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Creating a Firestorm That Is Still Burning: Frank Shaeffer and the Religious Right
Veitsev
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Viciouskillersquirrel over at Neogaf posted this and I thought it was really interesting. It is an interview between Frank Schaeffer (one of the founders of the Christian Right) and John Whitehead about how they helped create the Religious Right, the "monster" it became, and how Schaeffer regrets what he helped create. I personally think that the Religious Right has been a negative political force in this country. Its influence is waning at the moment and in time I think the GOP will be forced to cast it aside as the intellectuals in the party are forced to take over.
Creating A Political Firestorm That Is Still Burning
Some interesting excerpts:
NOTICE: Lets try and not let this become like the GOP threads that have been locked. This is about the interview, the Religious Right, its future, etc. This is not a thread where you post the latest GOP gaff/news.
Creating A Political Firestorm That Is Still Burning
Some interesting excerpts:
Frank Schaeffer wrote:We lifted up a number of single-issue political things like abortion, and we opened up a floodgate of a moralistic style of grandstanding from the sidelines, which has made this country essentially ungovernable. It also unleashed a culture war. The Left bears responsibility as well for that because Roe v. Wade was very ill-conceived—a kind of “one-stop solution†to a contentious issue that essentially set everybody on their ear. So it works both ways. But for the part I played, I have nothing but regret.Our basic premise was that the only way America could function was as a biblically based Christian society. We live in a multicultural, pluralistic, multi-religion society ranging all the way from atheist Jews to Hindus to Muslims to Christians to Episcopalians who are liberal, to Unitarians to Fundamentalists. Essentially, that vision of America was one of our enemies. We didn’t want a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic society. What we wanted was a homogenous Christian country built somewhat along the lines of Calvin’s Geneva or the Puritan-based state colonies. That essentially put us at cross purposes with and made us hate America as it is. So the America we envisioned actually didn’t exist, and probably never did. Thus, we were the enemies of America as it is today. America is not a religious state. It is a pluralistic, secular culture built around certain religious principles, along with certain other philosophical principles. But it doesn’t belong to us or the evangelicals any more than it belongs to any other group.What we did was set our hand against the reality in the United States and essentially set up this alternative reality of Christian books, Christian TV, Christian radio, Christian magazines, Christian schools and the home school movement. All of these various things were basically telling the rest of the country, “We hate you. We don’t like the way you are. We think you are sinful. We think you are awful. We wash our hands of you. We are going to do our own thing. And if we have our way, we will elect people like us and put them in office, change the laws and run you guys out of town."George Bush’s ascendancy to the White House is impossible to imagine, and even mathematically impossible to calculate, if you take the religious evangelical base out of the equation. He just doesn’t get elected. It is unimaginable that he would be in the White House if evangelical Christians had not put him there. They are the base that put him there. And if you look at what he did in office, you know, we finally had our man.None of what we saw with George W. Bush would have happened without the evangelical votes for president or any other office. We also helped to create a climate in which reasonable people could no longer sit down and discuss the issues of the day in a neutral way because we interjected a moral element into the debate—that is, our message was that if you love God, you will vote for Ronald Reagan and the Bushes. We gave it a theological spin, which gave us George W. Bush, who undid us because he was of mediocre intelligence and not fit to be president. But because Bush’s theology was “correct,†he got the evangelical vote. That’s the sad result of a single-issue politics and a single-issue theology carried to a logical conclusion.
NOTICE: Lets try and not let this become like the GOP threads that have been locked. This is about the interview, the Religious Right, its future, etc. This is not a thread where you post the latest GOP gaff/news.
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I don't foresee them being a politically significant part of the GOP anymore. There's been too much bad blood. Anyone remember the fallout between the Palin and McCain camps in the wake of the election?
Any predictions about how this is the last death throes of the movement are also wildly premature. Religious fanatics are still a fairly solid 25-30% of the country, with a lot of at least theoretical sympathy from an even larger base. You can't simply ignore that large a base, so while it's almost certainly going to fall out of it's previous prominence it's still going to be a major player on the national level for at least a couple of decades. The best analog is probably how labor has been treated on the left, there have been periods when it was the driving force behind the democratic party, and periods like the whole Third Way fiasco when it becomes a liability and the group gets thrown under a bus but stays with the party as a significant but weaker influence because they have no where else to go and the party needs them despite screwing them.
I'd like to say this is the last time we'll see this kind of movement in the US as we become more secular and educated, but I can't even go that far. I'd be willing to bet money that in our lifetime we'll see a resurgence in religious/social conservatism when the current xenophobic crop of republican leaders die or lose enough influence to be supplanted by people who tap into the strong religious and conservative backgrounds of immigrants and minorities.
I wouldn't, for a number of reasons. First off is this xenophobia and racism isn't just in the current leadership, it's in the up and comers as well (remember the College Republican "affirmative action bake sale" a while back?) Second, there are significant schisms between the black religious groups, Latino religious groups, and the traditional "Religious Right" that would make efforts by the latter to gain support for the former two rather...difficult.
I mean, he wasn't an asshole about his faith, at least. He just has a lot of faith-based opinions. He doesn't expect anybody to agree with him purely because of his faith, but he stands by his opinions and thoughts about things, because of his faith.
I guess what I'm saying is, as far as faith-based, right-wing, non-intellectual types, Huckabee's far from the worst.
I'm open to correction, of course.
True, and there other things. Like the fact that what we know as the "Religious Right" was formed to defend bigotry (specifically, the anti-miscegenation policies of Bob Jones University), way before abortion was seen as a rallying point.
Schaeffer here reminds me a lot of Goldwater, who helped create the culture wars as a means to win political power in the 60s, only to see his creation take on a life of its own, decrying it in his later years.
Yes, yes I did forget that part. I do remember hearing that, a few times.
Although, again, this is based in faith. I mean, nobody has a problem with the concept of changing the constitution for the betterment of the nation. That's why they put that in there.
But, then again, he's basically saying that since we can change the constitution, we should change it to make it a more christianity-provoking document.
Yeah, fuck 'im.
Xenophobia is basically the name of the game for the current leadership in the right, but while it's still prevalent in the next round of young leaders it's less so. And the round after that it'll be less so, and on down the line until it gets to the point that one overwhelmingly charismatic leader could turn that xenophobia away from race onto lifestyle. It's really only a matter of time before racism becomes less prevalent even on the right (look at how they're dealing with the gay issue now, 2 odd decades after it started moving into the mainstream) and there's going to be a lot of pressure on social conservatives of every stripe to ignore their relatively minuscule differences in particular brand of religious mania as the social agenda moves rapidly left (which it will as democrats solidify power for awhile and the religious right wanes in influence even among republicans).
It's not going to happen anytime soon, but it's something I just shy of certain we have to look forward to in the mid term future.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Trust me, the crazy's on the outside.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
He's essentially a Trojan horse.
Crazy eyeball gives it away.
No offense to people with lazy eyes, but I don't trust anyone that seems to be constantly casing the joint. You're up to something.
Conclusion: "Thatcher said it too" isn't a viable defense against accusations of crazy.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Given what I've read about her, it might even be an offense.
Thatcher advocated something similar, though she extended the idea to openly homosexual people in general if I remember correctly. And maybe even brown folks.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Can you cite this with any links? I've heard this before, that the abortion outrage was mostly a manufactured issue, but I wasn't able to dig anything up.
Like, what's he saying here? "We had all these ideas that we used cynically to accumulate power; we never imagined someone would come along and actually implement them!
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
The debt of the far insane right isn't coming any time soon, though I am not especially worried about the results. Despite the long primary, Obama treated Palin and Huck with friendly kid gloves and no one really knows too much about what they personally believe (Romney and Gingrich even more so). I'm confident enough we could tear any of these schmucks down, but it is worth remembering generic batshit R is still a 30% - 40% base in the US.
The main problem for Huck is that he's got some major skeletons in his closet that haven't gotten too much air time. While yes, he's scary because he puts the reasonable face on the crazy, I don't think he can really survive the meat grinder that is the American presidential campaign.
Which isn't to say it's a nightmare scenario or that I'm particularly concerned, just that he really is the best shot the crazy right fringe has at the moment.
Okay. Here goes. The nascent pro-choice movement had been waging a silent fight for abortion rights for years through the 60s in the states. The idea was along the lines of how gay marriage is being promoted, that it's a political decision, policy is on their side, and convincing state legislatures to allow it is the optimal process because it's done by representatives of the people and it's a voluntary measure. The fact that Japan allowed abortion during post-WW2 reconstruction and other countries allowed it (generally as an anti-population growth measure) helped. That tack was supported by numerous anti-communists because they saw overpopulation -> starvation -> political upheaval -> communist overthrows.
Then Roe v. Wade came along, and it took the fight into the federal courts contrary to the wishes of a lot of people in the pro-choice movement. And then it went to SCOTUS. That very fact was destined to blow up, because if the Court decided against them then their efforts were for nothing. If Roe won, it'd be allowed and it'd be because of an undemocratic Court opinion. And the worst was what happened: It was allowed, with exceptions. Because that suddenly made it a fight EVERYWHERE instead of the states they had cherry-picked in their momentum buildup and fight for nationwide public support.
Justice Blackmun's decision was actually focused entirely on protecting the rights of doctors to provide medical advice/services (which, well, that's another story for how this aspect of Roe has gotten nuked). Almost all of his research and all of his concern was about the doctors, not about abortion. It's rather fascinating, but unsurprising since his background was providing legal services for doctors. The right he "found" was in privacy--to protect doctor-patient privacy--and is why Privacy is such a big legal/political issue now. Anyway, the Court's decision as he wrote it established abortion as a fundamental right.
And that's when everything blew up.
Instead of treating it as the political issue it is, and ceding most power over the issue to the states and the political process the Court's decision took the fundamental political question about whether abortions can be performed at all off the table. An unelected group of six Justices ruled and the question was immediately moot because the Court had spoken and the legislatures no longer had the power to allow or disallow the procedure, but instead could only regulate measures within the framework.
And as it happened, the pro-choice movement was put on the defensive. They couldn't invest capital and time to convince the public and politicians to allow it. That was out of their hands. Now they had to defend the Court's decision and the argument that it was against the will of the people and undemocratic and we need to change this because (fill in the blank). And so it happened, that everything did blow up (led by Catholics) and here we are.
Ruth Bader-Ginsburg argued Casey before the Court (obviously before she was appointed to it) and dared them to just repeal Roe rather than constantly allow all of these exceptions--exceptions Roe allowed and basically incited states into enacting. The Court didn't, and didn't punt, and so the issue's been a hot-button, especially since in some places it served as a way to fight and demonize the same Court that had been finding and asserting rights for years against states' wishes going back to Brown v Board of Education--which was itself hugely controversial and led to the Massive Resistance movement, calls for Chief Justice Warren's (and others') impeachment, and led to a sea-change in the political landscape of the South.
Which is why this tack isn't being taken with gay marriage. California shows how that can blow up, as opposed to New Hampshire where it was considered and passed (overriding a veto) by the legislature.
But it's manufactured in how Catholics, really, made it one. At the time, it wasn't a huge issue among Protestants. But for us, it's inviolable. The Church's Culture of Life is pretty clear: No abortion. No death penalty. No unnatural termination of life. Period. Just to put this in perspective, abortion is not just a sin. It's not even just a cardinal sin to the Church. If you get an abortion, perform an abortion, or aid in the process of either and you're Catholic you are automatically excommunicated.
At the time, and this was around the same time Vatican II liberalized a lot of aspects of practice in the Church, there was--and has remained--a huge schism between liberal and conservative Catholics, which really began in the United States and in the Americas (when in the 70s and 80s you had priests getting involved deeply in political movements and aligning themselves with Marxists in Latin America or even just speaking out against right-wing dicators. And on that note, it recently occurred to me that I'm liberal because this was such a big deal when I was growing up in my Catholic school that out Church promoted social justice and Catholics were being murdered for opposing right-wing dicators). And then a relatively conservative Pope comes to power in John Paul II, who was an anti-communist, pro-life, and an ally of Ronald Reagan.
And that's, OT, why it pisses me off that the Church and the U.S. Conference of Bishops has worked very hard to make abortion a single-issue litmus test as it injects itself in political discourse. What annoys me is that it's only abortion, and not all aspects of the Culture of Life. For instance, Republicans who support(ed) the death penalty unrepentantly have gone to speak at Notre Dame and no one cared. Obama got invited and you'd think they were bringing Satan to speak.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0voovjOeEw
"That was Barack Obama," Huckabee ad-libbed. "He just tripped off a chair.... He's getting ready to speak, and somebody aimed a gun at him and he, he dove for the floor."
At the time, death threats against Obama and his increased Secret Service protection had gotten attention in the press as a rising black candidate. To imply any sort of violence against ANY candidate is a totally tasteless joke, but is paricularly tone deaf considering the history of black leaders in the United States.
In a later statement, Huckabee said, "I made an offhand remark that was in no way intended to offend or disparage Sen. Obama. I apologize that my comments were offensive. That was never my intention."
Yeah....
I've never understood this stance. You want your beliefs legislated, be they on taxes, social issues or whatever, yet you think that people who don't agree with you shouldn't be allowed to get theirs. People who do believe that homosexuality is a sin also tend to believe that it is their duty to rescue others from sin, so why would they not try to legislate against it? They'd be saving the nation from hell.
The belief system is the issue here and it's something that won't go away until people get over their fear of challenging religious beliefs. (This is not meant to turn this into a religion thread)
Except they don't really view it as "a cynical way to accumulate power", but rather as them supporting ideas they believed in. And then the whole thing went way further then they ever wanted it to.
Anyway, in America and Europe? Not very many. American Catholics are notoriously liberal by most standards, and tend to focus on the greater social justice part that some popes (i.e., the last two) have forgotten is core to the catechism. As much as I still consider myself Catholic, I'm not down with the Church and especially my archdiocese itself. But that's for another thread.
God hates gay people, but apparently he's OK with Photoshop.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Computers are evil. That's construction paper and Elmer's Glue, as Christ commands.
No, Westboro is in a way the ultimate evolution of the Religious Right. Frankly, I think they're more honest than the more mainstream groups, as they say in public what the more "acceptable" groups only talk about in private.
Westboro Baptist Church is to the religious right what the Montana militia guys are to the hardcore NRA "they're coming to take our guns" crowd; someone with whom they share an ideology and a desire to take action in defense of it, but who are far more aggressive in their actions than the more "normal" crowd would ever be. I would even go so far as to say that there's a certain admiration for the craziest of the winger groups amongst the rank and file, but I don't know that I would call them an "evolution." That implies a refinement of the thing that's evolving, not a regression into unstable hatemongering. WBC and the militia guys are more like throwbacks.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.