We tend to write off the religious nutjobs in this country, because no one sane can possibly believe that, right?
Who said they're sane?
The story about Christian Embassy filming a promotional video in the Pentagon has gotten a fair amount of play in the blogosphere lately, but not enough in the MSM, although WaPo has this story:
In the video, much of which was filmed inside the Pentagon, four generals and three colonels praise the Christian Embassy, a group that evangelizes among military leaders, politicians and diplomats in Washington. Some of the officers describe their efforts to spread their faith within the military.
"I found a wonderful opportunity as a director on the joint staff, as I meet the people that come into my directorate," Air Force Maj. Gen. Jack J. Catton Jr. says in the video. "And I tell them right up front who Jack Catton is, and I start with the fact that I'm an old-fashioned American, and my first priority is my faith in God, then my family and then country. I share my faith because it describes who I am."
Pete Geren, a former acting secretary of the Air Force who oversaw the service's response in 2005 to accusations that evangelical Christians were pressuring cadets at the Air Force Academy, also appears in the video. The Christian Embassy "has been a rock that I can rely on, been an organization that helped me in my walk with Christ, and I'm just thankful for the service they give," he says.
A senior Air Force general says "God first, country third." The officer who handled the violations of freedom of relgion at the Air Force Academy is part of this group. (That whole scene in itself should have been a screaming alarm for people.)
It's not that treatment of people who want to support particular personal positions publicly is even-handed or anything.
This year, Navy chaplain Gordon J. Klingenschmitt was court-martialed for appearing in uniform at a political protest in front of the White House, though he maintained that all he did was lead a prayer.
Weinstein noted that his son and daughter-in-law, who are serving as first lieutenants in the Air Force, received written permission in July to appear in a documentary based on the book "Constantine's Sword," a history of Christian anti-Semitism.
"They may appear on camera for this documentary, but as they will be speaking for themselves, as private citizens, not for the Air Force, they cannot appear in uniform," says the order, a copy of which Weinstein provided to The Washington Post.
"Weinstein" is former JAG Mikey Weinstein, who founded the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. Read this interview at Salon. It's illuminating, and really, really scary.
And then there's Sam Brownback, who wants to hold up a federal judical appointment because the appointee was a guest at a same-sex commitment ceremony: It so happens he's a member of a shadowy group known mainly as "the Family."
In order to supposedly understand the judge's views, Brownback is asking for a play-by-play of a ceremony a nominee for a federal court seat attended, despite the fact he has been a member of a secretive, extremist group for years, the rules of which require that he remain silent about it. This might be understandable behavior in an eighteen-year-old frat pledge, but when the person keeping secrets is a sitting senator, his group's leaders praise the "Hitler Concept" as an organizational tool and have connections to members of unfriendly foreign governments, this secrecy must be lifted.
The group is known primarily as "the Family." It was the focus of an excellent (if frightening) expose by Jeff Sharlet in the March 2003 Atlantic Monthly Harper's. An excerpt from the piece shows just how far outside the mainstream the group is. The group's leader, Doug Coe, explaining how the Family works to Kansas congressman Todd Tiahrt. Coe says it's based on
"A covenant...Like the Mafia,” Doug clarified. “Look at the strength of their bonds.” He made a fist and held it before Tiahrt's face. Tiahrt nodded, squinting. “See, for them it's honor,” Doug said. “For us, it's Jesus.”
Coe listed other men who had changed the world through the strength of the covenants they had forged with their “brothers”: “Look at Hitler,” he said. “Lenin, Ho Chi Minh, Bin Laden.” The Family, of course, possessed a weapon those leaders lacked: the “total Jesus” of a brotherhood in Christ.
(From Nitpicker's post on Brownback at Unclaimed Territory.)
If you're like me at all, you start to see patterns in all of this, connections that aren't getting the play they need, or the public attention. Sara Robinson pulls it all together at Orcinus.
When you set the opinions of the vast majority of Americans against the extremist views the religious right staked out this year, you have to wonder: What are they thinking? Surely, they can't believe that staking out such extreme positions is the way to recover their political clout, and win back hearts and minds?
Actually: Yes. It is quite possible that this is exactly what they believe.
Which leads me to a disturbing tendency I've seen in the PC middle: "you have to understand that they really believe this, it's part of their worldview, so we have to make allowances for that." I saw that in someone's post about Ted Haggard, I've seen it in posts about James Dobson's insincere flirtations with fact, I've seen it far too many places. You have to realize that these people are not dealing with objective reality. If facts don't fit, they ignore them. I'm sure it is their worldview, but I don't have to make allowances.
I'm all in favor of religious belief -- I happen to be quite devout myself, if not always particularly observant -- but if your religion starts to interfere with your contact with the real world, you've got a problem. In the case of the nuttiest Christianists, we have a real problem, because these people are way too influential in this country. The parallel with the radical jihadists in Islam is too obvioius to need pointing out (another thing they reject, by the way).
What they are doing, whether unconsciously or deliberately, is moving the center toward their positions. I think it's deliberate: I remember the 1970s and '80s, when religious extremists were running "stealth candidates" for school boards and city councils, candidates who deliberately were mum on their real positions -- creationism in science classes, reinstatement of blue laws, restricting access to contraceptives, the works. It was deceptive and underhanded, and the moral stink of their tactics is still with us, because the tactics haven't changed.
Look, these people don't play fair. "Fair" is not in their vocabulary. Take the Keith Ellison controversy. Dennis Prager started it with his bizarre rant about the Bible being the only allowable book to swear on. Virgil Goode continued it with his racist anti-Muslim diatribe. But look what happened -- it's now Ellison's fault for doing what any sane person would do: choosing to include his own sacred writings in his ceremonial swearing in. (Of course, there's a political angle to this -- Jacobus is a Republican strategist, after all -- but without the Christianist brouhaha, she wouldn't have a crutch. Read the transcript -- she's a real piece of work, that one is.)
They're conspiracy thinkers (O'Reilly's "War on Christmas," which he invented), liars, bait-and-switch artists, nothing's ever their fault -- the Christianist reaction to the fall-out from Dobson's warping of scientific data in his Time piece is instructive (it's a plot by the Gay Agenda), and live in a perpetual stated of denial -- see this article on their reaction to a study that says, yes, indeed, everyone's doing it and has been for generations:
However, Dr. Janice Crouse of Concerned Women for America (CWA) sees Finer’s report as a ploy to cast doubt on the need for abstinence-until-marriage programs. "My eyebrows went up when I first saw the numbers," she recalls, "and I thought that the results were a bit too pat because they fit so specifically into the agenda of Planned Parenthood and the Guttmacher Institute."
Did I mention conspiracy theories? And let's just ignore all the evidence that abstinence programs don't work. After all, what's a few lives in contrast to The Truth? (This article is very interesting. It's on a Christianist website and is a reprint from Agape Press. The entertaining thing about it is, they play it straight and obviously don't see the irony. And of course, since it's Agape Press -- house organ, if you'll pardon the expression, for James Dobson -- you can't believe a word in it -- the "failure" rate in abstinence only programs is astronomical.)
I'll be looking at this issue more -- it's huge and complex and ultimately, very scary for the future of this country. Come to think about it, most of what I write here is related to this in some way. Stay tuned.
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