The Growing Threat of Right-Wing Christians

Below are excerpts from an interview with Michelle Goldberg, author of Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism.  Link: AlterNet: The Growing Threat of Right-Wing Christians. I'm fascinated by the parallel world Goldberg describes, a world of alternative science, bureaucracy, history, and normativity with its own standards for assessing validity.

In some ways, it reminds me of the UFO community, which also has scientific journals, specific investigation procedures, a set of historical narratives. Yet, a key difference, it seems to me, is that a signficant portion of ufologists seek to establish the truth of their claims via dominant scientific norms. Differently put, few ufologists contest the procedures or claims of mainstream science. Instead, they want mainstream scientists to investigate further witness reports. Many ufologists, moreover, are well attuned to the vagaries of first person claims, the problems of memory, and they rely on a variety of methods to try to distill fact from fantasy.

So, if ufology is closer to something like mainstream science, what should we think of these Christian Nationalist groups? Should they be understood as analogous to another culture, with its own traditions and standards? One might say that multiculturalism emphasizes the validity of different cultures and beliefs and that tolerance would require acknowledging these views.

There are at least two arguments against thinking Christian Nationalism together with multiculturalism. One comes from within the academic discourse around multiculturalism itself, namely, the point that cultures are not separate totalities; rather they are mutually informing, infilitrating, mixing, hybrid, all that good stuff. So arguing that these groups deserve tolerance because of their cultural difference won't do--they are already intermixed within and part of a larger American culture.

The second argument involves dominance. In the US, claims for difference have emerged within the context of legalized exclusion from the rights and opportunities of citizens. This is clearly not the case with Christian Nationalists. In fact, a version of Christian Nationalism is dominating the country. Claims for tolerance here, then, effect a kind of weird reversal where a claim to being a victim masks a position of power and influence.

Onnesha Roychoudhuri: How did the idea for the book come about?

Michelle Goldberg: I've done reporting on the subject for a long time. One of the first pieces I did on the Christian right was on the ex-gay movement. What struck me going to the Exodus Conference was that it takes place in this whole entire parallel universe. They have their own psychologists, psychological institutions and their own version of professional medical literature. The amount of books, magazines and media, and the way it almost duplicated everything that we have in our so-called reality, is remarkable. What struck me years later when I was reporting on the Bush administration was that the parallel institutions that I had first come into contact with were replacing the mainstream institutions -- especially in the federal bureaucracy.

Roychoudhuri: Can you give an example?

Goldberg: In the Department of Health and Human Services, the people they hired to formulate sex education policy, at both the national and international level, didn't come from the American Medical Association or the big medical schools. They're coming from places like the Medical Institute for Sexual Health, which is this Christian Nationalist medical group. [The group says it is a "nonprofit scientific, educational organization to confront the global epidemics of non-marital pregnancy."]

One of the earlier stories I did for Salon was on the UNFPA (United Nations Population Fund) which does family planning, but they don't do abortion, mostly safe childcare and reproductive health through clinics all over the world. Congress had appropriated $35 million to the UNFPA. There's this group called the Population Research Institute -- another one of these parallel institutions. They're radically anti-family planning and claim that population control policies are part of this "one-world conspiracy" to cull the population of the faithful so that the "one-world government" can more easily assert its control. On the website it said that not only is overpopulation a myth, but all the people on Earth could live comfortably in the state of Texas. I did this story in 2002. I still had this naive idea that this kind of thing would remain marginal.

But what's amazing is that Population Research Institution went on to testify before Congress saying that the UNFPA promotes forced abortions in China. These kinds of accusations start echoing up the ladder to the point where Bush froze the UNFPA funding. This despite the fact that the State Department had already sent a delegation to China to investigate and said there was nothing to these accusations at all.

These excerpts from the interview should alert us to the depth of the political schism in the US. They provide an explanation for the failure of political debate: no common terms, no standards of reference, no agreed upon baseline.

Fans of multiculturalism and some versions of poststructuralism rightly urge a skepticism toward generalities, common standards, generalized norms. They rightly point out the way that these standards are results of previous political struggles, that they are premised on ongoing exclusions.

What we have now is the ongoing struggle. We are in the middle of a struggle over what will count as truth, reason, history, validity, morality, scientific validity. The Left needs to start fighting this battle with much more militancy and ferocity.

It seems now to be accepted that facts are produced in institutional contexts that are not neutral: the msm constantly lambasts the liberal press, papers like the Wall Street Journal publish editorials bashing scientific publications, conservatives fund their own think tanks, creationists have their own so-called scientific journals, economists dispute the key notions of their discipline, etc... It's not surprising that mythical and religious thinking flourishes amidst this uncertainty. When experts disagree, one is often compelled just to roll the dice, or, as I writes in Aliens in America:

What happens to our everyday approaches to truth when reality isn't, when we try to amass information our relation to which is fragmented and unclear, when answers are lacking, either in availability or capacity to satisfy? The answer, abduction.

If the US, and, let's face it, the world, isn't to be doomed by the wacko world of Christian nationalists, the left will have to fight them much more militantly. First, we will have to stop calling them wackos and reducing their belief to madcap ravings of the lunatic fringe. Instead, we have to recognize their seriousness and their infrastructure. Second, we have to carry out serious, detailed specific exposes and critiques on all their ideas and claims, relentlessly demonstrating--not to ourselves but to a larger audience of people who might be disposed to believe them--their falsity and venality. Third, we need to explore and critique the foundations of their institutions--as increasing numbers of journalists are starting to do. Fourth, we need to find new defenses for the university and, as we do so, find ways to immunize the university from the Scylla and Charybdis of corporate capitalism and state militarism. Fifth, we need to push more compelling arguments for collective responsibility and environmental responsibility. Sixth, we need to push for substantial limitations on markets, property rights, and corporate power. Seventh, we have to explain, over and over again, why collective approaches to collective problems are vital and necessary.

In my view, these tasks are best carried out from a position of militant unity where we recognize that we are in life and death struggle. Producing such a unity will be difficult. It will likely be a fractious unity--and that is for the best. But the choice is clear--either we fully engage or we continue along the path to barbarism.

Comments

[Levi]

Excellent, Jodi! These groups scare the daylights out of me and I'm not at all sure what is to be done. My first brush with this phenomenon happened years ago when I was still in highschool. A born again movement came through my town and somehow got everyone worked up. This had profound effects on the school itself. Within a year Orwell's 1984 had been banned from English classes due to its sexual content, they had shifted to abstinence only sex education, and were trying to take down the teaching of evolution. They actually burned copies of the Orwell in a trashcan outside the school.

It amazes me that this doesn't get more attention in the mainstream press. I think a number of people aren't even aware that it exists. They hear the signifier "Christian" and assume that the reference is simply to nice, wholesome churches. This makes things extremely difficult at the level of public discourse, as you constantly have to qualify what you're talking about.

But more perplexing is the way in which this gets little or no attention in the press, as is the case with extremist rhetoric on the right in general. It's baffling that someone like Coulter can write the things she does and get published in major newspapers across the country, whereas someone like HRC can make an offhand comment about plantations and has to publically apologize. Glenn Greenwald examines a variant of this phenomenon here:

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/07/journalists-its-time-for-some-articles.html

Why is it that a free pass is given with this kind of talk.

In the last six years I've increasingly come to feel that theory, as practiced in the academies, is trapped in a myopic bubble. We get all worked up by what Negri and Hardt have written, or engaged in rarified debates between Foucaultians, Butlerians, Lacanians, Laclauians, Deleuzians, Badiouians, Laclauians, etc, but it's not clear to what degree many of these debates relate to what's actually taking place in the United States. To what degree are these tools realistically targeting the world in which we live? In a previous post to the diary on students and debate, I made a plea for preserving the notion of universalism and truth (though not very effectively). This diary underlines one of the major reasons for preserving these notions. I teach in Texas outside of Dallas, and regularly encounter students who come from these sorts of environments. If I adopt the stance that all is rhetoric, that everything is language games and differing symbolic universes, aren't I necessarily led to endorsing this rhetoric in my classroom. I'm with Paul on the need for a return to the Enlightenment. Not only do we need a return to Enlightenment ideals of reason, but we need to rescucitate the practice of militantly fighting superstition in its modern variants. I get the sense that a number of cultural theorists don't want to *choose*, that they are like beautiful souls that want a nice federation of peaceful differences. However, I don't see how we can avoid choosing and choice necessarily involves exclusion. Adopting Nietzsche's maxim to "will only what you can will to return eternally", I find that I cannot will the return of this.

[McKenzie Wark]

I second the call to a militant enlightenment, provided it is one that also turns the light on itself.

What neither universalism or 'multiculturalism' want to deal with is conflict. The former assumes it doesn;t exist, the latter assumes it can be wished away.

'Hybridity' is only part of the picture. It is by engaging in conflict that a 'culture' comes to know itself as something separate.

So two problems: firstly, to acknowledge that there really are conflicts, and

second, to determine what are legitimate and illegitimate kinds of conflict.

Fire arms, lynchings, mob violence -- bad kinds of conflict. Book burnings? More interesting case!

[Lynn]

Jodi -

Really nice post. Actually, you have been kicking a lot of ... with your recent stuff.

Levy -

Really nice comment.

[Kenneth Rufo]

I'm with McKenzie. Might we spend some time parsing what marks legitimate militism from illegitimate? And, relatedly, is there a valuable form of antagonism without militancy?

[Jodi]

I appreciate the comments, folks, thanks so much.

On Enlighenment: I actually thought that reflexivity was a characteristic of Enlightment thought (which maybe I'm overly blurring into German Idealism) so that self critique, or critique of one's own position, is part of it. And, I fully agree with Levi on the importance of choosing, of taking sides.

Antagonism without militancy: well, Ken, since I tend to think of antagonism as a constitutive element of the social, such that it's always present, I would say that we can have antagonism without militancy. So, I would reverse the terms and say that worse is a militancy without antagonism--so militany defenders of imaginary and fantastic figures and ideals.

Illegitimate and legitimate milantancy, perhaps not the same as legit and illegit forms of conflict.

[rodkong]

http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/2006/07/youtube_for_the_11.html

Check out this YouTube clip...Ironic flip where Foxnews defends gay-rights against fringe right-wing group.

[Movie Goer]

Look, if you don't care about folks who have different, conservative ideas, and you really want to treat them as "the enemy", go ahead, "battle with much more militancy and ferocity."

But if you want to persuade and reach out, ditch these military metaphors. The 'left' (insofar as there is a unified left or right) would be much better off if it used more honey.

And don't think you're not reaching conservatives! I know - I'm somewhat conservative myself. I think you're blog is generally a good exemplification of considerate engagement with opposing ideas. An good example of how _not_ to constructively engage conservatives, and to do it militantly, would be Brian Leiter's blog.