The other say, I watched a reading (on CSPAN 2) from the book 'American Fascists.' The author has much to say about the Religious Right, and recapitulates some of it here:
Quote:
I spent two years reporting and writing “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.” At the numerous gatherings I attended around the country, one of the driving forces and most effective mobilizing agents was the issue of sexuality. This mass movement, led by figures such as James Dobson, claims that tolerance of “alternative lifestyles” is eroding the American family. They describe “same-sex attraction” as a disease that can be cured. And they condemn all sexual love that is not heterosexual as an abomination in the eyes of God.
[...]
These attacks mask a sinister agenda that has nothing to do with sexuality. It has to do with power. The radical Christian right—the most dangerous mass movement in American history—has built a binary worldview of command and submission wherein male leaders, who cannot be questioned and claim to speak for God, are in control and all others must follow. Any lifestyle outside the traditional model of male and female is a threat to this hierarchical male power structure. Women who do not depend on men for their identity and their sexuality, who live outside a male power relationship, challenge this pervasive cult of masculinity, as do men who find tenderness and love with other men as equals. The lifestyle of gays and lesbians is intolerable to the Christian right because its existence is a threat to the movement’s chain of command, one they insist was ordained by God.
[...]
Jesus, like God, has to be a real man, a man who dominates through force. The language of the movement is filled with metaphors about the use of excessive force and violence against God’s enemies.
The unspoken truth is that Christian men are required to have a personal, loving relationship with a male deity and surrender their will to a male-dominated authoritarian church. The submission to church authority is a potent form of emasculation. It entails a surrendering of conscience and personal control and deadens emotions and feelings. Glorified acts of force and violence against outsiders, against nonbelievers, compensate for this unquestioning submission.
[...]
[In the 1970s,] ...[m]y ethics professor at Harvard Divinity School, Dr. James Luther Adams, told us to watch closely what the Christian right did to homosexuals. He had seen the same tactic in Nazi Germany, where he spent 1935 and 1936 working with the underground anti-Nazi church known as the Confessing Church. The Nazis also used “values” to launch state repression of opponents.
In his talk, Hedges also described the dangers of the 'non-reality based worldview' that was forced upon these religious cultists.
He used the example of the under-construction Creation Museum, which he was allowed to preview. There he found dioramas that showed Man co-existing peacefully with dinosaurs in the Garden of Eden. The literature carefully explained how dinosaurs were herbivores at that time-- it was the Fall which turned them into dangerous carnivores.
We laugh, but this sort of thing, Hedges said, shows just how far these people are willing togo to maintain for themselves that all-important 'magical' worldview. A view, he said, which can eventually let one morally excuse oneself from just about any sort of behavior, provided one believe it to be sanctioned by the binary God.
In short, this is how 'Good Germans' were made in the 1930s, and how "persons of high character" are being made now. Who might they be, these 'persons?'
Consider the requirements outlined here (.pdf):
Quote:
Guidelines For Evangelism Leaders
The Significance of Proper Church Leadership"
A. Church leaders should be appointed on the basis of their saving faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
B.Church leaders should be appointed on the basis of their moral character.
[...]
F. Church leaders should be appointed on the basis of their submission to authority.
G.Church leaders should be appointed on the basis of their willingness to serve.
H.Church leaders should be appointed on the basis of their willingness to be trained.
Scary, isnt't it? |
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