This Mother Jones article is a must read in that takes on a meme which is about to go viral among conservatives. That is, the left is ‘paranoid’ about the religious extremism of the Republican presidential candidate field.
An opening salvo has been fired in the Washington Post by Bush speechwriter, Michael Gerson. He dismisses any claim that the GOP field provides any threat to the separation of church and state, going as far as to say that neither Perry nor Bachmann “wish to turn America into a theocratic prison camp.”
Mother Jones’ Tim Murphy dissects Gerson’s evangelical paranoia about the left and presents the facts about what the left really thinks about the GOP’s true feelings about religion and government. It also clears the air about the actual positions adopted by the candidates, without the candy coating of Gerson.
Here are the facts Gerson chooses not to engage: Bachmann and Perry believe that the United States is a Christian nation founded on Judeo-Christian principles, and that the tide of secularism that’s swept the nation over the past four decades (their position) has unmoored the country from its moral foundation. As politicians, they have worked to expand the role of Christianity in the public sphere, and they’ve pledged to do the same if elected president. And, yes, they’ve consciously sought to surround themselves with some pretty alarming people who, per their own statements, believe that Christians have an obligation to dominate society.
We know all this not because of some magical game of six-degrees-of-separation, but from the candidates’ own statements. Throughout her career, Bachmann has repeatedly identified the documentary How Should We Then Live, by the theologian Francis Schaeffer, as the most important film she has ever watched. Schaeffer’s thesis is that governments that aren’t built on Christian principles—and specifically, those principles of the early church—inevitably crumble, and they crumble fantastically. Christians therefore have an obligation to engage with modern society and take it back from the sea of moral relativism. Bachmann studied at a law school, Oral Roberts University, that was dedicated to, as she described it, teaching the Constitution from a Biblical perspective. She considers David Barton, the Texas pseudo-historian whose entire career is built on making the case that the United States was divinely inspired, to be an intellecutal titan and has invited him to give lectures to her friends in Congress, and to testify before the Minnesota legislature. Taking Christian Reconstructionism out of Barton and Schaeffer’s philosophy—or out of Oral Roberts Law School—would be like taking the dinosaurs out of Jurrasic Park.
Bachmann even practiced spiritual warfare, a staple of the dominionist movement, by bringing groups of “prayer warriors” into the Minnesota senate chambers after hours to pray over the desks of her opponents (including the body’s only openly gay member). And she has argued that the United States’ policy in the Middle East should be derived from the Book of Genesis.
As Canadians, we’ve heard all this before in the frenzied reaction of the right to Marci McDonald’s even-keeled, “The Armageddon Factor”. It’s not a new approach Gerson is taking. It’s a defense mechanism turned into an offence. It’s what the right does so well. Exaggerate the left’s position and add a little fear factor to it, and shout it out in the bigs of conservative journalism. It works because of the squeaky wheel factor. I’m not even going to bring up the straw man in the closet.
