The myth of "far right Christian fundamentalism"

[Quantum Windbag]

I keep hearing how this "fundamentalist" class leapt into existence in the 60s...and how the Republican party is "now" full of "fundies"...and how anyone who doesn't support abortion, gay marriage, the taxation of churches and sex counseling in schools is a "fundie".

It occurs to me that nothing exists in a vacuum. We are more liberal today than we have ever been...but the defamation of Christians began in the 60s with the rise of the radical left. The further left they pulled us, the more we heard the term "fundamentalism" applied to traditional, American, Christian values.

Essentially what has happened is this...we took an abrupt and severe left turn in the 60s, with the rise to power of pukes like Ayers, who infilterated the media and schools, and began to lament the "extremism" of the establishment.

They're the ones who blew people up...but suddenly, mainstream Americans became *fundies* and *extremists*.

Ironic, no?

CS Lewis talks about this phenomenon in "The Screwtape Letters". Screwtape the demon says that it is a triumph of evil to have gotten society to the point where it spends all its energies decrying the one thing it is least in danger of.

The Screwtape Letters - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

As a high Anglican, Lewis thought of evangelicals and fundamentalists probably as heretics yet believers.

That just shows how little you know about Lewis.

Touchstone Archives: C. S. Lewis, Reluctant Churchman

 

[JakeStarkey]

CS Lewis talks about this phenomenon in "The Screwtape Letters". Screwtape the demon says that it is a triumph of evil to have gotten society to the point where it spends all its energies decrying the one thing it is least in danger of.

The Screwtape Letters - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

As a high Anglican, Lewis thought of evangelicals and fundamentalists probably as heretics yet believers.

That just shows how little you know about Lewis.

Touchstone Archives: C. S. Lewis, Reluctant Churchman

Look at who writes it, and please try to keep up.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

One that confounds good and evil is an enemy to good.
Edmund Burke

Tell me something, when you use this quote after posting about a book that confounds Christians with haters of freedom are you describing yourself, or are you irony impaired?

 

[JakeStarkey]

Tell me something, when you use this quote after posting about a book that confounds Christians with haters of freedom are you describing yourself, or are you irony impaired?

The far right of Christianity has always hated freedom and free thinking.

 

[Bfgrn]

Yes, I know. I read it. That's why I put the link up there.

Toddle off, I think it's nappy time.

Elitists don't live for years in fox holes and war zones. Chris Hedges is no elitist.

War Is Sin

Posted on Jun 1, 2009

By Chris Hedges

The crisis faced by combat veterans returning from war is not simply a profound struggle with trauma and alienation. It is often, for those who can slice through the suffering to self-awareness, an existential crisis. War exposes the lies we tell ourselves about ourselves. It rips open the hypocrisy of our religions and secular institutions. Those who return from war have learned something which is often incomprehensible to those who have stayed home. We are not a virtuous nation. God and fate have not blessed us above others. Victory is not assured. War is neither glorious nor noble. And we carry within us the capacity for evil we ascribe to those we fight.

Those who return to speak this truth, such as members of Iraq Veterans Against the War, are our contemporary prophets. But like all prophets they are condemned and ignored for their courage. They struggle, in a culture awash in lies, to tell what few have the fortitude to digest. They know that what we are taught in school, in worship, by the press, through the entertainment industry and at home, that the melding of the state’s rhetoric with the rhetoric of religion, is empty and false.

The words these prophets speak are painful. We, as a nation, prefer to listen to those who speak from the patriotic script. We prefer to hear ourselves exalted. If veterans speak of terrible wounds visible and invisible, of lies told to make them kill, of evil committed in our name, we fill our ears with wax. Not our boys, we say, not them, bred in our homes, endowed with goodness and decency. For if it is easy for them to murder, what about us? And so it is simpler and more comfortable not to hear. We do not listen to the angry words that cascade forth from their lips, wishing only that they would calm down, be reasonable, get some help, and go away. We, the deformed, brand our prophets as madmen. We cast them into the desert. And this is why so many veterans are estranged and enraged. This is why so many succumb to suicide or addictions.

War comes wrapped in patriotic slogans, calls for sacrifice, honor and heroism and promises of glory. It comes wrapped in the claims of divine providence. It is what a grateful nation asks of its children. It is what is right and just. It is waged to make the nation and the world a better place, to cleanse evil. War is touted as the ultimate test of manhood, where the young can find out what they are made of. War, from a distance, seems noble. It gives us comrades and power and a chance to play a small bit in the great drama of history. It promises to give us an identity as a warrior, a patriot, as long as we go along with the myth, the one the war-makers need to wage wars and the defense contractors need to increase their profits.

But up close war is a soulless void. War is about barbarity, perversion and pain, an unchecked orgy of death. Human decency and tenderness are crushed. Those who make war work overtime to reduce love to smut, and all human beings become objects, pawns to use or kill. The noise, the stench, the fear, the scenes of eviscerated bodies and bloated corpses, the cries of the wounded, all combine to spin those in combat into another universe. In this moral void, naively blessed by secular and religious institutions at home, the hypocrisy of our social conventions, our strict adherence to moral precepts, come unglued. War, for all its horror, has the power to strip away the trivial and the banal, the empty chatter and foolish obsessions that fill our days. It lets us see, although the cost is tremendous.

more

 

[Quantum Windbag]

The Screwtape Letters - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

As a high Anglican, Lewis thought of evangelicals and fundamentalists probably as heretics yet believers.

That just shows how little you know about Lewis.

Touchstone Archives: C. S. Lewis, Reluctant Churchman

Look at who write it, and please try to keep up.

I see you missed the point, as usual.

He went to church because he believed that Scripture told him to do so. He went to the Anglican church because, at the time, that was the only church available. That does not mean he agreed with their theology. In fact, he wrote things that the Anglican church considers outright heresy.

Come to think of it, a lot of those evangelical Christians you think all but worship CS Lewis also think he is a heretic.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Tell me something, when you use this quote after posting about a book that confounds Christians with haters of freedom are you describing yourself, or are you irony impaired?

The far right of Christianity has always hated freedom and free thinking.

And the far left of Christianity, of course,totally in love with it. All we have to do is forget that they also support communism and all the evidence falls right into line with your delusions.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Yes, I know. I read it. That's why I put the link up there.

Toddle off, I think it's nappy time.

Elitists don't live for years in fox holes and war zones. Chris Hedges is no elitist.

War Is Sin

Posted on Jun 1, 2009

By Chris Hedges

The crisis faced by combat veterans returning from war is not simply a profound struggle with trauma and alienation. It is often, for those who can slice through the suffering to self-awareness, an existential crisis. War exposes the lies we tell ourselves about ourselves. It rips open the hypocrisy of our religions and secular institutions. Those who return from war have learned something which is often incomprehensible to those who have stayed home. We are not a virtuous nation. God and fate have not blessed us above others. Victory is not assured. War is neither glorious nor noble. And we carry within us the capacity for evil we ascribe to those we fight.

Those who return to speak this truth, such as members of Iraq Veterans Against the War, are our contemporary prophets. But like all prophets they are condemned and ignored for their courage. They struggle, in a culture awash in lies, to tell what few have the fortitude to digest. They know that what we are taught in school, in worship, by the press, through the entertainment industry and at home, that the melding of the state’s rhetoric with the rhetoric of religion, is empty and false.

The words these prophets speak are painful. We, as a nation, prefer to listen to those who speak from the patriotic script. We prefer to hear ourselves exalted. If veterans speak of terrible wounds visible and invisible, of lies told to make them kill, of evil committed in our name, we fill our ears with wax. Not our boys, we say, not them, bred in our homes, endowed with goodness and decency. For if it is easy for them to murder, what about us? And so it is simpler and more comfortable not to hear. We do not listen to the angry words that cascade forth from their lips, wishing only that they would calm down, be reasonable, get some help, and go away. We, the deformed, brand our prophets as madmen. We cast them into the desert. And this is why so many veterans are estranged and enraged. This is why so many succumb to suicide or addictions.

War comes wrapped in patriotic slogans, calls for sacrifice, honor and heroism and promises of glory. It comes wrapped in the claims of divine providence. It is what a grateful nation asks of its children. It is what is right and just. It is waged to make the nation and the world a better place, to cleanse evil. War is touted as the ultimate test of manhood, where the young can find out what they are made of. War, from a distance, seems noble. It gives us comrades and power and a chance to play a small bit in the great drama of history. It promises to give us an identity as a warrior, a patriot, as long as we go along with the myth, the one the war-makers need to wage wars and the defense contractors need to increase their profits.

But up close war is a soulless void. War is about barbarity, perversion and pain, an unchecked orgy of death. Human decency and tenderness are crushed. Those who make war work overtime to reduce love to smut, and all human beings become objects, pawns to use or kill. The noise, the stench, the fear, the scenes of eviscerated bodies and bloated corpses, the cries of the wounded, all combine to spin those in combat into another universe. In this moral void, naively blessed by secular and religious institutions at home, the hypocrisy of our social conventions, our strict adherence to moral precepts, come unglued. War, for all its horror, has the power to strip away the trivial and the banal, the empty chatter and foolish obsessions that fill our days. It lets us see, although the cost is tremendous.

more

War is not sin, crisis averted.

 

[JakeStarkey]

That just shows how little you know about Lewis.

Touchstone Archives: C. S. Lewis, Reluctant Churchman

Look at who write it, and please try to keep up.

I see you missed the point, as usual.

He went to church because he believed that Scripture told him to do so. He went to the Anglican church because, at the time, that was the only church available. That does not mean he agreed with their theology. In fact, he wrote things that the Anglican church considers outright heresy.

Come to think of it, a lot of those evangelical Christians you think all but worship CS Lewis also think he is a heretic.

I know you are not bright, but now you are demonstrating a lack of knowledge.

There were over 300 denominations in England at that time.

C. S. Lewis believed many evangelical and fundamentalist doctrines to be heretical.

Some Anglican divines thought Lewis was "too Catholic" in his teachings, particularly in terms of purgatory and the saints.

Stay in the straight and narrow, QWB, wavering neither to the left nor the right but forward ever down the center path. It's best for you if you do.

 

[Pogo]

Tell me something, when you use this quote after posting about a book that confounds Christians with haters of freedom are you describing yourself, or are you irony impaired?

The far right of Christianity has always hated freedom and free thinking.

Indeed -- as a wise (conservative) poster once put it, "Whether it be a crucifix in a jar of urine (or) an unflattering cartoon of Mohammed... I may not like or agree with any of them. But when we begin to force people into codes of speech approved by one group or another by means of fear, we become the Taliban."

Therein lieth the irony. Religious extremists think themselves to be strutting these huge moral distinctions between "us" and "them", never noticing what their actions have glaringly in common with "them". The pitfall of moralistic navel gazing.

 

[koshergrl]

Yes, I know. I read it. That's why I put the link up there.

Toddle off, I think it's nappy time.

Elitists don't live for years in fox holes and war zones. Chris Hedges is no elitist.

War Is Sin

Posted on Jun 1, 2009

By Chris Hedges

The crisis faced by combat veterans returning from war is not simply a profound struggle with trauma and alienation. It is often, for those who can slice through the suffering to self-awareness, an existential crisis. War exposes the lies we tell ourselves about ourselves. It rips open the hypocrisy of our religions and secular institutions. Those who return from war have learned something which is often incomprehensible to those who have stayed home. We are not a virtuous nation. God and fate have not blessed us above others. Victory is not assured. War is neither glorious nor noble. And we carry within us the capacity for evil we ascribe to those we fight.

Those who return to speak this truth, such as members of Iraq Veterans Against the War, are our contemporary prophets. But like all prophets they are condemned and ignored for their courage. They struggle, in a culture awash in lies, to tell what few have the fortitude to digest. They know that what we are taught in school, in worship, by the press, through the entertainment industry and at home, that the melding of the state’s rhetoric with the rhetoric of religion, is empty and false.

The words these prophets speak are painful. We, as a nation, prefer to listen to those who speak from the patriotic script. We prefer to hear ourselves exalted. If veterans speak of terrible wounds visible and invisible, of lies told to make them kill, of evil committed in our name, we fill our ears with wax. Not our boys, we say, not them, bred in our homes, endowed with goodness and decency. For if it is easy for them to murder, what about us? And so it is simpler and more comfortable not to hear. We do not listen to the angry words that cascade forth from their lips, wishing only that they would calm down, be reasonable, get some help, and go away. We, the deformed, brand our prophets as madmen. We cast them into the desert. And this is why so many veterans are estranged and enraged. This is why so many succumb to suicide or addictions.

War comes wrapped in patriotic slogans, calls for sacrifice, honor and heroism and promises of glory. It comes wrapped in the claims of divine providence. It is what a grateful nation asks of its children. It is what is right and just. It is waged to make the nation and the world a better place, to cleanse evil. War is touted as the ultimate test of manhood, where the young can find out what they are made of. War, from a distance, seems noble. It gives us comrades and power and a chance to play a small bit in the great drama of history. It promises to give us an identity as a warrior, a patriot, as long as we go along with the myth, the one the war-makers need to wage wars and the defense contractors need to increase their profits.

But up close war is a soulless void. War is about barbarity, perversion and pain, an unchecked orgy of death. Human decency and tenderness are crushed. Those who make war work overtime to reduce love to smut, and all human beings become objects, pawns to use or kill. The noise, the stench, the fear, the scenes of eviscerated bodies and bloated corpses, the cries of the wounded, all combine to spin those in combat into another universe. In this moral void, naively blessed by secular and religious institutions at home, the hypocrisy of our social conventions, our strict adherence to moral precepts, come unglued. War, for all its horror, has the power to strip away the trivial and the banal, the empty chatter and foolish obsessions that fill our days. It lets us see, although the cost is tremendous.

more

War is not sin, crisis averted.

Whew, that was close.

 

[koshergrl]

Tell me something, when you use this quote after posting about a book that confounds Christians with haters of freedom are you describing yourself, or are you irony impaired?

The far right of Christianity has always hated freedom and free thinking.

Indeed -- as a wise (conservative) poster once put it, "Whether it be a crucifix in a jar of urine (or) an unflattering cartoon of Mohammed... I may not like or agree with any of them. But when we begin to force people into codes of speech approved by one group or another by means of fear, we become the Taliban."

Therein lieth the irony. Religious extremists think themselves to be strutting these huge moral distinctions between "us" and "them", never noticing what their actions have glaringly in common with "them". The pitfall of moralistic navel gazing.

You need to learn to stick to the topic. You are incapable of understanding what my point is because of whatever alternate conversation you're having with me in your mind...and here, you start off on one track, then go off in a totally unrelated direction.

Moral distinctions and religious oppression are two different things. You start out talking about the *wrongness* of forcing one's religious beliefs upon other people...then you switch gears and start whining about moral distinctions, and pretend you've proved something.


It's sloppy thinking, and I don't have any patience for it. What religious extremists are you talking about? You don't name them, or even indicate who they might be. You make these vague references without any substance. That's so irritating.

 

[Bfgrn]

THE CHRISTIAN RIGHT AND THE RISE OF AMERICAN FASCISM

By -- CHRIS HEDGES

15 Nov 2004

Dr. James Luther Adams, my ethics professor at Harvard Divinity School, told us that when we were his age, he was then close to 80, we would all be fighting the "Christian fascists."

The warning, given to me 25 years ago, came at the moment Pat Robertson and other radio and televangelists began speaking about a new political religion that would direct its efforts at taking control of all institutions, including mainstream denominations and the government. Its stated goal was to use the United States to create a global, Christian empire. It was hard, at the time, to take such fantastic rhetoric seriously, especially given the buffoonish quality of those who expounded it. But Adams warned us against the blindness caused by intellectual snobbery. The Nazis, he said, were not going to return with swastikas and brown shirts. Their ideological inheritors had found a mask for fascism in the pages of the Bible.

He was not a man to use the word fascist lightly. He was in Germany in 1935 and 1936 and worked with the underground anti-Nazi church, known as The Confessing Church, led by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Adams was eventually detained and interrogated by the Gestapo, who suggested he might want to consider returning to the United States . It was a suggestion he followed. He left on a night train with framed portraits of Adolph Hitler placed over the contents inside his suitcase to hide the rolls of home movie film he took of the so-called German Christian Church, which was pro-Nazi, and the few individuals who defied them, including the theologians Karl Barth and Albert Schweitzer. The ruse worked when the border police lifted the top of the suitcases, saw the portraits of the Fuhrer and closed them up again. I watched hours of the grainy black and white films as he narrated in his apartment in Cambridge.

He saw in the Christian Right, long before we did, disturbing similarities with the German Christian Church and the Nazi Party, similarities that he said would, in the event of prolonged social instability or a national crisis, see American fascists, under the guise of religion, rise to dismantle the open society. He despaired of liberals, who he said, as in Nazi Germany, mouthed silly platitudes about dialogue and inclusiveness that made them ineffectual and impotent. Liberals, he said, did not understand the power and allure of evil nor the cold reality of how the world worked. The current hand wringing by Democrats in the wake of the election, with many asking how they can reach out to a movement whose leaders brand them "demonic" and "satanic," would not have surprised Adams. Like Bonhoeffer, he did not believe that those who would fight effectively in coming times of turmoil, a fight that for him was an integral part of the Biblical message, would come from the church or the liberal, secular elite.

His critique of the prominent research universities, along with the media, was no less withering. These institutions, self-absorbed, compromised by their close relationship with government and corporations, given enough of the pie to be complacent, were unwilling to deal with the fundamental moral questions and inequities of the age. They had no stomach for a battle that might cost them their prestige and comfort. He told me that if the Nazis took over America "60 percent of the Harvard faculty would begin their lectures with the Nazi salute." This too was not an abstraction. He had watched academics at the University of Heidelberg, including the philosopher Martin Heidegger, raise their arms stiffly to students before class.

Two decades later, even in the face of the growing reach of the Christian Right, his prediction seems apocalyptic. And yet the powerbrokers in the Christian Right have moved from the fringes of society to the floor of the House of Representatives and the Senate. Christian fundamentalists now hold a majority of seats in 36 percent of all Republican Party state committees, or 18 of 50 states, along with large minorities in 81 percent of the rest of the states. Forty-five Senators and 186 members of the House of Representatives earned between an 80 to100 percent approval ratings from the three most influential Christian Right advocacy groups - The Christian Coalition, Eagle Forum, and Family Resource Council. Tom Coburn, the new senator from Oklahoma, has included in his campaign to end abortion: a call to impose the death penalty on doctors that carry out abortions once the ban goes into place. Another new senator, John Thune, believes in Creationism. Jim DeMint, the new senator elected from South Carolina, wants to ban single mothers from teaching in schools. The Election Day exit polls found that 22 percent of voters identified themselves as evangelical Christians and Bush won 77 percent of their vote. The polls found that a plurality of voters said that the most important issue in the campaign had been "moral values."

President Bush must further these important objectives, including the march to turn education and social welfare over to the churches with his faith-based initiative, as well as chip away at the wall between church and state with his judicial appointments, if he does not want to face a revolt within his core constituency.

Jim Dobson, the head of Focus on the Family, who held weekly telephone conversations with Karl Rove during the campaign, has put the President on notice. He told ABC's "This Week" that "this president has two years, or more broadly the Republican Party has two years, to implement these policies, or certainly four, or I believe they'll pay a price in the next election."

Bush may turn out to be a transition figure, our version of Otto von Bismarck. Bismarck used "values" to energize his base at the end of the 19th century and launched "Kulturkampt," the word from which we get "culture wars," against Catholics and Jews. Bismarck 's attacks split the country, made the discrediting of whole segments of the society an acceptable part of the civil discourse and paved the way for the more virulent racism of the Nazis. This, I suspect, will be George Bush's contribution to our democracy.

more

 

[koshergrl]

You know, there's a limit to how much you can cut and paste in a single article.

 

[JakeStarkey]

You know, there's a limit to how much you can cut and paste in a single article.

Never bothers kg when she does it, so take her caution as cautionary.

 

[Pogo]

The far right of Christianity has always hated freedom and free thinking.

Indeed -- as a wise (conservative) poster once put it, "Whether it be a crucifix in a jar of urine (or) an unflattering cartoon of Mohammed... I may not like or agree with any of them. But when we begin to force people into codes of speech approved by one group or another by means of fear, we become the Taliban."

Therein lieth the irony. Religious extremists think themselves to be strutting these huge moral distinctions between "us" and "them", never noticing what their actions have glaringly in common with "them". The pitfall of moralistic navel gazing.

You need to learn to stick to the topic. You are incapable of understanding what my point is because of whatever alternate conversation you're having with me in your mind...and here, you start off on one track, then go off in a totally unrelated direction.

Moral distinctions and religious oppression are two different things. You start out talking about the *wrongness* of forcing one's religious beliefs upon other people...then you switch gears and start whining about moral distinctions, and pretend you've proved something.


It's sloppy thinking, and I don't have any patience for it. What religious extremists are you talking about? You don't name them, or even indicate who they might be. You make these vague references without any substance. That's so irritating.

You need to learn the art of reading. See the quotes? See your name in them? Me neither.

"Religious extremists" means just that. The brand makes no difference when you're in the business of wacko. In fact that's the whole point of the post.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Look at who write it, and please try to keep up.

I see you missed the point, as usual.

He went to church because he believed that Scripture told him to do so. He went to the Anglican church because, at the time, that was the only church available. That does not mean he agreed with their theology. In fact, he wrote things that the Anglican church considers outright heresy.

Come to think of it, a lot of those evangelical Christians you think all but worship CS Lewis also think he is a heretic.

I know you are not bright, but now you are demonstrating a lack of knowledge.

There were over 300 denominations in England at that time.

C. S. Lewis believed many evangelical and fundamentalist doctrines to be heretical.

Some Anglican divines thought Lewis was "too Catholic" in his teachings, particularly in terms of purgatory and the saints.

Stay in the straight and narrow, QWB, wavering neither to the left nor the right but forward ever down the center path. It's best for you if you do.

How many of those denominations had a church on the campus of Oxford? Or did you forget that he was a member of the faculty at the only college that is also a church?

As for his belief that anything was heresy, feel free to point them out.

 

[JakeStarkey]

I see you missed the point, as usual.

He went to church because he believed that Scripture told him to do so. He went to the Anglican church because, at the time, that was the only church available. That does not mean he agreed with their theology. In fact, he wrote things that the Anglican church considers outright heresy.

Come to think of it, a lot of those evangelical Christians you think all but worship CS Lewis also think he is a heretic.

I know you are not bright, but now you are demonstrating a lack of knowledge.

There were over 300 denominations in England at that time.

C. S. Lewis believed many evangelical and fundamentalist doctrines to be heretical.

Some Anglican divines thought Lewis was "too Catholic" in his teachings, particularly in terms of purgatory and the saints.

Stay in the straight and narrow, QWB, wavering neither to the left nor the right but forward ever down the center path. It's best for you if you do.

How many of those denominations had a church on the campus of Oxford? Or did you forget that he was a member of the faculty at the only college that is also a church? As for his belief that anything was heresy, feel free to point them out.

Truly, QWB, don't demonstrate your illiteracy anymore than what you are doing.

Do you know how many churches were on or near Oxford, established and not? I do. (this is a trap, by the by)

Do you know his theology? I do.

Do you know where his conversion occurred? I do.

Do you know whether he witnessed a personal relationship with Jesus the Christ? I do.

Do you know in what an Anglo-Catholic of the high church, believed? I do.

You made some affirmations, so it is your challenge to fulfill, not mine.

I am showing you, my friend, the pitfalls in which you will fall if you don't do some reading.

Snap to it.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Tell me something, when you use this quote after posting about a book that confounds Christians with haters of freedom are you describing yourself, or are you irony impaired?

The far right of Christianity has always hated freedom and free thinking.

Indeed -- as a wise (conservative) poster once put it, "Whether it be a crucifix in a jar of urine (or) an unflattering cartoon of Mohammed... I may not like or agree with any of them. But when we begin to force people into codes of speech approved by one group or another by means of fear, we become the Taliban."

Therein lieth the irony. Religious extremists think themselves to be strutting these huge moral distinctions between "us" and "them", never noticing what their actions have glaringly in common with "them". The pitfall of moralistic navel gazing.

Unlike, say, progressive heads of universities, who, in their attempt to end offense, impose speech codes that are offensive?

 

[Quantum Windbag]

THE CHRISTIAN RIGHT AND THE RISE OF AMERICAN FASCISM

By -- CHRIS HEDGES

15 Nov 2004

Dr. James Luther Adams, my ethics professor at Harvard Divinity School, told us that when we were his age, he was then close to 80, we would all be fighting the "Christian fascists."

The warning, given to me 25 years ago, came at the moment Pat Robertson and other radio and televangelists began speaking about a new political religion that would direct its efforts at taking control of all institutions, including mainstream denominations and the government. Its stated goal was to use the United States to create a global, Christian empire. It was hard, at the time, to take such fantastic rhetoric seriously, especially given the buffoonish quality of those who expounded it. But Adams warned us against the blindness caused by intellectual snobbery. The Nazis, he said, were not going to return with swastikas and brown shirts. Their ideological inheritors had found a mask for fascism in the pages of the Bible.

He was not a man to use the word fascist lightly. He was in Germany in 1935 and 1936 and worked with the underground anti-Nazi church, known as The Confessing Church, led by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Adams was eventually detained and interrogated by the Gestapo, who suggested he might want to consider returning to the United States . It was a suggestion he followed. He left on a night train with framed portraits of Adolph Hitler placed over the contents inside his suitcase to hide the rolls of home movie film he took of the so-called German Christian Church, which was pro-Nazi, and the few individuals who defied them, including the theologians Karl Barth and Albert Schweitzer. The ruse worked when the border police lifted the top of the suitcases, saw the portraits of the Fuhrer and closed them up again. I watched hours of the grainy black and white films as he narrated in his apartment in Cambridge.

He saw in the Christian Right, long before we did, disturbing similarities with the German Christian Church and the Nazi Party, similarities that he said would, in the event of prolonged social instability or a national crisis, see American fascists, under the guise of religion, rise to dismantle the open society. He despaired of liberals, who he said, as in Nazi Germany, mouthed silly platitudes about dialogue and inclusiveness that made them ineffectual and impotent. Liberals, he said, did not understand the power and allure of evil nor the cold reality of how the world worked. The current hand wringing by Democrats in the wake of the election, with many asking how they can reach out to a movement whose leaders brand them "demonic" and "satanic," would not have surprised Adams. Like Bonhoeffer, he did not believe that those who would fight effectively in coming times of turmoil, a fight that for him was an integral part of the Biblical message, would come from the church or the liberal, secular elite.

His critique of the prominent research universities, along with the media, was no less withering. These institutions, self-absorbed, compromised by their close relationship with government and corporations, given enough of the pie to be complacent, were unwilling to deal with the fundamental moral questions and inequities of the age. They had no stomach for a battle that might cost them their prestige and comfort. He told me that if the Nazis took over America "60 percent of the Harvard faculty would begin their lectures with the Nazi salute." This too was not an abstraction. He had watched academics at the University of Heidelberg, including the philosopher Martin Heidegger, raise their arms stiffly to students before class.

Two decades later, even in the face of the growing reach of the Christian Right, his prediction seems apocalyptic. And yet the powerbrokers in the Christian Right have moved from the fringes of society to the floor of the House of Representatives and the Senate. Christian fundamentalists now hold a majority of seats in 36 percent of all Republican Party state committees, or 18 of 50 states, along with large minorities in 81 percent of the rest of the states. Forty-five Senators and 186 members of the House of Representatives earned between an 80 to100 percent approval ratings from the three most influential Christian Right advocacy groups - The Christian Coalition, Eagle Forum, and Family Resource Council. Tom Coburn, the new senator from Oklahoma, has included in his campaign to end abortion: a call to impose the death penalty on doctors that carry out abortions once the ban goes into place. Another new senator, John Thune, believes in Creationism. Jim DeMint, the new senator elected from South Carolina, wants to ban single mothers from teaching in schools. The Election Day exit polls found that 22 percent of voters identified themselves as evangelical Christians and Bush won 77 percent of their vote. The polls found that a plurality of voters said that the most important issue in the campaign had been "moral values."

President Bush must further these important objectives, including the march to turn education and social welfare over to the churches with his faith-based initiative, as well as chip away at the wall between church and state with his judicial appointments, if he does not want to face a revolt within his core constituency.

Jim Dobson, the head of Focus on the Family, who held weekly telephone conversations with Karl Rove during the campaign, has put the President on notice. He told ABC's "This Week" that "this president has two years, or more broadly the Republican Party has two years, to implement these policies, or certainly four, or I believe they'll pay a price in the next election."

Bush may turn out to be a transition figure, our version of Otto von Bismarck. Bismarck used "values" to energize his base at the end of the 19th century and launched "Kulturkampt," the word from which we get "culture wars," against Catholics and Jews. Bismarck 's attacks split the country, made the discrediting of whole segments of the society an acceptable part of the civil discourse and paved the way for the more virulent racism of the Nazis. This, I suspect, will be George Bush's contribution to our democracy.

more

All you need to do is start screaming about dominionism and you will be the perfect replacement for "One Who Must Not Be Named." That and throw in an epic meltdown occasionally.