Recently, in writing about the current situation in the Middle East (which may change at least slightly for the better, with the formation of a new Israeli government), I touched upon my unhappy past as a fundamentalist Christian. I did so to use it as a jumping-off point into a broader discussion about religious extremism, by both Israelis and Palestinians and its sad contribution to the escalating violence in the Holy Land. On further reflection, specifically with regard to religious extremism, the escalating partisan divide within our own country, and the extreme tactics being deployed in the process, merit my returning to what is personally a very sore subject for me.
I do so not purely for autobiographical purposes, but to comment on the contribution that fundamentalist Christianity has made both to the Middle East crisis and the crisis affecting democracy within our nation. It should be painfully obvious by now that here in the U.S., hitherto the platinum standard for the world for the functioning of a free and open society, democracy is no longer a given. For all of us, it's no longer a question of whether we will continue in the future to call ourselves a democracy. It's increasingly a question of whether we can call ourselves a democracy right now.
One way to understand democracy is that it is a contract among the citizens who live under the protection of its laws, by which the citizens agree to openly debate their concerns and proposed solutions for the nation's needs, and then submit to a formal neutral process--in our case, the election of public officials to act on the outcomes of those debates in the form of periodic elections conducted in an open and fair process.
But that contract is slowly accruing a lot of "fine print" that effectively defeats the fundamental goal of democracy--to give every citizen an equal share of power and an equal say in the direction of the nation. And, however partisan it may be for me to say this, it is painfully clear that the authors of that "fine print" are Republicans in state houses and governor's mansions all across the country. By now, whether in print or on electronic media, you have seen accounts of how GOP-controlled states are changing election laws to not merely protect, but to advance the interests of white nationalists in keeping people of color out of the corridors of power. But it goes much further than that.
These states are making it legal for anyone to openly carry firearms, regardless of their background or makeup, run over protesters if feeling "endangered," and enter a private business without needing to take any pandemic-related precautions. For a detailed and (as of the moment) comprehensive list of these sledgehammer blows to your constitutional rights, take a look here.
These disgusting efforts to undermine your freedom and mine share many things in common, but perhaps the worst of these commonalities is a complete untethered connection to the reality you, me, and the rest of us actually wake up to every day. Voting restrictions in the absence of voter fraud. The denial of protection for peaceful protestors, based on an entirely personal perception of being menaced. The threat of increased gun violence, making a mockery of any alleged conservative concern for the "thin blue line," as if their response to the Jan. 6 insurrection wasn't enough of a mockery.
And, as we have all seen over the past twelve months, an utter disregard for the realities of medical science. Republicans at every level of government, in every corner of the American landscape, have treated the reality of a deadly airborne virus as something that can be stopped by their personal feelings about science and the alleged liberal "bias" of those who study it. They have willfully ignored the fact that viruses have no politics, no agenda, no allies or adversaries. They just have the same will to live that all living beings have. And, in the case of viruses like the COVID-19 virus, its will to live is stronger than your body's ability to fight it. The result? Hundreds of thousands of Americans dead. Millions more with their health compromised. And all of us living with a lessening sense of our ability to face the reality--the sheer raw fact--of a common enemy that doesn't care how you feel about it.
On a personal basis, the rejection of medical science by so many allegedly adult, educated fellow country-people has come close to breaking my faith in the ability of Americans not merely to agree on politics, but to even agree on facts. Without the latter, political agreements, and even a political system in which everyone has a stake, simply are not possible.
And yet, I shouldn't be so terribly surprised.
Why?
Because I spent the first twelve years of my adult life in the belly of the beast that has swallowed the Republican Party whole, and is now threatening to do the same to the United States. Specifically, evangelical Christianity. I know how it operates. I understand the nature of its appeal. And I understand why the political power it has accumulated over the past six decades must be destroyed. And, to begin my explanation, I must indulge in a tiny bit of what I promised earlier I wouldn't touch: autobiography.
I got involved with evangelical Christianity in the middle of my freshman year at Oberlin College, a school that, although avowedly secular at the time (and now), had its roots in Christian revivalism. I was, for reasons better saved for any memoirs I might publish, at a directionless point of low self-esteem in my life. This, coupled with the narcissism that comes all too naturally with being a baby boomer, made me ripe for a theology that effectively told me that I could be part of a spiritual elect, with a special inside knowledge of the realities of the universe, and all I had to do was put my common sense and tolerance in deep storage, and tell everyone that I'd been "born again."
Sad to say, I was hooked. That's how low my self-esteem was. But, again, it's also how strong my narcissism was. Let's be blunt: it takes a phenomenal amount of narcissism to believe that you've somehow stumbled onto everything you need to know about everything, provided that you accept being force-fed a line of allegedly biblical theology that is often shallow at best and dishonest at worst. After all, finding all that out, as others have done before you, takes what John Houseman used to describe on Smith Barney commercials as good-old-fashioned hard work.
And, after all, isn't it easier just to believe? Especially when you've got all of these supposedly credentialed pastors, TV hosts, and whatever else they may be telling you how special you are? Of course it is. After all, it's not like any of these people would abuse the tax-exempt status to lead you down a dead end in your life while they are using your blind obedience to help pry open the doors to power in Washington, D.C..
Right?
I have to admit that, in my case, it took my twelve years to come to terms with the fact that being a born-again Christian was just denying me the ability that everyone should have: to chart my own destiny, to learn how I might fit into the world around me and do the hard work of fitting in, by getting outside of myself and into the world around me. As arrogant as it my be for me to say this, in the end, it was my intellectual abilities, the things that brought me to Oberlin in the first place. that saved me from a life of being nothing more than an empty vessel for the craven designs of the evangelical Christian movement and its leadership.
But not everyone's that lucky.
A combination of underfunded educational systems and exporting of livable-wage jobs have left millions of people without a reliable means of support. Without hope for a better life for themselves or their posterity. Without a clue as to how to make their lives better.
What better fodder for a system that offers the keys to the Kingdom of G-d in return for unquestioned belief, plus 10% of your meager financial reasons, than these people?
So it has been over the past four decades that the Grand Old Party, supposedly the party of Lincoln but in fact the party of money, has been gradually taken over by the boomingest business there is in Main Street America, in what we like to call the "heartland"--fundamentalist theology.
Is it any wonder that so many Americans are untethered from the most basic facts necessary for their immediate, personal survival? Doesn't matter. They're covered in Jesus' blood. Just ask them.
Is it, for that matter, any wonder that politics has ceased to be about the art of compromise, because one party is filled with people who believe that they have the answers to everything, and that everyone who disagrees with them is not merely a political enemy, but also a spiritual one? It shouldn't be. This outcome was forecast a long time ago by none other than the later Mr. Conservative himself. Take it from here, Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona.
Evangelical Christianity is the reason--I would go so far as to say the sole reason--that American democracy is at the brink.
Can we walk it back from there? Honestly speaking, I don't know. I wish I could respond with an unqualified "yes." But history is not an encouraging guide. On a macro-level, history is a litany of empires that thought they had what it took not to crumble, before they crumbled.
I will go so far as to say this. It cannot happen, and it will not happen, unless millions of Americans can be deprogrammed. Until they can be weaned from the easy nectar of false theology. Until they can look the harsh realities of contemporary American life--a burning planet, a historically oppressed people, a kleptocratic economy, and other external facts more powerful and dangerous than any internal feelings--right in the eye, and stop pretending that they're part of a spiritual elect that doesn't need to care about anything except the Rapture.
The Rapture, in fact, is why they were so enthusiastic about Trump's pro-Netanyahu policies toward Israel; they saw those policies as speeding up the time when they can be in Heaven and forget about everything else. I can assure you that it is not about their feelings concerning Jews. I regret not saying more about this in my earlier post. I hope that I can successfully make amends here.
The deprogramming needed would, to be successful, have to be a massive undertaking. I don't know if it can be done without tremendous upheaval, and that is putting it as mildly as I can. And the hour is very late. Democracy is hanging in the balance. How much longer can it hang there, before it falls and is replaced by a theocratic autocracy?
I don't have any comforting answers. I hope and pray with all my heart that it is enough to ask the question. If you care about the future of the America you've taken for granted, I hope you will start to ask it as well. And I pray that, together, we will come up with answers that renew our national democratic contract, a contract without elites and built around objective truth.
After all, as Will Durant once said, a great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within.
No comments:
Post a Comment