Theocracy, Anyone?
So I had to share this article from Salon, an excerpt from Michelle Goldberg's forthcoming book on the rise of Christian nationalism. (Worth the day pass to read). Of course, having worked at Americans United for Separation of Church and State for two years, and the ACLU before that, I already knew about these people and exactly how mentally ill they are. I mean, it's really sad how distorted their thinking and perceptions are. When I worked at the ACLU people would call and curse at us sometimes; I had more than one person ask me why the ACLU hated Christians and try to convert me. After two years of getting bloodthirsty, venomous e-mails at Americans United, I was done with all that. I moved on to a new job and tried to forget about it. Eventually I almost started to believe that those people couldn't hurt me, after years of thinking they would have taken me into a field and shot me if they could.
But there has been some debate in the letters to the editor (Salon has a feature where anyone can post a letter responding to an article) about how much of a threat this is. Some people have said, oh this is a small fringe group and they pose no danger to us. Others feel that a fascist takeover is imminent, noting that Germans thought the Nazis were a fringe group as well. Since most of this audience could at least nominally be described as fundamentalist -- although I assume that none of you are in any way associated with the tripe described in the book -- I thought it might be useful to get your thoughts. Have you encountered anyone in your churches who thinks this way? Do your churches participate in the types of rallies described in the article? Would you chain yourself to the Capitol steps to prevent Roy's Rock from being removed? Do you know anyone who would? Do you receive (or send) those mendacious e-mail forwards planted by the Heritage Foundation et al. about how the ACLU is conspiring to ban the Bible? Do you know people who actually have read any of the Left Behind books? (Shudder) Will Alabama or South Carolina really secede and try to form a Christian state? How imminent is this threat, really? And also, I think I've asked this before but I forgot the answer -- is the Church of Christ millenialist, premillenialist, postmillenialist, or none of the above?
But there has been some debate in the letters to the editor (Salon has a feature where anyone can post a letter responding to an article) about how much of a threat this is. Some people have said, oh this is a small fringe group and they pose no danger to us. Others feel that a fascist takeover is imminent, noting that Germans thought the Nazis were a fringe group as well. Since most of this audience could at least nominally be described as fundamentalist -- although I assume that none of you are in any way associated with the tripe described in the book -- I thought it might be useful to get your thoughts. Have you encountered anyone in your churches who thinks this way? Do your churches participate in the types of rallies described in the article? Would you chain yourself to the Capitol steps to prevent Roy's Rock from being removed? Do you know anyone who would? Do you receive (or send) those mendacious e-mail forwards planted by the Heritage Foundation et al. about how the ACLU is conspiring to ban the Bible? Do you know people who actually have read any of the Left Behind books? (Shudder) Will Alabama or South Carolina really secede and try to form a Christian state? How imminent is this threat, really? And also, I think I've asked this before but I forgot the answer -- is the Church of Christ millenialist, premillenialist, postmillenialist, or none of the above?
posted by Sandi | 7:03 AM
11 Comments:
I'll answer the easy question: Churches of Christ are predominantly "amillenialist" (1000-year reign figurative).
I think most church folks are kind of like sheep, and I mean that in both good and bad ways. I doubt anything but a very small group are vicious people, but when the combination of busy lives, environment, and Christian political propaganda merge, they believe the ACLU is evil & prayer in schools is good & gay marriage bad & a good Christian should never vote for a Democrat.
Now before I incur wrath, I'm not saying people can't come to those very same conclusions after honest consideration. I'm just saying for the most part people just float along with what sounds "right" to them, and these are the things that sound right to most church folks.
So, no, there's not a lot of rabid folks in my church. But yes, they will sign email petitions and pass around those sorts of things that can be done in the seated position. I can't see anyone going so far as to chain themselves to anything.
I'm not afraid of a theocracy happening in America. I think lots of folks would chain themselves to things to prevent that from happening, not to mention the holes (including Constitutional) in such an idea.
But I can see where there's reason to worry about it. And it has sure seemed to creep that direction recently.
Will Alabama or South Carolina really secede and try to form a Christian state?
I haven't read the article, but a big part of me answers this question: boy, I really hope so.
Let 3 or 4 southern states secede and form their own little country, and allow -- heck, encourage -- anyone who wants to be part of that kind of country to freely immigrate to it -- with the proviso that they have to stay for at least 5 yrs. (assuming the country lasts that long). Also provide financial assistance for those who want out to get out and resettled before the handover.
Let the wingnuts get all this nonsense out of their system by having to live under the system they think they want. It'd be a states-rights-havin', gun-carryin', millenium-usherin', pre-scientific paradise. For about 3 days. Then it would implode.
The only real problem it would cause for the rest of us would be making sure we had ironclad border security to keep their violence out of the U.S.
That's what part of me thinks, anyway.
(They could call their country Gwaccvnni.)
Thanks, you all, for your comments, and especially Whitney. This is exactly what I was looking for. I am so far away now from the places where this goes on that I don't have any information from real people about it.
When I attended O.S. C of C in the 1980s and 1990s, I do not recall much political talk other than the one incident I mentioned in my first post regarding the anti-gay pamphlet distributed by Roger Burdge (sp?), who was preacher at the time. Of course, I left soon after Bill was elected and long before the 1994 midterm elections, so as to what's happened since then, I don't know. I do know that I was called a "cultural elite" to my face by a longtime OSCofC member at my own wedding reception, and I was dimly aware throughout college that anti-Democrat talk was percolating among some members. But all the crazy stuff (on the national stage) has really happened since I graduated from college in 1998.
I was talking to my childhood best friend (who I met at OSCofC) soon after the 2004 election. She works at Pepperdine, and she told me that the people she works with there were incredibly vicious during the campaign, sometimes with the knowledge that she did not support President Bush, sometimes without. I seem to recall that she told me that more than one person had intimated or stated outright that you would not go to heaven if you voted for John Kerry (or maybe it was any Democrat, the details are a little fuzzy).
So, like Al noted, people have gotten very politicized in terms of party identification. And what I was wondering is, does that translate at all into being a "true believer" in potential theocracy? If what Al and Whitney are saying is true, then most people say these things and believe these things (ACLU is evil, blah blah blah) in a fairly passive way and there are just a few loudmouths out there who feel more strongly about it than the rest.
And Whitney, bravo for every time you've sent people links to the urban legend website!!! People are so gullible about things like this, believe everything they read, and end up with misdirected anger about something that isn't even true. And then there are the people who deliberately disseminate untruths in order to further their agendas. I am always shocked by it even though I know I shouldn't be at this late date. To me, if you can't promote your point of view honestly, then you really need to rethink it. Getting people to support your cause by deceiving them may be effective, but it is incredibly immoral. Anyhow, I wish that more people receiving these who feel as you do would speak up. I have done it a couple of times when family members were still naive enough to send me such things, and for sure no one appreciates being corrected, but it is so important. You would (or maybe you wouldn't!) be amazed at the kind of frenzies people work themselves up into over the things they read in e-mail forwards. I got enough vitriol when I was at AU to last me a lifetime.
I don't know if I had ever mentioned this before, but AU was co-counsel with the Southern Poverty Law Center and the ACLU of Alabama in the Roy Moore case. Our legal director received a really ugly death threat soon after we won the case, which was only a month or two after I had started working there. It was really scary. AU had to hire a consultant to do a full-scale evaluation of and improvements on the security of the building. And too, a large part of my job was responding to e-mails from the public. So I was steeped in this stuff for two years. I think it really skewed my perspective about how prevalent such views are, and that's part of why I like to ask people who live outside of the East Coast Corridor about it. I didn't think it would be a divisive topic here at all -- I just wanted to get a sense of what's out there.
While I generally agree, I'll quibble a bit, Joe.
Jefferson was more Deist than Theist. The other Framers were scattered across a spectrum from, say, Thomas Paine (atheist) at one end, to, say, Patrick Henry (hardnosed, established-church-advocating Anglican) at the other. Franklin was pretty close to Paine's end of the spectrum. Washington seems to be somewhere in the middle; probably more theistic than Jefferson, but not a lot. Madison we just flat don't know about; we know he was raised Anglican, but he seems to have scrupulously avoided discussing his own religious beliefs (or lack thereof) in public or even in his letters.
Overall, I've found it's hard to say much of anything definitive about the Framers' religious beliefs.
But our country was NOT established to be a haven for Christianity.
Again, I generally agree, but with reservations. It really depends on whose intentions you're talking about. This is a problem for all arguments from (or about) "original intent."
Patrick Henry, among others, did intend to establish a haven for Christianity. Madison and Jefferson, among others, decidedly did not. We have no idea what the people who ratified the Constitution intended, because we have basically no records of those statehouse debates.
So, IMHO, any pursuit of "original intent" regarding church & state is doomed to failure. There was no single "original intent." There's just enough evidence of the intent of just enough of the relevant people for anybody advocating almost any position to find some historical support for their argument, and wave it around as if it's decisive.
And what I was wondering is, does that translate at all into being a "true believer" in potential theocracy? If what Al and Whitney are saying is true, then most people say these things and believe these things in a fairly passive way . . .
I agree with Al and Whitney -- with the proviso that what you, Sandi, might consider theocratic and dangerous, most of those passive believers would not consider theocratic at all and would vote for.
Well, that's a proviso that swallows the whole rule! I guess what I mean by theocratic is the plain meaning -- doing away with our Constitution and democratic government in general and instituting Biblical law. I don't classify every move to chip away at the church/state wall to be, in and of itself, theocracy.
I guess what I was getting at, Sandi, was that a thing might be theocratic without effecting a full-on theocracy, and your notion (and mine) of what things are theocratic probably differs quite a bit from Al's typical parishioner.
Case in point:
doing away with our Constitution and democratic government in general and instituting Biblical law.
In your thinking (and mine), one would have to do away with our Constitution, etc., in order to institute biblical law. I'm not sure the typical member of CsofC would see it that way at all; on their view, one could have both.
(Maybe it would help if I actually read the article you referenced. Is it about the Dominion Theology/Christian Reconstructionist whackjobs, or more typical Evangelicals?)
Oh, so it is about the Dominion Theology moonbats. Ah.
So my new short answer, Sandi, is: no, you don't find that kind of thing in CsofC. (Not to my knowledge, anyway. It's waaaaaaaaay too Calvinistic for CsofC.)
If you're curious, Whitney, look up Rousas John Rushdoony. He's the fountainhead and theologian-in-chief.
Didn’t we fight a war over a similar issue some years back?
I recall something along those lines, Cap'n, but the side that lost seems to have trouble remembering that its views were examined and, to borrow a phrase, relegated to the ash heap of history. They keep fulminating about them as if the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the ensuing constitutional amendments never happened.
I though that’s what I said in the following paragraph
It is, more or less. What you'd said seemed aim more at the comically rednecked among us, though. I had in mind the ones in Dillard's suits or Duckhead khakis who get themselves elected to schoolboards or city coucils or statehouses, or even federal houses. (Texas and Mississippi and Kansas delegations, I'm looking at you.)
The CSA, I think, would've had a different set of problems from what a religious wingnut country would experience today. The South's problem then was largely economic and technological, right?
The -- what, Dominion States of America? -- the DSA's problem would be a total lack of a unifying ideology (what John Rawls calls "overlapping consensus"). Each militaro-religious group would militate that its view be imposed on everybody else, and then they'd all go to killing each other. There just wouldn't be anything to hold it all together. (Much the same pattern as in the Puritan New England colonies, only obscenely more violent.)
Swerve on, MacDuff! Swerving is encouraged here'bouts.
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