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!
