Customer Reviews

Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party

5 star:		(66)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

I just want to second the Amazon review of this book by Frank Schaeffer. Amen, Frank and bravo to Max, who really has written an amazing book.

I also grew up in the evangelical culture. With the exception of my immediate family, most of my relatives are part of Christian right. I graduated from a conservative, evangelical college where, as one of the few politically liberal students, I probably met more gay and lesbians than I later did at my Ivy League graduate school. As Max Blumenthal shows in his book.....this is not a strange coincidence.

I was born into an evangelical home, as were my parents. In fact, most of the hundreds of evangelicals I met at church or college were the second, third or fourth generation of conservative Christians. I left the evangelical world at age 22 and have spent years wondering what makes it so angry and reactive. Main-line Protestants and Catholics have their own faults and odd tics. Ditto for the reform and conservative branches of Judiasm. But with the exception of certain fundamentalist Muslims, none of these groups seem to have the same weird, sado-masochistic vibe of the Christian right.

In fact, evangelical Republicans act so much like untreated trauma survivors or dry drunks that I've really come to view them more as a psychological phenomenon as opposed to a religious movement. They're obsessed with gays, pornography and sexuality because, as Blumenthal shows, so many are closeted gays, porn addicts and/or men who can't relate to women in a healthy, equal way.

It's a very strange sub-culture. Conservative Christians tend to cut themselves off from a huge spectrum of human emotions (with the usual dismal, whack-a-mole results.) They insist on ignorance, attempting to shackle any natural intellectual curiosity. In order to remain in a conservative Christian world, you have to censor your thoughts and emotions to the point where the result is a serious case of arrested development.

Which is why so many right-wing Christians can't seem to think or process feelings like normal adults. Instead they operate in a very child-like world of good or evil, heaven or hell, salvation or damnation, all or nothing, with us or against us. Which is why they're absolutely fixated on creating scapegoats (Commies, gays, liberals, Islamic terrorists, dark-skinned people, feminists, hippies, or whatever else is handy.) as a way to project their fears and darkness onto some other group.

This is not a new sub-culture---these people have been part of the American landscape for hundreds of years. What's new is their seizure of a major political party and being able to rule one of the largest, most powerful countries in the world, certainly from 2000-2008 and probably going back to the Reagan presidency as well.

I'm a former tribe member and I'm still asking....why are they like this? What's the point of this mass phenomenon of violent psychological self-mutilation? What the hell are they so afraid of?

Max Blumenthal is the first reporter who goes deep enough into the movement to ask these kind of questions. It's a phenomenal, riveting, hilarious and yet deeply serious analysis. You won't be able to put it down.

By Frank Schaeffer

For me reading Max Blumenthal's Republican Gomorrah is a look into a mirror. That might be because Blumenthal extensively interviewed me and drew rather heavily on my book "Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back" as a reference for his in-depth exposé of what has gone so very wrong with the Republican Party. He's on my turf so I happen to know he's telling the truth as its not been told before. But there's more.

Republican Gomorrah is the first book that actually "gets" what's happened to the Republican Party and in turn what the Republicans have done to our country. The usual Democratic Party and/or progressive "take" on the Republican Party is that it's been taken over by a far right lunatic fringe of hate and hypocrisy, combining as it does, sexual and other scandals with moralistic finger wagging. But Blumenthal explains a far deeper pathology: it isn't so much religion as the psychosis and sadomasochism of the losers now called "Republicans" that drives the party. And the "Christianity" that shapes so much "conservative" thinking now is anything but Christian. It's a series of deranged personality cults.

Th e Religious Right/Republicans have perfected the method of capturing people in personal crisis and turning them into far right evangelical/far right foot soldiers. This explains a great deal that otherwise, to outsiders, seems almost inexplicable--the why and wherefore of "Deathers" "Birthers" et al. Blumanthal brilliantly sums up this pathology as:

"...a culture of personal crisis lurking behind the histrionics and expressions of social resentment. This culture is the mortar that bonds leaders and followers together."

Tracing the thinking of the fathers of the Republican Party, including my dad, the late Francis Schaeffer, who I teamed up with when I was a young man to help launch the Protestant wing of the "pro-life" movement, along with other such as Rousas John Rushdoony and the philanthropist Howard Ahmanson -- who used to donate generously to my far right work -- Blumenthal explains where the current Republican Party came from. He also details who it's foundational thinkers were, and just why it's still so dangerous. (A threat proved again this summer as the gun-toting fringe derailed the health care reform debate.)

He has their number. For one thing this book -- at last! -- will forever put James Dobson where he belongs: onto the top of the list of the American n ational rogue's gallery of mean-spirited, even sadistic, cranks.

Blumenthal first came to my attention when he was doing his in-depth reporting on Sarah Palin. He was a guest on a TV program I was on too. There was something accomplished and in depth about the quality of his reporting on religion that I hadn't seen from other progressive sources. I've been following his work since. Blumenthal understands the philosophy, psychology and religion of Religious Right figures like Palin, Dobson, Robertson et al in a way that no other reporter (with the exception of the always amazingly perceptive Jeff Sharlet author of <em>The Family</em>) does.

Now, having read Blumenthal's book I know why he seems to really understand the nuances of far right religion. No one else has ever investigated this subject with as much insight into the psychological sickness that is the basis of the Religious right's power to delude other people who are also needy and unstable.

In another time and place the despicable (and sometimes tragic figures) Blumenthal describes would be the leaders of, or the participants in, local lynch mobs, or the followers of the Ku Klux Klan. But today figures such as James Dobson, Pat Robertson, (the late) Jerry Falwell, Newt Gingrich, and Sarah Palin have led a resentment-driven second American revolution, not just against Democrats and progressives but against the United States of America itself. And this group of outsiders (in every sense of that word ) now control one of our major political parties.

As I explained to Blumanthal when he interviewed me, one of the reasons I left the far right movement in the 1980s was because I perceived20it becoming the bedrock of anti-Americanism. The worst things got the better we right wing activists liked it. We loved crisis. We<em> manufactured </em>crisis! Crisis (public or personal) would force the country to embrace our radical solution: a radical turn to Old Testament law that would put homosexuals to death, see adulterers stoned at the city gates and so forth.

There were exceptions to the hard edge, my late father Francis Schaeffer was one. And Blumenthal (in his chapter on Dad and I) describes how my father was a compassionate man who opened his ministry to all before something "snapped" after the Roe v. Wade decision when he became a leader in the pro-life movement.

But with a few exceptions (like my late father) most of the people described in Blumenthal's book have no "other side" to them. They are the sick bedrock of what, at any moment, may become a full-blown American fascism. (Sharlet has done great work on showing how these Religious Right folks have also invaded the US Military, especially the chaplaincy ranks.)

My one -- very slight -- criticism of Republican Gomorrah is that Blumenthal neglected to do something that would have bolstered his arguments and given them deeper credibility: introduce a bi t of paradox and nuance into his book. He could have made a better case for the left by frankly looking at some of the extremism on the left that has played into the hands of the cynics who control the Religio us Right: for instance the the way Roe v. Wade was (in the view of many liberal pro-choice advocates) a tactical mistake preempting what was already happening in states including California and New York, in terms of legalizing abortion, and thereby galvanizing the culture war as we know it. And in the same vein perhaps when it comes to the current ethics of abortion and porn Blumenthal's case would be stronger if he had pointed out that there are many progressives, who have serious moral qualms on these issues as well.

That said Blumentha's case against the Religious Right is breathtakingly damning. What these folks want -- to destroy our pluralistic democracy and replace it with theocracy -- appears so far-fetched to most Americans that unfortunately their agenda is not taken seriously. The great service Blumenthal performs is to not only enlighten those who didn't grow up in the movement (as I did, sad to say) but to offer a genuine warning as to the seriousness of what these people will unleash if not stopped, then stopped again and again--because they are here to stay. And they just happen to control the republican Party!

Why should Blumenthal's book to be taken seriously? Take it from this former "insider" he knows what he's talking about. Hi s thesis is less about politics than about the deviant psychology that people like Dobson have cashed in on by feeding delusion, victimhood and failure as a means through which to build a political movement. What Blumenthal reveals20is the heart of the most dysfunctional and truly dangerous -- not to mention armed -- darkest reaches of our country.

What should we "do"? Read the book! Then fight like hell to keep Republicans out of power come what may. And maybe (note to progressives!) be a little less critical of President Obama and a little more grateful that he's in the White House!

Once in a while a book comes along about which one can say: If you love our country read this! Republican Gomorrah is one such book. One other thing: if you know any sane Republicans that would like to save what's left of their party <em>beg them to read this book</em>. If you have to beg them in the name of Jesus!

In Republican Gomorrah, Max Blumenthal traces the history of the rise of the Christian Right and its take over of the Republican Party. This is a process which began in the 1950s as an outgrowth of McCarthyism and intensified in reaction to the civil rights movement, anti-Vietnam protests, and other aspects of the 1960s. It first gained real power during the 1980s and finally achieved total dominance within the GOP during the 1990s and in the George W. Bush Administration.

Blumenthal has done an impressive amount of meticulously documented research and has unearthed much new information. He identifies Francis Schaeffer as the original source of much of the philosophy behind the Family (as the movement is known among its adherents), and recognizes the heavy influence of James Dobson, Rousas John Rushdoony, and Howard F. Ahmanson in its propagation. As the Family has gained power it has attracted politicians like Tom DeLay and Ralph Reed until, in the 2008 election, it was actually able to dictate the choice of a supremely unqualified candidate as the Republican vice-presidential nominee.

This book intrigued me on several levels. As a white Southern male in my early 50s, I have witnessed much of the Family's rise. I remember Francis Schaeffer being avidly discussed among young conservatives at my college during the 1970s, and recall the very heavy handed Republican efforts to co-opt the votes of people like me which began in 1980 and have continued to the present. I resented then and still resent today their assumption that my heritage and my faith would incline me to vote for their bigoted and racist platform, and feel deeply ashamed that so many who have a similar background to mine could be manipulated into giving them their support. The chapters dealing with Christian Reconstructionism and Dominionism are excellent guides for understanding those movements and their connections to the GOP. I also found the chapters detailing the hypocrisy and financial and/or sexual pecadillos of these men and women who claim to be doing the Lord's work highly interesting, if sometimes sickening. It would be all too easy to sneer at such churlishness and dismiss it out of hand, but that would be a mistake.

With our country so deeply divided, and with civilized debate and rational discourse rapidly disappearing, books like Republican Gomorrah make invaluable reading to those of us who are dumbfounded by the profound ignorance now so much on display in town hall meetings, "tea parties", and most unfortunately in Congress itself. Republican Gomorrah reveals the mechanisms by which so many honorable religious Americans have been woefully and deliberately misinformed and manipulated into supporting cynical politicians who care nothing for true faith and values. Americans who are truly concerned for the future of our country need to read Republican Gomorrah and be aware that the Republic has much to fear from those who wrap themselves in the flag and wave the Bible in the air.

This well-researched and superbly written new book uncovers the lies and hypocrisy of conservatives who are quick to condemn wrong-doing in others while hiding behind the cloak of Christianity and "family values." It completely shatters the facade they have built up about themselves. I loved every minute of it. It is THE book to read this fall.

Max Blumenthal combines brains and guts in exposing the horrors that now inhabit the "conservative" side of the American political spectrum. His account would lie in the realm of comedy if he weren't dissecting a strain of thought and behavior that represents a serious threat to America's future. We need more warriors like Max Blumenthal; he's an invaluable national asset.

The demise of the GOP over the course of the past 40 years has resulted from two destructive influences: the Religious Right and libertarian economic theories. The latter has caused the GOP to embrace an unending string of crackpot economic theories. The former has caused the GOP to abandon its traditional conservatism to embrace fringe culture crusades, setting aside political issues to embrace moral and religious causes that really have nothing to do with government. Blumenthal in REPUBLICAN GOMORRAH focuses exclusively on the role of the Religious Right in the destruction of the GOP. To a large degree it overlaps with a host of other excellent books on the Religious Right -- to name just a few: CRAZY FOR GOD by Frank Schaeffer (Religious Right icon Francis Schaeffer's son and the author of the current featured review of Blumenthal's book), AMERICAN THEOCRACY by Kevin Phillips, ETERNAL HOSTILITY by Frederick Clarkson, WITH GOD ON THEIR SIDE by Esther Kaplan, KINGDOM COMING: THE RISE OF CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM by Michelle Goldberg, AMERICAN FASCISTS: THE CHRISTIAN RIGHT AND THE WAR ON AMERICA by Chris Hedges, THE FAMILY by Jeff Sharlet, THY KINGDOM COME by Randall Balmer, and TEMPTING FAITH by David Kuo -- and tells pretty much the same story. All these books chronicle the continuing growth of what can only be described as a vast moral and mental health crisis in the Religious Right. Hypocrisy and insanity riddle the political wing of the Religious Right today, and it has transported its problems to the GOP. Blumenthal distinguishes himself from the other writers that I mention by revealing the troubling depth of the moral crises in the leaders of the Religious right. An absolutely staggering number of movement leaders have had problems that by their own standards are both premeditated and immoral, such as attacking gays on the one hand while engaging in gay sexual affairs on the other. A shocking number of Religious Right leaders have had problems with sexual immorality. And a surprising number of Religious Right leaders evidence disturbing mental health problems, showing a tendency to sadomasochistic religion and an aggressive, nasty, mean-spirited approach to those not of their camp.

Blumenthal is rightfully upset by the destructive influence that the Religious Right has exerted on American politics. Many deplore the intermixing of religion and politics. I have an additional reason to be upset. I am a Christian. I am, in fact, a licensed Southern Baptist minister, though I suppose that that is technically no longer true since I left the SBC when it passed a proclamation at one of the national conventions, a proclamation stating that wives were to be submissive and obedient to their husbands. I always found it to be a challenge to be a well-educated and politically-liberal individual while calling myself a Southern Baptist, but that proclamation was so repulsive that I no longer wanted to be part of a tiny but resistant minority within the convention. I remain an unaligned Baptist and a deeply committed Christian who hates what the Religious Right has done both to Christianity and to political life in America. I'm upset with the hatred it has espoused and the vast number of un-Christian beliefs that have been put forward as if they were dogmas the equivalent of the Atonement and the Resurrection. Their hatred of gays is repulsive and their depiction of Jesus as vindictive and intolerant as the god of the Old Testament clashes violently with what we know of Jesus from the Gospels. My own belief is that if Jesus were to return today He would refuse to enter the churches of the Right and would despise them as much as he despised the self-righteous and judgmental Jews of his day. The deeply religious Jews that were Jesus' contemporaries were outraged by the company he kept and I believe that the leaders of the Religious Right would be similarly outraged by the people that Jesus would chose to spend his time with.

What is especially troubling is the way that so many of the culture warriors do not interiorize the Gospel. They speak out passionately against "the gay agenda" but their actions seem to reveal it as something that they secretly desire. How else to explain the bizarre number of leading conservative figures who attack gays publicly while engaging in a gay lifestyle in private. I find just as troubling passages in the books of James Dobson that reveal a sadistic view of punishment and an almost gleeful sense of inflicting violence on others. In everything that I have ever read about Dobson he comes across as a deeply screwed up human being. He reinforces the stereotype of psychologists being more neurotic than most regular people (of my four closest friends, three are either psychologists or therapists, and they all agree that an unusual number of psychologists are more than a tad messed up). Dobson just seems like a complete nutjob and he is hardly unique.

I am also amazed at the way that those within the Religious Right manage to interpret the disgust and disagreement others have with their agenda as religious persecution. I have met people who simply hate religion. One of my closest friends has a brute hatred of Christianity. But I actually think this is pretty unusual. I think most people who hate the Religious Right don't hate religion or Christianity. Instead, they hate stupidity. They hate, for instance, premillennial theology, the belief that Jesus will return to earth and call religious believers into the air in the Rapture. (As an aside, the Bible very explicitly does not teach the doctrine of the Rapture. There are two proof texts, one of which is pretty vague. The other is actually very clear. In this parable Jesus talks about being prepared for the coming of the kingdom of God. But premillennialists bizarrely misread the passage. Jesus talks of some being taken and some being left behind, but what he is writing of is very clearly something with the imagery of a flood. Those who are prepared are left behind while those who are not prepared are taken away. In other words, the passage means precisely the opposite of how Tim LeHaye and others interpret it. Go read it! Matthew 24:40-41.) Many hate the materialism and greed that drives so many conservative churches. Many hate the passion with which they mindlessly embrace conservative political candidates, the way they resist science, they way they try to force the rest of society to live according to their beliefs, and the way they hate a plural society. The Apostle Paul writes of being a fool for Christ, but he doesn't advocate being merely a fool. In fact, Paul's writings are of a highly educated individual who was learned in the learning of the day.

How can we get past this? How can we eliminate the harmful influence of the Religious Right both on Christianity and on American cultural and political life? I'm pretty certain that we Christians need to take the lead. A few have tried. Jim Wallis has written about the need for liberals to be more sympathetic to religious issues on the one hand and the need for conservatives to pursue a completely different approach to religion and politics on the other. Evangelical writer Gregory Boyd has written one of the best books I've read about Biblical teachings on politics and how they relate to American political life; I recommend his THE MYTH OF A CHRISTIAN NATION as the finest contemporary discussion of the light that the Bible can shed on politics. Boyd's book is remarkable for its being far more genuinely religious than any of the books written by those on the Right (as well as being far more deeply connected with Biblical teachings than the screeds by people like Dobson). It is people like Boyd and not people like Blumenthal who ultimately must alter the thinking of Christians in America about politics and religion.

There is also a deep need for the journalists and reporters to cease their deeply harmful accommodation of silly thinking. The press strives so diligently to show both sides of issues (though frankly more often than not they over represent the Right - if you've watched MEET THE PRESS in recent years conservative journalists persistently outnumber moderate journalists, while virtually no liberal journalists appear at all) that it refuses to acknowledge absurdity for what it is. The so-called liberal media (though actually a right wing, corporate owned media) has been one of the great enablers of the Religious Right.

One other thing that disturbs me as a Christian is how passionately hateful the Religious Right is. This is so completely at odds with everything that we know about Jesus. He despised the self-righteous, ignored the rich and powerful, and lavished his concern on the poor and disempowered. One of the more absurd ministers Blumenthal examines talks of Ultimate Fighting Jesus, a view of Christ so utterly at odds with everything that we know from the New Testament as to beggar belief. It is as if the Right is determined to embrace nuttiness. Christians have a duty to denounce these un-Christian beliefs and heretical depictions of the Gospel.

In the short run, it is essential for those of us concerned about the future of America to resist the nonsense put forth by the Religious Right. I also think that the Republican Party needs to reject the religious wing of their party. In the short term this may not be a winning strategy, but in the long run it is essential that they cease being held captive by the religious wing of their party. The dilemma for the Republican Party is that the Religious Right exerts a huge influence within the GOP but the candidates that they endorse are unacceptable to America at large. Sarah Palin remains a favorite of the Religious Right, but if she were to get the nomination in 2012 she would enable Obama to win the election with perhaps the largest margin of victory in American history. The same would hold true of Mike Huckabee. In the long run the GOP would probably be better off severing its connections with the Religious Right and starting over by becoming a moderate party. This probably won't happen, but one can only hope.

I strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in the current American political situation. The book is receiving a lot of attention and it very much deserves it. Blumenthal has contributed an important book on American politics. I just look forward to a day when Christianity in America is a force for good. The problem with Christianity is that it is always going to be limited by Christians. And as I tell my atheist friend, the problem isn't Christianity, but that Christians are human beings. And where you find human beings, you can find silliness.

From the moment I received the book from Amazon, I couldn't put it down. This is not a polemic or a shrill tirade, but a relentless expose of the flawed characters who (in their lust for power) destroyed the Republican Party. When you read example after example of the blatantly immoral and often illegal conduct of Christian conservatives, you realize how pathetic they are. I found myself feeling sorry for Robertson, Hagee, Falwell, Haggard et al. How they attained leadership positions astounds me. I am actually glad they found Jesus. If they hadn't, most of them would be in prison by now. These adulterous, drug abusing, prostitution-soliciting, wife-abandoning, child-abusing psychopaths should not aspire to leadership positions in any movement. They are by their own standards infinitely worse than those they hate. I had no idea how corrupt these people were. They should not have been allowed to appropriate Jesus and speak for Christianity in America. The mainstream churches should not have abandoned Jesus to these pretenders.

One of Blumenthal's greatest observations concerns how the Christian Right appropriated the term "family values". I used to think that "family values" pertained to families (i.e. parents and children). I have since learned that when the Christian Right talks about "family values", they really mean "Family values", i.e., values approved by the Family and proceeding from the harshest passages of the Old Testament/Torah. It's about time we started talking about the very real threat Christian Dominionism poses to our constitution and country. Dominionism is the hidden agenda behind the Christian Right's takeover of the Republican Party. It is as repressive as Sharia and is poses a far greater threat to our freedom than Islamic fundamentalism.

Blumenthal's dispassionate rhetoric and style are refreshing in this age of demagogic prose. This is a great first book, and I look forward to reading more.

If you've been hiding in a bunker for the past half century or so or just coming out of a long coma, Max Blumenthal's Republican Gomorrah should provide you with an overview of what happened to your grandparents' Republican Party. And if you were awake, but unable to keep track of all the GOP scandals (Who hired the hookers? Who tapped his foot in the men's room? Who sent naughty text messages to Congressional pages?) then this book will bring it all back for you.

Blumenthal traces the history of ultra-conservative Christianity and its intersection with right-wing Republicanism back to the early 20th century when R.J. Rushdoony formulated the idea of Christian Reconstructionism. The book follows the path from there through Jerry Falwell's segregationist sermons to televangelists' modern media empires and shows how right-wing religion and right-wing politics came together for a truly "unholy" marriage.

I've generally kept myself informed about the religious right's rise to power, but Blumenthal was able to surprise me in a number of places with new information and fresh insights. He also focuses on the religious right through the prism of Eric Fromm's Escape From Freedom, a book that considers the type of people who give up their own freedom to follow an authoritarian leader.

Obviously, this book comes at the issues from a liberal perspective. Nothing wrong with that. I wouldn't expect Ann Coulter to suddenly write a liberal manifesto (or even a balanced book, for that matter). There are a few places where it seems Blumenthal takes a snarky swipe at GOP politicos or religious leaders, but the sniping never reaches the level that some writers on the right use to sell books. As for the charge that Republican Gomorrah is "Christian bashing," I think that's just more hyperbole hurled by the right. What takes a beating in Blumenthal's book is not Christianity, but the type of cultishness that promotes itself as "Christianity" these days. The type of religion that Republican Gomorrah shines its light on has about as much in common with true Christianity as a paint-by-number set has in common with the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

Blumenthal's strength is 2-fold: he not only has the first-hand journalistic cred missing from so many analyses of the "misdeeds" of the christian right, but he also digs deeper to discover why people have literally turned their minds over to the leaders who so often end up straying from the very guidelines they set. Blumenthal's hypothesis - that succumbing to authority is easier than the complexities of freedom for these followers - is not a new one, but is still posited in a thought-provoking manner.

No toe-tag liberal I, this book slammed home the reasons the Republican Party has gone way off the deep end, and of its continuing alienation of normal people.

Heavily featured is the narcissistic megalomaniac, Dr. James Dobson. Additionally a whole cast of other unsavory, morally bereft, politically powerful Burn Again Christians fill out the book. Republican Gomorrah demonstrates repeatedly how and why the GOP has largely lost any claim to being a conservative party, rather it operates as a vassal for extremist organizations such as Focus on the Family.

The movers and the shakers in the Republican party are increasingly those who seek hegemony by appealing to the superstition haunted minds of fanatical religious bigots. Unfortunately there is an abundance of those folks seething and plotting in the Heartland over "queers," socialists, abortion providers and a multitude of lunatic conspiracies. Dobson and his ilk cater to this element's base fears by feeding them a heady brew of jacked up and dumbed down Christian theocracy, all the while continuing to plump out their sizable wallets on the donations these automatons shell out.

When the book is republished some editing changes should be made. Aside from numerous typos in the book, Blumenthal refers to Dobson variously as a Child Psychologist and a Child Psychiatrist. Obviously two different professions, Doc Dobson is (alarmingly) in fact a Child Psychologist.