Christian Nationalism

That Rudy Giuliani went down to Georgia and stumped for the former head of the Christian Coalition, Ralph Reed, who is running for lieutenant governor, is not in itself disturbing. Neither is the burgeoning McCain/Falwell alliance (although his attempt to give the same "you kids don't know everything" speech at The New School in New York City ended up falling victim to a smart lady who saw through it and did a pre-emptive strike on the speech). These are electoral realities coming to bear on two candidates who need to burnish their conservative bona fides to get through a primary. Anyway, these two guys (particularly Giuliani) believe in a much more pernicious fantasy, that of free-market Jesus:

Mr. Giuliani did not once mention Jesus Christ or his childhood interest in becoming a priest, but instead preached from the Bible of fiscal conservatism. He called for more federal tax cuts as a means of creating more jobs and stimulating the economy, and argued that tax cuts would invigorate business and ultimately yield greater total tax receipts, thereby helping the cause of deficit reduction.

How many times does that have to be disproven before the Republicans stop saying it? (The answer is that they never will: it's the straw that stirs the corporate conservative drink. Something as appealing a canard as "we can give billions in tax cuts to the rich AND increase the size of government AND shrink the deficit" will never die, no matter what the facts)

What is disturbing is that these candidates are playing to a base that has no belief in or use for democracy. Orcinus points us to this amazing excerpt from Salon writer Michelle Goldberg's new book "The Rise of Christian Nationalism". Goldberg deconstructs the fights over seemingly innocuous fights like the Ten Commandments in courthouses or "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance and finds the end goals underneath of a growing sect that wants America to become an explicitly Christian nation. These are not merely people of faith, they are zealots and charlatans that should be exposed for the danger they represent.

You need to know the players. People like Judge Roy Moore, the newest martyr in this trumped-up "war" against secular tyranny:

After all, Moore is a man who, in a 2002 court decision awarding custody of three children to their allegedly abusive father over their lesbian mother, called homosexuality "abhorrent, immoral, detestable, a crime against nature, and a violation of the laws of nature and of nature's God upon which this Nation and our laws are predicated," and argued, "The State carries the power of the sword, that is, the power to prohibit conduct with physical penalties, such as confinement and even execution. It must use that power to prevent the subversion of children toward this lifestyle, to not encourage a criminal lifestyle." [...]

As the controversy over the statue ignited, Moore's fame grew. At rallies across the country, he summoned the faithful to an ideal that sounded very much like theocracy. "For forty years we have wandered like the children of Israel," he told a crowd of three thousand supporters in Tennessee. "In homes and schools across our land, it's time for Christians to take a stand. This is not a nation established on the principles of Buddha or Hinduism. Our faith is not Islam. What we follow is not the Koran but the Bible. This is a Christian nation."

There's a Christian folk singer named Thomas Bowman whose songs recall the civil rights movement but whose ends are very avowedly the destruction of those who don't follow his beliefs:

"The opposing side, the anti-God side, the do-whatever-you-want side, the judicial side, just kept pushing and pushing and pushing for the last forty years," Bowman said. "They keep moving that line back." Finally, he said, God called on Christians to defend themselves.

There's a very defined military aspect to this movement:

True, our homegrown quasi-fascists often appear so absurd as to seem harmless. Take, for example, American Veterans in Domestic Defense, the organization that took the Ten Commandments on tour. The group says it exists to "neutralize the destructiveness" of America's "domestic enemies," which include "biased liberal, socialist news media," "the ACLU," and "the conspiracy of an immoral film industry." To do this, it aims to recruit former military men. "AVIDD reminds all American Veterans that you took an oath to defend the United States against all enemies, 'both foreign and domestic,'" its Web site says. "In your military capacity, you were called upon to defend the United States against foreign enemies. AVIDD now calls upon you to continue to fulfill your oath and help us defend this nation on the political front, against equally dangerous domestic enemies."

According to Jim Cabaniss, the seventy-two-year-old Korean War veteran who founded AVIDD, the group now has thirty-three chapters across the country. It's entirely likely that some of these chapters just represent one or two men, and as of 2005, AVIDD didn't seem large enough to be much of a danger to anyone.

Still, it's worth noting that thousands of Americans nationwide have flocked to rallies at which military men don uniforms and pledge to seize the reins of power in America on behalf of Christianity. In many places, local religious leaders and politicians lend their support to AVIDD's cause. And at least some of the people at these rallies speak with seething resentment about the tyranny of Jews over America's Christian majority.

"People who call themselves Jews represent maybe 2 or 3 percent of our people," Cabaniss told me after a January 2005 rally in Austin. "Christians represent a huge percent, and we don't believe that a small percentage should destroy the values of the larger percentage."

And it doesn't stop with crazy civilian defense corps that sound like the Minutemen or the Branch Davidians. How about the Air Force:

Also speaking was John Eidsmoe, a retired lieutenant colonel in the Air Force who wore full military dress... He's a proponent of a Confederate doctrine called interposition, which holds that states have the right to reject federal government mandates they deem unconstitutional. "Implementation of the doctrine may be peaceable, as by resolution, remonstrance or legislation, or may proceed ultimately to nullification with forcible resistance," he wrote in a manifesto titled "A Call to Stand with Chief Justice Roy Moore."

I should mention at this point that this isn't the only member of the Air Force whose rhetoric has become increasingly alien as of late. It's become something of an adjunct of the religious Right, which should be deeply troubling. This is from the San Francisco Chronicle:

Less than two years after it was plunged into a rape scandal, the Air Force Academy is scrambling to address complaints that evangelical Christians wield so much influence at the school that anti-Semitism and other forms of religious harassment have become pervasive.

There have been 55 complaints of religious discrimination at the academy in the past four years, including cases in which a Jewish cadet was told the Holocaust was revenge for the death of Jesus and another was called a Christ killer by a fellow cadet. [...]

Critics of the academy say the sometimes-public endorsement of Christianity by high-ranking staff has contributed to a climate of fear and violates the constitutional separation of church and state at a taxpayer-supported school whose mission is to produce Air Force leaders.

The commandant of the academy, a born-again Christian, said in 2003 that cadets' "first responsibility is to their God." That sounds like something out of the Shi'a militia in Iraq. And officers are forcing cadets to send money to conservative Christian candidates for Congress.

Maj. Gen. Jack J. Catton Jr., who is on active duty at Langley Air Force Base, sent the fundraising appeal on Thursday from his official e-mail account to more than 200 fellow members of the academy's class of 1976, many of whom are also on active duty.

"We are certainly in need of Christian men with integrity and military experience in Congress," Catton wrote.

Defense Department rules prohibit active-duty officers from using their position to solicit campaign contributions or seek votes for a particular candidate. An Air Force spokesman said yesterday that "appropriate officials are inquiring into the facts surrounding these e-mails."

Movements like this don't begin with ten million people all at once. They bubble up from the underground, playing on people's rage, finding a convenient scapegoat, and using demonization to push into the mainstream. Not only is the US Air Force apparently on board, but the leaders of the religious right are stoking these Dominionist fires, which assert that men of Christ must take over every aspect of society in order to usher in the Revelation and Jesus' return. Here's another bit from the Salon piece:

Tim LaHaye, who is most famous for putting a Tom Clancy gloss on premillennialist theology in the Left Behind thrillers that he co-writes with Jerry Jenkins, was heavily influenced by... a conspiratorial view of history and politics, arguing, "Most people today do not realize what humanism really is and how it is destroying our culture, families, country -- and, one day, the entire world. Most of the evils in the world today can be traced to humanism, which has taken over our government, the UN, education, TV, and most of the other influential things of life.

"We must remove all humanists from public office and replace them with pro-moral political leaders," LaHaye wrote.

I think we ignore this movement at our peril. These are a group of people with only one thing in mind: global dominance. In fact, they are sancitified by God himself to bring that about.

These are not all Christians. These are fundamentalists who pervert the values of Christianity in which hundreds of millions find comfort. But in a chaotic world, self-styled "leaders" may find themselves leading the easily led into violent confrontation. In fact, we may be seeing that already.