American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America
During the tenure of George W Bush, after a group cycling effort, a conservative friend (I am liberal) asked me if I knew why we went to war in Iraq. I muttered something about muddled intelligence to which he replied, “no, your wrong.” He said we were in Iraq because of abortion. Incredulous, I asked how. He replied that Bush received the evangelical vote because he was pro-life rather than the Pro-choice of Gore. In that contested election, it was all that mattered.
We have just had another contested election where the winner received the electoral vote majority, but not the popular, with the evangelical block and the forgotten remnants of much of middle America voting for the current occupant of the Oval Office. In Chris Hedges American Fascists The Christian Right and the War on America, he explains the mobilization of the evangelicals as a gigantic religious block. When one understands this book was published in 2006, it becomes rather frightening to see how far we have since slid.
Hedges Ethics professor at Harvard, Dr James Luther Adams wrote, “Human history is not the struggle between religion and irreligion, it is veritably a battle of faiths, a battle of the gods who claim human allegiance. Almost 40 years ago, “Pat Robertson and other radio and televangelists began speaking about a new political religion...who’s stated goal was to use the United States to create a global Christian empire.”
There is appeal in this movement to the disavowed and forgotten in our society. There is a despair and loss of hope that leads those desperate in life into the embrace of those who promise miracles and glory. When there is nowhere else to turn, these desperate Americans are turning to the world of miracles and magic “mediated by those who grow rich off those who suffer.”
Years ago, I accompanied a friend to the Willow Creek mega church in South Barrington, Illinois. It was my first, and next to last visit to what I refer to as industrialized religion. These mega churches are becoming more and more prevalent in our country, and Hedges documents the hypocrisy of their pastors and the message they emit. Hedges submits that the”business” of Trinity Broadcasting, and the partners who have become rich, such as the Paul and Jan Crouches, Pat Robertson, and Benny Hinns have grown wealthy, building extravagant “media and personal empires on the gospel of prosperity.” Young believers are indoctrinated to follow biblical rather than secular law.
The Ohio pastor Rod Parsley lives in a 7500 square foot house worth more than $1,000,000. He collects millions by promoting a gospel of prosperity, and has written, “one of the first reasons for poverty is a lack of knowledge of God and His word, and the Bible says that to withhold the tithe (Parsley collects ten percent of the salaries from his flock, a majority who live modestly)is to rob God.” Parsley also sells covenant swords and prayer cloths which he claims, “will bring the buyer freedom from financial troubles as well as from physical or emotional ailments.”
Hedges exposes the chicanery of those promoting religion and exploitation of those who follow them. Though the pages of American Fascists Hedges guides the reader through the wreckage of what was once good and compassionate about Christian religion and how those at the tiller, “this group of religious utopians, with the sympathy and support of tens of millions of Americans, are slowly dismantling democratic institutions to establish a religious tyranny, the springboard or an American fascism.” Using the 2008 Obama quote in its full context, “You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” The religious right capitalizes not on the quote, but parasitizes the people who have fallen upon long hard times. Hedges documents this tragedy in a very readable book, that has foreshadowed our last presidential election.
As an aside, though never very religious in the past, nor at all now, I wonder what the Jesus of whom I was taught, would have to say about the current leaders of the religious right, and the splendor in which they live, all the while exploiting those who have fallen upon hard times. “It is easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” (This quote is found in Matthew 19:24, Mark 10:25, and Luke 18:25.)
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