More Religion

I'm delighted bloggers are pushing back on the onslaught of fundamentalists and Glenn Beck types against the Founding Fathers. Harvey Wasserman posts on www.dailykos.com this morning "The Founders were not Fundamentalists". Actually, for the record, 99.9% of Christians globally are not fundamentalists. But Harvey adds to the debate, reminding us we should embrace our history without blinkers. Wasserman's own history of the United States is www.harveywasserman.com ,which also includes the number of pot-smoking founders.

He reminds us that Ethan Allen, the guerrilla leader of the Green Mountain Boys, was a militant atheist as were many of the farmers and artisans who supported the Revolution. So, Boycott Ethan Allen Furniture. Harvey's a little too tame on Thomas Paine, where he says he never mentioned religion. Paine, Glenn Beck's first hero when he appeared on Fox News, was a non-believer and a proto-socialist. The best part of Wasserman's post is his embrace of Benjamin Franklin and his amorous affairs.

But he adds some critical items to the whole debate. Thomas Jefferson, the hero of David Barton's Christian revisionism, wrote his own gospel, editing out all references of the miraculous to Jesus and portrayed Jesus as an activist and moral leader and a mortal. Founding fathers--John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe and John Quincy Adams--were all freethinkers.

George Washington became an Anglican as was required to join the British Army at the time. He rarely went to church, sometimes to the Presbyterian Church one block away from my house, and refused last rites. As we know from recent films, George Washington was a Mason. He also opined that religion should be regulated so that it would have no influence on politics.

In a 1796 treaty he signed, Washington wrote ,"the government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion."

To assure early American Jews, George Washington in a letter to the Jews in Truro, Mass, he wrote, the "Government of the United States , which gives bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistances, requires only that they live under its protection,should demean themselves as good citizens."

For those of us concerned about the past Administration's embrace of torture, it should be remembered that it was George Washington with his Revolutionary Army, who established the historical prohibitions of our military against using torture.

Since yesterday was Abraham Lincoln's Birthday, we might remind everyone that Lincoln was also notorious for his anti-religious sentiments and even sacriligious remarks. As Fred Kaplan noted in his book on Lincoln's reading, he learned his rhetoric by reading the Bible and Shakespeare and that his use of language with biblical allusions did not reflect his religious views.

Or Ronald Reagan, who once told conservative Christians, "you can't be for me, but I'm for you", actually didn't go to Church and was excused by his supporters because he claimed,"it was too much bother for the rest of the congregation."

When we see these assaults by fundamentalists on American history, we should remember that this is nothing new but dates back to the 1930s. With the country mired in the Great Depression, most denominations of Christians embraced a social gospel, stressing assistance to the poor and the Americans marginalized from our society. Within some of these denominations were factions who felt there was a Christian basis for capitalism and that Christian embrace of science and sociology eroded the message of salvation. Former Christian right leader Frank Schaeffer's father was among those who went the fundamentalist way. My grandfather took the directly opposite direction becoming an advocate of the social gospel, even being socialist. This faultline in protestantism led to the the Christian Nationalist Movement and the attempts to revise American history as a saga of a Christian country. Even though this has morphed in the last few decades into a more radical right agenda, it was in the Depression that the struggle began in earnest.

When you see modern fundamentalist embracing the notion of a white Jesus, the picture seen on many churches throughout the country, and arguing a biblical basis for laissez-faire capitalism, you only have to go back to the 1920s to locate where this is coming from. A blogger recently wrote from Pennsylvania that churches there actually gave seminars on the Christian basis for laissez-faire capitalism, arguing that both Sweden and Canada are "failed states" and that the old Confederacy was a model state. I wonder whether the AMZ Baptist Church would agree. But the Christian argument for slavery lasted well-beyond Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation and it seems to persist.

Fundamentalist Christians share with Islamists the same attitude toward sacred texts. Historically, the Church fathers always argued that the interpretation of the Bible must be tempered by tradition. The Bible was to be interpreted but not literally. In the Muslim faith, the same standards apply; the Quran must be interpreted along other sacred texts to understand its real meaning. The Reformation led to the availability of the Bible for all worshippers with the intent that Catholic priests could not prevent the believer from reading God's Word. But reformation theologians never argued for the literal interpretation of the Bible like American fundamentalists do. In fact, it is manifestly absurd. Sometime check out fundamentalist preachers on television as they use Concordances and other materials to explain a biblical passage. They don't even preach a literal Bible.

Not all fundamentalist Christians are dangerous. That right goes in my mind to what Andrew Sullivan calls "Christianist" for their worship of the apocalypse. This strain of Christian worships the Book of Revelations, not the Gospel. These are the Left Behind Christians, who celebrate the coming end days and the notion of Rapture. Unfortunately for us, there are about 15 million such believers in the United States. This mindset is behind Rev. Hagee's Christians for Israel, which supports the state of Israel for the purpose of provoking a global holocaust, which will lead to Christians being raised in rapture, while Jews and non-believers are cannon fodder for the judgement of Jesus Christ. This is the group supported by Senator Joe Lieberman and which backed John McCain for President. The most interesting twist to these end-timers is Sarah Palin, whose own minister said the Rapture would occur in Wasilla, Alaska.

The "Christianist" dimension here is that the end-timers aim to "infiltrate" the political structures in the United States to influence policy so as to activate the end-time scenario. They hold the mirror religious view of the Iranian President. The other aspect is their profound anti-Americanism. These American fundamentalists despise American society in all its manifestations. Edited out of Republican narratives is the denunciations of our society by Pat Robertson and the late Jerry Falwell whenever they applauded 9/11 or Hurrcane Katrina as God's judgment on us. It is also for that reason they support the creation of parallel institutions, home-schooling, anti-science and revisionist history. If you follow the Prop 8 trial like I do, they even want to create a Christianist legal system, which would regulate personal behavior and lifestyles. One of the more shocking displays of Christianist thinking has been the fundamentalist opposition to Health Care Reform. But this is rooted in a firm belief that our government is fundamentally corrupt and non-Christian. And , horrors of horrors, secular.

The Conservative Crack-Up

While in Ethiopia, I received an e-mail with a large Black Face with Red Lips crying ,"It's all Bush's fault" from one of the many conservatives I know. This was a cartoon with commentary on the president's State of the Union address. My response was that Obama basically took and owns the entire Republican vocabulary on tax cuts for small businesses and the middle class, while leaving the Republicans to defend the banks, the rich and propose cuts to Social Security and Medicare. Throw in torture, Gitmo and endless wars and I'm not so sure I would want to defend the Republican positions on anything. While on-line in Addis, I watched as Obama slaughtered the Republican House members at their retreat in Baltimore. But none of my right-wing correspondents will acknowledge this, even cherry-picking a response where they thought one representative got the better of Obama (in the full context the guy looked like a fool.) I've concluded long ago that Republicans, conservatives and their tea bag allies have never listened to a single Obama speech or policy proposal. The President is deluding himself when he just invited the Republicans to debate health care at the White House this month.

While at the African Union heads of state meeting in Ethiopia, I noticed their agenda consisted of the topics of peace and security; maintaining constitutional government; and the role of IT in development. Having dealt with these issues for decades I thought I would find them just the same old same old. But today I find them refreshing. Whoever the African leaders might be and how little political will they may possess to implement what they discussed, the fact of the matter is that their discussion was rational and modern, a bracing change from the insanity of our own political discussions in the United States.

Yes, terrorism is a problem for them as they showed concern about developments in Somalia but it was discussed without the hysteria we now find in the United States. I found it amusing that the plane from Germany had a stop-over in Yemen, where a considerable number of German tourists were heading for just that--tourism.

Reviewing television news coverage of global events while in Africa it dawned on me that the United States was not that much of a story or even a factor political pundits even discussed. While this would seem parochial in the past, it comes across now that the United States is not "the indispensable country" Charles Krauthammer argued in 2000. Developments in alternative energy sources and new methods of manufacturing were covered by examining the role of Asian and European countries. In the dozens of shows I watched nothing innovative shown was of American origin. At most we received a tangential reference as a country warring here and there. The coverage of political causes around the world showed hundreds of voices from a variety of non-governmental organizations, few of whom had support from America.

The tone I picked up at the African Union was a fond remembrance of America as it existed decades ago and a certain support for Barack Obama, a son of Africa but more importantly as a leader of a developing country. The delegations at the African Union dealt with their own agenda as dictated by their own needs. A healthy development after all these years but somewhat disconcerting to an American, who now really stands outside their development priorities.

This all brings me back to the collapse of conservative thought in the United States and the shards of right-wing protests and rage. Since Woodrow Wilson, American exceptionalism had an intellectual content and policy implications. Now with the implosion of conservatives, it has taken a darker, some would say, sinister tone. The European and Asian communities still look toward the United States for leadership on a host of issues, particularly on the global financial crisis. They assume a fairly pragmatic leadership aimed at stabilizing the world's economy and putting in place a regulatory regime to prevent another fiscal meltdown. In return, they afford us forebearance on the issue of Afghanistan and perhaps even Iran. They have welcomed a new Administration, which is not prone to act unilaterally on issues and to bully former allies into compliance. But all that would change if the radical right ever see power in the United States.

Upon my return I was treated to the Teabag Convention in Nashville, which drew a whopping 600 members. For an historical footnote, the Unitarian Universalist Church held a convention in the same place in the late 1990s with over 1,500 delegates from different churches. the UUs are a very minor religion in the United States. They did not receive wall-to-wall coverage by our networks. The same will apply to the netroots convention in Las vegas later this year, which will outdraw even the UUs but will receive no media attention.

The Teabag Convention brought to a national audience Tom Tancredo, a second generation Italian-American, who raged against immigrants, called for literacy tests for voting and criticized voters who didn't speak English. He even called for all non-Christians to be expelled from the country. The entrepeneur Joseph Farah of World Net Daily spent a good amount of his address on the issue of whether Barack Obama was born in the United States, although anyone reading this blog knows this is irrelevant to anything other than to denounce the "other". The Queen of the Birthers Orly Taitz was there to drum up more funding for her futile attempts to make Obama's birth certificate a legal issue. When was the last time an American President was ever asked for his birth certificate?

The star of the show was Sarah Palin, who received a speaking fee of $100,000 for the gig. Deliberately eschewing a teleprompter in a criticism of Obama's eloquence, she fumbled through notecards and delivered a speech in her imitation hillbilly voice. She wore a US-Israeli flag pin since her religious beliefs call for the return of Jesus to Israel after a global war and the resurrection of the believers in "rapture". For this to occur, Jews must return to Israel and Jewish settlements on Palestinian lands must be extended if there is to be enough room. Of course, in the end days the Jews all get exterminated. Why Israel plays with these people is still beyond me.

One could dismiss this all if the polls of Republicans demonstrated any rationality. The Reseaarch 2000 poll of 2,000 Republicans showed that 65% believe Obama is a socialist; a plurality believe he should be impeached, about a half either believe he wasn't born in the United States or have doubts, and a majority believe Sarah Palin is more qualified than Obama to be President. That's not a serious party.

The conservative paradigm has failed and the religious right is filling it. One of the discussions at the Teabag Conventions was encouraging the end of the separation between Church and State. What we see now is that cultural conservatives are deliberating dividing the middle class, playing on the old wedge issues of abortion, gays and guns. The fact that many of these teabaggers actually share critics of government and the economy not unlike the Democrats is being diverted by all these peripheral issues.

The economic Republicans are no longer for the middle class or small businesses. They are in full tilt support of large corporations and the wealthiest of us. This is simply no sympathy for the vanishing Middle Class. The Middle Class is supposed to be kept in line by cultural conservatives, especially the religious right.

Neoconservatives have been trying to make a comeback through critiques of Obama's foreign policy, which in private they can not find much to disagree with. However, married to whatever emerges in Republican circles they will just be reduced to a position of bellicosity in the Middle East, which will satisfy the Religious Right.

But I noticed another e-mail from a former colleague who is running for the House as a Republican in Michigan. He is running against the stimulus package, for smaller government, for constitutional government, against closing Gitmo and giving terrorists Miranda rights. I have not had the heart to ask him whether smaller government means dismantling the $1 trillion military-terrorist complex. But when you look at all the anti-government proposals and spending cut rhetoric you have an argument to dismantle the entire social welfare system in the United States. The House Republican budget plan of privatizing Social Security and ending Medicare only flag the return of the 1920s economic theories of the Republicans.

Today, 30% of Americans are now in poverty--which these people would like to believe are the black underclass and Hispanics but the vast majority are white. The Middle Class in the United States has lost income steadily for twenty years and its quality of life is vanishing. In many ways, the teabaggers are a delayed reaction to the economic disaster of the Bush-Cheney years. That also explains why corporate interests are heavily funding parts of their organizations so that they can channel this anger at the Obama Administration. A few teabaggers did recoil at the Supreme Court's ruling on corporate giving to political campaigns but not the majority of their spokespeople.

The political answer for these people is a pugnacious nationalism based on the perceived grievances of the white middle-class. If you are not white,Christian and heterosexual, you are the "other" that is bringing the country down. We see this in the arguments of the anti-gay lawyers for Prop 8, arguing from books and studies written in the 1950s, wishing that Ozzie and Harriet were the model parental unit. The scree by Tom Tancredo brings back the anti-immigrant rhetoric found in many populist movements but also the longing to return to an America pre-civil rights.

No sober assessment will come from the conservative circles--they have become a conservative nomenklatura--the conservative foundation welfare queens. These people who control talk radio, Fox News and a myriad of think-tanks in Washington and elsewhere simply can not think questions anew. They are stuck in the Old Think. They still believe after a generation of Reagan that they are the minority pitted against the liberal media and secular culture of America. They fervantly believe despite their six-figure salaries they are the intellectually oppressed, who face ridicule for their beliefs.

This is also a theme being picked up by the Religious Right--somehow their freedom of religion is being jeopardized as their control over certain segments of the society slip away. We have seen that in the health reform debate when Catholics and evangelicals protested over the ability for women to choose. We see this in the whole anti-gay debate that gay marriage would be an imposition on the churches and their religious teaching. And we see this everyday in the attacks on science at the school board levels.

Personally, I resent like hell that the Religious Right dominates the parameters of the whole discussion on religion in this society. I have just come back from a society who has practiced Christianity since 330 and in every diocese of their church is an administrative unit that deals with poverty because they believe that is essential to Christianity. Across the street from the major Ethiopian Orthodox Church in Addis is Lucy, our primitive ancestor, along with other examples of pre-Homo Sapiens. There are no religious protestors here. There are no attacks on evolution or the insistance on creationism in what is still and underdeveloped country. Just a week away from our own neurosis allows one to get a perspective on how far down a wrong path we have gone.

The pattern emerging is the bleeding of radical extremes from white and Christian nationalism into the discourse of conservatives. There is a deliberate and frontal assault on the separation of church and state. There is the age-old recurrence of anti-immigration rhetoric we know from the Know-Nothings. In a situation where we seem to have lost control, there is a desire for law and order as well as social control. Because we Americans really believe we may win the lottery or get rich someday, these people do not want to tax the wealthy, large corporations or the banks because they have been conditioned to believe that they or their children might luck out.

Certainly, there is some reason to believe this. Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh are college dropouts who make over $50 million each and Sarah Palin has become a millionaire, despite quitting as elected Governor of Alaska and needing four colleges and five years to get a B.A. This has coarsened our debate.

But it has also led to a more dangerous situation--the denigration of education or anyone who is educated. What is fascinating to me is that neoconservatives prided themselves in the beginning on their elitism and their education. Irving Kristol was an accomplished social scientist, who believed that rational analysis would support policy arguments. Instead, now we have corporate funded think-tanks attacking everything from climate change to evolution. During the beginning of the Iraq War, the Pentagon hired a free-lance journalist to establish a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq, while all the people with linguistic skills, regional expertise and religious understanding who concluded the opposite were cast aside. It will take a few more years of the Obama Administration before we can unravel the nonsense of the past in our fight against terrorism.

I believe the pattern of the right represents a incipient fascism. But let's say this does not fully mature. If these people return to power, what major power in the world will deal with the United States. The current climate on the right makes George W. Bush look like a moderate. No responsible economic power in the world could deal with a Palin or a Huckabee. The only ally the United States would have is Israel and only as long as the Likud and the far-right parties are in power. No one in their right mind would buy US Treasuries. We would automatically cease to be a major country on the world stage. This would indeed be American exceptionalism but not for the good.

And what about the "common good"--will there exist such a thing. Our own constitutional government is deeply threatened not only from the radical right but by the Supreme Court itself. The discovery by the Right of our Constitution goes back to the Christian Nationalist movement and their belief in full citizens and those after the civil war. Imagine having a woman married to a secessionist (Sarah Plain) extolling the virtues of the 14th amendment? You could not have made that up a few years ago without getting a laugh.

As I have written before, America's economic fate might be grim but it is essential that the idea of America be kept alive because even when we are dead people around the world can take solace and draw strength on the idea of America. Let's not be the instrument to kill the idea.