This is an extended post which considers two books:
American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America, by Chris Hedges (New York: Free Press, 2006)
In The World But Not Of It: One Family’s Militant Faith and the History of Fundamentalism in America by Brett Grainger (New York: Walker & Company, 2008)
It also references an article by Henry Giroux. For more on Giroux, see my review of Utopian Pedagogy: Radical Experiments against Neoliberal Globalization.
The election of Barack Obama has been accompanied by a mood of optimism: America (and the whole world for that matter) might at last enjoy some respite from the reactionary politics of George W. Bush and his caterwauling coterie on the extreme right. And so the alarmist writings of Chris Hedges, and even the more measured tone of Brett Grainger, may appear to have quickly dated themselves. However, this mood of optimism may have come at a price. It may be a fair analysis to suggest that a frustrated right has, for the time being, diverted its energies to other projects. So, for example, in California, the Church of Latter Day Saints directed its political efforts (and a reported $20 million) into the passage of Proposition 8. Those on the left should feel beholden to LGBTs who have become sacrificial lambs in the odd “negotiations” that delivered us a liberal administration. More recently, in what looks like a significant concession to (or attempt to placate) a noisy right, Obama has announced that Rick Warren, pastor the Saddleback Church, author of the patently evangelical Purpose Driven Life, and noted homophobe will offer up the opening prayer at Obama’s Inauguration Ceremony. Once again, it seems that LGBTs are the losers in this game. Of particular concern is that these concessions have been wheedled by religious interest groups rather than by a secular lobby. They underscore the continuing influence of the religious right, which suggests that critics like Hedges will have continuing currency long after Obama’s inauguration.
Chris Hedges’ American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America was published in January, 2007 and, as the title suggests, draws comparisons between the rise of fascism between the two world wars and the aspirations of the Christian right in America since the rise to prominence of Pat Robertson in the mid 1970’s. Critics, some of whose views appear in a wikipedia article on the book, view the comparison as extreme and ill-informed. However, it is important to note that Hedges restricts his analysis to those on the right who identify as dominionists, that is, those who adhere to a literal understanding of Genesis 1:26 which has god give to man (not woman) dominion over all creation. Dominionists have internalized this passage of scripture to produce a rabid sense of entitlement which emerges in its most virulent form as the prosperity gospel, a dominant theme in Pat Robertson’s 700 Club, Jim Bakker’s now defunct PTL Club and in the ministries of people like Benny Hinn, Kenneth Copeland and Creflo Dollar, all of whom have come under investigation because of a lack of financial transparency. Hedges gives little attention to the other passage of scripture which serves as a cornerstone of these ministries and renders them particularly dangerous: the great commission (see especially Matt 28:16-20) which conservative Christians read as authorization to engage in aggressive proselytism.
Hedges argues that a relatively small group of individuals has become disproportionately influential in public affairs, that its aims have little to do with religious claims and everything to do with the acquisition of power. It seeks to dissolve the separation of church and state and to establish America as Christian nation. In its theocratic vision of a Christian America, faith’s primary function is to provide its leaders with a justification for their privileged position and to suppress dissent by stunting critical thought through the reduction of language to a simplistic pap. This eviscerates public debate by limiting discourse to rote binaries and three-second sound bytes.
As a graduate of Harvard’s Divinity School and journalist whose primary role is communication, Hedges is well-suited to document the many ways in which the dominionists have used substantial communication empires to manipulate media and to turn language on its head. He cites numerous examples, but none is as telling as the use of the words “freedom” and “liberty.” In the newspeak of the Christian right, liberty means “liberty in Christ” which connotes an ironic submission to principles which only these special ministries are authorized to mediate. It does not seem coincidental that the same people endorse an inverted notion of liberalism in the sphere of economic policy. Here, the result is a confusing linguistic practice of designating conservative trade policies as “liberal.” Henry Giroux, who frequently explores the relationship of pedagogy and public discourse, provides an excellent discussion of newspeak in the Bush administration and its ties to the religious right in his article “Representations of the Unreal: Bush’s Orwellian Newspeak.”
Another bizarre example of newspeak from the religious right can be found in Ben Stein’s Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, a Michael Moore rip-off that unwittingly presents an extended meditation on how to invert the notions of freedom and liberty. It engages in dialogue-stopping tactics by drawing frequent verbal and visual comparisons between liberals and Nazis. (Giroux offers an example of this from Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, who compared those who advocated an estate tax on beneficiaries inheriting more than $2 million to Nazis, presumably because they were singling out a minority group — rich people.) The movie plays passive aggressive games, painting proponents of Intelligent Design as victims of the so-called culture war, and liberals as highly organized, well funded, and machine-like in their obedience to authoritarian leadership. It accuses liberal universities of undermining academic freedom by refusing to give ID an equal footing in their curriculum. Not surprisingly, universities are ineffectual when trying to counter such accusations, primarily because they are asked to do so through media with which the Christian right has a far greater facility.
Hedges also makes frequent, if tangential, reference to the phenomenon of projection which he identifies as a psychological habit common to fascist movements. The religious right’s stance often presents as a response, not to any real position on the left, but to a position the right constructs by projecting on the left elements of its own nature: as noted above, liberals are viewed as highly organized, well funded, and machine-like in their obedience to authoritarian leadership. As with fascists, the religious right reveals its greatest insecurities when it becomes most aggressive. In America, the group which bears the greatest weight of the right’s projected fears is the LGBT community. By definition, those with non-normative sexualities blur neat boundaries and undermine a simplified social vision. (It is ironic that Stein uses the image of the Berlin Wall coming down to denote the liberation of ID proponents from the tyranny of liberals when the same image can be used to symbolize the breaking down of barriers that have kept LGBTs from enjoying many social and legal entitlements.) Hedges suggests that homosexuals have historically been the “canary in the coal mine” and their abuse presages a pattern of treatment that inevitably expands to other groups like the mentally ill, artists, and intellectuals.
The same habit of projection is applied beyond American borders to countries identified as Islamic. Extremists in the Middle East are characterized by the Christian right in terms which invite a “pot calling the kettle black” response: they follow the teachings a man who lived in ancient times and has nothing relevant to say about our complex world; they promote repressive political regimes; they encourage primitive visions of family life that are repressive to women; they have little regard for human rights; and they view political action in violent, apocalyptic terms.
Hedges is scornful of religious and political moderates who elevate tolerance to a primary value and he calls upon readers to reject those views which, if allowed to flourish, would undermine the mechanisms of democracy. We cannot allow ourselves to rationalize our complacency as tolerance or we risk a descent into cynicism. However, his call to speak against intolerance sits in tension with his claims about the Christian right’s habit of engaging in projection. How do we know that the behaviours we identify as intolerant aren’t the product of our own projection? How do we safeguard against engaging in a kind of pre-emptive censorship in order to avoid the recognition that the thoughts and behaviours we attribute to the right are, in fact, our own.
Brett Grainger offers a possible answer to this conundrum with In The World But Not Of It published earlier this year. Like Hedges, Grainger is a graduate of Harvard Divinity School and like Hedges, he writes in a journalistic style that is most concerned to report the facts through a series of anecdotal presentations supported by historical grounding and hard research. He leaves to other commentators a deeper analysis of the social and cultural significance of the facts he documents. His message is simple: if we are to critique Christian fundamentalism, we must first avoid the tendency to treat it as a monolithic group with a single cohesive vision for the religious and political future of America. We resort to stereotypes because one faction of fundamentalism (the dominionists whom Hedges attacks) is highly visible thanks to its control of media. However, there are many Christian fundamentalisms, often with divergent and contradictory aims. As a consequence, Grainger’s book is necessarily disjointed and incomplete. What he offers is a series vignettes which gives the reader glimpses of this sprawling and incoherent phenomenon known as Christian fundamentalism.
Grainger opens with a chapter detailing his personal experience growing up within the Plymouth Brethren sect. Like dominionists, the Plymouth Brethren believe that the Protestant Bible is the inerrant and authoritative word of God and must be read literally. However, as the title of the book suggests, the Plymouth Brethren differ because they eschew political and cultural engagement. They are separatists who live in insular communities which try to maintain a purity of faith by exempting themselves from civic obligations like voting and by focusing their attention on the life to come. Grainger offers an account of his grandfather who was typical in his belief in the rapture when the apocalyptic writings of Daniel and the Book of Revelations would be fulfilled. However, his grandfather strayed from the practice of his community by naming a date and time when this would come to pass. After settling his affairs, he and Grainger’s grandmother went to a small town in northern Ontario, and on September 11, 1988, they waited to be raptured into heaven. Nothing happened, of course, but the two elder Graingers faced harsh social consequences when they returned to their community.
Grainger uses his family story to illustrate two points which are thematic: 1) the presence of Christian fundamentalism in America is under-reported because it fails to account for a broad base of separatists whose numbers are impossible to determine precisely because of their refusal to engage; and 2) far from being a monolithic gathering of sheep, many fundamentalists, like Grainger’s grandfather, feel free to develop idiosyncratic understandings of scripture which they are willing to pursue with dogged determination. Rugged individualism in expressions of faith should not be surprising in a culture which valorizes individual initiative. Grainger devotes an entire chapter to this phenomenon which he titles “Freelance Fundamentalism.” I note, however, that the anecdotal portion of the chapter concerns a character named George Bothwell from Ontario whose spiritual roots are in the United Church of Canada — odd, given the book’s subtitle. It is dangerous to use Canadian examples in the characterization of American belief because, certainly in Ontario, the climate is less polarized, and the United Church of Canada, with its capacity to accommodate wildly divergent views (from the conservative Victor Shepherd to the radically non-theistic Gretta Vosper), has no correlate in the U.S.
Along the way, Grainger gives us glimpses of:
• Conceptions of Purity. Although expressed as prescriptions of correct behaviour that define goodness, purity codes have the double effect of defining membership within a religious community. Amongst the Puritans, purity was expressed primarily through attitudes toward food and through dietary practices such as fasting. However, Puritans had no compunctions around the consumption of alcohol. Temperance movements in the 19th century shifted the focus of purity from food to alcohol and, for the first time in 1869, grape juice was substituted for wine at the Lord’s Supper. In the mid-20th century, as temperance as a social policy fell out of favour, conservative Protestantism latched onto sex and sexuality as the markers of purity. The unwanted consequence of this shift is that Baptists are now the fattest people in America.
• Christian Zionism. Belief sometimes makes strange bedfellows and no alliance is stranger than that between Christian Zionists and conservative Jews. Because Jews and Jerusalem are supposed to have a crucial place in the unfolding of Christian history, it is crucial that Israel be supported in its defense against Islamic incursions. It is imperative that Jerusalem never fall into the hands of Palestinians because this would fly in the face of Biblical prophecy. We cannot underestimate the extent to which such views have influenced U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. One of the bizarre consequences of this movement is the rise in Holy Land theme parks which give believers a faith confirming experience without the inconvenience (and risk) associated with leaving America.
• Intelligent Design. The chapter on Creationism and ID serves as an object lesson to those who protest this movement. Grainger describes how the humanist group, Free Inquiry, successfully opposed the construction of a Creation Museum by AiG (Answers in Genesis) only to find that their efforts roused enough resentment that AiG was able to raise substantial funds, double the Museum’s size and purchase prime real estate. Reason emphatically does not prevail in this debate because its terms are not set by reason. As the documentary, Expelled, amply demonstrates, content is irrelevant; all the matters is the emotive force of production value.
• Dispensationalism. John Nelson Darby’s systematic theology, first developed in the 1830’s, created a way for fundamentalists to reconcile the fantastic world of Biblical miracles with the rise of science. Like ID, dispensationalism engages in an ironic embrace of modernism and rational thought to support a pre-modern world view. However, Grainger observes that even Dallas Theological Seminary, once synonymous with this elaborate system of rationalizations, has found it insupportable and is quietly moving toward a mainstream fundamentalism.
While Grainger’s In The World But Not Of It offers a valuable reflection upon the phenomenon of Christian fundamentalism(s) in America, he nevertheless delivers it in conciliatory tones which sound too much like the liberal moderation Hedges condemns. For his part, Grainger might find that Hedges plays too close to the practice of projection which Hedges finds so objectionable in those he critiques. Read together, the two authors underscore a tension that I suspect is always present in any liberal critique of fundamentalist religious practices. Perhaps the best approach is to acknowledge that both concerns are at play, and then do the one thing that truly distinguishes a liberal critique: work within the tension without feeling compelled to resolve it.