A new generation of Religious Right leaders is turning conservative churches into political machines for far-right Republican candidates with rhetoric that might make Pat Robertson blush. Christians may hold the most powerful political offices in the country, but to these pastors, Christians are on the verge of being thrown into jail for professing their faith. Political opponents aren’t just wrong, they are the "hordes of hell" and the "forces of darkness." Notably, high-level Republican officials aren't trying to distance themselves from such rhetoric. Far from it. They're embracing the self-proclaimed "Christocrats" and counting on a new wave of aggressive politics-from-the-pulpit to win elections. In Texas, a group is giving the governor organized support from pastors motivated to help his re-election campaign. In Pennsylvania, a nascent group seeks to do the same for their embattled senator. And in Ohio, the candidate anointed by the "Patriot Pastors" – Secretary of State Ken Blackwell – is the Republican gubernatorial nominee.
... Candidates for public office are judged either godly or tools of Satan depending on their adherence to the pastors’ unforgiving agendas – not only on traditional Religious Right "social" issues such as criminalizing abortion and stripping gay Americans of legal rights, but also on a wide range of economic policies that would limit the government's ability to pursue the common good. Patriot Pastor leaders embrace tax cuts, elimination of the minimum wage, and even doing away with environmental and worker safety regulations on industry. ...
The "Patriot Pastor" movement is predicated on a particular vision of American politics: (1) that America is an explicitly Christian nation that should endorse sectarian policies, and (2) that this Christian America – and Christianity itself – are under attack from powerful forces in politics, possibly in league with Satan. (my emphasis)
This report focuses in particular on Patriot Pastor operations in Ohio and Texas, which are regarded as important models for Christian nationalist groups in other states.
In The Paranoid Style in American Politics (1965), historian Richard Hofstadter wrote of politically conservative Christian fundamentalists:
People who share this outlook have a disposition to interpret issues of secular politics as though they were solely moral and spiritual struggles. They are less concerned with the battle against communism in the world theater than they are with the alleged damage it does to politcs and morals at home. The cold war serves as a constant source of recriminations about our moral and material failure, but as an objective struggle in the arena of world politics it is less challenging to them than it is as a kind of spiritual wrestling match with the minions of absolute evil, who, as is so often the case with Satanic powers, exercise an irresistible attractiveness. (my emphasis)
This recent People for the American Way report is a reminder that the Christian Right of 2006 is far more powerful - but just as given to fanatical takes on politics - as some of their parents and grandparents were in 1965:
[Rod] Parsley [Ohio], [Laurence] White [Texas], [Russell] Johnson [Ohio], and [Rick] Scarborough [Texas] are in many ways the next generation of the Religious Right movement, which has grown dramatically in the past two decades from fringe status to being perhaps the dominant partner in the Republican coalition. They make no bones about manipulating an atmosphere of resentment over a feverish persecution narrative, and they do not hesitate to mobilize churches in direct electoral politics - the latest stage in the evolution of the Religious Right, and potentially far more effective than interest-group lobbying. (my emphasis)
