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From AlterNet

The Growing Threat of Right-Wing Christians


By Onnesha Roychoudhuri, AlterNet. Posted July 19, 2006.

"I don't want to be alarmist, but this is actually quite alarming,"
Michelle Goldberg said. She was referring to the subject of her new
book, "Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism," which
chronicles the steady rise of the neocons of Christianity.

Whether she's attending a Ten Commandments conference or joining
Tony Perkins' conference calls to listen in on what D.C. agenda will be
passed on to congregations, Goldberg's reporting offers insight into a
movement that has reshaped the nation's political and cultural landscape.
Goldberg did not go undercover, nor wear any disguise. Rather, she simply
showed up, listened and learned. And what she has learned is definitely alarming.

Traveling around the country on her book tour, Goldberg notes that
many people have approached her with stories that illustrate the religious
intolerance that is the hallmark of an aggressive Christian movement. On
a muggy day in Brooklyn, Goldberg sat down with me to discuss the need
for Americans -- particularly progressives and liberals -- to recognize the
sophisticated intellectual structure of Christian Nationalism, and how
it has succeeded in constructing a parallel reality based on Biblical
rhetoric and revisionist history.

Onnesha Roychoudhuri: How did the idea for the book come about?

Michelle Goldberg: I've done reporting on the subject for a long time.
One of the first pieces I did on the Christian right was on the ex-gay
movement. What struck me going to the Exodus Conference was that
it takes place in this whole entire parallel universe. They have their own
psychologists, psychological institutions and their own version of
professional medical literature. The amount of books, magazines and
media, and the way it almost duplicated everything that we have in our
so-called reality, is remarkable. What struck me years later when I was
reporting on the Bush administration was that the parallel institutions
that I had first come into contact with were replacing the mainstream
institutions -- especially in the federal bureaucracy.

Roychoudhuri: Can you give an example?

Goldberg: In the Department of Health and Human Services,
the people they hired to formulate sex education policy, at both
the national and international level, didn't come from the American
Medical Association or the big medical schools. They're coming
from places like the Medical Institute for Sexual Health, which is
this Christian Nationalist medical group.

[The group says it is a "nonprofit scientific, educational organization
to confront the global epidemics of non-marital pregnancy."]

One of the earlier stories I did for Salon was on the UNFPA (United
Nations Population Fund) which does family planning, but they don't do
abortion, mostly safe childcare and reproductive health through clinics
all over the world. Congress had appropriated $35 million to the UNFPA.
There's this group called the Population Research Institute -- another
one of these parallel institutions. They're radically anti-family planning
and claim that population control policies are part of this "one-world
conspiracy" to cull the population of the faithful so that the "one-world
government" can more easily assert its control. On the website it said
that not only is overpopulation a myth, but all the people on Earth
could live comfortably in the state of Texas. I did this story in 2002.
I still had this naïve idea that this kind of thing would remain marginal.

But what's amazing is that Population Research Institution went on
to testify before Congress saying that the UNFPA promotes forced
abortions in China. These kinds of accusations start echoing up the
ladder to the point where Bush froze the UNFPA funding. This despite
the fact that the State Department had already sent a delegation to China
to investigate and said there was nothing to these accusations at all.

There's a myth on the left that's been fostered by Thomas Frank.
I think it's a mistake to think that the religious right hasn't got anything.
Frank has fostered this idea that the right votes to end abortion and
gets a repeal of the estate tax. They've actually gotten quite a bit. One
of the main ways they are rewarded below the radar is by being given
vast amounts of control over American family planning policy abroad.

Roychoudhuri: What is "Christian Nationalism"
and what characterizes it as a political movement?

Goldberg: Christian Nationalism is a political ideology separate from
evangelicals. Evangelicals are about 30 percent of the American
population. Christian Nationalism is a subset of 10-15 percent. It's
less a religion than it is an ideology about the way America should be
governed. It has this whole revisionist history claiming that America
was founded as a Christian nation, that the separation of church and state
is a fraud perpetrated by seculars. What follows from that are ideas about
Christianization of institutions in American life, and that the courts
have vastly overstepped their authority in the enforcement of the
separation of church and state.

Roychoudhuri: Throughout the book, you show examples of the Christian
Nationalist movement pushing for special privileges under the banner of
equal rights. The change in the hiring rights of faith-based social
programs seems to epitomize this.

Goldberg: The words that they use for that is "religious freedom in hiring
rights." Religious groups have been able to get government checks for
a long time. But they used to have to abide by 1956 civil rights law which
has an exemption for religious groups. So, if you're a church you can
prefer Christians, mosques can prefer Muslims, but the catch has always
been that if you're contracting with the government, then you have to abide
by the same civil rights laws as everybody else. Bush, by executive order,
overturned that so that government-funded charities are no longer
bound by the laws. Now, there is job training, drug treatment and
preschool programs that are totally separate. The job is 100-percent
taxpayer funded, but they can say in the help-wanted ad, "Christians only."
Bush wanted to get the Salvation Army aboard the faith-based initiatives.

The Salvation Army then brought in a consultant to Christianize certain
divisions. He asked the human resources director at the Salvation Army
headquarters, Maureen Schmidt, whether one of the human resource
staffers at the social services division, Margaret Geissman, was Jewish, because
she had a "Jewish sounding name." Schmidt told him that she wasn't. So
then he went to her and said, "I want a list of homosexuals who work
there."

She said no. She's a really conservative lady, but she was totally
appalled and refused to do it.

Roychoudhuri: How did this kind of shift occur? Is there an architect
behind these faith-based programs?

Goldberg: The architect of the faith-based initiative is Marvin Olasky.
He was an advisor of Bush's campaign. Bush wrote the foreword to Olasky's
book, Compassionate Conservatism, I think people hear "compassionate
conservatism," and it sounds like a banality, but if you know Olasky's
book, you know it's outlining something very specific. Olasky believes
that America is in moral decline and that we need to return social
services to churches. He also believes that conversion is an important
part of the process. This book laid out exactly what he thought we
should be doing, and Bush went and did it.

Roychoudhuri: Your book discusses the role that megachurches play in the
politics of the right. Can you explain the ties?

Goldberg: It's not all of the megachurches, but it is many of them.
There's different kinds of connections. New Life Church in Colorado
Springs, Ted Haggard is the pastor there. He has a call with the White
House every single week. Other churches are networked in through the
Family Research Council in D.C. It's run by Tony Perkins who has these
conference calls that I actually got the number for and started
listening in on. All these pastors call in and Perkins basically updates them on
his latest conversations with the White House and the congressional
leadership. He tells them what kind of issues he needs to focus their
congregations on. So he would say you need to have your congregants
write to their senators about abolishing the filibuster or about confirming a
certain judge. He's literally relaying marching orders from Washington,D.C.

Roychoudhuri: Do you think congregants are aware of the connection?

Goldberg: I kind of doubt that people in the congregations know that but
I'm not sure that they would be particularly angry or outraged about it.
It would only outrage you if you believe in the separation of church and
state, that church shouldn't be a political party.

Roychoudhuri: You frequently discuss the similarities between Christian
Nationalism and fascism and totalitarianism. Were you conflicted about
broaching this?

Goldberg: Among liberals, there is always talk about fascism and there's
a kind of agreement that you can't talk about it more publicly without
sounding like a lunatic. You don't want to sound like you're comparing
Bush to Hitler. We have no language to talk about the intermediate
stages of this kind of thing. But there are these really unmistakable parallels
to fascism, not as a government system, but to fascism in its early
stages. Before fascism is a government, it's a movement. It's not born
in power, it comes to power. I think it's time to talk about fascism or
another word for it. Christian Nationalism is one way to talk about it.
But there are things that are going on that are not normal, they're not
politics usual.

These things are always subtle and gradual, but there are moments when
all of a sudden you think "Oh, they're drawing up lists of people who are
gay at public agencies." I don't want to be alarmist, but this is actually
quite alarming. Just recently, there was a story about a Jewish family
in Delaware who moved after fearing retaliation for filing a lawsuit
regarding state-sponsored religion. As I've been traveling around the
country, and I've been traveling a lot, I keep hearing about things like
this happening all over the place.

There's one abortion clinic in Mississippi right now and Operation
Rescue is planning to close it down. In parts of the country, doctors are
living under constant terrorist threat and it's a daily battle. If you're in
other parts of the country, you can be completely unaware of it. I keep
hearing from people on the coasts who say, well, I'm sure the pendulum
will swing back. But my sense is that, for instance, gay people who are
living in conservative states or Jews who are living in places where there
aren't a lot of other Jews, definitely feel something is going on and it's
affecting them on a day to day basis.

Roychoudhuri: You see this becoming an even more polarized battle in the
future -- the secular vs. religious. Barack Obama recently gave a speech
in which he advocated for a middle ground, and for progressives to
embrace their faith. Do you think that's a viable option?

Goldberg: Obama's speech to me was interesting. I thought that there
were some things about it that were really valuable, and some things that
were really destructive. What he said about people feeling that there's
something missing in their life, and speaking to that, was right on. The
religious right gives people the narrative arc both for their own lives
and then the country as a whole and it's very comforting to people.
Giving someone a list of policies -- even policies that will make their lives
better can't really compare to that.

But what was destructive was that he took for granted right-wing
rhetoric that has no basis in fact. He said, "What's the matter with the Pledge
of Allegiance, I don't think anybody is really bothered by the 'under God.'"

He's right; most people aren't bothered by it. It's a myth that
liberals, not to mention Democrats, have done anything against the Pledge of
Allegiance. The only people trying to take the "under God" out are a few
individuals representing themselves. When that California guy sued to
have the "under God" taken out of the pledge of allegiance, he wasn't being
represented by the ACLU, or the Americans United for the Separation of
Church and State. He was representing himself.

Roychoudhuri: What do you think it's going to take for progressives and
liberals to gain more currency?

Goldberg: One thing that the right does have that you don't have on the
left are these umbrella organizations. Most years, I go to the
Conservative Political Action Conference which brings together the
religious right, but also the neocons, the hate government people like
Grover Norquist, and the gun owners. They see each other there once a
year, they have weekly meetings that Grover Norquist holds where he
brings together representatives from all the different right-wing groups. Then
there are institutions like the Heritage Foundation that has religious
right social policy thinkers but also neocon defense people. Not
everybody believes everything in the movement, but there are these interlocking
circles and this social milieu where people meet and ideas circulate. We
don't have that.

We don't have one meeting that brings together the feminist groups, gay
groups, civil liberties and environmental groups. I feel like I'm always
talking to like-minded organizations, and they don't know what the other
group is up to.

Roychoudhuri: Any sense why that is?

Goldberg: There is progressive funding available for programs, but not
for institution-building. It's just now that they're starting to come up
with journals about these ideas that should underlie where the progressive
Democrats should go. There has been a real neglect in part because
people held the right in such contempt. There was never any appreciation for
the depths of the intellectual infrastructure. Even though the stereotype is
that liberals are the academics, there is, in certain senses,
anti-intellectualism among policy and political people who don't see how
that structure roots people, shapes ideas. It's more than just crafting
a message; it creates this whole interwoven skein of values and
assumptions. Now we're starting to see an attempt to create that on the left.

The other thing that I think is really necessary is creating something
parallel to the right's Concerned Women for America. Let's say it gets
in the news that the Dover school board is talking about introducing
creationism. We know the ACLU is great when it gets to the legal issues,
but even before it gets to that stage, we need consultants calling up
the people on our side saying, "Here's what we're up against, this is what
to expect, this is how you can talk about it in a way that will resonate
with people." You have the information, but it's just not getting to those
people. Whereas, on the other side, you do have consultants calling up
coaching people through it before it even gets to the table.

Roychoudhuri: You're very solution-oriented in the last chapter of the
book, but you clearly state that you think it's going to get worse
before it gets better.

Goldberg: It's already worse since the book came out. There's an idea
out there that once Bush is gone, or maybe if the Republicans lose
Congress,then we'll all be free and clear. Obviously, there's nothing more
important to me than seeing the Republicans lose Congress. But, it's
entirely possible that most Americans are going to vote Democratic in
the polls but that Republicans will still control Congress. The huge
structural advantages the Republicans have created for themselves have
to be addressed before anything else can be solved. I would say the
collapse of the Republican Party is really important, but the Christian
Nationalist movement is not a majority. I don't think there needs to be a majority
to affect policy.

Roychoudhuri: You write of a pretty enormous communication chasm:
"Dialogue is impossible without some shared sense of reality... What's
lacking isn't just truth, it's the entire social mechanism by which
truth is distinguished from falsehood." How can we regain that?

Goldberg: I found the last chapter the hardest to write because I do
feel like in certain ways the problem is much larger than any solutions I've
come up with. There are all these voices on the right that can say
almost anything without consequence. You would never see Kerry joining hands
with someone from the Black Panther Party or someone from the ANSWER
coalition.

But there are people on the right who are calling for theocracy and
almost nothing they say discredits them; they're still treated as respectable
mainstream voices.

It's important to get people to pay attention to who these people really
are. People don't know what Reconstructionism is, so it doesn't occur to
them to be shocked when they see a Reconstructionist on a panel or at a
banquet table with congressmen. That should be politically damaging;
that should be embarrassing. And the media needs to stop treating it as "some
people say this" and "some people say that" as though it's balanced, as
though they're legitimate points of view.

Also, journalists should take these religious groups seriously enough to
ask about them. I'm totally agnostic on the question of whether Bush is
a true believer or totally cynical, I think he's some combination.
Somebody asked Bush at a public meeting whether any of his Middle East policies
are informed by his vision of the End Times. That to me is a totally
legitimate question and he didn't really answer it. If these people are
saying they take their religion seriously, then people have a right to
ask what is it and do you believe x, y or z.

 

 


Onnesha Roychoudhuri is a former assistant editor of AlterNet.

 

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