Firing the First Shot in the Battle of Armageddon?
Internet, forgive me. I selfishly abandoned you in your time of need. That whole Christian militia thing happened and I was off the grid. What can I do to make it up to you? Five course meal of rascally puppy videos? Adorable MP3 of The Chipmunks doing “Obsession” by Animotion? Deep tissue massage with childhood candids of serial killers? Soothing slideshow of Top Ten Camera Angles from Which We All Look Fattest?
I’ve been out there pounding the pavement to publicize my book, Qing A’s, guest blogging, and reading aloud (here’s a video in case you want to see what that’s like). Idle thought time once dedicated to slanting truths has been devoted to brand new dilemmas: How can I transmit a consistent message without using the same words over and over? Should I care that people are making fun of the way I talk? When a woman emails to let me know I make her want to puke, how do I resist the temptation to write something nasty about people who take time to internet-harass strangers? (For this last dilemma, I shrug it off with wisdom my mother dispensed in 1989 when I complained that my drama teacher was a sadistic tyrant: Most likely she’s an unhappy person.)
An interesting item on The Huffington Post has me back on the beat. Yesterday Frank Schaeffer, author, former Religious Rightie, son of Francis Schaeffer (the theologian many people credit with drawing evangelical Christians into the political arena) blogged to assert a connection between mainstream evangelical Christianity and Hutaree Christian militia group in Michigan, who are accused of plotting to kill cops and lead an antigovernment uprising in an effort to expedite the end of days. His piece is called “The Evangelical ‘Mainstream’ Insanity Behind the Michigan ‘End Times’ Militia.”
Hell hath no fury like a believer scorned, I think the saying goes. I’ve certainly met my fair share of former evangelicals angry at the church for wasting their time and shielding them from the truth, so the vitriol of Schaeffer’s piece isn’t all that surprising. And one of the many things I’ve learned in the last month of book promotion is that it’s tempting to sell a book the way one scares off a cougar in the wild–make a racket and seem bigger than you actually are.
Presenting himself as a man who “knows them well” despite having publicly left their ranks in the 1980s, Schaeffer argues evangelicals gobble up Rapture-fantasy Left Behind novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins because they “provide the ultimate revenge fantasy for the culturally left behind against the “elite.” They do theologically what Sarah Palin does politically: divide the world and America into ‘Them’ and ‘Us.’” The popularity of these narratives suggest to Schaeffer that mainstream evangelicals “hate America (as it is)” and are eager to get the whole premillenial dispensation thing on the road. He argues that the Hutaree militia were just getting ready to act on impulses most evangelicals share.
I object, but I am with Schaeffer on this: many evangelical and conservative leaders have profited from selling followers on their own victimhood, rising to power on promises to effect change on social issues they don’t touch while instituting financial policies that keep their constituency battered, primed to keep buying that victim line, which all perpetuates a feeling among conservative evangelical Christians that they’re disenfranchised even when they hold power.
Here’s the objection: it’s a giant mistake to suggest that evangelicals are divesting in hopes for this life. That fat-slice demographic is also one of the most charitable in the country and the most likely to volunteer, they’re giving birth and adopting, they’re stubbornly involved in mortal-world politics, and their ranks includes both die-hard creationists and leaders who signed onto the Global Climate Change Initiative. The picture is messier than Schaeffer makes it.
But my real bone to pick juts out of Schaeffer’s conclusion:
The truth is that the “crazies” in Michigan are just acting on what millions of evangelicals say they believe and I don’t only mean about the so called End Times. I also mean that these days the Tea Party movement is spouting a rhetoric of doom and extremism that holds that the American government and even the nation is no longer legitimate. Add in the theology and you have a self-fulfilling “prophecy” of Armageddon.
Not so fast, Frank. It’s dead wrong to use “evangelicals” and “Tea Party movement” interchangeably, let alone to infer that one rabid group of murderous Christians in Michigan represents the world of evangelical Christians at large. Check out what Richard Cizik, former chair of the National Association of Evangelicals said on this issue:
As far as I can tell [the tea party movement] has a politics that’s irreligious. I can’t see how some of my fellow conservatives identify with it. The younger Evangelicals who I interact with are largely turned off by the tea party movement — by the incivility, the name-calling, the pathos of politics.
That Schaeffer dropped out of the movement as the power of the Moral Majority was about to crest makes his take on the zeitgeist of the evangelical life feel slightly trapped in the amber of that feathered-hair moment. Schaeffer may be able to speak to the dominant, dominionist thinking among evangelicals in the 1980’s, but the leaders of that era are dead, dying, or marginalized, progressively eclipsed by leaders in the emerging church, who make the fundamentalist evangelicals pretty nervous indeed.
And look–if the problem, as Schaeffer would have it, and okay, as I’d have it too, is radical insularity, the US V. THEM attitude in conservative communities that leads people to swallow the death panel/birther bullshit (which will hopefully inspire only relieved, weary laughter in a few years’ time), if anxiety about division in this country is the problem, how about let’s not make it worse by implicating all evangelical Christians in the crimes of a lunatic few?
Gallup says about 30% of Americans are biblical literalists, or, as Bill Maher would have it, believers in a talking snake. Are we going to rescind their right to vote? Steal their Bibles? Shut down their churches? Quarantine their towns? Of course not. And any attitude that could be construed as a desire to do so (read: generalizing, mocking, levying the idiotic “they hate America” accusation) only serves to convince people Sarah Palin has a point.
Look, Part Two: a neighbor of one of the Hutaree members told The New York Times, “In Michigan, I don’t think it’s that big of a deal to be in a militia.” So maybe the problem isn’t evangelical Christianity after all. Maybe we should be more concerned about the bitter clinging that results from economic apocalypse in the Mitten State.
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[...] Firing the First Shot in the Battle of Armageddon? – Gina Welch … [...]
Okay, so let me get this straight– mocking a bunch of insane idiots (and bible literalism is both insane and idiotic, let’s not quibble) is problematic because it feeds those selfsame insane idiots’ paranoid delusions of liberal persecution, thereby ratcheting up their violent rhetoric? Fuck that. It is on them to shape up their act, and I see no need to exercise restraint in calling out their hypocrisy and willful ignorance. Tacitly allowing their idiocy to stand unchallenged is an affront to reason and justice. Self-censoring to avoid upsetting barbarians is cowardly, and only encourages their hateful, anti-social behavior. We are supposed to kowtow to their groundless fears of religious oppression even as they abuse their power to actively oppress those who fail to meet their preposterous and fictitious ‘moral standards’, is that what you’re saying? Our nation faces existential threats that threaten to destroy and enslave us and you suggest making room for their bigotry, a show of respect for a group that considers such ridiculous non-issues as abortion and gay marriage to be the most vital issues of the day. It’s preposterous.
Refraining from calling out bad behavior is everything that is wrong with the media today. Does mockery and derision and righteous anger at injustice serve to consolidate power among the insane and dangerous? Absolutely. But it also creates a division that moderate Americans will not find appealing, it breaks up the GOP consensus, and makes those who follow Fox News appear foolish and stupid. And it is right. It is fair. It is honest and true. And that should be reason enough.
Hi Uriah–hang on, I fear you’ve missed my point: I’m saying that manipulating an isolated case of a single group so that it appears to infer broad conclusions about a relatively diverse population of evangelical Christians is dishonest, dangerous, and counterproductive, and feeds into existing paranoia rampant in that group that the secular world is the enemy.
To my mind, this generalizing is an obstacle to conversation with the GIANT number of evangelical Christians in this country, which is the only way to circumvent the manipulations of Fox News et al.
There’s a big difference between mocking someone and reporting the truth of their behavior. One tactic perpetuates the notion of “sides” to defend irrespective of reason, making the people who feel “attacked” by association shut out the sound of your voice; the other implies objectivity that speaks to everyone.
As far as what “is wrong with the media today,” I don’t agree that “refraining from calling out bad behavior” is the worst of it. The main problem, as I see it, is that news goes toe to toe with all other entertainment, so the exigencies of reporting the truth get backseated to keeping the viewer on your channel. Meaning, if it ain’t entertaining, if it doesn’t plug neatly into an existing narrative, it doesn’t get reported.
In response to another comment. See in context »How diverse are they, really? Of those that vote, what % would vote in favor of secular government? Certainly the degree of radicalization is different, but how exactly are their beliefs so different? You can have black cats and white cats and spotted cats and striped cats with a thousand unique personalities, they’re all still cats. How many evangelicals have any interest in objectivity or any of the other trappings of secular thinking? On an individual basis, you will find most people most places are very nice, and if you work at it, you may be able to sway them to moderate their views. Yet they will still vote along social group lines. The idea that we can effectively combat Fox News by being nice is ridiculous. Their radicalization as a social group has been a long time coming, and will not be swayed by holding hands and making peace offerings for them to refuse time after time.
Besides which, it’s just not good politics. The only thing threatening Democrats’ control of Congress is a huge wave of disillusioned progressives choosing not to vote for a party too busy shamefully sucking corporate cock to bother enacting their own supposed agenda and too cowardly to propose meaningful change. The appearance of sweeping radicalization on the part of both evangelicals and libertarian militia nuts serves to push forward the Tea Party agenda, true, but it is an agenda that cannot win against strong progressive voices in liberal states and the white house, though it can win against weak, blue dog candidates (as we saw in Massachusetts), putting pressure on the democrats to be both more progressive and more assertive. That assertiveness is critical to swaying the masses through building a meaningful narrative. Polemics are utterly necessary to the creation of narrative, as they form the borders of ‘mainstream’ thought. The right wing has a near-monopoly on polemicists, and it has done us terrible harm. We have no need to lie as they do to create a narrative– simply telling the truth is narrative enough. Nasty words have definitions just the same as any other– if we are being honest, we shouldn’t fear using them.
If, on the other hand, progressives continue to respectfully acknowledge and thereby legitimate the lies and shallow thinking of the right wing, we cede the conversation to them, we allow them to determine the terms of the negotiation, when no compromise should be made, when they are blocking even the most modest and half-hearted attempts at making necessary changes to protect the republic. They are an existential threat to our nation, and need to be neutralized. Obviously we can’t actively oppress them or we’re no better than they are– our only other option is to actively oppose them, to mock them and shame them and make it clear that they stand not just in the way of growth and progress, but actively stump for the destruction of the American way of life. Their economic policies will impoverish millions, their social policies will oppress millions, and their foreign policy will kill millions. This is not hyperbole, it is a cold fact.
We owe them nothing. You talk about feeding the notion that we are their enemy. It doesn’t need feeding! We ARE their enemies, if only because they have made it so! We can sit around pretending otherwise if you like, but it doesn’t change the fact that they sit there lapping up hate speech day by day as we do nothing to stop them. They hate us for our freedoms, and they want to see us punished and humiliated. How do you not see that? That is the message of Fox News, it’s all over the place. They have declared war on us, and we can’t even be bothered to point out their faults? They already feel attacked. They are already not listening to reason, already attacking the very idea of reason. You claim that objectivity speaks to everyone, but it is hardly the loudest voice for most people. People respond to strength and clarity, to narratives that they can easily understand, to repetition and ubiquity. Recognizing that, right-wing leaders amplify their lies daily, and the left wing, concerned about ever influencing anyone through any measure but pure objective reason, withers on the vine as our leaders rob the treasury despite clear and objective superiority of reason and a people hungry for change. I mean, a good looking liar tells us what we want to hear and we are so hungry that we’ll drop everything to work to put him in office. Strength, clarity, accessibility, repetition. There is nothing wrong with rallying the troops, so to speak. There is nothing wrong with telling the truth with strength and commitment of conscience. It is more entertaining, it gets more access. It speaks to more people, and if you keep your facts straight you will win objective minds as well. Yet few in the left seem to grasp this simple fact.
Should we be concerned about this division breaking up the union? Evangelicals are highly concentrated geographically, after all. Except that evangelicals rely on educated, secular America to provide money that their predictably weak economies cannot provide on their own. If they attempted self governance the lack of federal money would bleed them dry in a matter of a few short years, even assuming the federal government would allow it, and change would come to the hicks, too. We would be better off without them, in any case.
In response to another comment. See in context »Responding to a critique of generalization with a stream of generalizations is just brilliant. That’s sure to win Gina over.
In response to another comment. See in context »Oh, and projecting the views of eight members of a class onto all ~100,000,000 members of the class is pretty much a definiton of “hyperbole”.
In response to another comment. See in context »I agree, the generalizing and other-ing by both secularists and Christians is an impediment to the conversation. It’s disheartening, but not surprising, that almost all of the prevailing dialogue (if it can be called that) about religion starts with the premise that we can lump together these huge arrays of people with varying outlooks as “Theists” or “SPs.” Even more narrow groups like “Evangelical Christians” are suspiciously broad.
Ms. Welch, I haven’t read your book yet, but I did watch your talk on Fora.tv. It occurred to me that you may have written a kind of bizarro “Salvation on Sand Mountain.” Dennis Covington starts with a non-judgmental, ethnographic approach and in the end becomes very critical of his subject over a political difference (Basically, he thinks women should be allowed to wear pants). You seem to have gone in the opposite direction in the course of your research and writing.
In response to another comment. See in context »“Are we going to rescind their right to vote? Steal their Bibles? Shut down their churches? Quarantine their towns?”
If an Evangelical government were in charge, what would they do to the atheists? (Replace bibles with biology textbooks and churches with labs, as necessary.)
As you can see I have my “cowboy/survivalist” hat in the facebook pic, so you just “know” where I’m coming from. (Actually I sunburn easily.) Seriously, I had no idea that I was insane, idiotic, and paranoid.
. Biblical literalist* that I am, I’m still seeing some reactivity and emotion in your post? I sincerely regret it if someone like me treated you with a lack of respect or gentleness. I think we all appreciate better, whether we deserve it or not. (*well, how about a reasonably sophisticated epistemology and hermeneutic that falls on that end of the spectrum, anyway.)
Uriah, I’m guessing you’re actually a much more civil, friendly sort of person around your friends than I might guess reading your post, and I’m not going to be easily swayed from that premise
Hi Gina,
I just ordered your book and look forward to reading it. I am an Evangelical Christian (or maybe worse, Charismatic Evangelical) fairly educated in theology and philosophy, BA, MDiv, ThM, PhD (abd – all but dissertation). I have been dismayed by the assaults on the Church as if it is the root of all evils. Without a doubt many evils have been done in the name of Christ and his Church. But I have a question I would like to have answered and hopefully in a civil manner. The world and history is full of many good things which were founded by and had its beginning in the Church such as: the hospital and the university. Also, the early church brought great dignity to women by emphasis on marital fidelity, an almost unheard of concept in ancient Rome. Women were elevated from breeding sows (or mistresses) to a person to be cherished and loved. And, frankly, it is not the Sisters of the Atheists that are helping the extreme poor in India it is the Catholic Sisters of Mercy. I could go on for some time. My question is not what evils has the Church committed. What heritage (please be specific) do the Atheists have? I thank you for civil responses as I am really interested in being informed.
bobvcc,
I’m not atheist but I think I can offer some insight here.
I think it is a mistake to treat atheists as some kind of group or collective. There is no Sisters of the Atheists. There is no Atheist denomination. They do not all have some kind of shared common heritage. Atheism is simply a disbelief in the existence of deity.
So I am not really sure what you mean by “heritage”. Does Carl Sagan count?
Plenty of atheists were raised Christian. Does that mean they have a Christian heritage? Or does that go away when they stop believing in God?
Does heritage need to be religious? Isn’t “American” a valid part of one’s heritage?
And are you really suggesting that no atheists have every helped the extreme poor in India? Also, I find it interesting that you mention a Catholic group. How are the Charismatic Evangelical Sisters of Mercy doing?
In response to another comment. See in context »Thanks for the comments Jamesvalleroy. Obviously, I was unclear as to my use of heritage. I was more asking what lasting contribution atheist have made to rid the world of social ills… other than the critique of theists and freeing people from the bondage of belief in God. Nietzsche wrote that once the belief in God was destroyed the ‘ubermensch’ (supermen) would (or could) rise up with a ‘this worldly’ instead of ‘other worldly’ system of morals and bring about a new world of purpose and fulfillment. In other words his ‘death of God’ would bring about a newness within the world that would bring great good. Where are the ubermensch? Where is the great good of the atheists? Is it Communism? Where is the organization or movement that began from someone’s sincere non-belief in God that is a lasting beacon to the value and benefit of atheism. Or are they merely disjointed individuals with the enviable position of criticizing theists without any other expectation? Or are they still in the first phase of the program of killing God? As to the last comment of where are the Evangelical Charismatic Sisters of Mercy well there is a hospital in Calcutta, Calcutta Mercy Hospital, that treat the poor (and also the nuns of the Sisters of Mercy) that was founded and is funded by the Assemblies of God. I could name hundreds more (with a little research).
In response to another comment. See in context »