Soul Freedom

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Soul Freedom

Mon, 12 Sep 2005 03:00:00 -0700

 

 

 

 

Since a great part of the US is being wreaked by liars, cheats, and

thieves in power, using a mixture of false religious ravings combined

with poltical lies to further their own interests, in order to

control, steal, undermine, etc. all areas of government. This is for

those that already can think, as the pawns whether from ignorance,

brainwashing, poor education, stupidity, etc., in all of this don't

seem to have the ability to do so. One thing is certain, it is that these evil

people who are destroying the country are certainly not " religious " in any real,

good sense of the word.

 

 

 

 

http://www.alternet.org/story/25274/

 

 

 

Soul Freedom

 

By Bill Moyers, AlterNet. Posted September 10, 2005.

 

 

The notion of spiritual freedom is at risk, and the fourth observance

of the terrorist attacks of 9/11 is an appropriate time to think about it.

 

 

 

Ed. Note: 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.

 

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 1651, 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 9/11 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 9/11, our daughter and her husband adopted

their first baby. On the morning of September 11, 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 13 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, 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, Gen. 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, Gen. 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 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 crisscrossing 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 fifth of Americans has dropped almost 9 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.

 

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 lawsuits by aggrieved citizens.

On the same home page is a reminder that " There are 7177 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. "

 

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.

 

Bill Moyers is a broadcast journalist and former host of the PBS

program " NOW With Bill Moyers. "