Happy holidays. Or, as Pat Robertson prefers, Merry Christmas.
However you describe this season, it’s an appropriate time to talk about faith. Faith matters in a country where 96% of people say they believe in God. Faith also matters to the Democratic Party, and to progressives generally, since the Right has learned to use its political power and the Left has not.
Let’s start with the obvious: the political power of conservative Christians has become formidable.
30 years ago conservative Christians were a political fringe element in this country. They practiced their faith and kept pretty much under the political radar, even though they numbered in the tens of millions. Then, as we all know, the Republican Party successfully began to woo conservative Christians, leading with hot button social issues like abortion and homosexuality. The marriage benefited both sides.
The GOP got votes generated by the power of grassroots organizing in churches across the country, votes that in a short amount of time gave them control of the federal government and, in many instances, state and local governments as well. Conservative Christians got more political power behind their social agenda.
Democrats have always been a little cynical about this alliance, observing that clever pols in the Republican Party promise the moon to conservative Christians then, when the time comes to deliver real policy shifts, offer up far less.
Now it seems that the Republicans may have created their own Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Radical extremists like Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and James Dobson have gained enormous influence over Christian conservatives in this country and now would lead them on a campaign—and the radicals are very clear about this—to force the social and cultural fabric of this nation into a strict Biblical mold.
To these extremists (call them the Christian Far Right), not only is the Bible the literal word of God, what it says trumps any other religious, social or political thought or belief. Their opponents are not only wrong—they are with the anti-Christ, and doomed to eternal damnation. The commitment of the Christian Far Right to intolerance is complete. It’s clear they will keep up their assault on America until they are stopped. They have become our Taliban.
Democrats still seem confused and uncertain about how to deal with this threat. I offer these thoughts:
1. The Democratic Party should finally take conservative Christians seriously. Too many Democrats, even after the 2004 election, still tend to roll their eyes and snicker: “Do you believe those yokels in Kansas?” they ask. “They not only want to teach their kids that the earth was made in a week—they’ve written a whole new, Bible-friendly definition of science!”
Conservative Christians see contempt from Democrats as both an insult and a threat. It makes them listen more attentively to their own extremists, it drives them to continue to vote against their own economic interests, and it stimulates them to work even harder for Republican candidates.
Whatever Democrats may think of the religious beliefs of conservative Christians, they’ve got to get smarter about dealing with them in the political sphere. Otherwise Democrats will snicker themselves right into more electoral defeats.
2. Extreme Christian views are as American as apple pie. They didn’t start with Jerry Falwell—they landed with the Pilgrims. Forget the myth of that first Thanksgiving Day. The Pilgrims were Pat Robertsons in funny hats.
They came with their Bibles turned to the Book of Exodus. They were the new Israelites, fleeing the English Pharaoh. America, overflowing with milk and honey, was the Promised Land. Just as the first Israelites under God's guidance conquered the heathen in laying claim to their Promised Land, so too would these new Israelites conquer the heathen natives. The Pilgrims and the Book of Exodus laid the basis for the concept of Manifest Destiny, the rationalization for the ruthless expansion of American power.
The Bible’s Book of Revelations is another pivotal component of the belief system of conservative Christians, and especially of the Christian Far Right. The Revelations story has been recently popularized in the so-called Left Behind books, which have sold tens of millions of copies.
Briefly, it’s a story of how the world will end. As the process starts, a few who unswervingly obey God’s laws will be physically “raptured up” directly into heaven. Those who remain will be subject for seven years to the reigning power of the Anti-Christ. Finally, there will be a great battle in which Christ returns, not as gentle savior but warrior king. He slays the anti-Christ (and all the rest of the skeptics) in a bloodbath that makes the Holocaust look mild. (continue)
