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there have long been absurd books like this.
there has long been a demographic that consumes them.
previously, this segment would have been understood as extreme conservative, reactionary religious groups----far-right protestant evangelicals, products of any one of many waves of far right protestant evangelism that has swept across parts of the states....from aimee semple mcpherson to robertson to anglo-israelites to the backwash from the 1970s mobilizations----there are many books about this history, many analysis of how when and why this religious movement began to become politicized, etc.
what has changed is that now elements of their discourse shape a singificant aspect of the frame of reference within which what passes for american politics operates.
it is interesting--the political organization of this type of churches under the aegis of the christian coalition and other such is not identical with the churches themselves that are part of his organization--the ideologies of the churches (not to mention the belief systems of memebrs) are not identical to their political correlates. there is no need for the political right to extend its efforts that far into the grass roots level--it is easier and cheaper to integrate these churches into a kind of political relay system--and the christian coalition (among others) has been very creative in working out how to develop and maintain such a system. you got to hand it to them, not matter how vile their politics.
you can see from the quotes at the outset of this thread one or two ways in which the positions (evangelical protestant churches/right politics) map onto each other: the notion of an absolute seperation between the Correct views of these churches and everyone else maps onto the tendency of the right apparatus to draw clear lines whenever possible between itself and the rest of the world--the refusal to compromise (which in political terms is endelssly projected onto those who oppose right politics)--the assumption that god speaks to evangelicals and evangelicals alone maps onto the moralizing discourse of right politics in general--on and on---the rhetoric of spiritual warfare dear to evanglicals these days, the idea that "we" are entering "the end times" and so are "forced" to realign around the notions of "good vs. evil" (which of course rightwing evangelicals obviously get to define because god talks to them and only to them).
at the same time, it is obviously possible to oppose the politics without really caring what the individual envangelicals or their churches believe or do not believe. because the politics of these churches as churches and the image of their politics that have been worked into rightwing politics, to right media etc., are not identical. i will type this in big letters so even alansmitheee will understand it: THEY ARE NOT IDENTICAL.
i dont know what sense it makes for far right protestant evangelicals to imagine themselves, and their particular belief systems, to be explicitly under attack at every turn--maybe vanity drives this? it is flattering to think your personal beleifs are that significant, isnt it? ask any aging trotskyist about this kind of thing, if you do not fear contamination by doing it.
what is frightening not a little, and what you see for some reason surfacing through the fog and ooze of conservative ideology is an increasingly explicit claim that there is an absolute morality and that evanglical protestants know what that absolute morality is. both elements of this are simply insane internally--a really bad consequence of hamfisted "literal" readings of a complex heterodox text like the bible---and more than dangerous politically in that, combined with the other elements noted above, it is a recipe for a politics that combines brutal oppression with sanctimonious back-patting. it seems to me then that the far right should be grateful for the rest of us who work to keep them far far from actual power--they know not what disaster they would visit upon the rest of us were they to actually get uncontested power.
the logic of this kind of claim--combined with the apparent fact that this absolute morality is rooted in some type of illumination and so is not amenable to argument, to contestation, to friction---is of the worst kind of totalitarian intolerance. but this problems comes not from the churches themselves, and not from the believers themselves--but from the ways in which their worldviews are being and have been incorporated politically. it is the political stuff that seems to me worth opposing. i personally could not care less what evangelical christians as human beings choose to believe. which would i suppose make me evil.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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