The Religious Right and Contemporary American Politics

I remind you all of my earlier assertion that they were a relatively small and easily co-opted political minority (where else can they turn?) with little real influence on the majority of the population and little lasting political power.

It is good to be right.

And yes it is good, especially for those of us who are actually right. They (the fanatical fundamentalists of all types) are quite dangerous if ignored and the Christian fundies are no exception. They have been very well organized and financed, supported by certain factions within the media..........fortunately these types can be depended on to sooner or later pee in their own post toasties, which it appears they have done. ...

I agree with Bernie in that the threat is not gone. I'll admit that they avoided too many mistakes for a lot longer than I expected. I was losing hope a bit. ....

Lola wrote:

And yes it is good, especially for those of us who are actually right. They (the fanatical fundamentalists of all types) are quite dangerous if ignored and the Christian fundies are no exception. They have been very well organized and financed, supported by certain factions within the media..........fortunately these types can be depended on to sooner or later pee in their own post toasties, which it appears they have done. ...

I agree with Bernie in that the threat is not gone. I'll admit that they avoided too many mistakes for a lot longer than I expected. I was losing hope a bit. ....

Good to hear from you as well. Also reassuring to see that you still cling complacently to the old familiar illusions. None of us would be as interesting or entertaining without our faults.

I think the secular humanist fanatics are also quite well-funded and orgainzed and note that they include or influence a much larger portion of the media, particularly its establishment parts, than do the religious fundies. As long as George Soros has millions to spare they will prosper.

Glad to hear that the business is doing well and to observe ('tho we all frequent A2K less often than in the past) that you and Bernie are well and in character.

Afghanistan Deports Christian Koreans

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: August 3, 2006
Filed at 4:10 p.m. ET

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Afghanistan on Thursday ordered hundreds of South Korean Christians to leave the country, accusing them of seeking to undermine Islamic culture.

The Korean group's leader, Choi Han-woo, denied its 1,200 members, who gathered in Afghanistan for relief work and a cultural festival, took part in any religious activities.

However, Interior Ministry spokesman Yousef Stanezai said that although the Koreans came with tourist visas, their activities showed they had a different agenda.

''The program was against the Islamic culture and customs of Afghans,'' he said, adding they have been told to leave the country as soon as possible.

No, not at all. Only that they have to do very little to keep those votes - as long as the Democrats can be counted on for the heavy lifting in that area.

America's Holy Warriors

By Chris Hedges, Truthdig. Posted January 4, 2007.

The radical Christian Right is coming dangerously close to its goal of taking over the country's military and law enforcement.

The drive by the Christian right to take control of military chaplaincies, which now sees radical Christians holding roughly 50 percent of chaplaincy appointments in the armed services and service academies, is part of a much larger effort to politicize the military and law enforcement. This effort signals the final and perhaps most deadly stage in the long campaign by the radical Christian right to dismantle America's open society and build a theocratic state. A successful politicization of the military would signal the end of our democracy.

The most notorious example of this attempt to drum up a religious-based "will" to wage war came to light in 2003 with press reports of speeches delivered by Lt. Gen. William "Jerry" Boykin, the deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence, to audiences assembled by the Christian right.

Boykin repeatedly told audiences that the war was being waged by a "Christian army" and a "Christian nation" against Islamic forces aligned with Satan. He proclaimed that his own confidence in victory over a Muslim foe was based on the knowledge that "my God was bigger than his . . . my God was a real god and his was an idol." He likewise declared that George W. Bush was "appointed by God," despite having failed to win the majority of the votes in 2000, and indicated that he saw himself as answerable only to God's commands.

While the general's anti-Islamic bigotry and profoundly anti-democratic remarks provoked outrage, the Republican right and the Bush administration leapt to his defense. The general himself asked that a Pentagon inspector general investigate the controversy. The result was a report that avoided the content of Boykin's remarks, delivering only the mildest rebuke for his failure to assert that they were his personal opinion and to clear them first with superiors.

General Boykin remains to this day the senior uniformed officer in military intelligence and a top policy-maker in the "war on terror," overseeing assassination squads, illegal abductions and torture.

ARLINGTON, Va. (ABP) -- The influence of evangelical Christians in the military's highest ranks is again under question, after complaints about an evangelical group's promotional video that features several top-ranking Pentagon officers, some in uniform.

The Pentagon inspector general's office received the complaint from the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. The foundation -- founded earlier this year by an Air Force veteran who made headlines in a dispute over evangelical influences at the Air Force Academy -- made the complaint public Dec. 11.

The video appears on the website of the Christian Embassy, a Washington-area institution that serves high-level leaders in the federal government and the city's diplomatic community.

The organization is an outgrowth of Campus Crusade for Christ, an international evangelism and discipleship group for students.

Referring to the Pentagon's 20,000-plus employees, the video's narrator states: "Through Bible studies, discipleship, prayer breakfasts and outreach events, Christian Embassy is mustering these men and women into an intentional relationship with Jesus Christ."

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation's complaint, addressed to Thomas Gimble, the Pentagon's acting inspector general, said the appearance of Department of Defense employees in the video violates several military rules, including rules against active-duty service members promoting political or religious causes while in uniform.

The Rise of Christian Fascism and Its Threat to American Democracy
By Chris Hedges, Truthdig
Posted on February 8, 2007, Printed on February 8, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/47679/
Dr. James Luther Adams, my ethics professor at Harvard Divinity School, told his students that when we were his age -- he was then close to 80 -- we would all be fighting the "Christian fascists."

The warning, given 25 years ago, came at the moment Pat Robertson and other radio and television evangelists began speaking about a new political religion that would direct its efforts toward taking control of all institutions, including mainstream denominations and the government. Its stated goal was to use the United States to create a global Christian empire. This call for fundamentalists and evangelicals to take political power was a radical and ominous mutation of traditional Christianity. It was hard, at the time, to take such fantastic rhetoric seriously, especially given the buffoonish quality of those who expounded it. But Adams warned us against the blindness caused by intellectual snobbery. The Nazis, he said, were not going to return with swastikas and brown shirts. Their ideological inheritors had found a mask for fascism in the pages of the Bible.

http://www.alternet.org/stories/47679/

No offense, but I think the religious right has been the most overhyped threat in this decade's US politics.

Think about it. What three basic pillars of support and ideology have the Bush administrations leant on?

• the tax-cutting, corporate-friendly, corruption-tolerant, free market ideologues and big business pals
  
  
• the war-starting, executive power-entrenching, overreaching neoconservatives who were going to change the world in America's image by force
  
  
• the evangelical, puritan, culture war-fighting religious right with its obsession with abortion and gay marriage.

For sure, each constituency has tolerated or even approved of the actions of the others, brought together in their common pragmatic grab for power and shared distaste for anything liberal. But they're still three - the three, IMO - easily identifiable separate strands of Bushism.

OK, now ask yourself: which of these three strands has had the most influence, these past six years? Which of them succeeded best in getting their pet laws and policies pushed through? Which of the three has best succeeded in changing America in its own image? And which the least?

Face it: of the three, the religious right is the strand that got shafted. The highest ranking pol they got in Bush's admin was Ashcroft, and he dissappeared halfway through. Theres been hardly any change on abortion. Their agenda has come to be symbolised by the Schiavo debacle, which made Frist and the lot look foolish, and which they even lost, too. The only notch they can carve is the state referendums they won on gay marriage, and some of those were only symbolic.

The Bush era will forever be identified by Iraq and the monumental failure there of the neoconservative project. Once withdrawal from there ensues, however, the Bush era feature that will turn out to have had the most far-reaching impact in the US will be the huge, ideologically-inspired tax cut bonanza giveaway to the richest, and the deregulation of whole chunks of what remained of the government's ability to check market abuses that came with it. The religious right's agenda, on the other hand? As long as you're not gay, it's been a mere, and rather comical, blip on the radar.

And now the new presidential elections are going to come up and they are already rubbing the religious right's impotence into its face, confronting the bible-thumpers with probably having to swallow RudyMcRomney for '08.

Its almost enough to start feeling sorry for them.

Which Christian moral of his has been forced upon anyone?

Stem cell research, faith based social initiatives to name two and there are others coming, most likely abortion restrictions in the immediate future.

Christians Who Won't Toe the Line
By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Friday, March 16, 2007; Page A21

Evangelical Protestantism in the United States is going through a New Reformation that is disentangling a great religious movement from a partisan political machine. This historic change will require liberals and conservatives alike to abandon their sometimes narrow views of who evangelicals are.

The reformers won an important victory this month when the board of the National Association of Evangelicals faced down right-wing partisans and reaffirmed its view that solving global warming was an important moral cause. In so doing, it also expressed confidence in the Rev. Rich Cizik, the NAE's vice president for governmental affairs.

Cizik, who combines opposition to abortion with a firm commitment to human rights, the poor and the environment, came under attack from a gang of ideologues who would freeze evangelicals on a political course set more than a quarter-century ago.

Face it: of the three, the religious right is the strand that got shafted. The highest ranking pol they got in Bush's admin was Ashcroft, and he dissappeared halfway through.

Inserting an off-topic post to say hello to Bernie, Lola, Habibi, cicerone and Thomas.