XPost: sci.psychology.psychotherapy, alt.consciousness, talk.origins   
   From: suzych@swcp.com   
      
   This e-mail originated via Prof. Mark Crispin Miller, head of the Media   
   Studies Department at New York University, so I accept it as credible.   
   It is long but incredibly worthwhile. Forward it widely...it is too   
   important to keep to ourselves, don't you think?   
      
      
   The Covert Kingdom   
   Thy Will be Done, On Earth as It is in Texas   
   By JOE BAGEANT   
      
   Not long ago I pulled my car up alongside a tiny wooden church in the   
   woods, a stark white frame box my family built in 1840. And as always,   
   an honest-to-god chill went through me, for the ancestral ghosts   
   presumably hovering over the graves there. From the wide open front door   
   the Pentecostal preacher's message echoed from within the plain wooden   
   walls:  "Thank you Gawd for giving us strawng leaders like Pres ident   
   Bush during this crieeesis. Praise you Lord and guide him in this battle   
   with Satan's Muslim armies." If I had chosen to go back down the road a   
   mile or so to the sprawling new Bible Baptist church---complete with   
   school facilities, professional sound system and in-house television   
   production---I could have heard approximately the same exhortation.   
   Usually offered at the end of a prayer for sons and daughters of members   
   in the congregation serving in Iraq, it can be heard in any of the   
   thousands upon thousands of praise temples across our republic.   
      
   After a lifetime of identity conflict, I have come to accept that,   
   blood-wise, if not politically or spiritually, these are my people.  And   
   as a leftist it is very clear to me these days why urban liberals not   
   only fail to understand these people, but do not even know they exist,   
   other than as some general lump of ignorant, intolerant voters called   
   "the religious right ," or the "Christian Right," or "neocon   
   Christians." But until progressives come to understand what these people   
   read, hear, are told and deeply believe, we cannot understand American   
   politics, much less be effective. Given fundamentalist Christianity's   
   inherent cultural isolation, it is nearly impossible for most   
   enlightened Americans to imagine, in honest human terms, what   
   fundamentalist Americans believe, let alone understand why we should all   
   care.   
      
   For liberals to examine the current fundamentalist phenomenon in America   
   is accept some hard truths. For starters, we libs are even more   
   embattled than most of us choose to believe. Any significant liberal and   
   progressive support is limited to a few urban pockets on each coast and   
   along the upper edge of the Midwestern tier states. Most of the rest of   
   the nation, the much vaunted heartland, is the dominion of the   
   conservative and charismatic Christian. Turf-wise, it' s pretty much   
   their country, which is to say it presently belongs to George W. Bush   
   for some valid reasons. Remember: He did not have to steal the entire   
   election, just a little piece of it in Florida.  Evangelical born-again   
   Christians of one stripe or another were then, and are now, 40% of the   
   electorate, and they support Bush 3-1. And as long as their clergy and   
   their worst instincts tell them to, they will keep on voting for him, or   
   someone like him, regardless of what we view as his arrogant folly and   
   sub-intelligence. Forget about changing their minds.  These Christians   
   do not read the same books we do, they do not get their information from   
   anything remotely resembling reasonably balanced sources, and in fact,   
   consider even CBS and NBC super-liberal networks of porn and the Devil's   
   lies. Given how fundamentalists see the modern world, they may as well   
   be living in Iraq or Syria, with whom they share approximately the same   
   Bronze Age religious tenets.  They believe in God, Rumsfeld's Holy War   
   and their absolute duty as God's chosen nation to kick Muslim ass up one   
   side and down the other. In other words, just because millions of   
   Christians appear to be dangerously nuts does not mean they are marginal.   
      
   Having been born into a Southern Pentecostal/Baptist family of many   
   generations, and living in this fundamentalist social landscape means   
   that I gaze into the maw of neocon Christianity daily. Hell, sometimes   
   hourly. My brother is a fundamentalist preacher, as are a couple of my   
   nephews, as were many of my ancestors going back to god-knows-when. My   
   entire family is born-again; their lives are completely focused inside   
   their own religious community, and on the time when Jesus returns to   
   earth---Armageddon and The Rapture.   
      
   Only another liberal born into a fundamentalist clan can understand what   
   a strange, sometimes downright hellish family circumstance it is---how   
   such a family can love you deeply, yet despise everything you believe   
   in, see you as a humanist instrument of Satan, and still be right there   
   for you when your back goes out or a divorce shatters your life. As a   
   socialist and a half-assed lefty activist, obviously I do not find much   
   conversational fat to chew around the Thanksgiving table. Politically   
   and spiritually, we may be said to be dire enemies. Love and loathing   
   coexist side by side. There is talk, but no communication. In fact,   
   there are times when it all has science fiction overtones, times when it   
   seems we are speaking to one another through an unearthly veil, wherein   
   each party knows it is speaking to an alien.  There is a sort of high   
   eerie mental whine in the air. This is the sound of mutually   
   incomprehensible worlds hurtling toward destiny, passing with great   
   psychological friction, obvious to all, yet acknowledged by none .   
      
   Between such times, I wait rather anxiously and strive for change, for   
   relief from what feels like an increased stifling of personal liberty,   
   beauty, art, and self-realization in America. They wait in spooky   
   calmness for Jesus. They believe that, until Jesus does arrive, our   
   "satanic humanist state and federal legal systems" should be replaced   
   with pure "Biblical Law." This belief is called Christian   
   Reconstructionism. Though it has always been around in some form, it   
   began expanding rapidly about 1973, with the publication of R. J.   
   Rushdoony's, Institutes of Biblical Law (Vallecito, CA: Ross House   
   Books, 1982).   
      
   Time out, please. In a nod toward fairness and tolerance---begging the   
   question of whether liberals are required to tolerate the intolerant---I   
   will say this: Fundamentalists are "good people." In daily life, they   
   are warm-hearted and generous to a fault.  They live with feet on the   
   ground (albeit with ey es cast heavenward) and with genuine love and   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)