[Dialogue] Bush's Fondness For Fundamentalism Is Courting Disaster At Home and Abroad

[george]

Good thought.  Politics majors in inconsistency and complexity, and I  
don't propose to hold any expertise in analyzing media reports,  
effects, etc.  I briefly saw the Bush's when I worked in Dallas in  
the late 80's and early 90's.  Laura worked on a committee with a  
group of women from Highland Park UMC at a community center where I  
consulted and G.W. used to come by from time to time and responded to  
a request of mine to help a preacher's son who was headed to the  
majors out of college but blew out his knee.  He found him a job in a  
farm club.  From that little bit of contact, I suspect that one day  
Bush may appear less a fundamentalist than we think.  Some of the  
writers have reported that when he saw the large number of  
discontented voters in the fundy group, he began talking about them  
being an untapped goldmine and after that began shaping his personnae  
and running in that direction.  Laura, and in particular Laura's mom  
are old fashioned Methodists from Midland and more than one insider  
has suggested that Laura and George do not share the same views on  
abortion and other issues.  He would not be the first politician to  
use religion for his purposes, nor the first to get bitten by doing  
so.  The money given to religious non-profits through his efforts do  
not seem to have had any more effect on poverty and good behavior in  
this country than before.  In fact, our hospitals and community  
health centers are under siege, many at the breaking point, according  
to those who watch these things around Austin.  Because so much of  
this money has been dispensed without requiring plans and marks of  
accomplishment and is reportedly impossible to evaluate, I suspect  
when regime changes there will be another opportunity for the legal  
system to profit greatly.

–george holcombe

On Jul 31, 2006, at 9:19 PM, Bill Schlesinger wrote:

> The argument here does not hold full internal consistency.  Bryan’s  
> work as a populist politician was in favor of correcting social  
> ills caused by economic disparities – he opposed ‘social Darwinism’  
> that lay behind the ‘hands off the economy’ of the Republican Party  
> of the day.   Mellon and others argued that economic ‘survival of  
> the fittest’ was the best medicine for the economy.  Bryan – as  
> other Democrats – saw the need for community action in response to  
> the collapse of consumer demand and resources.
>
>
>
> Bush in fact has promoted various social interventions, and is a  
> major champion of the Community Health Center movement.  He regards  
> the involvement of religious entities in ‘charitable work’  
> worthwhile and supports funding those efforts with federal  
> dollars.  His actions in Israel and Iraq are more closely linked to  
> oil and other ‘rational’ values than we admit.
>
>
>
> I am extremely critical of many of the president’s initiatives and  
> decisions, including the decision on stem cell research, the  
> invasion of Iraq, and the refusal to deal comprehensively with  
> health care in this country.  But I think it weakens critique to  
> blame a superstitious and (literally) fantastic fundamentalism for  
> his actions and those of his supporters.  The author asks, “Is  
> there a connection between a religiously motivated mistrust of  
> science, glaring social injustice, and a war in the Middle East?”   
> The Catholic Church is no friend to the latter two, but shares a  
> sense of the question of the first.  Science says what we can do.   
> Religious values argue for what we should do – including caring for  
> the poor and weak, seeking peace, and acknowledging the  
> complexities of the human condition.
>
>
>
> Bill Schlesinger
> Project Vida
> 3607 Rivera Ave
> El Paso, TX 79905
> (915) 533-7057 x 207
> (915) 490-6148 mobile
> (915) 533-7158 fax
> pvida at sbcglobal.net
>
>
>
> From the very beginning, the conflict between religion and modern  
> science was couched in extreme, even apocalyptic rhetoric. Thomas  
> H. Huxley, who popularized the Origin of Species, insisted that  
> people had to choose between faith and science; there could be no  
> compromise: "One or the other would have to succumb after a  
> struggle of unknown duration." In response, conservative Christians  
> launched a crusade against Darwinism. After the first world war,  
> the Democratic politician William Jennings Bryan claimed that there  
> was a direct link between evolutionary theory and German  
> militarism: the notion that only the strong could or should survive  
> had "laid the foundation for the bloodiest war in history. The same  
> science that manufactured poisoned gases to suffocate soldiers is  
> preaching that man has a brutal ancestry."
>
> The struggle continues - nowhere more so than among the Christian  
> right in the US, who still regard the evolutionary hypothesis as  
> surrounded by a murderous nimbus of evil. In 1925, they tried to  
> ban the teaching of evolution in public schools and developed  
> creation science, based on a literal reading of the first chapter  
> of Genesis. More recently, they have tried to introduce into the  
> school curriculum the teaching of intelligent design (ID), which  
> claims that the irreducible complexity of micro-organisms could not  
> have evolved naturally but must be the result of a single creative  
> act. The issue splits the nation down the middle: fundamentalists  
> want to win a battle for God; liberals and secularists are fighting  
> for truth and rationality.
>
> The same passions are likely to be aroused by President Bush's  
> decision last week to veto the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act,  
> which would have loosened the restrictions on federal funding for  
> stem cell research. "This bill would support the taking of innocent  
> human life in the hope of finding medical benefits for others,"  
> Bush said. "It crosses a moral boundary that our decent society  
> needs to respect."
>
> His opponents point out that while the president zealously  
> champions the rights of the unborn, he is less concerned about the  
> plight of existing American children. The US infant mortality rate  
> is only the 42nd best in the world; the average baby has a better  
> chance of surviving in Havana or Beijing; infant mortality rates  
> are unacceptably high among those who cannot afford adequate  
> healthcare, especially in the African-American community. And,  
> finally, at the same time as Bush decided to veto the stem cell  
> bill, Israeli bombs were taking the lives of hundreds of innocent  
> Lebanese civilians, many of them children, with the tacit approval  
> of the US.
>
> Is there a connection between a religiously motivated mistrust of  
> science, glaring social injustice, and a war in the Middle East?  
> Bush and his administration espouse many of the ideals of the  
> Christian right and rely on its support. American fundamentalists  
> are convinced that the second coming of Christ is at hand; they  
> have developed an end-time scenario of genocidal battles based on a  
> literal reading of Revelation that is absolutely central to their  
> theology. Christ cannot return, however, unless, in fulfilment of  
> biblical prophecy, the Jews are in possession of the Holy Land.  
> Before the End, the faithful will be "raptured" or snatched up into  
> the air in order to avoid the Tribulation. Antichrist will massacre  
> Jews who are not baptized; but Christ will defeat the mysterious  
> "enemy from the north," and establish a millennium of peace.
>
> This grim eschatology, developed in the late 19th century, was in  
> part a reaction to the "social gospel" of the more liberal  
> Christians, who believed that human beings were naturally evolving  
> towards perfection and could build the New Jerusalem here on earth  
> by fighting social injustice. The fundamentalists, however,  
> believed that God was so angry with the faithless world that he  
> could save it only by initiating a devastating catastrophe; they  
> would see the terrible battles of the first world war, which showed  
> that science could be used to lethal effect in the new military  
> technology, as the beginning of the End.
>
> The fundamentalists' rejection of science is deeply linked to their  
> apocalyptic vision. Even the relatively sober ID theorists segue  
> easily into Rapture-speak. "Great shakings and darkness are  
> descending on Planet Earth," says the ID philosopher Paul Nelson,  
> "but they will be overshadowed by even more amazing displays of  
> God's power and light. Ever the long-term strategist, YHVH is  
> raising up a mighty army of cutting-edge Jewish End-time warriors."  
> They all condemn the attempt to reform social ills. When applied  
> socially, evolutionary theory "leads straight to all the woes of  
> modern life," says the leading ID ideologue Philip Johnson:  
> homosexuality, state-backed healthcare, divorce, single-parenthood,  
> socialism, and abortion. All this, of course, is highly agreeable  
> to the Bush administration, which is itself selectively leery of  
> science. It has, for example, persistently ignored scientists'  
> warnings about global warming. Why bother to implement the Kyoto  
> treaty if the world is about to end? Indeed, some fundamentalists  
> see environmental damage as a positive development, because it will  
> hasten the apocalypse.
>
> This nihilistic religiosity is based on a perversion of the texts.  
> The first chapter of Genesis was never intended as a literal  
> account of the origins of life; it is a myth, a timeless story  
> about the sanctity of the world and everything in it. Revelation  
> was not a detailed program for the End time; it is written in an  
> apocalyptic genre that has quite a different dynamic. When they  
> described the Jews' return to their homeland, the Hebrew prophets  
> were predicting the end of the Babylonian exile in the sixth  
> century BC - not the second coming of Christ. The prophets did  
> preach a stern message of social justice, however, and like all the  
> major world faiths, Christianity sees charity and loving-kindness  
> as the cardinal virtues. Fundamentalism nearly always distorts the  
> tradition it is trying to defend.
>
> Whatever Bush's personal beliefs, the ideology of the Christian  
> right is both familiar and congenial to him. This strange amalgam  
> of ideas can perhaps throw light on the behaviour of a president,  
> who, it is said, believes that God chose him to lead the world to  
> Rapture, who has little interest in social reform, and whose  
> selective concern for life issues has now inspired him to veto  
> important scientific research. It explains his unconditional and  
> uncritical support for Israel, his willingness to use "Jewish End- 
> time warriors" to fulfil a vision of his own - arguably against  
> Israel's best interests - and to see Syria and Iran (who seem to be  
> replacing Saddam as the "enemy of the north") as entirely  
> responsible for the unfolding tragedy.
>
> Fundamentalists do not want a humanly constructed peace; many,  
> indeed, regard the UN as the abode of the Antichrist. The  
> willingness of the US to turn a blind eye to the suffering of  
> innocent people in Lebanon will certainly fuel the rage of the  
> extremists and lead to further acts of terror. We can only hope  
> that it does not take us all the way to Armageddon.
>
> Karen Armstrong is the author of "The Battle for God: A History of  
> Fundamentalism." Email to: comment at guardian.co.uk.
>
> © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
>
> ###
>
>
>
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