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Religion is a set of beliefs and practices that are determined by one’s view of reality and the supernatural. Politics is the process by which groups make decisions. Because one’s view of reality has a powerful effect on decision-making, the two realms are tightly intertwined in a number of ways.

Those who say religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion is.
-Mohandas Gandhi

Theocracy describes a state in which religious and government leaders either are identical or form a strongly interlocked and virtually inseparable group. A number of states in the ancient world could be so described, and examples in more recent times include the Vatican, Tibet under the Dalai Lama, and Iran and other Islamic Republics.

Nihilism was a term that was first popularized by the novelist Ivan Turgenev in 1862 (though it had been used in Russia and abroad for several decades before that time) to characterize the rebellious and highly unconventional youths who had appeared in Russia by the late 1850s. Though the nihilists were often described as people who no longer believed in anything, in actuality they believed in their own ideas with passionate and indeed fanatical intensity. Heavily influenced by theories originating from Western Europe, including German philosophy and French socialist thought, the nihilists sought to radically redesign society by destroying existing conventions of social morality – which they regarded as abstract concepts lacking any inherent basis in reality. After many failed attempts, they managed to assassinate Tsar Alexander II, after which they were largely hunted down and wiped out.

Where has God gone? I shall tell you. We have killed him —you and I. We are all his murderers… God is dead. That which was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet possessed has bled to death under our knives. There has never been a greater deed.
-Friedrich Nietzsche

Christian anarchism is any of several traditions which combine anarchism with Christianity. Christian anarchists believe that freedom is justified spiritually through the teachings of Jesus. This has caused them to be critical of government and Church authority. Some believe all individuals can directly communicate with God, which negates the need for a system of clergy. Tolstoy’s The Kingdom of God is Within You is a key text in modern Christian anarchism.

Some Christian anarchists hold a higher critical view of the Bible and therefore do not feel obliged to follow the complete text as law. They base their beliefs on what they think are the simple principles and historic messages of Jesus, such as the Sermon on the Mount, rather than obediently following every passage in the Judeo-Christian Bible.

Directly, anarchists have borrowed from Quakerism the method of facilitation and meetings known as consensus decision making. This technique, which forms a fundamental part of Quaker worship, is used in most anarchist meetings.

Liberation theology emphasizes the Christian mission to bring justice to the poor and oppressed, particularly through political activism. Its theologians consider sin the root source of poverty, the sin in question being exploitative capitalism and class war by the rich against the poor. At its inception, liberation theology was predominantly found in the Catholic Church after the Second Vatican Council. It is sometimes regarded as a form of Christian social¬ism, and it has enjoyed widespread influence in Latin America and among the Jesuits, although its influence diminished within Catholicism after liberation theologians using Marxist concepts were harshly admonished by Pope John Paul II (leading to the curtailing of its growth).

Furthermore, with its emphasis on the preferential treatment of the poor, the practice (or praxis) was as important as the belief, if not more so. Base com¬munities were small gatherings, usually outside of churches, in which the Bible could be discussed, and mass could be said. They were especially active in rural parts of Latin America where parish priests were not always available, as they placed a high value on lay participation. As of May 2007, it was estimated that 80,000 base communities were operating in Brazil alone.

Joseph Ratzinger, on the other hand, has suggested that the movement is in origin a creation of western intellectuals: “an attempt to test, in a concrete scenario, ideologies that have been invented in the laboratory by European theologians” and in a certain sense itself a form of “cultural imperialism”. Ratzinger saw this as a reaction to the demise or near-demise of the “Marxist myth” in the west. He did, however, qualify this as referring especially to the origins of the movement and did not deny that it had popular support.

By Darius Mirshahi

I loathe extravagant places of worship and the leaders who run them. Mega-churches, temples, and mosques are built with the most expensive materials while thousands of people die of hunger, exposure, and curable diseases. Greedy capitalists posing as ‘men of God’ prey on the desperate and sell them false hope, taking from the poor to enrich themselves.

To make matters worse, most places of worship reinforce unhealthy social relations such as hierarchy, sexism, queerphobia, submission to authority, and generally create followers who feel ‘unworthy’ and helpless. They are also to blame for a large amount of the culture of fear we live in.

It occurs to me that Jesus (the guy in the Bible that supposedly lived 2000 years ago) would probably share my disdain for organized religion, as well as my disdain for capitalism, individualism, racism, exploitation, and all the other things our society is built on. It is my humble opinion that if Jesus was around today he’d most likely be engaged in class war.

Jesus was always talking about how the rich were evil and that it was the poor and oppressed people who would inherit the kingdom of ‘God’. He made many enemies in high places because of his class analysis, and ended up becoming one of the most famous political prisoners ever before he was publicly executed.

Just as he ran into the temple and flipped the tables of the money lenders back in the day, Jesus would be running around smashing ATM’s today. Jesus would kick the televangelists out of their mega-churches and set up squats and social housing for the homeless. Jesus would be helping co-ordinate a ‘Food Not Bombs’ by magically turning nothing into something that hundreds could feast on. Remember that whole fish and bread trick?

Jesus wouldn’t vote for conservatives, much to their dismay. Jesus wouldn’t vote for liberals either. Jesus wouldn’t vote at all. Jesus never asked a politician for anything, if he saw a prob¬lem he took action himself. Jesus didn’t lobby politicians for more health care; he went out and healed the sick himself. Today he’d probably open some free clinics in poor neighbourhoods and break the pharmaceutical corporations’ patent laws to provide cheap/free medicine to everyone who needed it.

Jesus, if he ever did exist, was a pretty awesome person. He was such a threat to the state, organized religion, and capitalism that the rich and powerful organized a smear campaign to justify his arrest and execution.

Today, everything he stood for has been co-opted. Now his followers are among the most lost in the world, allowing a rich, powerful, and hierarchical institution known as the church dictate their beliefs instead of directly following the example Jesus set.

With hundreds of millions of Christians around the world you’d think we would have already won this class war. You’d think we would have already eradicated capitalism and the state and instituted an egalitarian society based on mutual aid, gift giving, and freedom. It’s time for Christians to leave the church and act a little like the man they admire so much. Jesus was an enemy of the state and capitalism. What about you?

By Alice Teply

Religion is a force that is still prominent in society today, and dictates the way people live their lives. It is important to have an open mind and see things from different points of view, yet this can be difficult for many. One may respect a person’s right to believe in what they do, yet still feel contempt towards what those beliefs entail. Acceptance and tolerance are important, but it is still difficult to not have strong feelings towards particular belief systems.

Growing up in a small rural area, I was exposed to the culture of the Amish and Mennonites. People in these belief systems adhere strictly to the Bible, and the Church has a strong reign over their lives. I also know people who attend fairly conservative Churches, ones in which women are not allowed to cut their hair and are expected to wear skirts or dresses. While these people’s religious freedom is important, I often wonder if they ever question what the rules of their Church truly mean. If a woman cuts her hair or wears pants, do they believe she’s not worthy enough to be a woman? If a head-covering isn’t worn, is she considered unholy? One of the most common Christian beliefs is that any person who has not accepted Christ as his or her personal Savior will suffer eternity in hell. This would mean that a devout religious leader who commits an atrocious act like child molestation can ask for forgiveness and still get a one way ticket to heaven. These are the beliefs that govern millions of people’s lives, and are accepted without question. People who are raised with these beliefs may not feel oppressed, and may indeed be happy. However many are likely afraid to question, because it would mean unraveling the only world they know, and questioning the very foundation their worldview has been built on. Religious systems need to use these rules in order to control their followers, otherwise how else would they prosper?

Having spent a large portion of my childhood attending a Pentecostal Church, I understand the powerful hold religion can have on a person, and how difficult it is to let that go. Much of what went on at these churches was like a scene from the film Jesus Camp. Looking back on it now, I can see how much we were brainwashed. Even as a child I questioned what we were taught, but still went along with everything for fear of being sinful. When people are instilled with dogma their entire lives, it is difficult to let this go and form a mind of their own. So while people’s narrow-mindedness is infuriating, a small part of me understands what it is like to cling to beliefs that define your entire existence.

After leaving a religious organization, it is a challenge to find your own truth and meaning in life. It is difficult for me to give up everything I was taught, one being the concept of God. Yet my view of God is different than the fascist leader the Church paints him out to be. I believe the teachings of Jesus were positive ones, but that the Church has polluted them and twisted their meaning. The values of love and compassion are buried beneath power. I have chosen to take what I want from religion and leave the rest, because it can only be tainted under religion’s influence. I’m now left with many questions that will never be answered. Despite this, I wouldn’t trade it for the ignorance that befalls many who are unable to think for themselves. Some say ignorance is bliss, but mainly it leaves people in darkness. It’s better to accept the reality of not having all the answers. This, I believe, is true enlightenment.

By Andrew Jones

In early Judean teachings, the worship of false idols was considered a sin. According to them, there was only one true God to worship. This notion is still alive today in Christianity, but does it mean the same thing? Learning Christianity as a child, one is taught to worship this statue as opposed to that statue. This literal interpretation of scripture is itself worship of a false ideal. Because the ancient prophets - Jesus being the most influential in the west - were so far ahead of their culture’s understanding, the successive generations could not quite grasp the full meaning of their message. This misinterpretation led to dogmatism and caused the religious doctrine to eventually promote a subordinate mentality in the masses; the church assumed that human fate was in their hands and the original intent of Christianity was manipulated by political agendas. This control inevitably led to oppression, which in turn caused religion to be used as a form of escapism: the hierarchical society was not founded on human equality, and those who were at the bottom of the social scale lived rough, oppressed lives. Religious adherents began to neglect the self and hope for a better day, and this hope was rooted in a manmade image of God.

The very idea of Christian hope became self defeating. During harsh times, oppressed peoples have endured their situations hoping that if they did, after death they would be rewarded. This promise of hope is only true in the future, and therefore it is negation of living in the present. Forcing the future causes pressure on outcomes and attachment to ideas and images, which ultimately creates a cycle of unhappiness. Our power as humans is diminished if we give it all to an ideal or an image.

Today television has taken the place of religion as the pacifier of the masses. It indoctrinates, socializes, distracts, and causes people to aspire to an abstract concept instead of being happy with who they are. From Disney to reality shows, our perspectives are based on escaping from an undesired reality.

So why do so many people continue to escape from their oppressive realities instead of striving to change their current situations? Awareness of how our every action is influenced by the economic structures governing society makes it difficult and illogical to do nothing and remain pacified. Knowledge and education makes it hard to ignore; when you know better you do better. Pacifiers are for babies who can‘t handle the changes that are about to take place, and we must create a society that no longer needs them. We have to turn on, learn and push ourselves to evolve and change; we cannot blame or rely on some conceptual “God” in the sky to do it for us. Because humans created the image of God, we are the divine - right now. If everybody realized their ability to create their own lives, there would be no need for escapism.

By Gaelen Olinksi

Why has Christianity seen such a steady decrease in participation by Canadians over the past ten years? Major Christian denominations such as Catholicism and Protestantism are finding fewer and fewer young recruits. According to Census Canada, the percentage of Canadians who identify as Christian has dropped by approximately 1% per year over the past decade. At this rate, by about 2023, non-Christians will outnumber Christians in Canada. This isn’t to say that all religions are on the decline. In this country, Pagan religions such as Wicca and Native Spirituality have shown the greatest percentage growth of any religions in the past ten years. There is a growing skepticism of the leaders and the motives of major religions in Canada and other Western democracies. One can only hear so many stories of child-molesting priests or rich televangelists before seriously questioning the messages these religions have to offer. Is it any wonder why it is so difficult for the younger generation to hear “the divine calling?”

It goes beyond the stories of corruption within the church. The distrust we feel can be largely attributed to contemporary means of exchanging information. The information we are most exposed to usually comes from one of two places, television or the Internet. Television is a shaky source of information at best
and hardly a reliable one when you take into consideration the interests of those who control it. The Internet may be a better source, since it allows greater public access, therefore creating more diversified perspectives - but how many times have you seen a pop-up advertisement announcing that you have won a contest for thousands of dollars, or that if you order dick pills you will grow 4 inches overnight? Our parents may fall for this, but we know better.

Without trust there can be no faith. It is the key ingredient. Without faith the pope is no longer an agent of God, no longer someone to rely on as an intermediary between the faithful and the transcendent messages of the Lord; without faith the pope is just a farty old man.

So why then are some religions flourishing in the face of these skeptical times? If you examine the religious groups in Canada that have shown the most growth recently, you will notice these are religions which place a strong emphasis on inclusion - what I mean is an elimination of the mentality that either you’re with us or you’re against us - and secondly, a relation¬ship with the natural world. Trusting in Nature is much easier than trusting a man in the Vatican who is far removed from us and our daily existence.

There is also a large group of people who do not participate in any organized religion, but rather find a way to tribute their “God”, whether it’s through a cutting and pasting of various religious doctrines or the higher calling that comes through art or communion with nature.

When God called we weren’t home, maybe next time he’ll know where to find us.

By Uri Gordon - AnarchyAlive.com

The ancient Hebrews never believed in one god. There is nothing controversial about this claim. From the biblical narrative itself we learn how, in both kingdoms of Israel and Judah, one ruler after another “did evil in the eyes of Yahweh” by worshiping other gods and encouraging their ongoing worship among the people. Only a handful of “good” kings were dedicated to Yahweh alone and suppressed other cults. It is thus evident that during the First Temple period (c.1000-586 BCE), the population which had allegedly taken up the monotheistic covenant at Mount Sinai was in fact polytheistic, worshiping the selfsame family of goddesses and gods prevalent among the Western Semitic peoples of the age. Yahweh was nothing but the local name for this pantheon’s sky/father god, also known as El, and inseparable from his female partner and equal, the earth/mother goddess Ashera. A simple calculation from the Book of Kings will reveal that the typical wooden pole dedicated to the mother goddess stood in Solomon’s Temple for a full two thirds of its existence. Archaeologists have dug up literally thousands of Ashera figurines in Palestine/Israel, as well as inscriptions carrying blessings “from Yahweh and his Ashera”. No less popular were their son and daughter – the rain god Hadad, often referred to as the Ba’al (meaning “lord”), and the goddess of love and war Ashtoret, identical to the Mesopotamian Ishtar.

How then did this pagan nature religion transform into abstract monotheism, the basis for Judaism, Christianity and Islam? The answer lies not in theology, but in politics. The change took place in two stages, the first of which came with the sweeping campaign of religious and political centralization enacted in Jerusalem by King Josiah in 621 BCE. The chief instigators were the high priest Hilkiah, the royal secretary Shaphan, and the prophetess Huldah, a prominent noblewoman. During renovations in the temple, they “discovered” a forgotten manuscript, the Book of the Covenant, later incorporated into the book of Deuteronomy. Its centerpiece was the Shema – the passage beginning “Hear, O Israel, Yahweh our God, Yahweh the One” (Deut. 6:4) – along with harsh prohibitions on idolatry and exogamy, a stress on one exclusive temple, and threats of total annihilation of the people if they worship other gods. Presented to the king, these writings formed the perfect pretext for a wholesale centralization of theocratic power in the hands of the House of David and the Jerusalem priestly caste. Josiah acted swiftly:

He went up to the temple of Yahweh with the men of Judah, the people of Jerusalem…He read in their hearing all the words of the Book…Then all the people pledged themselves to the covenant. The king ordered…to remove from the temple of Yahweh all the articles made for Ba’al and Asherah and all the starry hosts…He took the Asherah pole from the temple of Yahweh to the Kidron Valley outside Jerusalem and burned it there. He ground it to powder and scattered the dust over the graves of the common people. He also tore down the quarters of the male shrine prosti¬tutes, which were in the temple of Yahweh and where women did weaving for Asherah…Josiah smashed the sacred stones and cut down the Asherah poles and covered the sites with human bones…slaughtered all the priests of those high places on the altars and burned human bones on them.
(2 Kings 23)

Josiah’s coup created and enforced a patriarchal state religion, to whose intellectual elite modern scholarship attributes the books of Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings – a retroactive historiography which would drastically reshape Judean identity and collective memory.

Yet the exclusive and centralized cult of Yahweh was still essentially a pagan affair – “monolatry” rather than monotheism. It was only following the destruction of Solomon’s Temple (586 BCE) and the forced migration to Babylon that the second stage took place. Over the next few generations, the elders of the exiled Judean community, having entirely internalized the Yahwist line, interpreted their traumatic uprooting as divine retribution for idolatry. This, along with the abrupt halt of sacrificial ritual, drove the Judeans towards an increasingly im¬material and ethical notion of the divine. Another likely influence was the encounter with the Zoroastrian religion of the Persians, who conquered Babylon and allowed the exiles to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple (444 BC). Their emperor Cyrus no doubt appreciated the utility of a universal faith, now enshrined in texts and ad¬ministered by a literate elite, in maintaining social order and obedience to his Judean vassals – as would Alexander the Great just over a century later. Left largely autonomous in their internal affairs, the Jews would go on to produce volumes upon volumes of exegesis and jurisprudence, taking the expedient lies of men for the sacred word of God.

Yet the ancient religion is not entirely lost. Its echoes are to be found in the songs and rituals of Jewitches and Hebrew pagans, a small movement of creative deviants who dodge the false choice between a ridiculously unfathomable God and a life barren of spirit. An older, gentler faith still lies dormant beneath the concrete blocks and bloodied soil of this orphaned land, await¬ing perhaps the day when the children of Ashera lay down their swords forever and seek reconnection to their deepest roots.

Recommended reading:
M. Smith, The Early History of God (Eerdmans, 2002)
R. Patai, The Hebrew Goddess (Wayne State, 1990)
L. Grabbe, Good Kings and Bad Kings (Clark, 2005)

Russell’s Teapot

If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to dis¬prove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.

Bertrand Russell from “Is There a God?”
-Commissioned, but never published, by Illustrated magazine in 1952

The Flying Spaghetti Monster

“I think we can all look forward to the time when these three theories are given equal time in our science classrooms across the country, and eventually the world; One third time for Intelligent Design, one third time for Flying Spaghetti Monsterism, and one third time for logical conjecture based on overwhelming observable evidence.”

The Flying Spaghetti Monster (or FSM) is the deity of the parody religion the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster or Pastafarianism. It was created in 2005 by Bobby Henderson as a satirical protest to the decision by the Kansas State Board of Education to require the teaching of intelligent design as an alternative to biological evolution in public schools. According to Henderson, since the intelligent design movement uses ambiguous references to an unspecified “Intelligent Designer”, this leaves open any conceivable entity to fulfill that role, even a Flying Spaghetti Monster.

By Heatscore

The Christian Right is an incredibly powerful force in American politics – and one that those in the secular camp ignore at their own peril. The modern day American evangelical community is the product of more than three decades of tireless organizational efforts married to two thousand years of populist ignorance; it is a terrifyingly well-oiled machine that can claim virtually unlimited funding, powerful corporate media sympathizers and a volunteer army numbering in the tens of millions as their chief assets.

In the wake of the sheer power they currently wield, it is a joke for us on the left to talk about any sort of transformative American revolution that does not concede that they would play – as present – a guiding role in the social transformation that would follow.

As it stands, they are the only political demographic with the numbers and the political influence to feasibly overthrow the American government and replace it with a political system of their choosing – and there are certainly elements on the movement’s fringes who openly advocate doing just that.

So how did they get so powerful? And is there anything that can stop them?

The Christian Right has its roots in the Deep South, whose tightly-knit religious congregations are a byproduct of the population’s history of frontier expansionism. When American settlers first left the established colonies of New England to populate the more recently conquered territories to the nation’s south and west, a lack of historical connection to their new communities found itself manifested in a cultural vacuum – one that was hastily filled by the Church.

In the decades that followed the Civil War, Americans who had fought on the side of the Confederacy remained disillusioned with federal politics in general and the Republican Party in particular. The Republicans were, back then, still remembered as the party of Abraham Lincoln and were largely associated with northern banking and industrial interests.

Up until the 1960’s, the southern Christian community was largely apolitical. When they did vote, it was generally for pro-segregationist Democrats of the Jim Crow variety. The South was – and still is, to a lesser extent – a bastion of racism and conservative values.

It wasn’t until the desegregationist measures enacted as part of Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” reforms – freedoms earned by the blood and sweat of those involved in the Civil Rights movement – that the Republicans began to gain ground in the country’s south. Despite losing most of the southern states to LBJ, the campaign of Barry Goldwater demonstrated to conservative Republicans that it was possible to win over white southern voters by appealing to their racist fears of black liberation. This strategy was improved upon during the subsequent campaigns of Richard Nixon – and the south has been solidly Republican (with several notable exceptions) ever since.

Having accomplished what once seemed impossible, the Republicans turned their attention to maintaining their newly established gains. Unfortunately for them, no amount of political brinksmanship could save them from the Watergate scandal, which ultimately drove them from power in 1976.

It was during the subsequent four years that the seeds of the modern day Christian Right were sown. If one were to at¬tempt to pinpoint the exact moment that the movement was “born”, it would likely be the creation of Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority, in 1979, whose fiery denunciations of perceived social and moral decline sought to galvanize the country’s Christian rank and file into a potent force for political change. In any case, the long dormant power of the American Christian community was revealed in 1980, when Ronald Reagan was swept into office on a wave of ballots cast by first-time Christian voters.

While Moral Majority perhaps best epitomized the character of the new wave of Christian Right organizations that sprung up during this time period (several other prominent organizations included Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition and James Dobson’s Focus on the Family) behind the scenes a new epicen¬ter soon emerged – one aimed exclusively at permanently binding America’s Christian congregations to the pro-corporate policies of the Republican Party.

The Council for National Policy (CNP) was founded in 1981 by Tim LaHaye (co-author of the best-selling Left Behind series, which frame America’s invasion of Iraq as a necessary precursor to the second coming of Christ) with the help of a large donation from conservative philanthropist Joseph Coors, of the powerful Coors beer dynasty. Touted as a “counterweight against liberal domination of the American agenda”, the CNP membership roster is a veritable who’s-who of the American conservative establishment, including prominent members of the country’s religious and business communities. As evidence of the group’s far-reaching clout, Source¬Watch points to a May 9, 2006, meet¬ing “whose speakers included NRA President Sandra Froman, Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff, Heritage Foundation president Edwin Fuelner Jr., Phyllis Schlafly, Grover Norquist, [former UN] Ambassador John Bolton, Oliver North and Robert Bork.” George W. Bush reportedly won the backing of the Christian Right by promising the CNP in a 1999 speech that he would only appoint pro-life judges to the Supreme Court. In 2008, Republican candidate John McCain selected Sarah Palin as his running mate largely to placate the CNP, whose members had up until then considered withholding their support, so disdainful were they of his apparent lack of commitment to “Christian values.”

Details of their meetings are sketchy and hard to come by, as the group goes to great lengths to avoid public scrutiny. A leaked memorandum printed in the New York Times distributed to attendees of a CNP meeting states unequivocally: “The media should not know when or where we meet or who takes part in our programs, before or after a meeting.”

The CNP has assumed the mantle of strengthening and maintaining the Christian Right in America - and the explosive growth of the movement’s influence over the past three decades shows that they have succeeded wildly. The CNP works by actively promoting so-called “wedge issues” - such as gay marriage or Roe v Wade - to agitate voters into electing Republican candidates whom they themselves have vetted. Once in office, these candidates are then free to push for corporate tax-cuts and increases in military spending. The strategy has succeeded in breeding a rabid new electoral demographic who vote solely for the furthering of the conservative Christian agenda - at the expense of any considerations to foreign policy, the economy, declining civil rights or the environment. It goes a long way towards explaining why millions of Americans are currently more concerned with evolution being taught in their children’s schools than they are of the fact that their children’s schools are woefully underfunded and a shocking number of their children graduate from high school as functional illiterates.

As part one of this series set out to explain, the rank-and-file of the American Christian Right possess many of the characteristics of a traditional fascist movement. Their self-perceived role as victims in an ongoing “culture war” (a “war” in which they feel themselves “under attack” by the decadent immorality of liberal democracy) combined with a strong hierarchical system of control and growing ties within the American military establishment would make them ideal storm troopers if and when the country’s corporate elite decide to throw their weight behind a fascist coup.

So what can be done to stop this from happening?

Unfortunately, there are no easy answers to solving the problems posed by the Christian Right. A coherent strategy on countering their influence would re¬quire its own book – or in any case, far more space than the two pages of this article provide. That being said, here are some ideas that could perhaps serve as a possible starting point.

First, moderate American Christians need to speak up. While most conservative Christians baulk at being lectured on morality by “godless atheists”, they are far more likely to listen to a fellow believer patiently explain that the message of Jesus was one of love and mutual respect – not of hate and intolerance. This has been an effective strategy in the Muslim world, where prominent clerics have used theological arguments to successfully discredit the message of Islamic fundamental¬ism (in countries that the US is not currently bombing or occupying, that is). The same strategy could be used in the United States against Christian fundamentalism, with the caveat that in the Muslim world the ruling class is generally opposed to fundamentalists, whereas in the US the two groups are mutually supportive.

Second, America’s atheists need to get organized. Christianity is appealing because it offers a sense of communal identity to its followers. It is important that the secular left strives to find a suitable counterpart – while avoiding the pitfalls of internal hierarchy and moral absolutism that are the hallmarks of religion. This does not mean they should avoid all religious tactics, some of which have intrinsic merit - meeting once a week, for instance, or providing free services to the poor. Atheists are (rightly) perceived as generally being more individualistic and materialistic than our Christian counterparts. If there is any hope of rolling back the increasing power of the Christian Right, this must change… and soon - before it’s too late!