The American right lost its religion
Pondering the collapse of the simulacrum of conservative faith in God and country, Hemmingway’s account of how one goes bankrupt comes to mind: “gradually and then suddenly.”
Digby and then Will Bunch remarked on the NPR interview last week with Russell Moore, editor-in-chief of the Christianity Today magazine, about his new book, “Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call For Evangelical America.”
On why he thinks Christianity is in crisis:
It was the result of having multiple pastors tell me, essentially, the same story about quoting the Sermon on the Mount, parenthetically, in their preaching — “turn the other cheek” — [and] to have someone come up after to say, “Where did you get those liberal talking points?” And what was alarming to me is that in most of these scenarios, when the pastor would say, “I’m literally quoting Jesus Christ,” the response would not be, “I apologize.” The response would be, “Yes, but that doesn’t work anymore. That’s weak.” And when we get to the point where the teachings of Jesus himself are seen as subversive to us, then we’re in a crisis.
The openness with which holy, coal-rolling Christian nationalists rejected both Jesus and the nation’s founding principles is only a surprise to those who have not been keen observers of the political and religious right. Their pas de deux has spun on since the 1970s, their steamy embrace growing closer with the decades.
“The increasingly dire, near-death experience of American democracy has felt like the proverbial frog in boiling water,” Bunch begins. But it’s not just democracy at risk. Evangelicals and American conservatives have lost their faith, gradually and then suddenly.
Local police raided the offices of the Marion County Record on Friday and the rural Kansas homes of its publisher and reporters. They seized computers, cell phones and reporters’ notes under cover of a warrant issued in apparent violation of federal law.
“The law requires law enforcement to subpoena materials instead,” the Kansas Reflector reports. Marion County District Court Magistrate Judge Laura Viar who signed the warrant offered no comment.
“An attack on a newspaper office through an illegal search is not just an infringement on the rights of journalists but an assault on the very foundation of democracy and the public’s right to know,” said Emily Bradbury, executive director of the Kansas Press Association. “This cannot be allowed to stand.”
Friday wasn’t exactly Kristallnacht, but in Donald Trump’s America where the press is regularly denounced as the enemy of the people, it rhymes. Thrice-married, thrice-indicted and twice-impeached, MAGA-world’s new savior spent his life flouting the law, cheating business partners, and taking what he wanted from women. Trump Country, evangelicals and police included, see in Trump a role model more manly than Jesus.
Bunch picks up the tale (The Philadelphia Inquirer):
In a few short generations, the U.S. relationship with authoritarianism has devolved from It Can’t Happen Here to “It could happen here” to today’s mantra: Turn on the news, it just happened again. “Hitler tactics” are busting out all over, and the gasping frog of American democracy is beginning to already taste like burnt chicken.
Deep into the 21st century, America is more racially, ethnically and religiously diverse than any moment in its 247-year history. The rising cohort of younger millennials and Gen Z — the nation’s best-educated generations ever, which seems to coincide with their embrace of diversity, tolerance and progressive ideas — is showing up at the voting booth. Sorry Sarah Palin, but this is “the real America” now, and the millions clinging to the older hierarchies around race, gender and Christian hegemony are not handling it well. If democracy means this true majority winning elections, then they hate democracy. If the real America is this young and diverse, then they hate America.
And Jesus.
Truculent Christian nationalism has no more to do with Christianity and the Constitution than logos on outlet mall causal wear. It is all tribal identity now, not faith. The Republican Party rejects any governing ethos. Their electeds pursue culture wars, not a better tomorrow. Trump is about vengeance? The right is about vengeance. Trump is about control? Evangelicals are about control. What’s left of the erstwhile Party of Lincoln is pure power politics.
The nihilism erupted in spasms over decades: after Ruby Ridge, after Waco, after Sept. 11, after the election of the first Black president. Then came the Trump-QAnon alternate reality. The boiling did not subside after Jan. 6. It abides. Only the roiling seems sudden.
A Daily Kos post from 2012 recounts a Bible study from perhaps 2009. The writer and a group of “Fox News watchers and Tea Party sympathizers” were discussing the parable of the Prodigal Son (emphasis mine):
After rereading the story, the pastor asked each of us with which character we identified. Ironically, even though I was the only childless person present, I was alone in identifying with the father. I’ve been in situations where I was so happy to see a person again whom I had missed that I was perfectly willing to forgive and forget whatever had happened in the past.
The old ladies, without an exception, identified with the prodigal son’s brother, who they believed had been wronged by the father. The poor brother had done everything right, yet the other one, the bad one, got the party. How was that fair? Why wasn’t the good brother rewarded and the irresponsible one punished?
I pointed out to them that while the prodigal son had a brief time of debauchery, it was followed by a rather miserable life, during which he had to work as a swineherd — not a pleasant occupation for a Jew. “Yes,” a woman named Elaine replied, “but that was his own fault! He brought it on himself! Besides, the only reason he even came back was that he was broke and miserable. He probably wasn’t even really sorry.”
“So what would you have done if you were the father?” the pastor asked.
“I would have told him off, of course,” Elaine answered. “I would have said, ‘You made your bed, so now lie in it. Go right back to where you came from!’”
“But what if the father loved the son so much that he wanted to forgive him?” the pastor followed up.
“Well, but that’s not love; that’s enabling. Besides, the son did not DESERVE to be forgiven.”
“That’s exactly the point of the story,” I chimed in. “The son didn’t deserve forgiveness but received it anyway. According to Jesus, that’s how the Kingdom of Heaven works.”
“Well,” fumed Elaine, “sometimes Jesus is just plain wrong.”
Jesus, democracy, patriotism — they were all outlet mall fashion. So long as they supported “the older hierarchies around race, gender and Christian hegemony,” they were comfortable outerwear. Then came the testing like that of the apostle. Peter wept in shame. But there’s no crying in MAGAstan. That’s for the weak.
Bunch concludes:
It’s all out in the open now, isn’t it? The U.S. women’s soccer team — young, diverse, not afraid to speak up for equality — are the new, albeit fragile, majority. They are America right now, and the right hates them — because they hate America. And this hatred makes it easier to destroy what America stands for. Even if that requires violence.
“Mr. President, I cannot stand these people that are destroying our country,” Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz told a boisterous crowd at the Iowa State Fair on Saturday, as he introduced Trump amid the usual litany of complaints about the border and the multiple probes into Trump’s corruption. “But we know that only through force do we make any change in a corrupt town like Washington, D.C.”
When all else fails — the canceling of elections, the voter suppression, the rule changing, the growing assault on the free press that makes a shocking raid like Marion County possible — force is their last resort. It was their last resort on Jan. 6, 2021, and they’re telling us now in the bright, deep-fried daylight of an Iowa fairgrounds that they’ll do it again.
It’s the social Darwinists, angry now and descending into nihilism, who find themselves unable to adapt.
Gradually and then suddenly, they make Peter look good. Judas was one of theirs.