Knowledge is Power: Five Books about the Religious Right
Rightwing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort, by Chip Berlet and Matthew Lyons, Guilford, 2000.
This book is used as a text in college courses around the country. It is a history of rightwing populism in the U.S. in its religious, secular and racist dimensions. It is a highly recommended background for understanding the roots of contemporary conservative movements. The official book summary states: Right-wing militias and other anti-government organizations have received heightened public attention since the Oklahoma City bombing. While such groups are often portrayed as marginal extremists, the values they espouse have influenced mainstream politics and culture far more than most Americans realize. This important volume offers an in-depth look at the historical roots and current landscape of right-wing populism in the United States. Illuminated is the potent combination of anti-elitist rhetoric, conspiracy theories, and ethnic scapegoating that has fueled many political movements from the colonial period to the present day. The book examines the Jacksonians, the Ku Klux Klan, and a host of Cold War nationalist cliques, and relates them to the evolution of contemporary electoral campaigns of Patrick Buchanan, the militancy of the Posse Comitatus and the Christian Identity movement, and an array of millennial sects. Combining vivid description and incisive analysis, Berlet and Lyons show how large numbers of disaffected Americans have embraced right-wing populism in a misguided attempt to challenge power relationships in U.S. society. Highlighted are the dangers these groups pose for the future of our political system and the hope of progressive social change. Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy, by Frederick Clarkson, Common Courage Press, 1997. This book was talking about the theocratic elements of the Christian Right years before it was cool, and I am pleased to report that it has stood up quite well over time, and remains surprisingly current. It discusses some major points in the development of the Christian Right political movement that brought us to where we are today. It also discusses the significance of the theocratic Christian Reconstrucionist movement in the context of the broader Christian Right, especially the antiabortion movement, and how it is foundational to many religiously motivated homeschoolers. I take the view that unless you understand the role of Christian Reconstuctionist movement, and seminal thinker R.J. Rushdoony, you can't understand the rise of the Christian Right or what animates its "Biblical worldview." One of the founders of Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority stated that without Rushdoony's books "none of us would be here." I think that statement is exactly right. This is not to say that everyone in the Christian Right is a reconstructionist; far from it. Rather, the ideas of Christian Reconstructionism have had everything to do with powering this contemporary political movement to the pinnacle of power in less than a generation. Among other central tenets of the Christian Right, this book explores and debunks the myth that America was founded as a Christian nation, and suggests specific ways that the Christian Right can be countered. Another feature of the book is a chapter exposing the bogus theories to two prominent academics that unfortunately became popular in Democratic and liberal circles in the 1990s. One of the authors was a barely closeted Christian Rightist posing as a neutral scholar. It is important to read books that are reliable sources of information and analysis -- that is, if you want to win. That is one reason why the books mentioned here are important.
Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism by Michelle Goldberg, just out from W.W. Norton, is a logical follow-up to Eternal Hostility. Goldberg deftly integrates her understanding of Christian Reconstructionism and Christian nationalism into the broader narrative of recent events -- notably an entire chapter on the Dover, Pennsylvania federal court case over intelligent design, which alone is worth the price of the book. There are also lucid and well documented discussions of the war on the federal judiciary and of course, the meaning of Christian nationalism as it permeates Christian Right political culture. Kingdom Coming is engagingly written and makes strange and complex material remarkably accessible to readers who may, as so many do, find this material hard to digest. It was an ordinary spring school board meeting in the small bedroom community of Dover, Pennsylvania. The high school needed new biology textbooks, and the science department had recommended Kenneth Miller and Joseph Levine's widely used Biology. But Bill Buckingham, a new board member who'd recently become chair of the curriculum committee, had an objection. Biology, he said, was "laced with Darwinism." He wanted a textbook that balanced theories of evolution with Christian creationism, and he was willing to turn to his town into a cultural battlefield to get it. (Note that the first words out of his mouth were rooted in the rhetoric of Christian nationalism.) Goldberg shows how it is not possible to understand the Christian right political movement in any of its aspect, without understanding how Christian nationalism figures into it. This is a significant and lasting contribution to our national discourse. With God on Their Side: How Christian Fundamentalists Trampled Science, Policy, and Democracy in George W. Bush's White House, by Esther Kaplan, New Press, 2004. Now out in paperback. This is the definitive book on what happens when religion trumps science in politics and public policy as exemplified by the outrageous policies of the Bush administration. While the books previously metnioned tell us how we got to where we are today, and many important aspects of the political and public policy implications this book focuses on the consequences of their policy ideas in hair-raising detail, particularly in the areas of federal AIDS policy and reproductive health of women. Here is an excerpt of an excerpt from The Nation:
Fifteen of the country's most prominent AIDS organizations, meanwhile, had their finances investigated by the federal government after they joined in a protest of Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson at an international AIDS conference. And two HIV-prevention groups serving the gay community, San Francisco's Stop AIDS and Washington's Us Helping Us, were hit with audits and obscenity investigations that lasted for more than a year. Though Stop AIDS was exonerated by federal investigators, who found that even its most explicit HIV-prevention programs conformed with "currently acceptable behavioral theories," the group learned in June that it would no longer receive federal funds. Nor would some two-thirds of the AIDS agencies the federal government had previously funded to do community prevention work--many of them outspoken critics of Bush. American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century, by Kevin Phillips, Viking, 2006. This book is also a must read in this political season. It is emblematic of the growing chasm between more conservative writers like Phillips, and the rabid alliance between neoconservatives and the religious right that has defined the Bush administration and the general trend in the GOP for a generation. Phillips shows that there is a strong historical correlation between the rise of religious zealotry and the decline of great nations and empires. He sees the rise of the American Christian Right in this context and relates the problems posed in connection with other major political and economic trends. (The book draws in part on work by me and by Esther Kaplan in making his argument.) While it is not without flaws, (that I will discuss in a formal review), these are outweighed by the strength of his general argument. That Phillips' books is getting so much national attention across the political spectrum also means that it is a must read as it will contribute significantly to the contemporary conversation on these subjects.
The frequent by-products of religious fervor in the later stages of the previous powers-- zealotry, exaltation of faith over reason, too much church-state collaboration, or a contagion of crusader mentality-- shed light on another contemporary U.S. predicament. Controversies that run the gamut from interference with science to biblically inhibited climatology and petroleum geology and demands for the partial reunion of church and state have accompanied the political rise of Christian conservatism. Such trends are rarely auspicious.
Knowledge is Power: Five Books about the Religious Right | 8 comments (8 topical, 0 hidden)
Knowledge is Power: Five Books about the Religious Right | 8 comments (8 topical, 0 hidden)
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