Andrew Sullivan writes: "That's how I explain the current GOP. It can only think in doctrines, because the alternative is living in a complicated, global, modern world they both do not understand and also despise. Taxes are therefore always bad. Government is never good. Foreign enemies must be pre-emptively attacked. Islam is not a religion. Climate change is an elite conspiracy to impoverish America. Terror suspects are terrorists. When Americans torture, it is not torture. When Christians murder, they are not Christians. And if you change your mind on any of these issues, you are a liberal, an apostate, and will be attacked."
Thousands attended 'The Response,' a religious event organized by Republican Gov. Rick Perry in order to pray for God to help save America: 'a nation in crisis,' 08/06/11. (photo: Brandon Thibodeaux/Getty Images)
Is the GOP a Religion?
12 September 11
he Dish covered the remarkable web essay of Mike Lofgren, but I didn't comment myself because it so closely follows my own argument in "The Conservative Soul" and on this blog, that it felt somewhat superfluous. But I want to draw attention to the crux of the piece, because if we are to understand how the right became so unmoored from prudence, moderation and tradition and became so infatuated with recklessness, extremism and revolution, we need to understand how it happened.
It is, of course, as my shrink never fails to point out, multi-determined. But here is Lofgren's attempt at a Rosebud:
How did the whole toxic stew of GOP beliefs - economic royalism, militarism and culture wars cum fundamentalism - come completely to displace an erstwhile civilized Eisenhower Republicanism?
It is my view that the rise of politicized religious fundamentalism (which is a subset of the decline of rational problem solving in America) may have been the key ingredient of the takeover of the Republican Party. For politicized religion provides a substrate of beliefs that rationalizes - at least in the minds of followers - all three of the GOP's main tenets.
That too is my view: that the GOP, deep down, is behaving as a religious movement, not as a political party, and a radical religious movement at that. Lofgren sees the "Prosperity Gospel" as a divine blessing for personal enrichment and minimal taxation (yes, that kind of Gospel is compatible with Rand, just not compatible with the actual Gospels); for military power (with a major emphasis on the punitive, interventionist God of the Old Testament); and for radical change and contempt for existing institutions (as a product of End-Times thinking, intensified after 9/11).
Lofgren argues that supply-side economics attaches to the fundamentalist worldview purely by coalition necessity. The fundamentalists are not that interested in debt or economics (they sure didn't give a damn as spending exploded under Bush) but if their coalition partners insist on a certain economic doctrine, they'll easily go along with it, as long as it is never compromised. If it's presented as eternal dogma, they can handle it - and defend it with gusto. If it also means that Obama is wrong, so much the better. Most theo-political movements need an anti-Christ of some sort; and Obama - even though he is the most demonstrably Christian president since Carter - fills the role.
And so this political deadlock conceals a religious war at its heart. Why after all should one abandon or compromise sacred truths? And for those whose Christianity can only be sustained by denial of modern complexity, of scientific knowledge, and of what scholarly studies of the Bible's origins have revealed, this fusion of political and spiritual lives into one seamless sensibility and culture, is irresistible. And public reminders of modernity - that, say, many Americans do not celebrate Christmas, that gay people have human needs, that America will soon be a majority-minority country and China will overtake the US in GDP by mid-century - are terribly threatening.
But all these nuances do not therefore vanish. The gays don't disappear. China keeps growing. The population becomes browner and browner. Women's lives increasingly become individual choices not social fates. And this enrages and terrifies the fundamentalist even more. Hence the occasional physical lashing out - think Breivik or McVeigh - but more profoundly, the constant endless insatiable cultural lashing out at the "elites" who have left fundamentalism behind, and have, on many core issues, science on their side. So within this religious core, and fundamentalist mindset, you also have the steely solder of ressentiment, intensified even further by a period of white middle and working class decline and economic crisis.
That's how I explain the current GOP. It can only think in doctrines, because the alternative is living in a complicated, global, modern world they both do not understand and also despise. Taxes are therefore always bad. Government is never good. Foreign enemies must be pre-emptively attacked. Islam is not a religion. Climate change is an elite conspiracy to impoverish America. Terror suspects are terrorists. When Americans torture, it is not torture. When Christians murder, they are not Christians. And if you change your mind on any of these issues, you are a liberal, an apostate, and will be attacked.
If your view of conservatism is one rooted in an instinctual, but agile, defense of tradition, in a belief in practical wisdom that alters constantly with circumstance, in moderation and the defense of the middle class as the stabilizing ballast of democracy, in limited but strong government ... then the GOP is no longer your party (or mine).
Religion has replaced all of this, reordered it, and imbued the entire political-economic-religious package with zeal. And the zealous never compromise. They don't even listen.
Think of Michele Bachmann's wide-eyed, Stepford stare as she waits for a questioner to finish before providing another pre-cooked doctrinal nugget. My fear - and it has building for a decade and a half, because I've seen this movement up-close from within and also on the front lines of the marriage wars - is that once one party becomes a church with unchangeable doctrines, and once it has supplanted respect for institutions and civility with the radical pursuit of timeless doctrines and hatred of governing institutions, then our democracy is in grave danger.
If you ask why I remain such a strong Obama supporter, it is because I see him as that rare individual able to withstand the zeal without becoming a zealot in response, and to overcome the recklessness of pure religious ideology with pragmatism, civility and reason. That's why they fear and loathe him. Not because his policies are not theirs'. But because his temperament is their nemesis. If he defeats them next year, they will break, because their beliefs are so brittle, but will then reform, along Huntsman-style lines. If they defeat him, I fear we will no longer be participating in a civil conversation, however fraught, but in a civil war.
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Comments
It's time to take away the tax-exempt status of those churches, religious organizations and non-profits that are not authorized to engage in politics. They've been using religion to promote their anti-everything views for 40 years.
Enough is enough!
Thus those people have political power and are not mere cults.
To quote Frank Zappa, "Tax the f*** out of the churches!"
The GOP stands for nothing grand or old... but rather The Greedy Oil Party?
or The Greedy Oligarchic Plutocrats?
They all seem to be shills for the neo-fascist corporatists. (although a some of the Dems , like Baucus are also in that category, as he was a shill for the ihealth insurance 'industry')
Here we go again with "If we are scum so are our opponents," meme. Surely anyone who disagrees with the right wing is every bit as evil as the right wing, fails to compute for anyone with a working brain.
U.S. governing is only representative of those in power, not an agency of substance. As has been said, it is a stage show and all participants (both parties) rehearse endlessly, keeping citizens entertained rather than considering the real intent of those in power.
Nobody really likes the display of militant religiosity, but keep things in perspective when assessing both parties and how they govern.
we will have lost America.
And who ever thought we could look at Nixon as any model of rationality and reasonable behavior? In the end, the worst thing he did was botch a third-rate burglary. What have we become?
What about founding a new party: The New Republican Party.
They will overtake us long before mid century.
Beautifully put! - something we all could do well in aspiring to
"Unfortunate" because this makes them so much more difficult to deal with. They seem impervious to rational arguments.
In fact, in their blind devotion to their T.P. Cause they have elements of being a cult.
I first began to notice this a few years ago with old friends who started forwarding me incredibly nasty and easily disproved PR-created email attacks upon Democrats, liberals, the government, the media, Muslims and other minorities, unions, the poor, H. Clinton, higher education and science, and of course Obama.
No matter how many time I told them I found them offensive and ill-informed they just kept trying to jam them down my throat (computer, that is.)
Reminds me of certain religions who push their beliefs door to door, though they at least are good hearted.
I wonder if other liberals/progressives have had similar problems with old friends who got converted to the Church of the Dogmatic Republican Right.
The ultimate irony is that their Ayn Randian Social Darwinism is the total opposite of the Christianity they profess to worship.
What I get is oh, I didn't know. But then another one comes. Again I return the correct answer and again, the same crappy answer.
And this is supposedly from a smart gal, I have told her please do not send me any more crap but she continues even though I have proved everything she has sent is either incorrect or was put out by Bush not Obama.
Truthfully I think they just do not care.
The only difference in the two parties is style. In the past, regardless of the sins of either party, such as starting unnecessary wars, I defended democrats for doing some good for the country. Certainly they sometimes still do, but we are under a new scenario of governing and if any will dig deep into what Obama is doing, they will see that he is following a line of action that is true of both parties. Obama just doesn't punch you in the mouth with it as George W. did. Nevertheless, it is the PNAC agenda.
The foofahrah occuring now, as I say is a side show. Not that there aren't some serious and drastic bills being proposed in various states that are directed by the religious right, but there are religious democrats that agree with such as banning abortion, etc. I live in an area where both parties agree on religious dictates.
My main concern is national government. Check into the reasons for continuing to attack countries, for rebuilding or building military bases in South America, sending a rocket into the moon last year, and sending an expedition to the moon for soil analysis. Read some bills that were passed under Bush, such as John Warner and Ted Kennedy's, declaring the militarization of space by the U.S. How about the Patriot Act, Homeland Security, and increasing surveillance on the population and on and on and on.
No difference in the parties there. While the tea party people are having debates and behaving like dickheads, the government keeps on rolling.
The government is THIS government, the democrats, not a Tea Party or GOP.
This is a baseless assertion, except to the extent that we are what we believe; we are our faith.
Let us ponder the greater matter here: Which belief system, Republican or Democrat lines up more with the teachings of Christ?
Am I my brothers keeper?...YES, "See how they love one another". "Whatever you do unto the least of these my brethren you do unto me."
WE got this from the Judeo- Christian faith. Where is the REpublican Tea Party getting this stuff they are spewing..hate, greed, coveteousness, control, murder, taking from the poor and giving to the rich, and the list goes on.
I am not holy but this is what we strive to acheive. To proogress, not regress back to barbarianism.
This is an excellent article that should beseen by as many as possible.
Christian fascism undoubtedly plays a role but it is only one cog in the machine. I see the media as the biggest problem we're facing, they continue to allow the lies and propaganda to go unchecked giving undeserved legitimacy to the right's extremism. It's been going on for so many years that we've absolutely lost the center. The right defines 'liberal' and 'conservative' and the media is its tool. There are rarely any consequences for the constant stream of lies coming from the Republican side or even for its criminality.
Andrew, you're not describing a "religion". There are still religions (i.e., The United Church of Christ, Episcopalians) that preach the penitent, inclusive version of Christianity as it's practiced by believers in the penitent Christ actually represented by the Bible.
The current GOP's extreme right, Triumphalist, Dominionist, "Seven Mountains" crowd is the tentacle of a CULT, not a religion. They've succeeded in turning their obedient prayer warrior Bachmann into a media whore on the campaign trail (with Palin in the wings), feeding red meat to legions of obese, red-state imbeciles who embrace and defend her roadshow and the empty "hellfire 'n brimstone" rhetoric that goes with it, and couldn't care less about the pollution of presidential politics by "zealous" members of an effing CULT. They want to JOIN!
Frankly, it all reminds me of Jim Jones and his tragic band of mouth-breathing, desperate followers in the People's Temple. We can thank them for our venerable idiom of total personal capitulation (just short of ritual suicide), "They drank the Kool Aid".
Rick Perry is a blow-dried, slick, cynical Jim Jones: He will be exposed.
I ask right wingers, "Do you have to be a Christian to be a Republican or a Republican to be a Chrisitian?" They won't answer or they'll just laugh. They won't admit that they really believe that to be a Christian you have to go along with and be faithful to the Republican party.
Fom personal experience and from watching the abusive relationship we have had with the Bush/Cheney administration and now with the Republicans-
We may be smart and they may be stupid by academic or logical standards BUT they are sociopaths. We are like two different species that can't communicate.
We approach problems and attempt to come up with fair compromises. They approach the same situations and figure out how to rob us blind, take us hostage and kill our family. We don't have the same objective. We're Elizabeth Warren, they're Bernie Madoff. We'd probably beat them on an IQ test but they'd walk away with our wallets.
"Christian " is something one IS by the way they live their life, not something one professes to be. When someone feels the necessity to tell me they are a "Christian" I make certain i do not bend over in front of them because I know what will happen.
The recent ancestors of some southern republicans were lynching black people on Saturday night, and flocking to their evangelical Christian church on Sunday morning. There, they heard sermons extolling the "purity" of the white race, demonizing Jews (I personally witnessed this), and presenting scripture as a divine mandate to keep the races separate, with blacks of course subordinate to whites. Nixon's "Southern Strategy" welcomed these bigots into the Republican Party with open arms. They and their "socially conservative"(read: racist)progeny remain there to this day, living the gospel of racism, greed, fear, and the unshakeable conviction that they are doing God's will. Some of them have now formed the even more radical-fundamentalist tea party.
I need hardly reiterate that (in my estimation) spirituality in it's many manifestations, is deeply personal but with few exceptions, (a few have been pointed out here and may I add the Quakers on that side of the ledger), organized religion is, LIKE POLITICS, the desire to have power over as many of the populace as possible, to demand their unquestioning allegiance and a goodly cut of whatever resources they can "Sacrifice" to the deity's alleged earthly representatives .
I admire my conservative friends who have resisted this fundamentalist push and are indeed horrified by it, and know of a popular Catholic priest who often likened Jesus' life to a humanitarian progressive's, after which he was admonished and banished to an obscure parish in Appalachia, against the wishes of his parishioners.
*Paradoxically and sadly, it's a continuing glaring fact that anybody without some church affiliation hasn't a prayer of being elected to high office in this country which constitutionall y separates church and state!
Now, that was really a brilliant comment.
*People Living In Fear:
A reference to conservative or fundamentalist followers of any religion that leads them to be fearful of any questioning of their religious doctrine or to be open to creative, new ideas. Because psychologically fear is such a crippling emotion, psychologically healthy people tend to try and control and recognize this in themselves. Those who don't tend to rely on more dictatorial or authoritarian leaders whether they be in the form of a political leader or their own chosen God.
Paul Harris
Author, "Diary From the Dome, Reflections on Fear and Privilege During Katrina"
The Zombie machos drink tea spiced with Texas bourbon, cooled with Alaska ice and served by a stylish Haus Frau. Through their control of yellow journalism they force those with residues of tolerance and humanity to swallow the piss and bile of once defeated anachronisms.
The Zombies, bankrolled by their friends in corporate board rooms, prepare to remove the Nation´s heart and replace it with a made in China machine. They coerce and blackmail the reasonable among the politicians to appoint the plutocrats and murderous Generals to controlling government bureaucracies and to follow their dictates to roll back social progress. The bankers succeed in reversing the American dream and immiserating the masses. Big Money and their Stooges inspire economic suicide while Fox News and Pentagon programmed militarism imprison the valiant, torture reason, degrade the noble and strain to devour what remains of civilization.
The Zombies have no human sensibility but yes one modern vice, greed.
Frank saw what was happening from outside the movement and came to the same conclusion. He also feared, way back in the eighties that these zealous bigots would eventually take over the country if they weren't stopped.
And they both become the most dangerous when they are given any degree of political power.
Witness the Crusades, Three Inquisitions, modern-day terrorism, Christianity's never-ending battle against science, people being beheaded in Saudi Arabia for having committed adultery or having consumed alcohol, the ancient Buddha statue blown to pieces in Bamiyan, the destruction of the great library in Alexandria, the bloody reign of Justinian the 1st, the Salem Witch trials etc. etc. etc.
God help us if Obama loses to one of these religious radicals the Tea Party has foisted upon the political landscape in recent times. And Andrew Sullivan is more-than-likely correct in his assumption - civil war may very well be the end result.
The miracle is that in spite of this Theology of Force, many members of all three faiths are actually kind and decent people. Never forget that.
Most of these people do so because of family tradition though...
-James Waterman wise Jr; 1936 (often attributed to Sinclair Lewis)
And this really isn't new with them, it's just now more out in the open.
The GOP cult affixation is so complete that it has cost my wife and I the friendship of her brother and my sister. They think we are evil for simply not agreeing with their dogma, despite our lifelong commitment to sharing goodness and helping others. Yes, the GOP is not only dividing a nation--it is destroying families.
Even worse, it is starting to feel a bit like the Spring of 1861 when Secessionists turned against their own friends and families in their passion to destroy America to preserve their world of White Supremacy and Plantation Aristocracy.
And Fredboy, don't think you will win them over by "sharing goodness"---in their Social Darwinism, they despise "do-gooders."
Remember Christ says at Matthew 7: 16 “Ye shall know them by their fruits. ---” And what are those fruits?
KJV Galatians 5: 19-21 “Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.”
Galatians 5: 22-23 “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.”
Now what I’m hearing from the GOP religion is listed under “the works of the flesh” certainly not “the fruit of the Spirit.”
Christians are sinners, but they are not practicing demons and devils.
Romans 13:1-4
It begins "Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities".........and ends "He is God's servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoers."
While it sounds like the Ayatollah, it's really in your Bible, read it and weep, as it's likely going to guide the penal policy of a President Bachman, Perry, or Palin.
So I'm afraid that while the beautiful passages Paul Scott quotes may guide many moderate Republicans, the Cultic Right is influenced more by that passage from Romans-- and the Old Testament.
Paul the apostle wrote that and he was a convert. Converts can be extremely radical. Christianity would be so much better off if Paul had been drowned at birth.
Ya, I've read this before from those who see the cards stacked against them in the secular v fundmentalist culture wars. But it's just hyperbole. A real civil war means guns. And liberals and progressives are out-gunned; that's just simple math. So who's gonna have this war, matey?
The fact is that in a war of ideas and facts, the left can hold its own, and even prevail. But rhetorically they are no match for Limbaugh and the fundmentalist teaparty nitwits who have usurped the GOP. This has been well documented, most recently by Michael Tomansky in the NYRB (Sept. 29).
Unless the left takes to the streets and organizes more strenuously than teabaggers did and elect people who truly represent their intersts, we are doomed. There will be no 'civil war', the religious nuts will simply take the field, and liberals and progressives will be powerless to stop it as they argue amongst themselves as to why people are prejudiced and ignorant.
There simply is, but one point of view of Scripture; God’s. Romans 13: 1-4 should not be considered the subject matter spoken of in that chapter, but a part of the chapter. If one is listening to a teacher and is not hearing Galatians 5: 22-23 coming through, when talking about the Biblical no-no laws; odds are their listening to the wrong teacher. God explains this clearly at Galatians 3: 24-25 “Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster.
Also the Christian will display the fruits of the Spirit regardless of whether they are republican, democrat, progressive, Arab, Jew, or any other name they may be called, in this lifetime; and from anywhere on the planet that they may reside. A Christian is not a judge (Matthew 7: 1-2 “Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.”)
Religion is accusatory, full of contradictions; and demands obedience or death. Religion is a core vote for the Republican Party; therefore, we have our own religious mess in this nation. One should never accept a verse or two as the Wholesome Word of God, always defer to Scripture; I recommend the KJV.
The time was at the genesis of the movement & I knew nothing about them. There were 16 people there counting me. Two of the individuals were not from around here. The theme from the outset focused on, let me say, Obama's skin color. The comments I heard there did not refer to him as A.A. or Black, if you catch my drift. Most of the interaction centered on Obama being a godless Muslim and how he was going after Christians, and was the enemy of Christianity.
Needless to say, I never went back. It is interesting to see how they have evolved or should I say devolved.
I still have difficulty juxtaposing Christian fundamentalist with Ayn Rand. In my opinion conjoining these 2 entities emerge from ignorance and lack of the ability to engage in rational thought. The republican party here in my area is most definitely a religion.
I just joined rsn after reading it a lot. Looking forward to coming back to comment.
That you knew not to go back is a credit to you; all should do the same. You say not whether you are a Christian that is liberal; if not a Christian you are a liberal that knows more about God than those claiming to know God. Since these folk say they get their beliefs, from the Holy Scripture, then what does the Holy Scripture say about the matter.
Mark 12: 30-31 “And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.”
1st John 4: 20-21 “If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? And this commandment have we from him, That he who loveth God love his brother also.”
KJV Matthew 7: 21 “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. 22) Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? 23) And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.
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