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Executive Times |
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2006 Book Reviews |
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Kingdom
Coming by Michelle Goldberg |
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Rating: |
*** |
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(Recommended) |
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Click on
title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Cogent Michelle
Goldberg’s new book, Kingdom
Coming, will disturb those pluralists who have been unwilling to examine
the ways in which evangelical Christians are taking over society to mold it
into their version of God’s kingdom. American polarization is taking new
forms, and Goldberg highlights in a cogent way the lack of common ground
between two different approaches to science, politics, social services and
justice. Here’s an excerpt, from the beginning of Chapter 2, “Protocols of
the Elders of San Francisco: The Political Uses of Homophobia,” pp. 50-57: On a Sunday morning just over three weeks before the 2004 election, a
purple curtain rose on the stage of
the 12,000-member World Harvest Church in
Columbus, Ohio, to reveal a purple- and white-robed choir standing on a
bridge several stories above the ground. Beneath them, a row of gospel singers in black suits sang soft-rock worship anthems. A black backdrop
behind them sparkled with pinpricks of
light like a starry sky. Colored lights swept over
the singers, and
two huge monitors showed close-ups of
the ecstatic faces of thousands of churchgoers who were about to hear how Jesus wanted them to save marriage from the hell-spawned forces of homosexuality on November 2. On the monitors flanking
the stage, words to a simple, chantlike
hymn appeared for people to sing along: You are
a mighty God You are
a mighty God Mighty
God mighty God Yes you
are a mighty God Two pianists played
and electric guitar riffs sizzled through the air. In the pews—row
after row of them—there was an ecstasy of singing and dancing, people swaying
with their hands in the air or turning in small circles. The verse
was repeated over and over, slightly modified—
“You are an awesome God; You are a holy God.” The song ended with cheers and applause from an audience that continued to
grow as late-corners trickled into the amphitheaterlike chapel. A
man with a neat silver
pompadour took the stage to warm up for Pastor Rod Parsley, a faith-healing televangelist
who, like Rick Scarborough,
is positioning himself as
one of the evangelical right’s next generation of leaders. Calling Parsley a
“prophet” and an “oracle of God,” the warm-up preacher said, “Tomorrow he’s
got eighteen years of marital bliss. He’s not only preaching it, he’s living
it. Marriage—one man, one woman.” The crowd shouted its approval. Parsley, a
broad-shouldered, dark-haired white man with narrow eyes and ripe, fleshy
lips, appeared onstage. “The nation has never been more divided and the
choices have never been more clear,” he declared.
“Everyone asks, ‘Why is it so close?’ The light is getting lighter and the
dark is getting darker. These two opponents are not just opponents. This is a
values situation. This is lightness and darkness!” He would say much more
about marriage, but not until his flock was looser and giddy with music and
movement. “Reach over and slap someone a high five and tell them it’s gonna get better!” he said, and people happily complied.
As the music rose, Parsley enjoined the worshippers to dance harder. “You
need to abandon yourself! Don’t let those aisles separate you!” At his words, people
started dancing in the aisles. Parsley called headache
sufferers to the front of the auditorium. But as people watched them line up,
he cried out, “Don’t stop worshipping Him! Don’t stop worshipping Him! Don’t
become a spectator!” As thousands in the crowd kept dancing, he moved among
those who came forward, putting his hand on their foreheads. “In the presence
of God I rebuke it,” he said. “In the presence of God I rebuke it. In Jesus,
I rebuke it. Lose it. Lose it. In the name of Jesus. In the name of Jesus.
Lose that.” The choir kept singing and
Parsley kept preaching, spewing glossolalia as he
laid his hands on his flock. Some people fell back and were caught by ushers
standing behind them. One woman paced the aisle, her hands above her head,
looking up and sobbing. Nearly an hour and a half
passed before Parsley started preaching in earnest to a crowd that was by
then happily worn out and receptive. He told his audience that Christianity
was under siege. Interlopers from out of state had come to He started to sweat. An
organ trilled behind him as he said, “On November 2, I see people marching
like a holy army to the voting booth. I see the holy spirit anointing you as
you vote for life, as you vote for marriage, as you vote for the pulpit!” Three and a half weeks
later, on November 3, a dozen or so volunteers for Americans Coming Together
(ACT)—the “interlopers” of Parsley’s sermon, who had come to Ohio to turn out
the progressive vote— slumped stunned in front of a TV in their suddenly
deserted Columbus headquarters. Off to the side, a blonde girl sobbed
quietly. Bush had won. Anti-gay-marriage initiatives, many of which also
banned domestic partnerships and other legal recognition for gay couples,
had passed resoundingly in all eleven states where they were on the ballot,
including All
through October, the mood among Democratic volunteers was ebullient. ACT had
mounted one of the largest, most well-financed get-out-the-vote drives in the
history of American politics, dispatching thousands of paid workers and
impassioned volunteers to canvass voters in swing states. On In The New York Times Magazine, Matt Bai wrote of Steve Bouchard, ACT’s
Ohio director, and his colleague Tom Lindenfeld:
“What gnawed at Bouchard was that nowhere we went in Franklin County, a
vigorously contested swing county, did we see any hint of a strong Republican
presence—no signs, no door-knockers, no Bush supporters handing out leaflets
at the polls. This seemed only to increase Lindenfeld’s
confidence. . . . For Bouchard, however, the silence was
unsettling. How could there be such a thing as a stealth get-out-the-vote
drive?” The drive wasn’t happening
in stealth. It was happening in churches, especially megachurches,
temples of religious nationalism where millions of Americans gather every
week for exultant sermons that mingle evangelical Christianity, self-help,
and right-wing politics. Bush’s brigades were hidden in plain sight in a
parallel culture, an November 2 was just the
beginning. In the months that followed, state and local lawmakers across the
country attempted to strip gay people of a host of legal protections,
including the right to share health insurance, adopt children, and become
foster parents. An Homosexuality has become the mobilizing passion for much of the
religious right. A populist movement needs an enemy, but one reason the
Christian nationalists are so strong is that they’ve made peace with many old
foes, especially Catholics and African-Americans. Gay people have taken the
place of obsolete demons. For the right, gays are
living signifiers of decadence and corruption. They’re seen as both repulsive
and tempting, their mere existence sparking some deep primordial panic among
much of straight In their widely promoted
2003 book The Homosexual Agenda, Craig
Osten and Alan Sears (president of the Alliance
Defense Fund, the major Christian nationalist legal outfit) write
breathlessly of a national conspiracy that, under the cover of fighting for
civil rights, aims to steal the souls of children and silence the church.
“Overt efforts are made by many to lead young men and women into homosexual
behavior, many for simple, base reasons that have nothing to do with
political agendas,” they wrote. “Instead, the new recruits are ‘fresh meat’ and
sources of new cash, new sex partners, and new profit.”3 In the past, this kind of demonization has been a precursor to horror. There are
some inescapable parallels between the rhetoric of cultural purity in 1930s Social conservatism is not
in itself fascistic, of course. But the combination of repression, populism,
and paranoia, the fear of decadence as a monstrous plot against the nation,
carries frightening echoes. The Nazis saw sexual liberation movements as part
of a Jewish conspiracy to subvert the German family and thus Just as anti-Semites deny
the Holocaust, some Christian nationalists argue that stories about the Nazi
victimization of gay people are lies devised to further the homosexual agenda
and disarm its opposition. In their revisionist history The Pink Swastika, Scott Lively and Kevin Abrams make the
astonishing charge that Nazism was a primarily homosexual movement, that
today’s gay rights movement is its direct descendant, and that claims to the
contrary are simply part of the homosexual conspiracy. Being ruthless, those
behind the “homosexual agenda” must be treated ruthlessly. “Like their Nazi
predecessors, today’s homosexualists lack any
scruples,” wrote Lively and Abrams. “Homosexuality is primarily a predatory
addiction striving to take the weak and unsuspecting down with it. The ‘gay’
agenda is a colossal fraud; a gigantic robbery of the mind. Homosexuals of
the type described in this book have no true idea of how to act in the best
interests of their country and fellow man. Their intention is to serve none
but themselves.”6 Lively and Abrams are not
solitary cranks: their contention that gays were perpetrators rather than
victims of the Holocaust is common among Christian nationalists. Among those
who’ve endorsed The Pink Swastika is
Steve Baldwin, executive director of the Council for National Policy, one of
the most powerful right-wing groups in The demonology these men
peddle—repeated endlessly at churches, on right-wing TV and radio, at
rallies, and by politicians—helps explain how in 2004 millions of Americans
decided that, in a time of war and economic uncertainty, there was no issue
more urgent than keeping gay people from getting married. The role that gay marriage
played in the 2004 election—and
continues to play in American politics—has been confused by competing hyperbole.
In the days after November 2, conventional wisdom held that the election
represented the triumph of right-wing culture warriors, who wasted no time
claiming a mandate. On November 3, William Bennett, the former Reagan drug
czar famous for political sanctimony and compulsive gambling, wrote in the National Review Online, “Having
restored decency to the White House, President Bush now has a mandate to
affect policy that will promote a more decent society, through both politics
and law. . . . Now is the
time to begin our long, national cultural renewal . . . no less in legislation than in federal
court appointments.” Culture warriors pointed to
the much quoted exit poll in which 22 percent of voters cited “moral values”
as their chief concern, exceeding those who pointed to In one way, the
significance of this poll was overstated. Yes, more voters pointed to “moral
values” than any of the other issues listed, but that’s partly because of the
way the question was worded. Nineteen percent of respondents said the most
important issue in the election was terrorism. Add that to As a percentage of the
electorate, the evangelical vote was no higher in 2004 than it was in 2000.
Yet evangelicals were the most active and cohesive part of the campaign,
outmatching the unprecedented progressive mobilization on behalf of John
Kerry. As Marvin Olasky wrote in the evangelical magazine
World, “President Bush won because
moral issues were more important than any others for one fifth of the voters,
and the president won that fifth by at least a 4—1 majority. To put it
another way, Senator Kerry probably received about 56 percent of the vote
from people most concerned with foreign policy or economic issues, the
traditional subjects for presidential campaigns.”7 While the 2004 election
wasn’t won on the culture war alone, it revealed the growing size and
strength of the Christian nationalist movement that’s been building in this
country for decades. The cadres of the religious right are the foot soldiers
of the Republican party, the people who man phone banks and organize their
neighbors. Not all Republican voters believe that gay marriage portends the
death of the nation, but ones who do were key to
Bush’s victory, and they’re now driving Kingdom
Coming sends a warning to those who value a secular society that efforts
are underway and progressing to define Steve Hopkins,
August 25, 2006 |
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The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the September
2006 issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/Kingdom
Coming.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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