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Note: This essay first appeared in the
October 2006 Baptist Studies Bulletin.
As America was being rocked by a lurid Republican sex scandal just
weeks before fall congressional elections, I visited the Current
Affairs section of my local Barnes and Noble on a mission to determine
just how many recent volumes have been written about the theocratic
tendencies of the Religious Right, a theme that has become somewhat of
a hot topic within the book world during the past two years.
In
recent months I have repeatedly been asked for recommendations of
books that examine the growing Christian nationalistic movement in
America. Readers of this Bulletin are already aware of several
important volumes which analyze the efforts the Religious Right to
conform American government to their so-called “biblical worldview” on
issues of morality. These volumes include
Thy Kingdom Come: An Evangelical’s Lament, by Randall Balmer;
Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, by Michelle
Goldberg;
American Theocracy, by Kevin Phillips; and
Endangered Values: America’s Moral Crisis by Jimmy Carter.
All of these are excellent volumes worthy of a close read. What
you may not be aware of, however, is just how many other books have
been published in the past sixty days and are now readily available in
the Current Affairs section of your local bookstore. These
newest volumes turn a critical eye to the ambitions of the Religious
Right in relation to the
Republican Party and the American government in general.
Among important August releases that examine the theocratic impulses of the Religious Right is
The Holy Vote: The Politics of Faith in America, by National
Public Radio’s Ray Suarez. This volume examines the political and
religious polarization created by the rise of the Religious Right.
Building Red America: The New Conservative Coalition and the Drive For
Permanent Power by the Washington Post’s Thomas Edsall details
the manner in which the Bush administration has effectively played to
Religious Right core issues such as abortion and gay rights. Ryan Sager’s
The Elephant in the Room: Evangelicals, Libertarians and the Battle to
Control the Republican Party demonstrates that in a battle
between the South and the West, religious conservatives are going to
the mat to wrest control of their Party from its non-sectarian wing. Losing
Our Democracy: How Bush, the Far Right and Big Business Are Betraying
Americans for Power and Profit by Mark Green, president of the
New Democracy Project, argues that the theocons are helping lead
America into a era of “new authoritarianism” characterized by
religious intolerance.
In September the
publishing industry produced even more volumes focusing on the
Christian Nationalism. Damon Linker’s
The Theocons: Secular America Under Siege examines how
evangelical Christians have partnered with Catholic intellectuals to
shape the Republican Party into the Party of God.
Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris takes the Religious
Right to task from a non-Christian perspective. Mel White’s
Religion Gone Bad: The Hidden Dangers of the Christian Right
offers an inside examination (White was a long-time ghost writer for
Jerry Falwell) of James Dobson and Falwell’s efforts to force
fundamentalist views of sexuality on American society through the
government. Barry Lynn’s
Piety & Politics: The Right-Wing Assault on Religious Freedom
draws from the author’s civil liberties expertise and experience in
analyzing the theocon attempt to curtail religious freedom in America.
Missouri Sen. John Danforth’s
Faith and Politics: How the “Moral Values” Debate Divides America and
How to Move Forward Together offers a Christian politician’s
insight (Danforth is an Episcopal minister) into why the Christian
fundamentalist attempt to merge church and state is dangerous for the
cause of Christ, the integrity of government and the world at large.
Is the recent, torrid
interest in the theocratic impulses of the Republican-allied Religious
Right a result of the upcoming congressional elections? Most likely. The unprecedented attention given to the subject
of Christian Nationalism is indicative
of the concerns that at least some Americans have with an increasingly hostile and
militant-sounding Religious Right which dismisses Bush administration
lies, cover up and deception while
claiming that the fiasco that is the Iraq War is a “noble cause”;
is so embedded with the Republican Party as to dismiss the current
homosexual child predator sex scandal as
nothing more than a prank played by wayward teenagers; treats
homosexuals as something other than full-fledged Americans; and looks
to Puritan colonial America as a model for government.
And if further evidence
is needed to demonstrate that Americans have finally been stirred from
their lethargy to take a stand against the dangerous designs of the
Religious Right’s alliance with the Republican Party, consider these
tidbits: of the approximately 500 volumes in the Current Affairs
section of Barnes and Noble, only two are anti-Hillary Clinton
volumes, while the most common book topic is opposition to the Iraq
War.
In short, the Party may be over for the Religious Right. If the
recent bookshelf expose of their theocratic impulses is not enough to
motivate voters to opposition,
the homosexual child predator scandal should be the nail in the coffin
of the theocon ambitions for America, at least for the immediate
future. Nonetheless, I do
hope that the literary world will continue to train a critical eye on
the Christian nationalistic movement, as would our Baptist forefathers if they were alive
today. |
