I've now completed my series of posts discussing Mel White's book Holy Terror, Lies the Christian Right Tells Us to Deny Gay Equality. This post gathers all the links together so you don't have to go browsing through the last three months of posts (though that isn't a bad idea – you might find something else of interest).
1. Fear
2. Cast of Characters
3. Battle plan
4. Idols
5. Fascism
6. Constitutional values
7. Love
8. Soulforce
I have two copies of this book to share. I didn't know it had been published under the title Religion Gone Bad, which I bought but hadn't yet read. I'm disappointed the Soulforce website didn't tell me of the title change. But that means I can give out two copies.
Showing posts with label Mel White. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mel White. Show all posts
Sunday, January 18, 2015
Holy Terror, part 8: Soulforce
I've been working on this series for quite a while now, the first part was posted in mid November. I even started this part a couple weeks ago. When I remembered the significance of this weekend and what this part is about I realized I had better finish it off. This is the last part.
The last chapter of Mel White's book Holy Terror, Lies the Christian Right Tells Us to Deny Gay Equality describes his personal journey to founding the organization Soulforce to counteract the battle being waged against us by the Fundies. That journey began with the publication of his previous book Stranger at the Gate in 1993 in which he describes his thirty years trying everything possible to not be gay. Prior to that book he had been a biographer, and sometimes ghostwriter, for many of the fundamentalist leaders. With the publication of that book two things happened: His previous colleagues and employers turned their backs on him and he suddenly became a gay activist.
At the end of 1994 the New York Times reported that 60% of murders of sexual minorities were "overkill," using a great deal more violence than needed to cause death. It didn't take long to figure out that the brutality of these deaths were due to the toxic misinformation flowing from the Fundie leadership.
White spent much of 1993 and 1994 trying to contact his former clients in hopes of meeting them to make the connections between their words and all these deaths and ask them to at least tone it down. He was ignored. His Christmas letter in 1994 expressed his frustration, "I'm finished trying to talk to the fundamentalists. They're hopeless. I'm giving up on them."
Within days he got a reply from Lynn Cothren, Coretta Scott King's assistant at the King Center in Atlanta and a gay Christian.
Cothren guided White to re-read the writings of Martin Luther King and Gandhi. This is what White learned there:
White began to formulate his own guiding principles. From Jesus: "Love your enemies. Bless them that curse you. Do good to them that hate you. And pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you. … These things I command you that you love one another."
From Gandhi: The law of love has two sides, "to cooperate with all that is good" and "to non-cooperate with all that is evil." The love that Jesus means is "the largest love, love even for the evil-doer. It however does not mean meek submission to the will of the evil-doer. On the contrary it means putting one's whole soul against the will of the tyrant. Evil, however, cannot be overcome by evil, by violence and retaliation. To use violence against the evil-doer is to deny spiritual unity with him."
From King: "Nonviolent resistance had emerged as the technique of the movement, while love stood as the regulating ideal. In other words, Christ furnished the spirit and the motivation while Gandhi furnished the method."
From Gandhi: "Truth (Satya) implies love and firmness (agraha) serves as a synonym for force. I thus began to call the Indian movement 'Satyagraha,' that is to say, the Force which is born of Truth and Love. … Satyagraha is soul force pure and simple and whenever and to whatever extent there is room for the use of arms or physical force or brute force, there and to that extent is there so much less possibility of soul force."
That passage gave White the name for his new organization. It is called Soulforce.
From King: "Never begin a protest if you're not going to take that protest all the way."
King's basic beliefs of soul force: "First, this is not a method of cowardice or passivity. It does resist; second, it does not seek to defeat or humiliate the opponent, but to win his friendship and understanding; third, the attack is directed to the forces of evil, rather than persons caught in the forces; fourth, it not only avoids external physical violence, but also internal violence of spirit; fifth, it is based upon the conviction that the universe is on the side of justice."
King's summary of soul force: "We will take direct action against injustice without waiting for other agencies to act. We will not obey unjust laws or submit to unjust practices. We will do this peacefully, openly, cheerfully because our aim is to persuade. We will adopt the means of nonviolence because our end is community at peace with itself. We will try to persuade with our words, but if words fail, we will try to persuade with our acts. We will always be willing to talk and seek fair compromise, but we are ready to suffer when necessary and even risk our lives to be witnesses to the truth as we see it."
King's method of soul force, as written by White: "First, gather your evidence. See where injustice prevails and make your strong case against it; second, meet with your opponent to negotiate an end to the injustice; third, if negotiations break down or are used to delay injustice, recruit, train, and equip people of good faith in the principles of relentless nonviolent resistance; fourth, with people committed to nonviolence of the heart, tongue, and fist, plan and carry out nonviolent direct actions that prove to your opponent that you will not be satisfied until justice is done."
White says if we are to satisfy that justice shouldn't we protest unjust wars, demand the end of boycotts that prevent medicine from reaching the needy in hostile countries, take a stand against billions spent on the military instead of on the needy, take care of the prisoner by making the court and corrections systems more just, demand relief for the Palestinian as well as the Israeli, and work to preserve our wounded earth? I'm sure the list should be much longer and include justice for the youth I serve supper to every week at the Ruth Ellis Center. White adds, "This kind of love will cost us."
Hermann Hagadorn's poem The Bomb That Fell on America includes a conversation between himself a the Voice. He is compared to Jesus and the Voice confirms a difference is that "You have never been crucified. Do you know why?" He answers, "I have never made people angry enough." The Voice replies, "The world is sick for dearth of crucifixions."
As for the place of sexual minorities in the church White says we must quit cooperating with those who oppress us. Our opponents assume we are infinitely patient or too comfortable in our closets to lead a revolution. Love demands we call a stop to studies and debates. Love demands we recruit, train, and organize around the principles of relentless nonviolent resistance. Love demands massive and relentless direct actions to confront injustice and end the lies against us. It is time for boycotts, picket lines, mass vigils, serious fasts, candlelight marches, and other acts of nonviolent spiritual disobedience against those who oppress us.
That's a lot to take in. Not enough crucifixions? Must I be so annoying to those in power that they kill me? Or are there other ways of sacrificing myself? Can the sacrifice be in time, treasure, and energy?
I think about my time at the Ruth Ellis Center. I've served supper there for six years. I've been there so long they've declared me to be an angel. I volunteer because the needs of gay youth cast out from their homes because of a Church is so important to me that sending money is not enough. I have to involve me. Have I helped the youth? They aren't as hungry and my work means the staff can spend more time taking care of all the other needs these kids have. But is it justice? Have I helped tackle the reason why these youth are tossed to the street? Alas, no.
What does my work towards justice look like? What does yours?
The last chapter of Mel White's book Holy Terror, Lies the Christian Right Tells Us to Deny Gay Equality describes his personal journey to founding the organization Soulforce to counteract the battle being waged against us by the Fundies. That journey began with the publication of his previous book Stranger at the Gate in 1993 in which he describes his thirty years trying everything possible to not be gay. Prior to that book he had been a biographer, and sometimes ghostwriter, for many of the fundamentalist leaders. With the publication of that book two things happened: His previous colleagues and employers turned their backs on him and he suddenly became a gay activist.
At the end of 1994 the New York Times reported that 60% of murders of sexual minorities were "overkill," using a great deal more violence than needed to cause death. It didn't take long to figure out that the brutality of these deaths were due to the toxic misinformation flowing from the Fundie leadership.
White spent much of 1993 and 1994 trying to contact his former clients in hopes of meeting them to make the connections between their words and all these deaths and ask them to at least tone it down. He was ignored. His Christmas letter in 1994 expressed his frustration, "I'm finished trying to talk to the fundamentalists. They're hopeless. I'm giving up on them."
Within days he got a reply from Lynn Cothren, Coretta Scott King's assistant at the King Center in Atlanta and a gay Christian.
I've been following your progress since I read about you in the Southern Voice and until your recent letter I liked what I saw. But your angry decision to break off communications with the radical right signals a turn towards violence. I hope you will seriously reconsider.Violence? What is there about breaking communication that is violent?
Cothren guided White to re-read the writings of Martin Luther King and Gandhi. This is what White learned there:
[King] went on to defend nonviolence on principle as he had for almost a dozen years. And he made it clear that giving up on an opponent was an act of violence against him. He is our brother. We are children of the same Creator. We are in need of reconciliation, and reconciliation will never happen if we call them "hopeless" and walk away.
…
[The fundamentalist leaders] had ignored my pleas for dialogue. So, like a petulant child, I was about to take my toys and go home.. Even worse, I was feeling more and more like blowing up the playground. Although I couldn't see it, anger was crippling my spirit; and though I would have denied it then, the same anger was leading me slowly but surely toward violence.
White began to formulate his own guiding principles. From Jesus: "Love your enemies. Bless them that curse you. Do good to them that hate you. And pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you. … These things I command you that you love one another."
From Gandhi: The law of love has two sides, "to cooperate with all that is good" and "to non-cooperate with all that is evil." The love that Jesus means is "the largest love, love even for the evil-doer. It however does not mean meek submission to the will of the evil-doer. On the contrary it means putting one's whole soul against the will of the tyrant. Evil, however, cannot be overcome by evil, by violence and retaliation. To use violence against the evil-doer is to deny spiritual unity with him."
From King: "Nonviolent resistance had emerged as the technique of the movement, while love stood as the regulating ideal. In other words, Christ furnished the spirit and the motivation while Gandhi furnished the method."
From Gandhi: "Truth (Satya) implies love and firmness (agraha) serves as a synonym for force. I thus began to call the Indian movement 'Satyagraha,' that is to say, the Force which is born of Truth and Love. … Satyagraha is soul force pure and simple and whenever and to whatever extent there is room for the use of arms or physical force or brute force, there and to that extent is there so much less possibility of soul force."
That passage gave White the name for his new organization. It is called Soulforce.
From King: "Never begin a protest if you're not going to take that protest all the way."
King's basic beliefs of soul force: "First, this is not a method of cowardice or passivity. It does resist; second, it does not seek to defeat or humiliate the opponent, but to win his friendship and understanding; third, the attack is directed to the forces of evil, rather than persons caught in the forces; fourth, it not only avoids external physical violence, but also internal violence of spirit; fifth, it is based upon the conviction that the universe is on the side of justice."
King's summary of soul force: "We will take direct action against injustice without waiting for other agencies to act. We will not obey unjust laws or submit to unjust practices. We will do this peacefully, openly, cheerfully because our aim is to persuade. We will adopt the means of nonviolence because our end is community at peace with itself. We will try to persuade with our words, but if words fail, we will try to persuade with our acts. We will always be willing to talk and seek fair compromise, but we are ready to suffer when necessary and even risk our lives to be witnesses to the truth as we see it."
King's method of soul force, as written by White: "First, gather your evidence. See where injustice prevails and make your strong case against it; second, meet with your opponent to negotiate an end to the injustice; third, if negotiations break down or are used to delay injustice, recruit, train, and equip people of good faith in the principles of relentless nonviolent resistance; fourth, with people committed to nonviolence of the heart, tongue, and fist, plan and carry out nonviolent direct actions that prove to your opponent that you will not be satisfied until justice is done."
White says if we are to satisfy that justice shouldn't we protest unjust wars, demand the end of boycotts that prevent medicine from reaching the needy in hostile countries, take a stand against billions spent on the military instead of on the needy, take care of the prisoner by making the court and corrections systems more just, demand relief for the Palestinian as well as the Israeli, and work to preserve our wounded earth? I'm sure the list should be much longer and include justice for the youth I serve supper to every week at the Ruth Ellis Center. White adds, "This kind of love will cost us."
Hermann Hagadorn's poem The Bomb That Fell on America includes a conversation between himself a the Voice. He is compared to Jesus and the Voice confirms a difference is that "You have never been crucified. Do you know why?" He answers, "I have never made people angry enough." The Voice replies, "The world is sick for dearth of crucifixions."
As for the place of sexual minorities in the church White says we must quit cooperating with those who oppress us. Our opponents assume we are infinitely patient or too comfortable in our closets to lead a revolution. Love demands we call a stop to studies and debates. Love demands we recruit, train, and organize around the principles of relentless nonviolent resistance. Love demands massive and relentless direct actions to confront injustice and end the lies against us. It is time for boycotts, picket lines, mass vigils, serious fasts, candlelight marches, and other acts of nonviolent spiritual disobedience against those who oppress us.
That's a lot to take in. Not enough crucifixions? Must I be so annoying to those in power that they kill me? Or are there other ways of sacrificing myself? Can the sacrifice be in time, treasure, and energy?
I think about my time at the Ruth Ellis Center. I've served supper there for six years. I've been there so long they've declared me to be an angel. I volunteer because the needs of gay youth cast out from their homes because of a Church is so important to me that sending money is not enough. I have to involve me. Have I helped the youth? They aren't as hungry and my work means the staff can spend more time taking care of all the other needs these kids have. But is it justice? Have I helped tackle the reason why these youth are tossed to the street? Alas, no.
What does my work towards justice look like? What does yours?
Thursday, January 1, 2015
Holy Terror, part 7: Love
In his book, Holy Terror, Lies the Christian Right Tells Us to Deny Gay Equality Mel White talks about progressive values. In the last post I talked about progressive political values, those based on the Constitution. In this post we move on to progressive moral values, those based on the Bible.
Yes, the previous section discussed that the Constitution is more important than the Bible in a democracy. But the Bible is still quite important. We must rescue it from abuse.
* We reclaim the Bible as a primary source of our progressive moral values and we will resist fundamentalist efforts to claim the bible as their own.
White describes the Bible as the Greatest Book Never Read. Lots of people profess to believe what is says. It seems very few have actually read it. White describes the lives who suffered for the Bible: John Wycliffe and William Tyndale – both had translated the Bible into English and the king felt threatened. There are those sustained by it – Captain Howard Rutledge in solitary confinement sustained by verses he memorized as a child. White gives the example of his own father, a pillar of the church, who defied advice of church leaders and rode with his son in a Pride Parade.
* We reclaim our faith to help empower & inform our progressive moral values and will resist any fundamentalist efforts to define God for us.
White heard stories for E. Stanley Jones, a famous evangelist, talk about what he had learned from Gandhi. Jones said Gandhi had loved and respected the teachings of Jesus, yet remained Hindu. Jones reportedly asked Gandhi, "What makes you different from the average Christian?" Gandhi replied, "I think Jesus meant it." Jones asked how he and his colleagues might be more effective in sharing their faith. Gandhi replied:
* We reclaim the values of the Jewish prophets: justice and mercy; therefore we will resist injustice and seek to be more merciful to those who suffer injustice.
I've written before about the many Bible verses that discuss justice and mercy as part of discussing how the tax system purposefully underfunds schools to make sure the poor and racial minorities do not have the education to rise to the middle class.
Here are a couple more definitions. From Gandhi: "'Mercy' means helping those who suffer, and 'justice' means cutting off that suffering at its source."
And from Dietrich Bonhoffer: "Our role is NOT just to bandage the victims pulled out from under the wheel, bu to put a spike in the wheel itself."
White's hope: We see that sexual minorities are in desperate need of mercy and justice. Those who have been damaged by Fundie actions will see that Jesus was not a fundamentalist nor held fundamentalist beliefs.
* We reclaim the primary value of Jesus love. Therefore we will resist thoughts, words and actions that are unloving and put nonviolence into practice with out friends and enemies alike.
Those damaged by fundamentalism hear White speak and they come to him with a burning question, "How can you be sure that God loves you, too?"
The answer is to let Jesus speak for himself. The stories of Jesus assure us he loves outcasts best. From his first sermon Jesus condemned the Pharisees "who knew the law by heart but had forgotten that love is the heart of the law."
As for outcasts: Jesus was born of an unwed mother in a conquered nation and spent time as a war refugee in Egypt. Jesus did not graduate from college or even high school and made his living as a laborer. Jesus gathered quite a collection of outcasts as his disciples. Jesus healed the outcast leper, the outcast woman with a flow of blood, the outcast lunatic in the graveyard, the outcast man blind from birth. He accepted a drink from the outcast woman at the well. Jesus healed the centurion's "special servant" – an outcast both because he is part of the occupying army and because that "special servant" is almost certainly a gay lover.
White concludes this chapter by writing:
Yes, the previous section discussed that the Constitution is more important than the Bible in a democracy. But the Bible is still quite important. We must rescue it from abuse.
* We reclaim the Bible as a primary source of our progressive moral values and we will resist fundamentalist efforts to claim the bible as their own.
White describes the Bible as the Greatest Book Never Read. Lots of people profess to believe what is says. It seems very few have actually read it. White describes the lives who suffered for the Bible: John Wycliffe and William Tyndale – both had translated the Bible into English and the king felt threatened. There are those sustained by it – Captain Howard Rutledge in solitary confinement sustained by verses he memorized as a child. White gives the example of his own father, a pillar of the church, who defied advice of church leaders and rode with his son in a Pride Parade.
* We reclaim our faith to help empower & inform our progressive moral values and will resist any fundamentalist efforts to define God for us.
White heard stories for E. Stanley Jones, a famous evangelist, talk about what he had learned from Gandhi. Jones said Gandhi had loved and respected the teachings of Jesus, yet remained Hindu. Jones reportedly asked Gandhi, "What makes you different from the average Christian?" Gandhi replied, "I think Jesus meant it." Jones asked how he and his colleagues might be more effective in sharing their faith. Gandhi replied:
First, I would suggest that all of you Christians must begin to live more like Jesus. Second, practice your religion without toning it down. Third, emphasize love and make it your working force for love is central to Christianity. Fourth, study the non-Christian religions more sympathetically to find the good that is within them, in order to have a more sympathetic approach to the people.White responds:
Gandhi and Jones taught me how to be entirely "out" as a Christian and at the same time be totally accepting of anyone who disagrees. Trusting that the Spirit of Truth with touch us both in the process.White is concerned for the large number of people, mostly sexual minorities, who have been so damaged by religion they have stopped their spiritual journeys. That, says White, has serious consequences for our liberation movement and for progressives in general. Without this force for love our values are likely to break down at a critical moment.
…
Unfortunately, this means dialogue, and, as the well-known language theorist Stanley Fish has said, a fundamentalist "doesn't want dialogue about his beliefs; he wants those beliefs to prevail. Dialogue is not a tenet in his creed, and invoking it is unlikely to do anything but further persuade him that you have missed the point."
* We reclaim the values of the Jewish prophets: justice and mercy; therefore we will resist injustice and seek to be more merciful to those who suffer injustice.
I've written before about the many Bible verses that discuss justice and mercy as part of discussing how the tax system purposefully underfunds schools to make sure the poor and racial minorities do not have the education to rise to the middle class.
Here are a couple more definitions. From Gandhi: "'Mercy' means helping those who suffer, and 'justice' means cutting off that suffering at its source."
And from Dietrich Bonhoffer: "Our role is NOT just to bandage the victims pulled out from under the wheel, bu to put a spike in the wheel itself."
White's hope: We see that sexual minorities are in desperate need of mercy and justice. Those who have been damaged by Fundie actions will see that Jesus was not a fundamentalist nor held fundamentalist beliefs.
* We reclaim the primary value of Jesus love. Therefore we will resist thoughts, words and actions that are unloving and put nonviolence into practice with out friends and enemies alike.
Those damaged by fundamentalism hear White speak and they come to him with a burning question, "How can you be sure that God loves you, too?"
The answer is to let Jesus speak for himself. The stories of Jesus assure us he loves outcasts best. From his first sermon Jesus condemned the Pharisees "who knew the law by heart but had forgotten that love is the heart of the law."
As for outcasts: Jesus was born of an unwed mother in a conquered nation and spent time as a war refugee in Egypt. Jesus did not graduate from college or even high school and made his living as a laborer. Jesus gathered quite a collection of outcasts as his disciples. Jesus healed the outcast leper, the outcast woman with a flow of blood, the outcast lunatic in the graveyard, the outcast man blind from birth. He accepted a drink from the outcast woman at the well. Jesus healed the centurion's "special servant" – an outcast both because he is part of the occupying army and because that "special servant" is almost certainly a gay lover.
White concludes this chapter by writing:
Becoming and activist is simply a matter of putting love into action. For activists, love is something you do, not something you just talk about, and that's when the fun begins.
Holy Terror, part 6: Constitutional values
On July 4, 1986 a gathering of 460 fundamentalist Christian leaders gathered at the Lincoln Memorial to sign their Manifesto for the Christian Church. Here are some key phrases from that document (though the text is quoted, these statements were not adjacent in the original, ellipses are by White):
In his book, Holy Terror, Lies the Christian Right Tells Us to Deny Gay Equality Mel White sees something more:
Treason.
Those who signed the Manifesto have declared their intention to replace the U.S. Constitution as the ultimate legal authority of the nation. It is this intention that is behind their work to "raise money, mobilize volunteers, win elections, get initiatives passed, and constitutions amended."
So what do we do about it?
White begins by laying out the progressive values that should guide us, both political and moral. First, the political, based on the Constitution.
* We value the Constitution as the bedrock of our democracy; therefore we will resist all efforts to put the Bible in its place.
When speaking White will hold up a copy of the Constitution and a Bible. He'll ask, "Which is more important?" Even progressives will frequently answer the Bible is more important. White responds (my ellipsis):
Make this value personal. Vow to deny support to any politician or preacher who quotes the Bible and not the Constitution as governing authority; who would withhold rights from anyone based in a verse from the Bible; who even hints at limiting the free exercise of faith or no faith at all; who wants to restrict freedom of speech, of assembly, or of petitioning the government. Keep a copy of the Constitution by your TV and judge all newsmakers by its standards.
* We value our religious freedom; therefore we will resist all efforts to make this a "Christian nation."
White highlights two reasons to oppose the claim that America is a Christian nation. The first is the replacement of the Constitution with the Bible as discussed above. The second is if this is a Christian nation that it become a duty to follow the Bible literally, which means declaring homosexuals as an abomination, worthy of death.
To make their claim Fundie leaders follow the most popular axiom of Joseph Goebbels: Repeat a lie often enough and people will believe it, though maintaining the lie requires repression of dissent. So our task is to repeat with equal frequency that America is founded on religious freedom.
Yes, Puritan leaders saw themselves as agents of Christ, but church members, Puritan and Anglican, were only 1 of 8 settlers. In addition, the Puritans established religious tyranny. We don't need that.
There is only one mention of "Nature's God" in the Declaration of Independence. There is no mention of God or Jesus in the Constitution or Federalist Papers (described as "working documents of the founding fathers"), There is no cross in our flag or money. The phrase "In God We Trust" wasn't added to our money until 1955. Many founding fathers were Deists, not Christians. In 1797 President John Adams, in a treaty with Tripoli, assures them that America is "not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion."
The Virginia Act for Establishing Religious Freedom was written by the state's favorite son Thomas Jefferson. He warned against:
* We value the separation of church and state; therefore we will resist all efforts to bring down "the wall of separation."
Lots of Fundies are calling the separation of Church and State a fallacy, a myth, nonsense, an incorrect reading of the First Amendment. Nah, we don't want a theocracy, we just want our country back. Jerry Falwell said, "The idea that religion and politics don't mix was invented by the Devil to keep Christians from running their own country." Yeah, their country, the rest of us just live here.
The piece of the First Amendment under discussion is, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." The fundamentalists version is, "Congress shall make no law that threatens or undermines our religious beliefs or prohibits the free exercise of our absolute political and moral values."
We must use the real version of the Establishment Clause when there is talk of "faith-based" initiatives which reward Fundie churches and charities, when there is talk of funding abstinence-only sex education and denial of funding for AIDS research, when Fundies talk of a "holy" war, when religion is used as a reason to cancel environmental programs or international treaties, and when there are demands to amend the Constitution to uphold religious goals, such as the Marriage Protection Amendment.
There is also this phrase from Article VI of the Constitution: "… no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." Millions of Fundie viewers didn't object when Jerry Falwell called for the election of righteous men.
White has evidence that G.W. Bush violated this phrase when Harriet Miers was nominated to the Supreme Court. That came to light when James Dobson bragged that Bush had consulted with him before the nomination was announced and that Dobson had given his blessing. That revelation undermined her nomination, which is good. Alas, we got John Roberts instead. Was Dobson consulted? If so, he learned to keep his mouth shut.
It has been obvious for a long time (since the 1992 GOP convention publicly declared their anti-gay stance) that there is a religious test if a candidate wants to get elected as a GOP fiscal conservative. He must also say all the right things about being against abortion and against gay rights.
White reminds us of an important reason for keeping that wall between Church and State. Once it is down there would be other groups, such as Islamists wanting to institute Sharia law, itching to replace the Christian Fundies. When they deny our liberties, they deny their own.
The Bible is the only absolute, objective, final test... for all philosophies, books, values, actions, and plans...I look at that list and see a whole lot of dangerous stupidity. Sheesh, there are many places in which the Bible contradicts itself. In addition, we – including Fundies – have concluded that some laws of the Bible do not apply to modern society. The big one is polygamy. Then there is that "sooner or later" phrase in their prediction of doom. If America prospers for another thousand years before being destroyed, does that fit their definition of "later"? But previous posts in this series have dealt with how fundamentalists misinterpret the central message of the Bible, so I won't repeat it here. Yeah, I see dangerous stupidity.
Whatever statements or values are in opposition to the statements and values of the Bible err to the degree of that opposition.
The Bible States Reality for all Areas of Life and Thought... in the sphere of law, government, economics, business, education, arts and communication, medicine, psychology and science.
All theories and practices of these spheres of life are only true, right, and realistic to the degree that they agree with the Bible.
Those people or nations that live in opposition to biblical laws and commandments will sooner or later, be cursed and destroyed.
In his book, Holy Terror, Lies the Christian Right Tells Us to Deny Gay Equality Mel White sees something more:
Treason.
Those who signed the Manifesto have declared their intention to replace the U.S. Constitution as the ultimate legal authority of the nation. It is this intention that is behind their work to "raise money, mobilize volunteers, win elections, get initiatives passed, and constitutions amended."
So what do we do about it?
White begins by laying out the progressive values that should guide us, both political and moral. First, the political, based on the Constitution.
* We value the Constitution as the bedrock of our democracy; therefore we will resist all efforts to put the Bible in its place.
When speaking White will hold up a copy of the Constitution and a Bible. He'll ask, "Which is more important?" Even progressives will frequently answer the Bible is more important. White responds (my ellipsis):
When it comes to guiding our democracy and running our government, the U.S. Constitution must always trump the Bible, because the Constitution protects our rights to disagree about what the Bible says. … The Constitution offers every citizen an umbrella of protection that will guarantee his or her right to read or not read the Bible,, to believe in God or to ignore God altogether, to attend or not attend church, synagogue, temple, or mosque.And yes, attempts at the substitution have been tried. G.W. Bush was forced into proposing a Marriage Protection Amendment for the Constitution.
Make this value personal. Vow to deny support to any politician or preacher who quotes the Bible and not the Constitution as governing authority; who would withhold rights from anyone based in a verse from the Bible; who even hints at limiting the free exercise of faith or no faith at all; who wants to restrict freedom of speech, of assembly, or of petitioning the government. Keep a copy of the Constitution by your TV and judge all newsmakers by its standards.
* We value our religious freedom; therefore we will resist all efforts to make this a "Christian nation."
White highlights two reasons to oppose the claim that America is a Christian nation. The first is the replacement of the Constitution with the Bible as discussed above. The second is if this is a Christian nation that it become a duty to follow the Bible literally, which means declaring homosexuals as an abomination, worthy of death.
To make their claim Fundie leaders follow the most popular axiom of Joseph Goebbels: Repeat a lie often enough and people will believe it, though maintaining the lie requires repression of dissent. So our task is to repeat with equal frequency that America is founded on religious freedom.
Yes, Puritan leaders saw themselves as agents of Christ, but church members, Puritan and Anglican, were only 1 of 8 settlers. In addition, the Puritans established religious tyranny. We don't need that.
There is only one mention of "Nature's God" in the Declaration of Independence. There is no mention of God or Jesus in the Constitution or Federalist Papers (described as "working documents of the founding fathers"), There is no cross in our flag or money. The phrase "In God We Trust" wasn't added to our money until 1955. Many founding fathers were Deists, not Christians. In 1797 President John Adams, in a treaty with Tripoli, assures them that America is "not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion."
The Virginia Act for Establishing Religious Freedom was written by the state's favorite son Thomas Jefferson. He warned against:
...the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavoring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world, and through all time...No, America is not a Christian nation, it is "also not a nation where Christians – or Americans of any other or no spiritual tradition – are asked to put their spiritual values on hold while they campaign, vote, initiate legislation, or hold office."
* We value the separation of church and state; therefore we will resist all efforts to bring down "the wall of separation."
Lots of Fundies are calling the separation of Church and State a fallacy, a myth, nonsense, an incorrect reading of the First Amendment. Nah, we don't want a theocracy, we just want our country back. Jerry Falwell said, "The idea that religion and politics don't mix was invented by the Devil to keep Christians from running their own country." Yeah, their country, the rest of us just live here.
The piece of the First Amendment under discussion is, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." The fundamentalists version is, "Congress shall make no law that threatens or undermines our religious beliefs or prohibits the free exercise of our absolute political and moral values."
We must use the real version of the Establishment Clause when there is talk of "faith-based" initiatives which reward Fundie churches and charities, when there is talk of funding abstinence-only sex education and denial of funding for AIDS research, when Fundies talk of a "holy" war, when religion is used as a reason to cancel environmental programs or international treaties, and when there are demands to amend the Constitution to uphold religious goals, such as the Marriage Protection Amendment.
There is also this phrase from Article VI of the Constitution: "… no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." Millions of Fundie viewers didn't object when Jerry Falwell called for the election of righteous men.
White has evidence that G.W. Bush violated this phrase when Harriet Miers was nominated to the Supreme Court. That came to light when James Dobson bragged that Bush had consulted with him before the nomination was announced and that Dobson had given his blessing. That revelation undermined her nomination, which is good. Alas, we got John Roberts instead. Was Dobson consulted? If so, he learned to keep his mouth shut.
It has been obvious for a long time (since the 1992 GOP convention publicly declared their anti-gay stance) that there is a religious test if a candidate wants to get elected as a GOP fiscal conservative. He must also say all the right things about being against abortion and against gay rights.
White reminds us of an important reason for keeping that wall between Church and State. Once it is down there would be other groups, such as Islamists wanting to institute Sharia law, itching to replace the Christian Fundies. When they deny our liberties, they deny their own.
Tuesday, December 23, 2014
Holy Terror, part 5: Fascism
There are a variety of "laws" that aren't passed by any legislature, yet seem to accurately describe a common aspect of every day life. The most famous is Murphy's Law: Anything that can go wrong, will. The internet and the web brought out many more, such as Moore's Law of 1970: The processing power of computers will double every two years.
Back in 1990 Mike Godwin created what is known as Godwin's Law: As online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1. For those who don't speak probability that means a comparison to Nazis will happen. Jon Stewart once did an episode of The Daily Show in which he replayed instances of leaders, left, right, and center who invoked fascism to slander opponents.
I'm well acquainted with the anti-gay crowd accusing us of being Nazis or acting like Hitler. It seems they resort to that because the terrors of the 1930s and '40s carry enough emotional baggage that their point is easily made in a way that will resonate with the common man (if it wasn't so stupidly inaccurate).
There is a corollary to Godwin's law: Once such a comparison is made the debate is over and the person making the claim loses.
And yet Mel White, in his book Holy Terror, Lies the Christian Right Tells Us to Deny Gay Equality not only compares Fundies to fascists, but spends 40 pages doing so. Doesn't Godwin's law and its corollary mean White has lost the debate? Well, no. "The law and its corollaries would not apply to discussions covering … totalitarian regimes and ideologies, if that was the explicit topic of conversation." On those 40 pages White does exactly that. One doesn't lose the debate when calling someone a fascist if that person really is a fascist.
First, a clarification or disclaimer. White is not implying that today's American Fundies are as brutal or deadly as Nazi's. What he is saying is that there are important similarities that should be examined.
Lawrence Britt is a businessman, novelist-historian, and fascinated by fascism. He studied he principles behind fascism in Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Chile, and Indonesia (I didn't know there were so many). He came up with 14 identifying characteristics.
Davidson Loehr makes the link between fascism and fundamentalism. He says Britt's list of 14 characteristics of fascism
White then takes the discussion into an interesting direction. He explores the question: What are personality traits of those most likely to support fascism? The answer comes from The Authoritarian Personality commissioned by the American Jewish Committee who wondered why Europeans were so willing to let Nazis murder six million Jews. The thousand-page report was issued in 1950. Those most likely to support fascism have these traits:
In 1944 Henry Wallace, Vice President under FDR, wrote an editorial in the New York Times about the dangers of the American Fascists. The public distaste for that opinion was enough for Roosevelt to dump Wallace and ask Harry Truman to be his running mate, which is how Truman got to be president. Wrote Wallace:
White wants us to be clear about his own methods:
The list of characteristics that are present in fascism are also present in modern fundamentalist goals. The list of traits in those who support fascism are well known to fundamentalist leaders and they craft their messages to exploit those traits. The propaganda messages used by Nazis to demonize Jews are being used by fundamentalists to demonize sexual minorities.
Are fundamentalists fascists? They're certainly acting as if they are.
Back in 1990 Mike Godwin created what is known as Godwin's Law: As online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1. For those who don't speak probability that means a comparison to Nazis will happen. Jon Stewart once did an episode of The Daily Show in which he replayed instances of leaders, left, right, and center who invoked fascism to slander opponents.
I'm well acquainted with the anti-gay crowd accusing us of being Nazis or acting like Hitler. It seems they resort to that because the terrors of the 1930s and '40s carry enough emotional baggage that their point is easily made in a way that will resonate with the common man (if it wasn't so stupidly inaccurate).
There is a corollary to Godwin's law: Once such a comparison is made the debate is over and the person making the claim loses.
And yet Mel White, in his book Holy Terror, Lies the Christian Right Tells Us to Deny Gay Equality not only compares Fundies to fascists, but spends 40 pages doing so. Doesn't Godwin's law and its corollary mean White has lost the debate? Well, no. "The law and its corollaries would not apply to discussions covering … totalitarian regimes and ideologies, if that was the explicit topic of conversation." On those 40 pages White does exactly that. One doesn't lose the debate when calling someone a fascist if that person really is a fascist.
First, a clarification or disclaimer. White is not implying that today's American Fundies are as brutal or deadly as Nazi's. What he is saying is that there are important similarities that should be examined.
Lawrence Britt is a businessman, novelist-historian, and fascinated by fascism. He studied he principles behind fascism in Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Chile, and Indonesia (I didn't know there were so many). He came up with 14 identifying characteristics.
Strong and constant use of patriotism.I look at this list and see the GOP. I've written many times about how the GOP is acting like fascists. I started with this post about how fascism rises. You can read all 46 of my posts here. Though I won't list details I hope you can go through the list above and think of times (likely many times) the GOP has done each of those.
Disdain for human rights. There is always a security "need" that trumps rights, and torture is even approved.
Identification of enemies and scapegoats as a unifier against a common threat. Enemies include various minorities (such as us), liberals, commies, etc.
Supremacy of the military. Money spent on the military is taken from much needed domestic programs. Military service is glamorized.
Rampant sexism. The exclusive male leadership makes homophobia and opposition to abortion to be national policy.
Controlled mass media. When there isn't gov't censorship large media outlets are controlled by sympathetic corporations.
Obsession with national security. Fear is a great tool.
Religion and government are combined, even when gov't policy and religious doctrine supposedly conflict.
Corporate power is protected.
Labor power is suppressed.
Disdain for intellectuals and the Arts, because the arts are a source of free expression.
Obsession with crime and punishment with police given unlimited powers.
Rampant cronyism and corruption.
Fraudulent elections.
Davidson Loehr makes the link between fascism and fundamentalism. He says Britt's list of 14 characteristics of fascism
mirrors the social and political agenda of religious fundamentalism worldwide. It is both accurate and helpful for us to understand fundamentalism as religious fascism, and fascism as political fundamentalism. They both come from very primitive parts of us that have always been the default setting of our species: amity towards our in-group, enmity toward out-groups, hirarchican deference to alpha male figures, a powerful identification with our territory, and so forth. It is that brutal default setting that all civilizations have tried to rise above, but it is always a fragile thing, civilization, and has to be achieved over and over and over again.So go through that list again and think about how the Fundies have done each one – or at least are trying to. Rampant sexism? Still going strong. Patriotism? See the previous post of this series that discusses making an idol out of America. Obsession with security? What are Fundies saying about torture? Controlled mass media? They have their own networks and manage to be persistent voices in mainstream media for the sake of "balance." Corporate power protected? Do any of them decry what Wall Street did to bring about the Great Recession? Who is complaining about all those mortgage foreclosures? Disdain for the arts? Who pushes Congress to try to abolish the National Endowment for the Arts? Supremacy of the military? How often to Fundies invoke war imagery when discussing their enemies? Who is pushing to redefine the phrase in the constitution "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion" normally referred to as the separation of church and state? I could go on.
White then takes the discussion into an interesting direction. He explores the question: What are personality traits of those most likely to support fascism? The answer comes from The Authoritarian Personality commissioned by the American Jewish Committee who wondered why Europeans were so willing to let Nazis murder six million Jews. The thousand-page report was issued in 1950. Those most likely to support fascism have these traits:
A desire for a strong leader. That desire results in a submissive, uncritical attitude towards authorities who become idealized moral authorities of the in-group.White demonstrates that Fundie leaders, such as Jerry Falwell, understand these traits and appeal to them in their letters to stir their warriors to action. From a Falwell letter urging his followers to vote (for Bush): "We... may be God's instrument for saving America. … Shame on America for killing unborn babies and recognizing same-sex marriage … This election is clearly light against darkness. … May God bless America one more time. … We must elect the righteous into office who will see that righteousness prevail. … Any dummy knows what is means to vote Christian. … stir up a few extra million Americans to vote for someone who will not be soft on terrorism, who will hunt down and kill this evil man."
Cultural narrowness that rigidly accepts the values of the in-group with a strong tendency to punish those who defy cultural norms.
Patriotic conformity that one's own nation is superior and should rightly dominate other nations, especially "enemy" nations.
Members of the out-groups are seen as stereotypes rather than as individuals.
Anti-introspection – resistance to self-understanding, to soul-searching, to cause-and-effect analysis of behavior. Belief in unexplainable phenomena. Disparages attempts to see life complexities.
Aggression towards an out-group that is declared to be intrinsically evil and must be eradicated to avoid contamination with the good.
In 1944 Henry Wallace, Vice President under FDR, wrote an editorial in the New York Times about the dangers of the American Fascists. The public distaste for that opinion was enough for Roosevelt to dump Wallace and ask Harry Truman to be his running mate, which is how Truman got to be president. Wrote Wallace:
The American Fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a Fascist the problem is never how to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the Fascist and his group more money or more power.White takes his comparison of Nazis and today's Fundies one more step. "The very same techniques that the Nazis used against the Jews during the early stages of their campaign to demean dehumanize, and demonize them are being used against us today."
Always and everywhere they can be identified by their appeal to prejudice and by the desire to play upon the fears and vanities of different groups in order to gain power. It is no coincidence that the growth of modern tyrants has in every case been heralded by the growth of prejudice … It may be shocking to some people in this country to realize that, without meaning to do so, they hold views in common with Hitler when they preach discrimination against other religions, racial or economic groups.
White wants us to be clear about his own methods:
In drawing this comparison, I am not in any way suggesting that the suffering of America's sexual and gender minorities is equal to the suffering of European Jewry. However, there is no doubt that propaganda leading to fear and hatred of any people always ends in suffering, one victim at a time. The tragic deaths of Anne Frank, Emmett Till, and Matthew Shepard are a direct result of a very similar sequence of events. Once the blame game begins, the urge to purge follows quickly. The arrest, imprisonment, and murder of six million Jews and the destruction of almost five thousand Jewish communities were an almost predictable consequence of Hitler's propaganda campaign against them.White then shows how similar the Nazi propaganda is to what Fundies are saying about us. The Jews were described as diseased, so are we. Jews were described as sexually perverted, so are we. Both groups are described as a threat to children (which we've heard many times), a threat to family and family values (also heard frequently), a threat to the nation, a threat to Christians and the Christian Church, sinful and fallen creatures condemned by God, people with too much power and privilege, and the enemy against whom war must be waged.
The list of characteristics that are present in fascism are also present in modern fundamentalist goals. The list of traits in those who support fascism are well known to fundamentalist leaders and they craft their messages to exploit those traits. The propaganda messages used by Nazis to demonize Jews are being used by fundamentalists to demonize sexual minorities.
Are fundamentalists fascists? They're certainly acting as if they are.
Sunday, November 30, 2014
Holy Terror, part 4: Idols
In the last post of this series I was feeling a bit glum because I reported on the false statements used against us. Now comes a topic I report with glee. This post covers what is false about the Fundamentalist Christian religion. This is a core part of Mel White's book Holy Terror, Lies the Christian Right Tells Us to Deny Gay Equality.
Right there at the top of the Top Ten, those Commandments Fundies want to carve into monuments, paint on walls in school cafeterias, and use as a substitute for American law (but don't actually intend to follow), are these:
* You shall have no other gods before me.
* You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven or on earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them.
Simplified, that second one means don't create idols or false gods and worship them. White proceeds to list and describe the idols that Fundies worship.
God as Idol
This god isn't the god of the bible. Yeah, this god is created by stringing together unrelated biblical verses, but it was created to justify prejudices. And it is the same god that approved of the Inquisition, the Crusades, the war against Native Americans, and slavery, and opposed women's rights.
But this doesn't describe the God of the bible – the whole bible. All of the bible points to Jesus. Jesus summarized the Top Ten into two Great Commandments:
Bible as Idol
Fundies speak of an inerrant bible, one that was essentially dictated by God. This is bibliolatry, defined as "having an excessive reverence for the letter of the Bible" The Fundie says: God said it. I believe it. That settles it. No questions. No discussions. No possible change of mind or heart.
But... The commandments of Jesus contradict those of Moses. Who wins? The bible is the story of God and those who encounter him. It wasn't supposed to be a guide to biology, geology, or astronomy. What about the Spirit of Truth who has been speaking through "Copernicus, Galileo, Michelangelo, da Vinci, Bach, Handel, Newton, Darwin, Kepler, Jefferson, Lincoln, Pasteur, Einstein, George Washington Carver, Rachel Carson" and many others? White wrote:
Many Fundie leaders pull out particular verses to create bogus spiritual laws. An example: Want to be rich? See Luke 6:38 – "Give [to my ministry] and it shall be given to you..." This implies that the giver, or the Fundie preacher, can control God – my giving requires God to give me wealth. Other spiritual laws promise health, success, and salvation. But religion isn't a "Get Out of Jail Free" card.
Fundies worship the text of the bible, not God. This is idolatry.
Family as Idol
Every Fundie organization that exists to harm us either has the word "family" in its name or at least has protection of the family as a top goal. Declaring harm to the family is the easiest and most emotionally charged (and thus vote getting) way for them to reach their goal of declaring homosexuality harmful in general.
In the previous post of this series I included a quote from Robert Skolrood, one of the leaders. I repeat it here (and add some more):
"… impossible … to make peace... " That's mostly because Fundies have decided it is impossible. Our existence is too much of a challenge to their beliefs. So another way to reach them must be found.
Homosexuality "denies, really, the fundamental values of Christianity" Oh? Rick Warren, sounding very Fundie, wants to force candidates for public office to answer questions about abortion, embryonic stem cells, same-sex marriage, cloning, and euthanasia. Warren declares them as non-negotiable, as if they were foundation principles of Christianity. But aren't the foundation principles, taken from Matthew 25, supposed to be about feeding the hungry, caring for the sick, finding shelter for the homeless, and all the rest?
Homosexuality "denies life" Homosexuals don't make babies and without babies there is no national future. Never mind that many same-sex couples make great parents.
Homosexuality "denies God's expressed desire that men and women cohabit" It is this claim that prompts a lot of screeching about gays not really wanting to marry and wanting to destroy marriage.
Homosexuality "denies the root structure that the Bible prescribes for all mankind and the family." Ah, now we get to the core of the matter. When the family is described as a root structure there is a particular structure, a chain of command, in mind. White wrote:
And what happens if heterosexism, sexism, and homophobia are overthrown? Suzanne Pharr gives us an idea. There won't be tomboys or sissies. We will love anyone we want. We will be free to show affection to anyone even if they aren't a potential mate. Isolation will diminish. Jobs will be open to all. Men who don't have to assert their manhood will become less violent – something that will affect national and international politics. We'll wear whatever clothes match our personal comfort and style. There will be no gender roles.
All of that sounds pretty good to me.
Hollywood is very good at displaying the idealized family. That's bad enough for those who don't come from an ideal family. But Fundies take it one more step, condemning those who don't conform to their ideal. And a lot of families simply cannot match the Fundie ideal family. The family is an idol worshiped by fundamentalists.
Nation as Idol
We've heard the loud voices proclaim that: (1) America is a Christian nation that is held in special favor by God. (2) because of homosexuality God is (or will) withhold that favor and America will be destroyed. Therefore there must be an effort to (3) reclaim America for Christ. That comes with the understanding that something must be done about "the gay problem."
We've also long heard that the Founding Father's were Christian (actually, most were Deist) who intended America to be Christian (never mind that the only mention of religion in the Constitution is that pesky bit about not establishing a state religion). So we've been arguing over the real meaning of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.
But the claim to America being a Christian nation uses a much older document – the Mayflower Compact signed on November 11, 1620. That's a little document written and signed by a group of fundamentalists fleeing persecution but intent on establishing some persecution of their own. Yes, the Mayflower Compact says the colony was established "for the Glory of God, and Advancement of the Christian Faith." But this claim that it is our founding document ignores that the majority of the passengers on the Mayflower were colonists without religious convictions and did not sign the Compact.
As we've seen and heard over the last 20 years there has been a strong effort to make that establishment clause in the First Amendment become meaningless. White documents the efforts and the rhetoric that go into the Fundie claim, much I've already analyzed here.
Back in 2002 Bush II gave a speech on Ellis Island surrounded by the Fundie leaders who worked hard to get him elected. In that speech Bush referred to American as he used the phrase "that light shines in the darkness and the darkness will not overcome it."
A British commentator noticed the similarity of that phrase to one in the bible referring to Jesus. That means with Fundie encouragement America is ranked with Jesus as
Right there at the top of the Top Ten, those Commandments Fundies want to carve into monuments, paint on walls in school cafeterias, and use as a substitute for American law (but don't actually intend to follow), are these:
* You shall have no other gods before me.
* You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven or on earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them.
Simplified, that second one means don't create idols or false gods and worship them. White proceeds to list and describe the idols that Fundies worship.
God as Idol
This god isn't the god of the bible. Yeah, this god is created by stringing together unrelated biblical verses, but it was created to justify prejudices. And it is the same god that approved of the Inquisition, the Crusades, the war against Native Americans, and slavery, and opposed women's rights.
But this doesn't describe the God of the bible – the whole bible. All of the bible points to Jesus. Jesus summarized the Top Ten into two Great Commandments:
Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.White responds to those gathered at Glen Eyrie, the retreat that presented the battle plan against us:
Wasn't it plain to them that this ancient holiness passage from Leviticus [the one that calls for homosexuals to be put to death] that they were using as a law to support their prejudice was trumped, invalidated, annulled, quashed, overthrown by the two great commandments? Had they learned nothing about how God views the "untouchables" from the example of Jesus, who embraced the "untouchable" leper; who praised the "untouchable" bleeding woman; who drank from the bucket of the "untouchable" Samaritan whore; who dined with the "untouchable" Jews who collected taxes for Rome; who let the "untouchable" prostitute pour expensive perfume on his feet and dry them with her hair; and who healed the "untouchable" homosexual companion of the "untouchable" Roman centurion?The lesser god, the one who supports Fundie prejudices, is an idol. He who worships a lesser god violates the Top Ten and the Two Great commandments.
Bible as Idol
Fundies speak of an inerrant bible, one that was essentially dictated by God. This is bibliolatry, defined as "having an excessive reverence for the letter of the Bible" The Fundie says: God said it. I believe it. That settles it. No questions. No discussions. No possible change of mind or heart.
But... The commandments of Jesus contradict those of Moses. Who wins? The bible is the story of God and those who encounter him. It wasn't supposed to be a guide to biology, geology, or astronomy. What about the Spirit of Truth who has been speaking through "Copernicus, Galileo, Michelangelo, da Vinci, Bach, Handel, Newton, Darwin, Kepler, Jefferson, Lincoln, Pasteur, Einstein, George Washington Carver, Rachel Carson" and many others? White wrote:
Nevertheless, an inerrant Bible as they define it is the frame through which fundamentalists view the world. That frame can bounce off every idea you throw at it if your understanding of a biblical verse doesn't agree with theirs. They aren't interested in the meaning you find in a biblical passage. They aren't even interested in the truths scholars, historians, and linguists find there. For fundamentalists, the canon is closed. No more inspiration is needed. The Holy Spirit is as unnecessary for understanding holy writ as is the knowledge of Greek or Hebrew. Fundamentalists know exactly what every verse means and woe be unto those who disagree.
Many Fundie leaders pull out particular verses to create bogus spiritual laws. An example: Want to be rich? See Luke 6:38 – "Give [to my ministry] and it shall be given to you..." This implies that the giver, or the Fundie preacher, can control God – my giving requires God to give me wealth. Other spiritual laws promise health, success, and salvation. But religion isn't a "Get Out of Jail Free" card.
Fundies worship the text of the bible, not God. This is idolatry.
Family as Idol
Every Fundie organization that exists to harm us either has the word "family" in its name or at least has protection of the family as a top goal. Declaring harm to the family is the easiest and most emotionally charged (and thus vote getting) way for them to reach their goal of declaring homosexuality harmful in general.
In the previous post of this series I included a quote from Robert Skolrood, one of the leaders. I repeat it here (and add some more):
It is impossible for Christianity to make peace with homosexuality because homosexuality denies, really, the fundamental values of Christianity. It denies life, it denies God's expressed desire that men and women cohabit, and it denies the root structure that the Bible prescribes for all mankind and the family. What these people are against is absolute values. And Christianity is one of the stumbling blocks in their way.White breaks it down in more detail than in the previous chapter.
"… impossible … to make peace... " That's mostly because Fundies have decided it is impossible. Our existence is too much of a challenge to their beliefs. So another way to reach them must be found.
Homosexuality "denies, really, the fundamental values of Christianity" Oh? Rick Warren, sounding very Fundie, wants to force candidates for public office to answer questions about abortion, embryonic stem cells, same-sex marriage, cloning, and euthanasia. Warren declares them as non-negotiable, as if they were foundation principles of Christianity. But aren't the foundation principles, taken from Matthew 25, supposed to be about feeding the hungry, caring for the sick, finding shelter for the homeless, and all the rest?
Homosexuality "denies life" Homosexuals don't make babies and without babies there is no national future. Never mind that many same-sex couples make great parents.
Homosexuality "denies God's expressed desire that men and women cohabit" It is this claim that prompts a lot of screeching about gays not really wanting to marry and wanting to destroy marriage.
Homosexuality "denies the root structure that the Bible prescribes for all mankind and the family." Ah, now we get to the core of the matter. When the family is described as a root structure there is a particular structure, a chain of command, in mind. White wrote:
God speaks to Jesus; Jesus speaks to men; men speak to women; women speak to children (and then to men of color, women of color, children of … but that's another story)White expands on that:
For Fundamentalist Christians, if God's chain of command is broken, chaos will prevail in the family as it does in the military, and homosexuals represent the greatest threat to that chain. …Yeah, gay men might give women ideas. So Fundie men are fearful of losing their position at the top of the heap. This is a very strong fear.
Then along comes "Steve," the dangerous "homosexual activist" who is definitely not submissive to authority but insists on defying it. … Rigid gender roles have been established since the beginning of recorded history. Keeping men in charge and women in their place is the way civilization has always worked. Accepting homosexuality not only flies in the face of natural creation (or so they think) but it threatens the overthrow of heterosexism, sexism, and homophobia … all established cultural norms.
And what happens if heterosexism, sexism, and homophobia are overthrown? Suzanne Pharr gives us an idea. There won't be tomboys or sissies. We will love anyone we want. We will be free to show affection to anyone even if they aren't a potential mate. Isolation will diminish. Jobs will be open to all. Men who don't have to assert their manhood will become less violent – something that will affect national and international politics. We'll wear whatever clothes match our personal comfort and style. There will be no gender roles.
All of that sounds pretty good to me.
Hollywood is very good at displaying the idealized family. That's bad enough for those who don't come from an ideal family. But Fundies take it one more step, condemning those who don't conform to their ideal. And a lot of families simply cannot match the Fundie ideal family. The family is an idol worshiped by fundamentalists.
Nation as Idol
We've heard the loud voices proclaim that: (1) America is a Christian nation that is held in special favor by God. (2) because of homosexuality God is (or will) withhold that favor and America will be destroyed. Therefore there must be an effort to (3) reclaim America for Christ. That comes with the understanding that something must be done about "the gay problem."
We've also long heard that the Founding Father's were Christian (actually, most were Deist) who intended America to be Christian (never mind that the only mention of religion in the Constitution is that pesky bit about not establishing a state religion). So we've been arguing over the real meaning of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.
But the claim to America being a Christian nation uses a much older document – the Mayflower Compact signed on November 11, 1620. That's a little document written and signed by a group of fundamentalists fleeing persecution but intent on establishing some persecution of their own. Yes, the Mayflower Compact says the colony was established "for the Glory of God, and Advancement of the Christian Faith." But this claim that it is our founding document ignores that the majority of the passengers on the Mayflower were colonists without religious convictions and did not sign the Compact.
As we've seen and heard over the last 20 years there has been a strong effort to make that establishment clause in the First Amendment become meaningless. White documents the efforts and the rhetoric that go into the Fundie claim, much I've already analyzed here.
Back in 2002 Bush II gave a speech on Ellis Island surrounded by the Fundie leaders who worked hard to get him elected. In that speech Bush referred to American as he used the phrase "that light shines in the darkness and the darkness will not overcome it."
A British commentator noticed the similarity of that phrase to one in the bible referring to Jesus. That means with Fundie encouragement America is ranked with Jesus as
one brought into the world to bring God's plans into fulfillment. To suggest that a sovereign nation state with political priorities and military budgets has somehow a divine status is in my opinion at least as close as you can come to idolatry.White concludes this section by writing:
When the Bible, or the family, or the nation are adored, blindly, excessively, when they are so important that they take the place of God, they become idols. Unfortunately, idols fail. And when the people who believed in those idols with all their heart experience that failure, it leaves their lives in chaos.
Saturday, November 29, 2014
Holy Terror, part 3: Battle plan
For many years my parents (or my grandparents, when they were alive) would organize family reunions. I rarely saw more distant relations outside of these gatherings. Alas, my parents and their siblings and cousins are too old to do the work to make these events happen.
Back in 2003 a distant cousin (I couldn't tell you the relationship) volunteered to host a reunion of my Dad's family at her place near Colorado Springs. This was quite a change from our usual venues in northern Ohio. So, it was more than a one-day trip. We had a chance to see many sights in the area. I had a chance to see how big the Focus on the Family compound is (though I had no intention of going inside).
One of those sights was Glen Eyrie. It is a big house built in 1871 and remodeled in 1881 to resemble a castle. It is now on the National Register of Historic Places and used as a conference and retreat center. During our visit I'm pretty sure we didn't go into any of the buildings. Instead, we were given a CD we could put in the car's sound system to drive around the grounds and look at the exterior of the buildings. The CD talked of the fine religious work done on the grounds by The Navigators, a Christian group that owns the place that has the purpose of training people to share their faith. That means they are Evangelical, though not necessarily fundamentalist.
I mention all this because in 1994 Glen Eyrie was the site of a three day conference that planned the "short term" solution to gay and lesbian Americans. With this I continue my series of posts on Mel White's book Holy Terror, Lies the Christian Right Tells Us to Deny Gay Equality. White relied on conference materials and audio tapes of the event to tell us about it. The attendees were leaders of anti-gay groups from across the country, though specifically excluding the big names (mentioned in part 2) so that the movement would have the appearance of being grass-roots and that the big players couldn't get it done without the little guy's help. The urgency and importance of the meeting were asserted from the start with Will Perkins saying, "If we lose this battle, there are no moral absolutes left for this nation." White wrote:
The main part of the Glen Eyrie conference was a presentation of the Glen Eyrie Protocol, how the Fundies were to wage war against us, their battle plan. It has three main parts.
First, prove that heterosexuality is best for individuals and society. Translation: homosexuality is destructive to both the individual and society. Yeah, the tone was supposed to be positive, but that didn't last. Attendees were cautioned to use scientific data, not biblical arguments. That's because biblical arguments didn't resonate with those who weren't religious.
The AIDS epidemic had been ravaging gay communities for more than a decade by the time of this conference. That became the prime piece of evidence that homosexuality was destructive. There were lots of examples of gay men coming out to their parents by telling Mom and Dad they were dying of AIDS.
As for actual "science" there was Paul Cameron, who back in 1983 has been tossed out of the American Psychological Association for shoddy "research." But why quibble over that detail when Cameron was able to produce such useful studies as The Medical Consequences of What Homosexuals Do, Child Molestation and Homosexuality, What Causes Homosexual Desire and Can it Be Changed?, and Same Sex Marriage: Til Death Do Us Part? Yes, every one of these is as vile as their title suggests and every one of them is stuffed full of lies. But they provided the needed scientific foundation for the battle. That "toxic waste," as White calls it, is still being used to poison minds.
Second, prove that homosexuality is NOT immutable. Translation: homosexuality is a choice and that homosexuals can change. To help with this was the National Association of Research and Therapy of Homosexuals, or NARTH. This was the top organization in reparative therapy and they had the roster of psychoanalysts and psychologists to back them up. Several denominational organizations sprang up: Courage for Catholics, Evergreen for Mormons, JONAH for Orthodox Jews, and the big one Exodus. There was a ready supply of "ex-gays" to give testimony to religious broadcast programs.
Nearly all participants of these programs discovered they didn't work. Alas, many concluded the fault was their own and suffered great psychological harm and many committed suicide. We can rejoice that in 2013 the head of Exodus admitted failure to change anyone's orientation, apologized for the pain, and closed the organization.
Even so, this part of the battle plan has been effective. From a 2003 survey by the Pew Forum:
Third, demonstrate why society needs to make certain demands on people sexually. Translation: government needs to be persuaded to use its power to enforce fundamentalist Christian sexual morality, especially on homosexuals. This part of the plan is deeply rooted in the idea that America is supposed to be a Christian nation built on absolute, God-given morals. The pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness are supposedly dependent on these absolute morals.
This part of the plan is built on four principles:
* Convince elected officials to take a stand against pro-gay legislation.
* Eliminate government funding of immoral behavior – including funding for AIDS research and prevention (yup, it's our own fault if we contract AIDS and we deserve to die).
* See a spiritual awakening. Translation: give gays and lesbians a last chance to confess their sin and be guided into an ex-gay ministry.
* To strengthen the male/father image. Translation: reinforce patriarchy and make sure sex education is only about abstinence until marriage.
Robert Skolrood, one of the leaders, gave this rallying cry:
I've heard the comment that when the Cold War ended and the Soviet Union collapsed, Fundie groups needed a new way to raise money. Raising the specter of Godless Communism just didn't sweeten the pot like it used to. So Fundies turned to demonizing us to raise funds. White dismisses that comment. While Fundies did indeed raise millions off our backs and did so not long after the Iron Curtain fell, we weren't just a convenient target. These people genuinely believed we were (and are still) a dire threat to everything they hold dear.
This Glen Eyrie meeting described the "short term" solution. This solution included: deny all rights to same-sex couples, end all sex education except abstinence, stop gov't support of safe-sex progams and AIDS research, prevent gays from adopting, remove lesbian and gay teachers and pastors, remove hate-crime protections, prevent laws that ban discrimination, ban gays and lesbians from the military, recriminalize homosexual behavior, and do whatever else they can to keep us in the closet (or convince us to become straight). White asks the important question: If this is the short term solution, what is the long term solution?
This was a difficult post for me to write. It wasn't because the words didn't flow. It was having to spell out one false statement after another, knowing they were intentionally false and with the purpose of doing harm to me and my kind. We have been living with, trying to combat, and suffering from the poisons these statements have injected into the national conversation for 20 years now. I take great comfort that even with these poisons regularly hurled at us the public opinion of same-sex marriage, public accommodation laws, and hate crime laws has consistently shifted in our favor over the last 20 years and is now a majority opinion. Because of this very effective campaign, the GOP is still against us. In spite of it the nation is embracing us. These false statements are still out there and still do harm. Thankfully, more and more people see them as false.
There is another sign of hope, though it comes with pain. At the age of 12 Ryan Robertson told his parents he was gay. They, Rob and Linda, guided Ryan into a reparative therapy program. It didn't work and Ryan died of a drug overdose at the age of 18. Rob and Linda could have left their church. Instead, they chose to challenge the false teaching. The church leadership is having harder time simply branding them as no longer being a "real" Christian. Rob and Linda are using blogs and social media to find and band together with other parents who choose the love of a child over church doctrine. Various seminary scholars are becoming more vocal in their challenge to doctrine. The closure of Exodus has raised the question, "If I can't change my kid into being a straight Christian, then what?" Linda Robertson said:
Back in 2003 a distant cousin (I couldn't tell you the relationship) volunteered to host a reunion of my Dad's family at her place near Colorado Springs. This was quite a change from our usual venues in northern Ohio. So, it was more than a one-day trip. We had a chance to see many sights in the area. I had a chance to see how big the Focus on the Family compound is (though I had no intention of going inside).
One of those sights was Glen Eyrie. It is a big house built in 1871 and remodeled in 1881 to resemble a castle. It is now on the National Register of Historic Places and used as a conference and retreat center. During our visit I'm pretty sure we didn't go into any of the buildings. Instead, we were given a CD we could put in the car's sound system to drive around the grounds and look at the exterior of the buildings. The CD talked of the fine religious work done on the grounds by The Navigators, a Christian group that owns the place that has the purpose of training people to share their faith. That means they are Evangelical, though not necessarily fundamentalist.
I mention all this because in 1994 Glen Eyrie was the site of a three day conference that planned the "short term" solution to gay and lesbian Americans. With this I continue my series of posts on Mel White's book Holy Terror, Lies the Christian Right Tells Us to Deny Gay Equality. White relied on conference materials and audio tapes of the event to tell us about it. The attendees were leaders of anti-gay groups from across the country, though specifically excluding the big names (mentioned in part 2) so that the movement would have the appearance of being grass-roots and that the big players couldn't get it done without the little guy's help. The urgency and importance of the meeting were asserted from the start with Will Perkins saying, "If we lose this battle, there are no moral absolutes left for this nation." White wrote:
From the opening moments of their Glen Eyrie conference these fundamentalists Christians were evoking God's guidance on their plan to deprive lesbian and gay Americans of all the civil rights and protections guaranteed them by the U.S. Constitution. It was obvious that they believed that the war they were waging against us was a holy war and that their efforts to "end homosexuality in America" were done in God's name and with God's blessing.A big part of the problem, according to the attendees, was that most pastors were wimps on the issue and they didn't know how to present a compelling argument against homosexuality. So this conference planned to supply that without drawing the pastor into controversies.
The main part of the Glen Eyrie conference was a presentation of the Glen Eyrie Protocol, how the Fundies were to wage war against us, their battle plan. It has three main parts.
First, prove that heterosexuality is best for individuals and society. Translation: homosexuality is destructive to both the individual and society. Yeah, the tone was supposed to be positive, but that didn't last. Attendees were cautioned to use scientific data, not biblical arguments. That's because biblical arguments didn't resonate with those who weren't religious.
The AIDS epidemic had been ravaging gay communities for more than a decade by the time of this conference. That became the prime piece of evidence that homosexuality was destructive. There were lots of examples of gay men coming out to their parents by telling Mom and Dad they were dying of AIDS.
As for actual "science" there was Paul Cameron, who back in 1983 has been tossed out of the American Psychological Association for shoddy "research." But why quibble over that detail when Cameron was able to produce such useful studies as The Medical Consequences of What Homosexuals Do, Child Molestation and Homosexuality, What Causes Homosexual Desire and Can it Be Changed?, and Same Sex Marriage: Til Death Do Us Part? Yes, every one of these is as vile as their title suggests and every one of them is stuffed full of lies. But they provided the needed scientific foundation for the battle. That "toxic waste," as White calls it, is still being used to poison minds.
Second, prove that homosexuality is NOT immutable. Translation: homosexuality is a choice and that homosexuals can change. To help with this was the National Association of Research and Therapy of Homosexuals, or NARTH. This was the top organization in reparative therapy and they had the roster of psychoanalysts and psychologists to back them up. Several denominational organizations sprang up: Courage for Catholics, Evergreen for Mormons, JONAH for Orthodox Jews, and the big one Exodus. There was a ready supply of "ex-gays" to give testimony to religious broadcast programs.
Nearly all participants of these programs discovered they didn't work. Alas, many concluded the fault was their own and suffered great psychological harm and many committed suicide. We can rejoice that in 2013 the head of Exodus admitted failure to change anyone's orientation, apologized for the pain, and closed the organization.
Even so, this part of the battle plan has been effective. From a 2003 survey by the Pew Forum:
People who believe homosexuality is a choice, as opposed to a trait people are born with, are far more opposed to gay marriage, as are people who believe homosexuals can change.
Third, demonstrate why society needs to make certain demands on people sexually. Translation: government needs to be persuaded to use its power to enforce fundamentalist Christian sexual morality, especially on homosexuals. This part of the plan is deeply rooted in the idea that America is supposed to be a Christian nation built on absolute, God-given morals. The pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness are supposedly dependent on these absolute morals.
This part of the plan is built on four principles:
* Convince elected officials to take a stand against pro-gay legislation.
* Eliminate government funding of immoral behavior – including funding for AIDS research and prevention (yup, it's our own fault if we contract AIDS and we deserve to die).
* See a spiritual awakening. Translation: give gays and lesbians a last chance to confess their sin and be guided into an ex-gay ministry.
* To strengthen the male/father image. Translation: reinforce patriarchy and make sure sex education is only about abstinence until marriage.
Robert Skolrood, one of the leaders, gave this rallying cry:
Homosexuality denies, really, the fundamental values of Christianity. It denies life, it denies God's expressed desire that men and women cohabit, and it denies the root structure that the Bible prescribes for all mankind and the family. What these people are against is absolute values. And Christianity is one of the stumbling blocks in their way.White explains the "root structure":
God has given each of us a role to play in sustaining life on this planet. A gay man who refuses to do his God-given duty as husband and father helps bring down the entire structure.
I've heard the comment that when the Cold War ended and the Soviet Union collapsed, Fundie groups needed a new way to raise money. Raising the specter of Godless Communism just didn't sweeten the pot like it used to. So Fundies turned to demonizing us to raise funds. White dismisses that comment. While Fundies did indeed raise millions off our backs and did so not long after the Iron Curtain fell, we weren't just a convenient target. These people genuinely believed we were (and are still) a dire threat to everything they hold dear.
This Glen Eyrie meeting described the "short term" solution. This solution included: deny all rights to same-sex couples, end all sex education except abstinence, stop gov't support of safe-sex progams and AIDS research, prevent gays from adopting, remove lesbian and gay teachers and pastors, remove hate-crime protections, prevent laws that ban discrimination, ban gays and lesbians from the military, recriminalize homosexual behavior, and do whatever else they can to keep us in the closet (or convince us to become straight). White asks the important question: If this is the short term solution, what is the long term solution?
Once fundamentalist Christians have successfully dehumanized our lives, demeaned our relationships, denied us our rights, devastated our families, destroyed our influence in church and society, and driven us back into our closets, what comes next?
This was a difficult post for me to write. It wasn't because the words didn't flow. It was having to spell out one false statement after another, knowing they were intentionally false and with the purpose of doing harm to me and my kind. We have been living with, trying to combat, and suffering from the poisons these statements have injected into the national conversation for 20 years now. I take great comfort that even with these poisons regularly hurled at us the public opinion of same-sex marriage, public accommodation laws, and hate crime laws has consistently shifted in our favor over the last 20 years and is now a majority opinion. Because of this very effective campaign, the GOP is still against us. In spite of it the nation is embracing us. These false statements are still out there and still do harm. Thankfully, more and more people see them as false.
There is another sign of hope, though it comes with pain. At the age of 12 Ryan Robertson told his parents he was gay. They, Rob and Linda, guided Ryan into a reparative therapy program. It didn't work and Ryan died of a drug overdose at the age of 18. Rob and Linda could have left their church. Instead, they chose to challenge the false teaching. The church leadership is having harder time simply branding them as no longer being a "real" Christian. Rob and Linda are using blogs and social media to find and band together with other parents who choose the love of a child over church doctrine. Various seminary scholars are becoming more vocal in their challenge to doctrine. The closure of Exodus has raised the question, "If I can't change my kid into being a straight Christian, then what?" Linda Robertson said:
I got a lot of emails from parents who said, "I don't know one other parent of a gay child. I feel like in my community, I don't have permission to love my child." They have a lot of questions. But then they're going back to their churches and speaking to their pastors, speaking to their elders and speaking to their friends, saying, "We have a gay child. We love them and we don't want to kick them out. How do we go forward?"
Sunday, November 16, 2014
Holy Terror, part 2: Cast of characters
White discusses several leading people in the modern fundamentalist movement and what they contributed to where we are today. Some are well known – we've been battling them for 30 years. Others are new to me. White knew most of them personally and worked with them on a variety of book and film projects. The first one mentioned is Billy Graham, but mostly to say that while Graham was the best known Evangelical of the 20th Century, he was not a Fundamentalist. So, onward.
Next is Francis Schaeffer. He expounded on fundamentalist principles at L'abri, his compound in Switzerland. He wanted to restore fundamentalist principles to a religion that had strayed too far and he wanted to restore those same principles to America, which had also strayed too far (much more on this later). He was waging war to save both church and state. Schaeffer's 1981 book A Christian Manifesto was a call for fundamentalists to become politically active, to reclaim America for Christ.
No doubt Schaeffer was sincere in his beliefs and his goals. But his writings and speeches were full of incorrect interpretations (such as the Supreme Court and their ruling on prayer in public school) and hyperbole to rally the troops. Those techniques have been used consistently since then.
Though Schaeffer considered homosexuality to be "a part of the abnormality of the fallen world," he didn't exploit fear of gays for his fundraising.
The son of Francis is Frank Schaeffer, who grew up in the compound and is now repudiating his father's work. I wrote about Frank a few times in the past: here, here, and here. He apparently has a regular gig at Huffinton Post explaining fundamentalism while debunking it. This Frank Schaeffer is not the United Methodist pastor who performed a same-sex wedding for his gay son. That one spells his name with only one "f" and I frequently misspelled it when I wrote about him.
W. A. Criswell was for fifty years the senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas. In 1969 he preached a sermon titled, "Why I Preach the Bible is Literally True." This was the "shot heard round the denomination" and started the purge of progressives and moderates from the leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention.
In 1980 Criswell preached his first sermon against homosexuality. This sermon is the source of most of the lies that have been told and retold about us: He said the story of Sodom and Gomorrah is about homosexuality rather than inhospitality as the bible itself says. He misused the six other "clobber" passages to condemn us. He used faulty science to claim homosexuality is an acquired sickness that is curable. He conjured fear of gays and lesbians, on the march to secure rights. He railed against the teaching of sex education in schools. He used a few examples to declare all gay people live miserable lives. He concluded by saying gays may also accept the healing power of Jesus. And if they don't...
Before he died in 2002 at the age of 92 Criswell saw and regretted the pain caused by his demand that everyone agree with him about the inerrancy of the bible. Though Criswell laid the foundation of the Fundie view of homosexuality (and probably didn't regret that), he did not use homosexuality and fear of it to raise money.
About the time Francis Schaeffer was writing his Christian Manifesto Jerry Falwell was developing the Moral Majority. Schaeffer had put out the call to war; Falwell recruited and trained the troops. His first difficulty was getting over a psychological barrier – all his training was towards shunning those outside his denomination, but he needed fundamentalists in other denominations to help wage his war. Falwell later said, "Francis Schaeffer told me that in the past God used pagans to accomplish his will. Why shouldn't we?"
Falwell was a master of spin. His platform has four planks: Pro-life (women shouldn't have control over their reproductive rights), pro-family (no rights for gay people), pro-moral (but our definition of morality), and pro-American (making this a Christian nation by ending the separation of church and state).
Falwell, Paul Weyrich (a Jew), and Richard Viguerie (Roman Catholic) mastered mass-market mail to rally the troops to begin electing like-minded supporters to every level of government. In the 1980s they exploited fear of the "godless Soviet empire." Once communism collapsed in Europe Falwell and company exploited fears of millions of unborn babies and of the gay agenda. His letters described all this as a declaration of war. Their high point (so far) was in 2004 when their minions elected a fundamentalist president and established a firm hold on the House and Senate.
Pat Robertson created his own separate media empire and used it to push the Fundie agenda, including bashing sexual minorities. That empire is huge, reaching millions, and is well funded.
James Dobson also had a huge following through his own media outlet, Focus on the Family. He became the enforcer. If he didn't like what a politician was doing he would rant about it, prompting his listeners to inundate the politician's mail, email, and phone. It got to the point that some politicians called Dobson before a major decision. That was especially true of Bush II when the decision was judges for federal courts and justices for the Supreme Court (more on this later). Through this Dobson showed his intent of driving moderates out of the GOP.
Dobson created action councils around the country. While many of them had the word "family" in the organization's name, the names were different enough to avoid easy tracing back to Dobson. These local councils could do the political enforcement at the local and state level. Through his empire Dobson has become "the most powerful and the most influential voice on the religious right."
A key part of Dobson's efforts was to use the lies Criswell developed to demonize gay people. Part of it was because he saw us as a threat, part of it was because he could raise millions of dollars that way.
Mel White includes D. James Kennedy in this cast of characters. Kennedy is the head pastor of the huge Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in South Florida. Kennedy uses that platform to spout a more extreme version of what Dobson, Robertson, and Falwell say.
Schaeffer issued the call to arms. Criswell supplied the propaganda and the urge to purge. Falwell and Robertson supplied the troops. Dobson bullied the politicians. And Kennedy trumpeted their ultimate dream.
Next is Francis Schaeffer. He expounded on fundamentalist principles at L'abri, his compound in Switzerland. He wanted to restore fundamentalist principles to a religion that had strayed too far and he wanted to restore those same principles to America, which had also strayed too far (much more on this later). He was waging war to save both church and state. Schaeffer's 1981 book A Christian Manifesto was a call for fundamentalists to become politically active, to reclaim America for Christ.
No doubt Schaeffer was sincere in his beliefs and his goals. But his writings and speeches were full of incorrect interpretations (such as the Supreme Court and their ruling on prayer in public school) and hyperbole to rally the troops. Those techniques have been used consistently since then.
Though Schaeffer considered homosexuality to be "a part of the abnormality of the fallen world," he didn't exploit fear of gays for his fundraising.
The son of Francis is Frank Schaeffer, who grew up in the compound and is now repudiating his father's work. I wrote about Frank a few times in the past: here, here, and here. He apparently has a regular gig at Huffinton Post explaining fundamentalism while debunking it. This Frank Schaeffer is not the United Methodist pastor who performed a same-sex wedding for his gay son. That one spells his name with only one "f" and I frequently misspelled it when I wrote about him.
W. A. Criswell was for fifty years the senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas. In 1969 he preached a sermon titled, "Why I Preach the Bible is Literally True." This was the "shot heard round the denomination" and started the purge of progressives and moderates from the leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention.
In 1980 Criswell preached his first sermon against homosexuality. This sermon is the source of most of the lies that have been told and retold about us: He said the story of Sodom and Gomorrah is about homosexuality rather than inhospitality as the bible itself says. He misused the six other "clobber" passages to condemn us. He used faulty science to claim homosexuality is an acquired sickness that is curable. He conjured fear of gays and lesbians, on the march to secure rights. He railed against the teaching of sex education in schools. He used a few examples to declare all gay people live miserable lives. He concluded by saying gays may also accept the healing power of Jesus. And if they don't...
Before he died in 2002 at the age of 92 Criswell saw and regretted the pain caused by his demand that everyone agree with him about the inerrancy of the bible. Though Criswell laid the foundation of the Fundie view of homosexuality (and probably didn't regret that), he did not use homosexuality and fear of it to raise money.
About the time Francis Schaeffer was writing his Christian Manifesto Jerry Falwell was developing the Moral Majority. Schaeffer had put out the call to war; Falwell recruited and trained the troops. His first difficulty was getting over a psychological barrier – all his training was towards shunning those outside his denomination, but he needed fundamentalists in other denominations to help wage his war. Falwell later said, "Francis Schaeffer told me that in the past God used pagans to accomplish his will. Why shouldn't we?"
Falwell was a master of spin. His platform has four planks: Pro-life (women shouldn't have control over their reproductive rights), pro-family (no rights for gay people), pro-moral (but our definition of morality), and pro-American (making this a Christian nation by ending the separation of church and state).
Falwell, Paul Weyrich (a Jew), and Richard Viguerie (Roman Catholic) mastered mass-market mail to rally the troops to begin electing like-minded supporters to every level of government. In the 1980s they exploited fear of the "godless Soviet empire." Once communism collapsed in Europe Falwell and company exploited fears of millions of unborn babies and of the gay agenda. His letters described all this as a declaration of war. Their high point (so far) was in 2004 when their minions elected a fundamentalist president and established a firm hold on the House and Senate.
Pat Robertson created his own separate media empire and used it to push the Fundie agenda, including bashing sexual minorities. That empire is huge, reaching millions, and is well funded.
James Dobson also had a huge following through his own media outlet, Focus on the Family. He became the enforcer. If he didn't like what a politician was doing he would rant about it, prompting his listeners to inundate the politician's mail, email, and phone. It got to the point that some politicians called Dobson before a major decision. That was especially true of Bush II when the decision was judges for federal courts and justices for the Supreme Court (more on this later). Through this Dobson showed his intent of driving moderates out of the GOP.
Dobson created action councils around the country. While many of them had the word "family" in the organization's name, the names were different enough to avoid easy tracing back to Dobson. These local councils could do the political enforcement at the local and state level. Through his empire Dobson has become "the most powerful and the most influential voice on the religious right."
A key part of Dobson's efforts was to use the lies Criswell developed to demonize gay people. Part of it was because he saw us as a threat, part of it was because he could raise millions of dollars that way.
Mel White includes D. James Kennedy in this cast of characters. Kennedy is the head pastor of the huge Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in South Florida. Kennedy uses that platform to spout a more extreme version of what Dobson, Robertson, and Falwell say.
D. James Kennedy was the perfect shepherd to guide his flock away from the real problems of justice, mercy, and truth every Sunday with a fundamentalist Christian mix of patriotism, cheap grace, pseudopsychology, and scary apocalyptic warnings of what might happen to America if... If the evil Soviet empire triumphs... If homosexuals have their way with our children... If feminists destroy the family... If pro-abortionists continue killing a million unborn babies yearly... If criminals, teenage gangsters, drug peddlers continue to roam our streets.. If pornographers... If the internet... If Hollywood... If activist judges... If Hillary Clinton...Kennedy was a signer, though not author, of A Manifesto for the Christian Church that was signed by 460 Fundies in 1986. This document includes a list of essential truths. At the top of the list is the inerrancy of the bible, which is
the test for all truth, including philosophies, books, values, actions, and plans, and the final measurement of all God wants mankind to know about law, government, economics, business, education, arts and communication, medicine, psychology, and science.According to the Manifesto when a nation obeys the bible it will be blessed, when it disobeys it will be cursed. It is America's task to teach the rest of the world of God's laws. In the list of social evils, abortion is at the top followed by homosexuality, well above treatment of the poor (#5) and racial discrimination (#8). Since the bible must be taken literally the response to homosexuality must be the death penalty.
Schaeffer issued the call to arms. Criswell supplied the propaganda and the urge to purge. Falwell and Robertson supplied the troops. Dobson bullied the politicians. And Kennedy trumpeted their ultimate dream.
Saturday, November 15, 2014
Holy Terror, part 1: Fear
I'm reading the book Holy Terror, Lies the Christians Right Tells Us to Deny Gay Equality by Mel White. There are lots of important things from this book to share, so I'll be doing it over several days.
Mel White is an Evangelical Christian and he is clear to say while all Fundamentalists are Evangelical, not all Evangelicals are Fundamentalist. He's definitely not a Fundie. White was a ghostwriter, writing the biographies of some of the top Fundies, including Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. White is gay and spent 30 years trying desperately not to be. He finally admitted it wasn't working. He acquired a partner and started the organization Soulforce, which works to combat the harm the Fundies are doing to us. All of that is recounted in his autobiography Stranger at the Gate. You can get both books on the Soulforce website.
The book Holy Terror was published in 2006 at the height of the Bush II presidency and just after a bunch of states (including Michigan) voted in Marriage Protection Amendments. This was about the time that such an amendment didn't make it through Congress though there was a strong push for it. White added a preface in 2011 for the paperback version.
But now it is 2014 and those same-sex marriage bans are falling like dominoes. Is White's book still relevant? One need only look at last week's election and check out the nuggets in the various state GOP platforms that specify what Fundies intend for us – both America and sexual minorities (and anyone who isn't a straight, white, male fundamentalist).
In the week before the election NPR did a piece featuring an Evangelical pastor who complained that the GOP doesn't seem to be listening to his fellow Fundies as intently as they had in the past. Or at least not talking up the issues as much as before. This pastor warned that his flock might become disillusioned and decide not to vote (Yay!).
But White says part of that is because the Tea Party is championing many of the Fundie issues and many on the religious right are glad to have a secular cover for their religious goals.
White begins with definitions of fundamentalism from a variety of writers. Here are some of them.
From Jonathan Sacks, chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth:
Edward John Carnell, former professor and president of Fuller Theological Seminary:
I want to branch off White's story to look at that first definition, that behind fundamentalism is "fear, a profound insecurity." White doesn't look any deeper. For that I turn to a book by John Shelby Spong, who has also been battling fundamentalism. The book is Why Christianity Must Change or Die. I both do and don't recommend this book because the change Spong is talking about is much deeper than avoiding fundamentalism and turning to love. Spong says that fear is a fear of death, or more likely, a fear of what happens after death. To me this means Fundies are desperate to get into heaven and afraid they won't make it. So Fundies are ordering their lives in a vain attempt to please God. They load up on rules, thinking that by doing these things and not doing those they attract God's favorable attention. They see God as the sheriff ready to make the bust, not as the embodiment of love. To order their own lives Fundies need to block out the rest of the world, or better yet, make sure the world conforms to their understanding. That combined with their fear means the Fundie is after power, and when one has power one inflicts violence to keep it.
Spong discusses another fear, that of not being able to control everything. If they can't control something directly, they want a God who will control it for them. That control is desired (begged for) for such things as health (about as controllable as the weather) and riches. They're desperate for that control while some of us understand that control isn't possible and are able to deal with that. This idea will be important in White's book later on.
Mel White is an Evangelical Christian and he is clear to say while all Fundamentalists are Evangelical, not all Evangelicals are Fundamentalist. He's definitely not a Fundie. White was a ghostwriter, writing the biographies of some of the top Fundies, including Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. White is gay and spent 30 years trying desperately not to be. He finally admitted it wasn't working. He acquired a partner and started the organization Soulforce, which works to combat the harm the Fundies are doing to us. All of that is recounted in his autobiography Stranger at the Gate. You can get both books on the Soulforce website.
The book Holy Terror was published in 2006 at the height of the Bush II presidency and just after a bunch of states (including Michigan) voted in Marriage Protection Amendments. This was about the time that such an amendment didn't make it through Congress though there was a strong push for it. White added a preface in 2011 for the paperback version.
But now it is 2014 and those same-sex marriage bans are falling like dominoes. Is White's book still relevant? One need only look at last week's election and check out the nuggets in the various state GOP platforms that specify what Fundies intend for us – both America and sexual minorities (and anyone who isn't a straight, white, male fundamentalist).
In the week before the election NPR did a piece featuring an Evangelical pastor who complained that the GOP doesn't seem to be listening to his fellow Fundies as intently as they had in the past. Or at least not talking up the issues as much as before. This pastor warned that his flock might become disillusioned and decide not to vote (Yay!).
But White says part of that is because the Tea Party is championing many of the Fundie issues and many on the religious right are glad to have a secular cover for their religious goals.
White begins with definitions of fundamentalism from a variety of writers. Here are some of them.
From Jonathan Sacks, chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth:
I define fundamentalism as the attempt to impose a single truth on a plural world. … What really lies behind fundamentalism is fear, a profound insecurity that makes you feel when you meet someone who doesn't like you or who doesn't agree with you that that challenges and threatens your very being. Aggression is always a sign of insecurity, and insecurity is always at bottom a lack of faith, not the presence of it.John Shelby Spong, retired Episcopal bishop:
[Fundamentalist Christians are] those whose religious security is rooted in a literal Bible. … they do not want that security disturbed. Fundamentalists are not happy when facts challenge their biblical understanding or when nuances in the text are introduced or when they are forced to deal with either contradictions or changing insights … For biblical literalists there always an enemy to be defeated in mortal combat.
Edward John Carnell, former professor and president of Fuller Theological Seminary:
Fundamentalism is orthodoxy gone cultic. … The mentality of fundamentalism is dominated by ideological thinking. Ideological thinking is rigid, intolerant, and doctrinaire; it sees principles everywhere, and all principles come in clear tones of black and white; it exempts itself from the limits that original sin places on history; it wages holy wars without acknowledging the elements of pride and personal interest that prompt the call to battle; it creates new evils while trying to correct old ones.
I want to branch off White's story to look at that first definition, that behind fundamentalism is "fear, a profound insecurity." White doesn't look any deeper. For that I turn to a book by John Shelby Spong, who has also been battling fundamentalism. The book is Why Christianity Must Change or Die. I both do and don't recommend this book because the change Spong is talking about is much deeper than avoiding fundamentalism and turning to love. Spong says that fear is a fear of death, or more likely, a fear of what happens after death. To me this means Fundies are desperate to get into heaven and afraid they won't make it. So Fundies are ordering their lives in a vain attempt to please God. They load up on rules, thinking that by doing these things and not doing those they attract God's favorable attention. They see God as the sheriff ready to make the bust, not as the embodiment of love. To order their own lives Fundies need to block out the rest of the world, or better yet, make sure the world conforms to their understanding. That combined with their fear means the Fundie is after power, and when one has power one inflicts violence to keep it.
Spong discusses another fear, that of not being able to control everything. If they can't control something directly, they want a God who will control it for them. That control is desired (begged for) for such things as health (about as controllable as the weather) and riches. They're desperate for that control while some of us understand that control isn't possible and are able to deal with that. This idea will be important in White's book later on.
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