A continuation of original post “How religious right is the country going?” and “Holy Crap”.....
This article is one of the best I've read yet explaining the evolving political religious movement in this country....and how it supports Bush and an endless holy war....
http://www.counterpunch.org/bageant05252004.html The Covert Kingdom
Thy Will be Done, On Earth as It is in Texas
By JOE BAGEANT
My favorite exerpts....
“Forget about changing their minds. These Christians do not read the same books we do, they do not get their information from anything remotely resembling reasonably balanced sources, and in fact, consider even CBS and NBC super-liberal networks of porn and the Devil's lies. Given how fundamentalists see the modern world, they may as well be living in Iraq or Syria, with whom they share approximately the same Bronze Age religious tenets. They believe in God, Rumsfeld's Holy War and their absolute duty as God's chosen nation to kick Muslim ass up one side and down the other. In other words, just because millions of Christians appear to be dangerously nuts does not mean they are marginal. “
“They wait in spooky calmness for Jesus. They believe that, until Jesus does arrive, our "satanic humanist state and federal legal systems" should be replaced with pure "Biblical Law." This belief is called Christian Reconstructionism. Though it has always been around in some form, it began expanding rapidly about 1973, with the publication of R. J. Rushdoony's, Institutes of Biblical Law (Vallecito, CA: Ross House Books, 1982). A moreover covert movement, although slightly more public of late, Christian Reconstructionism and Dominionism have for decades exerted one hell of an influence through its scores of books, publications and classes taught in colleges and universities. Over the past 30 years their doctrine has permeated not only the religious right, but mainstream churches as well, via the charismatic movement. The radical Christian right's impact on politics and religion in this nation has been massive, with many mainstream churches pushed rightward by its pervasiveness without even knowing it. Clearly the Methodist church down the street from my house does not understand what it has become. Other mainstream churches with more progressive leadership, simply flinch and bow to the radicals at every turn."
"Christian Reconstruction and Dominionist strategists make clear in their writings that homeschooling and Christian academies have been and continue to create the Rightist Christian cadres of the future, enabling them to place ever-increasing numbers of believers in positions of governmental influence. The training of Christian cadres is far more sophisticated than the average liberal realizes. There now stretches a network of dozens of campuses across the nation, each with its strange cultish atmosphere of smiling Christian pod people, most of them clones of Jerry Fallwell's Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. But how many outsiders know the depth and specificity of political indoctrination in these schools? For example, Patrick Henry College in Purcellville, Virginia, a college exclusively for Christian homeschoolers, offers programs in strategic government intelligence, legal training and foreign policy, all with a strict, Bible-based "Christian worldview." Patrick Henry is so heavily funded by the Christian right it can offer classes below cost. In the Bush administration, seven percent of all internships are handed out to Patrick Henry students, along with many others distributed among similar religious rightist colleges. The Bush administration also recruits from the faculties of these schools, i.e. the appointments of right-wing Christian activist Kay Coles James, former dean of the Pat Robertson School of government, as director of the U.S. office of personnel. What better position than the personnel office from which to recruit more fundamentalists? Scratch any of these supposed academics and you will find a Christian zealot. I know because I have made the mistake of inviting a few of these folks to cocktail parties. One university department head told me he is moving to rural Mississippi where he can better recreate the lifestyle of the antebellum South, and its "Confederate Christian values." It gets real strange real quick.
Joe Bageant is a senior editor at the Primedia History Group and writes from Winchester, Virginia. He may be contacted at
[email protected].