A NEW POWER RISING

US religious fundamentalists preparing for Armageddon?

Bryan Owen

Among the Hopi and Navajo tribes of the South-western United States there is a mythological character named Kokopelli. Known as the ‘hero with a thousand faces’ he is generally depicted as a flute player cheerfully leading the dance of life. With his bright red macaw feathers Kokopelli is a Native American symbol of passion, creativity and balance. In case pride or hubris overtakes him, though, Kokopelli is hump-backed, deformed, disabled. It’s a universal theme that through the weak wisdom is to be found. 

I doubt, though, whether President Bush and his neo-conservative handlers would agree with such native wisdom even though Kokopelli is to be found everywhere from wall hangings to coffee mugs in Dubya’s religiously conservative heartlands. Instead, America today seems to warm to themes of strength, overwhelming force, extraordinary rendition and the tacit approval of torture to extract information.

In 2005 Mr Bush received an ecstatic welcome in newly democratic Republic of Georgia where he hailed the country as a ‘beacon of liberty’. But the President is extremely picky about which countries should enjoy that kind of freedom. They clearly don’t include nearby Uzbekistan where President Bush’s undemocratic friend, President Islam Karimov, is ruthlessly quashing any aspirations poverty stricken Uzbeks might have to follow the people of Georgia down the road of plural opinions and free elections.

Mr Bush, of course, is a product as well as a prisoner of the New Puritanism sweeping the United States - an aggressive form of Christianity that is itself very ambivalent about democratic concepts let alone common humanitarian values such as peace or justice or truth.

Some 25% of the American population claim to belong to this religious constituency and they now wield immense influence both in their local communities and in Washington. They seem to have American liberals on the run. 

The city of Colorado Springs lies in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Recently it was referred to as ‘home to the greatest concentration of fundamentalist Christian activist groups in American history’. The city has several mega-churches who number their membership in the thousands as well as to politically powerful church organisations such as Focus on the Family that now feeds much of its propaganda to evangelical groups in Britain and elsewhere around the world. With the US Air Force Academy as a neighbour Colorado Springs is an extremely conservative and patriotic place where speaking out of line can cost you your friends or your job.

Focus on the Family is one of those peculiarly American empires started and controlled by an individual with a mission - in this case by former paediatrician Dr James Dobson, one of the most influential evangelicals in the US. The organization, with its books and worldwide radio ministry, now has an annual published income of some $85m promoting what Dobson calls ‘family values’. Unfortunately, these values have a dark and threatening side including the assertion that homosexual behaviour is a sin. In their literature they classify being gay as a ‘learned behaviour born of social rejection’ - and they claim it can be cured by God. Any scientific research suggesting a genetic or biological cause is dismissively brushed aside. Too many facts, of course, cloud the issue.

These New Puritans have attacked the First Amendment which says that ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof’. Do hard-liners like former Attorney General John Ashcroft really want to push the United States towards theocracy in the way that, for example, Massachusetts was a theocracy in the 1690s? A new name has been coined for these zealots - Dominionists. They believe that God has ordained America to be a light to the nations whether the nations want to be lit up or not.

In Britain we’re asking whether the US can any longer claim to be a modern, secular, plural and democratic society when alternative and dissenting points of view are no longer respected. It’s ironic that the Chicago Tribune has the 17th century English puritan and poet John Milton’s words etched into its magnificent edifice: 

‘Give me liberty to know,
to utter and to argue
freely according to my
conscience, above all
other liberties.’

What has happened to such liberties in neo-conservative America? And what has happened to the crusading journalism of the kind practiced with such integrity by Edward R. Murrow? He said we are not descended from fearful men. That’s difficult to believe in Dubya’s America today when a significant number of the population seems to be governed by the fear of terrorism. Given the terrorist outrages European and other countries have had to endure over the years, any foreign visitor to the US could be forgiven for thinking too many Americans have gotten things out of all proportion.

Dubya’s unlawful doctrine of preventive war is the prime example of Dominionism in practice with its goal of religious, economic and political domination. Even the US Senate’s debate last year on the Iraq War did little to allay the fears of those of us who watch American affairs from a distance.

Dr James Dobson recently said ‘the great pendulum of history is swinging back and forth every day, oscillating between righteousness and wickedness’. Such rhetoric is typical of right wing fundamentalism - simplistic, aggressive and anti-intellectual. Everything is black or white, right or wrong. There are no shades of grey, no nuances, no room for subtle arguments. It is tabloid religion using tabloid language. Abortion, for example, is defined as ‘infanticide and a deadly curse…’ and obscenity is ‘a destroyer straight from hell…’

The religious right are engaged, they say, in God’s battle because that’s what it says in the Bible. The arguments of moderate Christians who suggest alternative interpretations of Scripture are ruthlessly disposed of. They’re not from God, say the fundamentalists, but from the Devil himself posing as angels of light. Moderate Christians are summarily dismissed.

You would perhaps expect that a city as religious as Colorado Springs would, therefore, be a model society of heaven on earth yet it has one of the highest rates of divorce in America - 34% higher than the national average. Why? Because New Puritan teenagers are expected not to have sex before marriage even though their peers do. According to Harpers, in 1995 some 2,500,000 of them joined the Promise Keepers movement pledging celibacy until they were married. Apparently only 12% of them actually succeeded.

But because St Paul says that ‘it’s better to marry than to burn’ their parents force them to marry in their late teens or early twenties - several years earlier than the US national average. When their marriages hit the rocks, as many of them do, they get divorced.

Another social issue in Colorado Springs is domestic violence. Fundamentalist religious families in Middle America are extremely patriarchal in structure. The man is the head of the family. Women obey their husbands and children obey their parents - and men use their hands when necessary. This, too, is apparently permitted by God. The authorities such as the police and social services are left to pick up the pieces.

In September every year, the American Libraries Association (ALA) sponsors their annual ‘Banned Books Week’. In 2006 the theme was ‘Read banned books - they’re your ticket to freedom’. Does the United States - this supposed beacon of freedom par excellence - really follow the example of Nazi Germany or the former Soviet Union in banning and burning books? It happens every day in many small towns in Middle America. If you don’t believe me check with the American Libraries Association.

The ALA wants to remind Americans not to take their precious democratic freedoms for granted. They want Americans to celebrate their freedom to express their opinions even if those opinions might be considered unorthodox or unpopular.

On its website the ALA lists the current top 100 most banned books in America - books banned by the religious right. They include standard works such as ‘Huckleberry Finn’ and ‘Tom Sawyer’ by Mark Twain and ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ by J.D. Salinger. They also include the 1960 Pulitzer Prize winner ‘To kill a mockingbird’ by Harper Lee. She has just been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. And on the list, of course, are children’s books such as ‘The Witches’ and ‘James and the Giant Peach’ by Roald Dahl and the Harry Potter books by J.K.Rowling.

And the list also includes standard British school examination texts like ‘Lord of the Flies’ by William Golding, ‘Of Mice and Men’ by John Steinbeck and ‘Brave New World’ by Aldous Huxley.
These books are banned when local library and school boards are taken over by unthinking and uncritical fundamentalists most of whom have very little love of good literature or any concern for the exploration of ideas.

When I visited Colorado Springs in 2005 I was told it has a nickname. It’s called ‘Hate City’ because that’s how its ‘born again citizens’ treat those who are gay or divorced, or those who have had abortions or perform them, or those who accept the general theory of evolution or current scientific thinking in geology, palaeontology, physics, astronomy and genetics.

A joke doing the rounds illustrates how fundamentalists are now perceived:

An American writer decided to write a book about churches around the country. Starting in California he spotted a golden telephone on the vestibule wall with a sign which read "$10,000 a minute."

He asked the pastor what this meant and was told that this golden phone was a direct line to Heaven. If he pays the price he can talk directly to God. 

As the writer continued to visit churches in Seattle, Salt Lake, Chicago, Boston, Miami and around the United States, he found more phones with the same sign, and the same answer from each pastor.

Finally he arrived in Colorado Springs. On entering a church there he saw the usual golden telephone but this time the sign read, "Calls: 25 cents." He asked the pastor why the call was so cheap.

The pastor replied, "Son, you're in Colorado now, and it’s a local call."

Although the religious right tries to occupy the moral high ground on the subjects of their choice - typically marriage, abortion and gay issues - they seem to have little concern for the moral issues that exercise the rest of the world. Are issues such as poverty or unfair trade practices or the rampant AIDS epidemic sweeping through Africa or the protection of the planet from particle pollution and global warming of no concern to God or Godly believers?

The religious right’s concerns (some may say obsessions) are with sex and sexuality. Their minds seem to be constantly in other people’s bedrooms.

Six thousand children dying every day from preventable disease? It’s the result of sin, they say. World poverty? It’s the result of sin. New Puritan thinking is characterised by its simplicity - just delete any issue that sits uncomfortably with America’s view of itself as God’s Chosen nation. Is America’s $12 billion porn industry also born of sin? Don’t ask.

The religious right is pro-Israel. In 2005 a group of influential American ‘Bible believing’ pastors had meetings with both the former Finance Minister Benjamin Netanhahu and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. ‘These discussions are very important regarding Israel's understanding and relationship with Evangelicals worldwide, and our relationship with Jewish people and Israel,’ said Ted Haggard, former pastor of the 11,000 member New Life Church in Colorado Springs and former Chairman of the powerful National Evangelical Association. Why? Because the Bible says that Israel today should occupy the land given to Moses by God 4,000 years ago. That means expelling Palestinians across the Jordan whatever world opinion might say.

These Christian Zionists are particularly frightening because they believe that the continued existence of Israel is necessary for the rise of the Antichrist and the subsequent Second Coming of Christ who will defeat the Devil before reigning in glory.

Christian Zionists, therefore, have set out to cripple the Middle East Road Map. But - and this is what is so frightening - many of them also want to destroy the two mosques on the Temple Mount, rebuild the Temple of Herod and thus bring about the end of the world. They really do want to create the right conditions for Armageddon itself - and these people have regular access to the White House. Who needs a jihadist when these people are around?

Fundamentalists have a deep fear of the world and they withdraw from it as much as they can. In their churches in places such as Colorado Springs you can pick up a Christian Yellow Pages so that even your plumber believes the same as you. 

By contrast, maybe the Hopi and Navajo tribes, decimated by the ‘civilising’ white man in the 19th century, had discovered a precious truth in their stories about Kokopelli. The flute player is a life-giver and a life-affirmer. He summons people to live in balance with one another and with the good earth. He leads the dance of life while Mr Bush’s constituency, by contrast, plays irresponsibly with death.

A century ago the American poet Edwin Markham described the attitudes of religious fundamentalists whether they be New Puritans, Dominionists or Christian Zionists. But he also described a way that offers society and individuals the best and only hope for the future. And perhaps it is the only way to avoid unleashing the four horsemen champing at the bit:

‘They drew a circle that shut me out –
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But love and I had the wit to win -
We drew a circle to include them in.’

© Bryan Owen 2006

* photos above are of the Colorado Springs headquarters of Focus on the Family and of the New Life Church campus where Ted Haggard was formerly pastor. The poster shows the American Library Association's theme for Banned Books Week 2007

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Bryan Owen is currently working on a book about American religious fundamentalism. The following poem is one of many he has written on religious fundamentalism It was inspired by the film 'Good Night and Good Luck' starring George Clooney and David Strathearn portraying Murrow's fight for integrity in public life during the McCarthy wiitchhunts.

Edward R. Murrow (1908-1965) the American journalist who confronted Sen Joseph McCarthy and House Committee on  UnAmerican Activities in 1954. Murrown said of McCarthy and his methods, 'We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men.'

We are not descended from fearful men

(in memory of Edward R. Murrow, American journalist, 1908-1965)

We are not descended from fearful men,
my friend,
yet (fearful fools that we are)
we still fail to confront
the tyrannies of evil men

who by ruthless use of money
or force of twisted personality
or rapacious lust for power
would imprison us all

so that they might become God
and we their worshippers
obediently bowing down
and giving them the glory
in eternal Faustian submission.

They are little men with big bibles
who focus on other people’s families
and other people’s bedrooms…

They are little men with big cheque books
who know the cost of everything
but the value of nothing…

They are little men with big guns
who at the push of a button orgasm
at their phallic missiles of shock and awe…

They are, my friend, little men with big promises
who betray the trust of voters
for a mess of potage at the tables of power.

Where are the truly big men, my friend,
who by their simple deeds
can move millions to love
and who with a simple word
can restore our sense of self-worth?

Where are the big men, my friend,
who have nowhere to lay their own head
nor would they want to
while millions have no bed
to call their own?

And where am I, my friend,
and what is my part
in these things?

Who will show me the way
in which I should go
or should I merely say
good night and good luck
and hope for the best…?

© Bryan Owen 2006