And she reminds us that the relationship between the Christian Right and the Trumpified Republican Party, which seems unlikely on its face to people who aren't particularly familiar with the kind of white Christian nationalism involved, is not especially hard to understand:
From the outset, Christian nationalism has always been a con, sold to its followers on the false claim that the United States was founded as a Christian nation. David Barton, Stewart shows us, is the foremost purveyor of this myth; she notes that the publisher of Barton’s 2012 book, The Jefferson Lies: Exposing the Myths You’ve Always Believed About Thomas Jefferson, felt compelled to withdraw it after National Public Radio checked Barton’s biblical citations only to find that “not one of them checked out.” ... But that hasn’t put a damper on Barton’s career as the right’s favorite “historian,” or in his career with the GOP. For nine years, Stewart notes, Barton served as vicechair of the Texas Republican Party, and in the 2016 presidential campaign, he ran a super-PAC that supported Ted Cruz’s candidacy.Fundamentalist Christianity has a strong authoritarian component. The desire for safety and order can quickly overwhelm nominal moral and religious scruples.
The con is in Christian nationalist and religious-right rhetoric that falsely describes common methods of birth control as abortifacients, routinely and falsely links Muslim Democrats to terrorist groups, claims that “homosexuals” seek to “recruit” your children to their “lifestyle,” and posits that the Earth is a mere 4,000 years old. There’s the rhetorical con that is effectively rewriting the First Amendment to advantage its own religion over all others and compares the social safety net to “slavery.” To a constituency already so distanced from any objective notion of truth, the greatest liar of all the U.S. presidents is a Moses to his people. [my emphasis]
Al Gore wrote a book called The Assault on Reason (2007) about the danger represented by the continually radicalizing Republican Party, then grimly embodied in the Cheney-Bush Administration, and the dangerously accomodating Democratic Party. That is the ugly and still ongoing situation of asymmetric polarization in Americana party politics.
It is simply no longer possible to ignore the strangeness of our public discourse. I know I am not alone in feeling that something has gone fundamentally wrong. ...Gore was highly critical of the way the Cheney and Bush fear-mongered with fabricated "evidence" to invade Iraq:
The single most surprising new element in America's national conversation is the prominence and intensity of constant fear. Moreover, there is an uncharacteristic and persistent confusion about the sources of that fear; we seem to be having unusual difficulty in distinguishing between illusory threats and legitimate ones. [my emphasis]
Terrorism relies on the stimulation of fear for political ends. Indeed, its specific goal is to distort the political reality of a nation by creating fear in the general population that is hugely disproportionate to the actual danger that the terrorists are capable of posing. Ironically, President Bush's response to the terrorist attack of September 11 was, in effect, to further distort America's political reality by creating a new fear of Iraq that was hugely disproportionate to the actual danger Iraq was capable of posing. That is one of the reasons it was so troubling to so many when in 2004 the widely respected arms expert David Kay concluded a lengthy, extensive investigation into the administration's claim that Iraq posed an enormous threat because it had weapons of mass destruction with the words We were all wrong. [my emphasis in bold]The tone of Christian fundamentalism in its various manifestations in the Christian Right relies heavily on a context of fear. Fear of Hell, fear of temptation, fear to punishment, fear ofd sex, fear of rejection. And they are particularly inclined to look for a Strong Leader and a political discourse of order and control to ease the fear.
And the sense that Trump is on Their Side is simply more important for the Christian Right than the actual religious adherence and personal conduct of the President. That fact stands out in the results of a recent Pew Research Center report, White Evangelicals See Trump as Fighting for Their Beliefs, Though Many Have Mixed Feelings About His Personal Conduct 03/12/2020:
On the whole, Americans care more about having a president who stands up for their religious beliefs than having one who personally shares those beliefs. Roughly seven-in-ten say it is either very (38%) or somewhat (31%) important to have a president who stands up for people with their religious beliefs.Yes, the political culture of Christian nationalism is white Christian nationalism.
White evangelical Protestants are particularly likely to hold this view. Two-thirds of white evangelicals say it is very important to have a president who stands up for their religious beliefs, about double the share who say it is very important for a president to have strong religious beliefs. And white evangelicals say Trump fits the bill: Fully eight-in-ten white evangelical Protestants say that the phrase “fights for what I believe in” describes Trump “very well” or “fairly well,” including roughly half who say this describes him “very well.” [my emphasis]
And the "white" part of this sentiment is not restricted to fundamentalists:
White evangelical Protestants are not alone in their admiration of Trump. Among other groups of white Christians, smaller but still substantial majorities also express agreement with Trump’s policies and associate him with a number of positive traits, such as intelligence.I take this as an encouraging sign, though, "Overall, just 5% of U.S. adults believe God chose Trump to become president because God approves of Trump’s policies."
For example, roughly two-thirds of white Catholics say the phrase “fights for what I believe in” describes Donald Trump very well or fairly well, and 68% of white Catholics say “intelligent” is a fairly or very good descriptor of Trump. Similar shares of white Protestants who are not born-again or evangelical Christians say the same. And more than half of people in both groups say they agree with Trump on many, nearly all or all of the important issues facing the country.
The survey shows, furthermore, that growing numbers in all three of the largest white Christian groups (white evangelical Protestants, white Protestants who are not evangelical and white Catholics) think that their side has been winning recently on the political issues that matter to them. [my emphasis]
There is a theological side to this, which is the idea that God in all-powerful (omnipotent) but that human beings have free will. But the entire concept of democracy and government by popular consent assume that individuals are capable of making free choices based on an understanding of their interests and desires. As Al Gore put it:
Our Founders rejected direct democracy because of concerns that fear might overwhelm reflective thought. But they counted heavily on the ability of a "well-informed citizenry" to reason together in ways that would minimize the destructive impact of illusory, exaggerated, or excessive fears. "When a man seriously reflects on the precariousness of human affairs, he will become convinced that it is infinitely wiser and safer to form a constitution of our own in a cool deliberate manner, while we have it in our power," wrote Thomas Paine in his legendary pamphlet Common Sense, specifically warning that the Founders should not take the risk of waiting until some fear seized the public imagination, in which event their reasoning processes would be hampered.So that is an interesting chink in the authoritarian psychological armor of the Christian Right. Most of them consciously realize that they are making conscious political decisions for which they have some responsibility. But the most striking finding of the Pew survey to me is how indifferent even Trump's Christian Right supporters are to his actual religious beliefs and personal conduct.
To conclude, I want to draw attention to the role the Christian Right has played in promoting a key authoritarian goal to weaken democracy, the attempt to replace actual judicial independence with pro-authoritarian idolgoical partisanship. Jimmy Carter wrote in his book Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis (2005):
Perhaps one of the strangest and most disturbing examples of this political effort by right-wing Christians has been to attack the federal court system itself, after Senate Democrats failed to approve a handful of the -most conservative nominees for federal judgeships. They ignored the fact that this was the same number as Republicans had successfully opposed among Bill Clinton's nominees. Senator Bill Frist, the highest-ranking member of the United States Senate, aligned himself in a public telecast with a fundamentalist religious group to promote false claims that Democratic senators who opposed a few judges were conducting "an assault against people of faith." The group's leader announced that the "activist" judiciary poses "a greater threat to representative government" than "terrorist groups." Dr. James Dobson, another sponsor of the event, called the Supreme Court "unaccountable," "out of control," and "a despotic oligarchy," and accused the justices of a forty-year "campaign to limit religious liberty." (At a subsequent press conference, President George W. Bush [ludicrously] disavowed the connection between religious faith and opposition to the appointment of federal judges.) [my emphasis]
No comments:
Post a Comment