[Oe List ...] Moyers' speech

[george]

This is a speech worth reading.
–george

September 09, 2005

This article is adapted from Bill Moyer's address this week at Union 
Theological Seminary in New York, where Judith and Bill Moyers received 
the seminary's highest award, the Union Medal, for their contributions 
to faith and reason in America. Bill Moyers is a broadcast journalist 
and former host the PBS program/ NOW With Bill Moyers/. Moyers also 
serves as president of the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy, 
which gives financial support to/ TomPaine.com/./

  *At the Central Baptist Church* in Marshall, Texas, where I was 
baptized in the faith, we believed in a free church in a free state. I 
still do.

  My spiritual forbears did not take kindly to living under theocrats 
who embraced religious liberty for themselves but denied it to 
others.  "Forced worship stinks in God's nostrils," thundered the 
dissenter Roger Williams as he was banished from Massachusetts for 
denying Puritan authority over his conscience.  Baptists there were a 
"pitiful negligible minority" but they were agitators for freedom and 
therefore denounced as "incendiaries of the commonwealth" for holding 
to their belief in that great democracy of faith--the priesthood of all 
believers.  For refusing to pay tribute to the state religion they were 
fined, flogged, and exiled. In l651 the Baptist Obadiah Holmes was 
given 30 stripes with a three-corded whip after he violated the law and 
took forbidden communion with another Baptist in Lynn, Massachusetts. 
His friends offered to pay his fine for his release but he 
refused.  They offered him strong drink to anesthetize the pain of the 
flogging. Again he refused.  It is the love of liberty, he said, "that 
must free the soul."

  Such revolutionary ideas made the new nation with its Constitution and 
Bill of Rights "a haven for the cause of conscience." No longer could 
magistrates order citizens to support churches they did not attend and 
recite creeds that they did not believe.  No longer would "the 
loathsome combination of church and state"--as Thomas Jefferson 
described it--be the settled order. Unlike the Old World that had been 
wracked with religious wars and persecution, the government of 
America  would take no sides in the religious free-for-all that liberty 
would make possible and politics would make inevitable. The First 
Amendment neither inculcates religion nor inoculates against it. 
Americans could be loyal to the Constitution without being hostile to 
God, or they could pay no heed to God without fear of being mugged by 
an official God Squad. It has been a remarkable arrangement that 
guaranteed "soul freedom."

  It is at risk now, and  the fourth observance of the terrorist attacks 
of 9/ll is an appropriate time to think about it.

  Four years ago this week, the poet's prophetic metaphor became real 
again and "the great dark birds of history" plunged into our lives.

  They came in the name of God. They came bent on murder and 
martyrdom.  It was as if they rode to earth on the fierce breath of 
Allah himself, for the sacred scriptures that had nurtured these 
murderous young men are steeped in images of a violent and vengeful God 
who wills life for the faithful and horrific torment for unbelievers.

  Yes,  the Koran speaks of mercy and compassion and calls for ethical 
living.  But such passages are no match for the ferocity of instruction 
found there for waging war for God's sake. The scholar Jack 
Nelson-Pallmeyer carefully traces this trail of holy violence in his 
important book, /Is Religion Killing Us? / [Trinity Press 
International, 2003]. He highlights many of the verses in the Koran 
that the Islamic terrorists could have had in their hearts and on their 
lips four years ago as they moved toward their gruesome rendezvous. As 
I read some of them, close your eyes and recall the scenes of that 
bright September morning which began in the bright sun under a blue 
sky:

      "Those who believe Fight in the cause of Allah, and Those who 
reject
      Faith Fight in the cause of Evil."(4:76)

      "So We sent against them A furious Wind through days of disaster, 
that
      We might Give them a taste of a Penalty of humiliation In this 
Life; but
      The Penalty of the Hereafter will be More Humiliating still: And 
they
      Will find No help." (41:16)

      "Then watch thou For the Day That the sky will Bring forth a kind 
Of
      smoke (or mist) Plainly visible, Enveloping the people: This will 
be
      a Penalty
      Grievous." (44:10-11)

      "Did the people of the towns Feel Secure against the coming Of Our
      Wrath by night While they were asleep?  Or else did they feel
      Secure against its coming in Broad daylight while they Played
      About (carefree)? Did they then feel secure Against the Plan of
      Allah?--But no one can feel Secure from the Plan of Allah,
      except those (Doomed) to ruin." (7:97-99)

  So the holy warriors came--an airborne death cult, their sights on 
God's enemies: regular folks, starting the day's routine.  One minute 
they're pulling off their jackets, shaking Sweet n' Low into their 
coffee, adjusting the height of their chair or a picture of a child or 
sweetheart or spouse in a frame on their desk, booting up their 
computer--and in the next, they are engulfed by a horrendous cataclysm. 
God's will. Poof!

  But it is never only the number of dead by which terrorists measure 
their work. It is also  the number of the living-- the survivors--taken 
hostage to fear. Their mission was to invade our psyche; get inside our 
heads--deprive us of trust, faith, and peace of mind: keep us from ever 
again believing in a safe, just, and peaceful world, and from working 
to bring that world to pass. The writer Terry Tempest Williams has said 
"the human heart is the first home of democracy." Fill that heart with 
fear and people will give up the risks of democracy for the assurances 
of security; fill that heart with fear and you can shake the house to 
its foundations.

  In the days leading up to 9/ll our daughter and husband adopted their 
first baby. On the morning of September 11th our son-in-law passed 
through the shadow of the World Trade Center toward his office a few 
blocks up the street. He arrived as the horrors erupted. He saw the 
flames, the falling bodies, the devastation.  His building was 
evacuated and for long awful moments he couldn't reach his wife, our 
daughter, to say he was okay. Even after they connected it wasn't until 
the next morning that he was able to make it home. Throughout that 
fearful night our daughter was alone with their new baby. Later she 
told us that for weeks thereafter she would lie awake at night, 
wondering where and when it might happen again, going to the computer 
at three in the morning to check out what she could about bioterrorism, 
germ warfare, anthrax and the vulnerability of children. The terrorists 
had violated a mother's deepest space.

  Who was not vulnerable? That morning Judith and I made it to our 
office at Channel Thirteen on West 33rd Street just after the second 
plane struck. Our building was evacuated although the two of us 
remained with other colleagues to do what we could to keep the station 
on the air. The next day it was evacuated again because of a bomb scare 
at the Empire State Building nearby.  We had just ended a live 
broadcast for PBS when security officers swept through and ordered 
everyone out. This time we left.  As we were making our way down the 
stairs I took Judith's arm and was struck by the thought: Is this the 
last time I'll touch her?  Could what we had begun together a half 
century ago end here on this dim, bare staircase? I forced the thought 
from my mind, willed it away, but in the early hours of morning, as I 
sat at the window of our apartment looking out at the sky, the sinister 
intruder crept back.

  Terrorists plant time bombs in our heads, hoping to turn each and 
every imagination into a private hell governed by our fear of them.

  They win only if we let them, only if we become like them: vengeful, 
imperious, intolerant, paranoid. Having lost faith in all else, zealots 
have nothing left but a holy cause to please a warrior God. They win if 
we become holy warriors, too;  if we kill the innocent as they do; 
strike first at those who had not struck us; allow our leaders to use 
the fear of terrorism to make us afraid of the truth; cease to think 
and reason together, allowing others to tell what's in God's mind. Yes, 
we are vulnerable to terrorists, but only a shaken faith in ourselves 
can do us in.

  So over the past four years I have kept reminding myself of not only 
the horror but the humanity that was revealed that day four years ago, 
when through the smoke and fire we glimpsed the heroism, compassion, 
and sacrifice of people who did the best of things in the worst of 
times.  I keep telling myself that this beauty in us is real, that it 
makes life worthwhile and democracy work and that no terrorist can take 
it from us.

  But I am not so sure. As a Christian realist I honor my inner skeptic. 
And as a journalist I always know the other side of the story. The 
historian Edward Gibbon once wrote of historians what could be said of 
journalists. He wrote: "The theologians may indulge the pleasing task 
of describing religion as she descended from Heaven, arrayed in her 
native purity. A more melancholy duty is imposed on the historian 
[read: journalist] He must discover the inevitable mixture of error and 
corruption which she contracted in a long residence upon earth, among a 
weak and degenerate race of beings."

  The other side of the story:

  Muslims have no monopoly on holy violence. As Jack  Nelson-Pallmayer 
points out, God's violence in the sacred texts of both faiths reflect a 
deep and troubling pathology "so pervasive, vindictive, and 
destructive" that it contradicts and subverts the collective weight of 
other passages that exhort ethical behavior or testify to a loving God.

  For days now we have watched those heart-breaking scenes on the Gulf 
Coast: the steaming, stinking, sweltering wreckage of cities and 
suburbs; the fleeing refugees; the floating corpses, hungry babies, and 
old people huddled together in death, the dogs gnawing at their feet; 
stranded children standing in water reeking of feces and garbage; 
families scattered; a mother holding her small child and an empty water 
jug, pleading for someone to fill it; a wife, pushing the body of her 
dead husband on a wooden plank down a flooded street; desperate people 
struggling desperately to survive.

  Now transport those current scenes from our newspapers and television 
back to the first Book of the Bible--the Book of Genesis. They bring to 
life what we rarely imagine so graphically when we read of the great 
flood that devastated the known world. If you read the Bible as 
literally true, as fundamentalists do, this flood was ordered by 
God.  "And God said to Noah, 'I have determined to make an end of all 
flesh... behold, I will destroy them with the earth."  (6:5-l3).  "I 
will bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh in 
which is the breath of life from under heaven; everything that is on 
the earth shall die." (6:l7-l9) Noah and his family are the only humans 
spared--they were,  after all,  God's chosen.  But for everyone else: 
"... the waters prevailed so mightily...  that all the high 
mountains....were covered....And all flesh died that moved upon the 
earth, birds, cattle, beasts...and every man; everything on the dry 
land in whose nostrils was the breath of life, died...." (7:17-23).

  The flood is merely Act One. Read on: This God first "hardens the 
heart of Pharaoh"  to make sure the Egyptian ruler will not be moved by 
the plea of Moses to let his people go. Then because Pharaoh's heart is 
hardened, God turns the Nile into blood so people cannot  drink its 
water and will suffer from thirst. Not satisfied with the results, 
God  sends swarms of locusts and flies to torture them;  rains hail and 
fire and thunder on them destroys the trees and plants of the field 
until nothing green remains; orders every first-born child to be 
slaughtered, from the first-born of Pharaoh right on down to "the 
first-born of the maidservant behind the mill." An 
equal-murderous  God, you might say. The massacre continues until 
"there is not a house where one was not dead."  While the Egyptian 
families mourn their dead, God orders Moses to loot from their houses 
all their gold and silver and clothing. Finally, God's thirst for blood 
is satisfied, God pauses to rest--and  boasts: "I have made sport of 
the Egyptians."

  Violence: the sport of God. God, the progenitor of shock and awe.

  And that's just Act II. As the story unfolds women and children are 
hacked to death on God's order; unborn infants are ripped from their 
mother's wombs; cities are leveled--their women killed if they have had 
sex, the virgins taken at God's command for the pleasure of his holy 
warriors.  When his holy warriors spare the lives of 50,000 captives 
God is furious and sends Moses back to rebuke them and tell them to 
finish the job. One tribe after another falls to God-ordered genocide: 
the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the 
Perizzites, the Jebusites--names so ancient they have disappeared into 
the mists as fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters, grandparents 
and grandchildren, infants in arms, shepherds, threshers, carpenters, 
merchants,  housewives--living human beings, flesh and blood: "And when 
the Lord your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them; then you 
must utterly destroy them; you shall make no covenant with them, and 
show no mercy to them...(and) your eyes shall not pity them."

  So it is written--in the Holy Bible.

  Yes, I know: the early church fathers, trying to cover up the 
blood-soaked trail of God's sport, decreed that anything that disagrees 
with Christian dogma about the perfection of God is to be interpreted 
spiritually. Yes, I know: Edward Gibbon himself acknowledged that the 
literal Biblical sense of God "is repugnant to every principle of faith 
as well as reason" and that we must therefore read the scriptures 
through a veil of allegory. Yes, I know: we can go through the Bible 
and construct a God more pleasing to the better angels of our nature 
(as I have done.) Yes, I know: Christians claim the Old Testament God 
of wrath was supplanted by the Gospel's God of love [See /The God of 
Evil/ , Allan Hawkins, Exlibris.]

  I know these things; all of us know these things.  But we also know 
that the "violence-of-God" tradition remains embedded deep in the DNA 
of monotheistic faith. We also know that fundamentalists the world over 
and at home consider the "sacred texts" to be literally God's word on 
all matters. Inside that logic you cannot read part of the Bible 
allegorically and the rest of it literally; if you believe in the 
virgin birth of Jesus, his crucifixion and resurrection, and the 
depiction of the Great Judgment at the end times  you must also 
believe  that God is sadistic, brutal, vengeful,  callow, cruel and 
savage--that God slaughters.

  Millions believe it.

  Let's go back to 9/11 four years ago. The ruins were still smoldering 
when the reverends Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell went on television 
to proclaim that the terrorist attacks were God's punishment of a 
corrupted America.  They said the government  had adopted the agenda 
"of the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays 
and the lesbians" not to mention the ACLU and  People for the American 
Way (The God of the Bible  apparently holds liberals in the same low 
esteem as Hittites and Gergushites and Jebusites and all the other 
pagans of holy writ.) Just as God had sent the Great Flood to wipe out 
a corrupted world, now--disgusted with a decadent America--"God 
almighty is lifting his protection from us." Critics said such comments 
were deranged.  But millions of Christian fundamentalists and 
conservatives didn't think so. They thought Robertson and Falwell were 
being perfectly consistent with the logic of the Bible as they read it: 
God withdraws favor from sinful nations--the terrorists were meant to 
be God's wake-up call: better get right with God. Not many people at 
the time seemed to notice that Osama bin Laden had also been reading 
his sacred book closely and literally, and had called on Muslims to 
resist what he described as a "fierce Judeo-Christian campaign" against 
Islam, praying to Allah for guidance "to exalt the people who obey Him 
and humiliate those who disobey Him."

  Suddenly we were immersed in the pathology of a "holy war" as defined 
by fundamentalists on both sides. You could see this pathology play out 
in General William Boykin. A professional soldier, General Boykin had 
taken up with a small group called the Faith Force Multiplier whose 
members apply military principles to evangelism with a manifesto 
summoning warriors "to the spiritual warfare for souls." After Boykin 
had led Americans in a battle against a Somalian warlord he announced: 
"I know my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God 
and his God was an idol." Now Boykin was going about evangelical 
revivals preaching that America was in a holy war as "a Christian 
nation" battling Satan and that  America's Muslim adversaries will be 
defeated "only if we come against them in the name of Jesus." For such 
an hour, America surely needed a godly leader. So General Boykin 
explained how it was that the candidate who had lost the election in 
2000 nonetheless wound up in the White House. President Bush, he said, 
"was not elected by a majority of the voters--he was appointed by 
God."  Not surprising, instead of being reprimanded for evangelizing 
while in uniform, General Boykin is now the Deputy Undersecretary of 
Defense for Intelligence. (Just as it isn't surprising that  despite 
his public call for the assassination of a foreign head of state, Pat 
Robertson's Operation Blessing was one of the first groups to receive 
taxpayer funds from the President's Faith-Based Initiative for "relief 
work" on the Gulf Coast.)

  We can't wiggle out of this, people. Alvin Hawkins states it frankly: 
"This is a problem we can't walk away from."    We're talking about a 
powerful religious constituency that claims the right to tell us what's 
on God's mind and to decide the laws of the land according to their 
interpretation of biblical revelation and to enforce those laws on the 
nation as a whole.  For the Bible is not just the foundational text of 
their faith; it has become the foundational text for a political 
movement.

  True, people of faith have always tried to bring their interpretation 
of the Bible to bear on American laws and morals--this very seminary is 
part of that tradition; it's the American way, encouraged and protected 
by the First Amendment.  But what is unique today is that the radical 
religious right has succeeded in taking over one of America's great 
political parties--the country is not yet a theocracy but the 
Republican Party is--and they are driving American politics, using  God 
as a a battering ram on almost every issue: crime and punishment, 
foreign policy, health care, taxation,  energy,  regulation, social 
services and so on.

  What's also unique is the intensity, organization, and anger they have 
brought to the public square. Listen to their preachers, evangelists, 
and homegrown ayatollahs: Their viral intolerance--their loathing of 
other people's beliefs, of America's secular and liberal values, of an 
independent press, of the courts, of reason, science and the search for 
objective knowledge--has become an unprecedented sectarian crusade for 
state power. They use the language of faith  to demonize political 
opponents, mislead and misinform voters, censor writers and artists, 
ostracize dissenters, and marginalize the poor. These are the foot 
soldiers in a political holy war financed by wealthy economic interests 
and guided by savvy partisan operatives who know that couching 
political ambition in religious rhetoric  can ignite the passion of 
followers as ferociously as when Constantine painted the Sign of Christ 
(the "Christograph") on the shields of his soldiers and on the banners 
of his legions and routed his rivals in Rome.  Never mind that the 
Emperor himself was never baptized into the faith; it served him well 
enough to make the God worshipped by Christians his most important ally 
and turn the Sign of Christ into the one imperial symbol most widely 
recognized and feared from east to west.

  Let's take a brief detour to Ohio and I'll show you what I am talking 
about. In recent weeks a movement called the Ohio Restoration Project 
has been launched to identify and train thousands of "Patriot Pastors" 
to get out the conservative religious vote next year.  According to 
press reports, the leader of the movement-- the senior pastor of a 
large church in suburban Columbus--casts the 2006 elections as an 
apocalyptic clash between "the forces of righteousness and the hordes 
of hell." The fear and loathing in his message is palpable: He 
denounces public schools that won't teach creationism, require teachers 
to read the Bible in class, or allow children to pray.   He rails 
against the "secular jihadists" who have "hijacked" America and prevent 
school kids from learning that Hitler was "an avid evolutionist." He 
links abortion to children who murder their parents. He blasts the 
"pagan left" for trying to redefine marriage. He declares that 
"homosexual rights" will bring "a flood of demonic oppression." On his 
church website you read that "Reclaiming the teaching of our Christian 
heritage among America's youth is paramount to a sense of national 
destiny that God has invested into this nation."

  One of the  prominent allies of the Ohio Restoration Project is a 
popular televangelist in Columbus who heads a $40 million-a-year 
ministry that is accessible worldwide via l, 400 TV stations and cable 
affiliates. Although he describes himself as neither Republican nor 
Democrat but a "Christocrat"--a gladiator for God marching against "the 
very hordes of hell in our society"--he nonetheless has been spotted 
with so many Republican politicians in Washington and elsewhere that he 
has been publicly described as a"spiritual advisor" to the party. The 
journalist Marley Greiner has been following his ministry for the 
organization, FreePress.  She writes that because he considers  the 
separation of church and state to be "a lie perpetrated on 
Americans--especially believers in Jesus Christ"--he identifies himself 
as a "wall builder" and "wall buster." As a wall builder he will 
"restore Godly presence in government and culture; as a wall buster he 
will tear down the church-state wall." He sees the Christian church as 
a sleeping giant that has the ability and the anointing from God to 
transform America. The giant is stirring. At a rally in July he 
proclaimed to a packed house: "Let the Revolution begin!" And the 
congregation roared back: "Let the Revolution begin!"

  (The Revolution's first goal, by the way, is to elect as governor next 
year the current Republican secretary of state who oversaw the election 
process in 2004 year when a surge in Christian voters narrowly carried 
George Bush to victory. As General Boykin suggested of President Bush's 
anointment, this fellow has acknowledged that "God wanted him as 
secretary of state during 2004" because it was such a critical 
election. Now he is criss-crossing Ohio meeting with Patriot Pastors 
and their congregations proclaiming that "America is at its best when 
God is at its center.") [For the complete  stories from which this 
information has been extracted, see: "An evening with Rod Parsley, by 
Marley Greiner, FreePress, July 20, 2005; Patriot Pastors,"  Marilyn 
Warfield, /Cleveland Jewish News/, July 29, 2005; "Ohio televangelist 
has plenty of influence, but he wants more", Ted Wendling, /Religion 
News Service/, Chicago Tribune, July 1, 2005; "Shaping Politics from 
the pulpits,"  Susan Page, /USA Today/ , Aug. 3, 2005;  "Religion and 
Politics Should Be Mixed Says Ohio Secretary of State," WTOL-TV Toledo, 
October 29, 2004].

  The Ohio Restoration Project is spreading. In one month alone last 
year in the president's home state of Texas, a single Baptist preacher 
added 2000 "Patriot Pastors" to the rolls.  On his website he now 
encourages pastors to "speak out on the great moral issues of our 
day...to restore and reclaim America for Christ."

  Alas, these  "great moral issues" do not include building a moral 
economy. The Christian Right trumpets charity (as in Faith Based 
Initiatives) but is silent on social and economic justice. Inequality 
in America has reached scandalous proportions: a few weeks ago the 
government acknowledged that while incomes are growing smartly for the 
first time in years, the primary winners are the top earners--people 
who receive stocks, bonuses, and other income in addition to wages. The 
nearly 80 percent of Americans who rely mostly on hourly wages barely 
maintained their purchasing power. Even as Hurricane Katrina was 
hitting the Gulf Coast, giving us a stark  reminder of how poverty can 
shove poor people into the abyss, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that 
last year one million people were added to 36 million already living in 
poverty. And since l999 the income of the poorest one fifth of 
Americans  has dropped almost nine percent.

  None of these harsh realities of ordinary life seem to bother the 
radical religious right. To the contrary, in the pursuit of political 
power they have cut a deal with America's richest class and their 
partisan allies in a law-of-the-jungle strategy to "starve" the 
government of resources needed for vital social services that benefit 
everyone while championing more and more spending rich corporations and 
larger tax cuts for the rich.

  How else to explain the vacuum in their "great moral issues" of the 
plight of millions of Americans without adequate health care? Of the 
gross corruption of politics by campaign contributions that skew 
government policies toward   the wealthy at the expense of ordinary 
taxpayers? (On the very day that oil and gas prices reached a record 
high the president signed off on huge taxpayer subsidies for energy 
conglomerates already bloated with windfall profits plucked from the 
pockets of average Americans filling up at gas tanks across the 
country; yet the next Sunday you could pass a hundred church signboards 
with no mention of a sermon on crony capitalism.)

  This silence on  economic and political morality is deafening but 
revealing. The radicals on the Christian right are now the dominant 
force in America's governing party. Without them the government would 
not be in the hands of people who don't believe in government. They are 
culpable in upholding a system of class and race in which, as we saw 
last week, the rich escape and the poor are left behind. And they are 
on they are crusading for a   government  "of, by, and for the people" 
in favor of one based on Biblical authority.

  This is the crux of the matter: To these fundamentalist radicals there 
is only one legitimate religion and only one particular brand of that 
religion that is right; all others who call on God are immoral or 
wrong. They believe the Bible to be literally true and that they alone 
know what it means. Behind their malicious attacks on the courts 
("vermin in black robes," as one of their talk show allies recently put 
it,) is a fierce longing to hold judges accountable for interpreting 
the Constitution according to standards of biblical revelation as 
fundamentalists define it. To get those judges they needed a party 
beholden to them.  So the Grand Old Party--the GOP--has become God's 
Own Party, its ranks made up of God's Own People "marching as to war."

  Go now to the website of an organization called America 2l 
(http://www.america21.us/Home.cfm ). There, on a red, white, and blue 
home page, you find praise for President Bush's agenda--including his 
effort to phase out  Social Security and protect corporations from law 
suits by aggrieved citizens. On the same home page is a reminder that 
"There are 7,177 hours until our next National Election....ENLIST 
NOW."  Now click again and you will read a summons calling Christian 
pastors "to lead God's people in the turning that can save America from 
our enemies." Under the headline "Remember--Repent--Return" language 
reminiscent of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell reminds you that "one of 
the unmistakable lessons [of 9/11]  is that America has lost the full 
measure of God's hedge of protection. When we ask ourselves why, the 
scriptures remind us that ancient Israel was invaded by its foreign 
enemy, Babylon, in 586 B.C. ....(and) Jerusalem was destroyed by 
another invading foreign power in 70 A.D. .... Psalm l06:37 says that 
these judgments of God ...were because of Israel's idolatry.  Israel, 
the apple of God's eye, was destroyed ... because the people failed... 
to repent."  If America is to avoid a similar fate, the warning 
continues, we must "remember the legacy of our heritage under God and 
our covenant with Him and, in the words of II Chronicles 7:14: 'Turn 
from our wicked ways.'"

  Just what does this have to do with the president's political agenda 
praised on the home page? Well, squint and look at the fine  print at 
the bottom of the site. It reads: America2l is a not-for-profit 
organization whose mission is to educate, engage and mobilize 
Christians to influence national policy at every level.  Founded in 
l989 by a multi-denominational group of pastors and businessmen, it is 
dedicated to being a catalyst for revival and reform of the culture 
/and the government/ ."  (emphasis added).

  The  corporate, political and religious right converge here, led by a 
president who, in his own disdain for science, reason and knowledge, is 
the most powerful fundamentalist in American history.

  What are the stakes?  In his last book, the late Marvin Harris, a 
prominent anthropologist of the time, wrote that "the attack against 
reason and objectivity is fast reaching the proportions of a crusade." 
To save the American Dream, "we desperately need to reaffirm the 
principle that it is possible to carry out an analysis of social life 
which rational human beings will recognize as being true, regardless of 
whether they happen to be women or men, whites or black, straights or 
gays, employers or employees, Jews or born-again Christians. The 
alternative is to stand by helplessly as special interest groups tear 
the United States apart in the name of their "separate realities' or to 
wait until one of them grows strong enough to force its irrational and 
subjective brand of reality on all the rest."

  That was written 25 years ago, just as the radical Christian right was 
setting out on their long march to political supremacy. The forces he 
warned against have gained strength ever since and now control much of 
the United States government and are on the verge of having it all.

  It has to be said  that their success has come in no small part 
because of our acquiescence and timidity.  Our democratic values are 
imperiled because too many people of reason are willing to appease 
irrational people just because they are pious. Republican moderates 
tried appeasement and survive today only in gulags set aside for them 
by the Karl Roves, Bill Frists and Tom DeLays. Democrats are divided 
and paralyzed, afraid that if they take on the organized radical right 
they will lose what little power they have. Trying to learn to talk 
about God as Republicans do,  they're talking gobbledygook, 
compromising the strongest thing going for them--the case for a moral 
economy and the moral argument for the secular checks and balances that 
have made America "a safe haven for the cause of conscience."

  As I look back on the conflicts and clamor of our boisterous past, one 
lesson about democracy stands above all others: Bullies--political 
bullies, economic bullies and religious bullies--cannot be appeased; 
they have to be opposed with a stubbornness to match their own.  This 
is never easy; these guys don't fight fair; "Robert's Rules of Order" 
is not one of their holy texts.  But freedom on any front--and 
especially freedom of conscience--never comes to those who rock and 
wait, hoping someone else will do the heavy lifting. Christian realism 
requires us to see the world as it is, without illusions, and then take 
it on. Christian realism also requires love. But not a sentimental, 
dreamy love. Reinhold Niebuhr, who taught at Union Theological Seminary 
and wrestled constantly with applying Christian ethics to political 
life, put it this way: "When we talk about love we have to become 
mature or we will become sentimental.  Basically love means...being 
responsible, responsibility to our family, toward our civilization, and 
now by the pressures of history, toward the universe of humankind."

  Christian realists aren't afraid to love.  But just as the Irishman 
who came upon a brawl in the street and asked, "Is this a private fight 
or can anyone get in it?" we have  to take that love where the action 
is. Or the world will remain a theatre of war between fundamentalists.

-- 
This message has been scanned for viruses and
dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
believed to be clean.