The Religious Right-Wing Has Already Seceded from the Country

In order to understand what is truly going on with the McCain campaign right now, and why--in spite of overwhelming evidence that the American people are not responding to it--the Republican nominee seems hellbent on attacking Barack Obama for everything from associations "with a domestic terrorist" to allowing babies to die, as he did yet again in last night's debate, you have to realize that what we are seeing in the Republican party right now is basically a split between thinking, fiscal conservatives and the more moderate of the party who accept most of their precepts, and the religious right wing who have, in effect, seceded from the union already and are trying to take the party with them.

I would love to take credit for this brilliant observation, but I have to bow, once again, to HuffingtonPost's own Frank Schaeffer, who understands this world and its dynamics better than anyone. As most of you must surely know by now, Mr. Schaeffer's father, the late Francis Schaeffer, is largely credited with having laid the foundation for the fundamentalist evangelical movement. During the 80's and 90's, the father and son were hosted and toasted by all the big names from the movement, from Jerry Falwell, James Dobson, Pat Buchanan, and Billy Graham to the Republican leaders such as Ronald Reagan and both George Bushes who courted them and their base.

As he details in his fine book, CRAZY FOR GOD, How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back, a movement that started out passionate and faith-based became progressively joyless, hypocritical, legalistic, and judgmental, with charismatic, ego-driven mega-pastors becoming far more concerned with building their own empires and securing their own power than with promoting the quiet and compassionate ministry of Jesus Christ.

When amoral and canny politicians and their handlers recognized the gold mine such a voting block could provide, the politicization of religion was complete, and the saddest point in all of this, in my opinion, is that the religious right and the many well-meaning believers who adhere to its rather rigid rules, do not even know they are being deliberately manipulated for the most cynical of reasons.

But the thing is, the more separate and isolated they become from the bulk of American culture, the easier they are to manipulate, especially when the powerful comprehend the underlying code-words, and use it to further their own power.

In a recent interview with Amy Goodman, for Democracy Now! and posted at TruthOut.org, Schaeffer compares the shady organization that GOP VP-nominee Sarah Palin's husband, Todd, had belonged to until just recently, that advocates Alaska's secession from the United States, to what is happening with the religious right:

"But really, over the years, distancing myself from that evangelical background, as I talk about in the book, I've come to a place where...speaking of the secessionists in Alaska, the evangelical right-wing subculture in this country, particularly the Assemblies of God, by the way, that Sarah Palin comes from, have really already ceded from our union, in the sense of the fact that they have, you know, between home schooling and their own schools, their own publishing, their own radio, their own TV, many times very fundamentally anti-American, waiting for the Apocalypse, waiting for Jesus to take everybody away in the Rapture, weirdly Christian Zionist and at the same time assuming that the Jews will all be killed in Armageddon, when Jesus comes back, as part of their Rapture enterprise.

"You know, just to put it frankly, the evangelical movement that I grew up in as a child used to be a fairly respectable and respectful group of people. They regarded themselves as Americans and part of the system. And now, I really think it's been taken over by a group of people that have to be described fairly as just wingnuts...And the fact of the matter is, the movement has gone off the rails. "

Mr. Schaeffer raises an important point that cannot be overlooked here. The advent of home-schooling, once the purvue of only a tiny sliver of the population, has boomed in recent years. Public schools were considered secularist, even anti-God, and so more and more Christian homes began to teach their children at home, even as private, church-supported Christian schools also began to proliferate.

Since the rock-bottom line of the fundamentalist teaching is that EVERY WORD IN THE BIBLE IS INSPIRED BY GOD AND IS THE LITERAL TRUTH, then it follows that such things as scientific inquiry must be filtered through that gauze--hence the refusal by many fundamentalists to accept that evolution exists.

You have to understand that such a rigid understanding of Biblical teachings makes it IMPOSSIBLE for Christian fundamentalists to question ANY of it. To do so is A DIRECT THREAT to their faith. They are literally afraid that if they ask too many questions, their faith and its belief system will collapse, and they will be left alone in the universe with no God and no direction.

This severe either-or interpretation of life extends into political policy and must be embraced by any politician who courts their vote.

When John McCain got the nomination, this large segment of the Republican establishment was highly suspicious of him, because although he is strongly pro-life, he has not exactly embraced their entire agenda and has certainly not been as strong a proponent of their policies--or as overtly religious--as, say, I dunno...Tom DeLay?

Although it was Ronald Reagan who first saw and exploited this voting block--even though he, himself, never attended church--it was Karl Rove who elevated that exploitation to an art. (Even though he admits that he is actually an agnostic. How cynical is that?)

Rove understood that the religious right takes seriously yet another scripture that says, "Believers, be ye not yoked to unbelievers."

This tends to cause fundamentalists to stick strictly to church-oriented settings in their daily lives. As the commercial world also caught on to the amount of money to be made in this area, a whole new marketing campaign exploded--Christian romance novels, Christian rock music, Christian movies, Christian radio and television stations, Christian toys, and so on.

At that same time, those same marketing forces, aided and abetted by politicians, emphasized the idea that regular news sources--broadcast news, ranking newspapers and news magazines, and the like--were LIBERAL and therefore, NOT TO BE TRUSTED.

This meant that respected news sources such as the New York Times or the Washington Post could all be lumped in with the liberal media and ignored, while "the truth" could be found only on Christian news sources.

So you can educate your children at home, teaching from the same Bible they read in Sunday School and in church on Sunday mornings and evenings and Wednesday nights, driving to and fro while listening to Christian radio in the car, pay attention to Christian news networks while preparing dinner, watch a Christian video with the kids, put them to bed, and read a Christian book before you go to sleep, then wake up to your morning Bible devotional.

Almost all your friends are Christians, and when you go online, you hang out in Christian chat groups.

This is what Mr. Schaeffer meant when he talked about the secession of Christian fundamentalists from the rest of the country.

And with this extremely narrow worldview and lack of exposure to outside influences, it makes this particular voting block very easy to manipulate.

And it is done, for starters, with code-words.

One of the most outrageous moments of last night's debate occurred when John McCain snorted in derision when Barack Obama said that he would not vote for an anti-abortion bill that did not take into account, "the life and health of the mother."

Making air-quotes with his fingers, McCain sneered that "the health of the mother" was an "extreme pro-abortion" concept.

The vast majority of people viewing that moment were repulsed by McCain's comments, and rightfully so--but for the religious right who were watching, this was a moment of high satisfaction.

It has long been a sticking-point with anti-abortion advocates that doctors would only use "health of the mother" as an excuse to provide on-demand abortions. The idea was that all a doctor had to do was say that the mother's health was in jeopardy, even if it wasn't. They believed--and still believe--that "health of the mother" is a mere ploy to get away with more abortions.

To religious fundamentalists, it is always either-or. There is no nuance in their world.

This one moment, more than any other--with the possible exception of lumping Obama in with "extremist environmentalists" because he wants to see to it that nuclear power is safe--was the tell in the poker game that McCain and his handlers are playing.

From the time the Republicans--carried on the wave of right-wing evangelicals--took over congress in 1994 until only recently, religious right-wingers have dictated public policy, Supreme Court nominees, political discourse, and legislation.

But as they have become increasingly isolated even within the Republican party itself, they have failed to understand that the rest of the country is not as conservative or fundamentalist as they are.

And as their howls of protest grow increasingly more shrill, their message is growing increasingly more extreme, to the point that now, even contraception is considered by many of them to be a form of abortion, and some fundamentalist pharmacists won't even fill prescriptions for women for birth control pills.

It was a good run, for a while there, for the Republican party. Voter guides passed out in churches, lots of God and flags waved around during speeches and rallies and conventions...consequently, when McCain decided who was going to run his campaign, he aligned himself with those who still believe that to energize THAT "base" for the Republican party is, in effect, to energize the entire electorate, all the way to victory.

But wedge issues, waged so skillfully by Karl Rove in previous campaigns--abortion, gay rights, and gun control--only worked, at the time, because during and for a while after the Clinton years, this country was at peace and in a time of prosperity. More moderate people could afford to vote against their own economic self-interest and feel righteous doing it, because after all, their candidate was a good, God-fearing man.

It's Rove's protegees now running McCain's campaign, and they've tried mightily to create new wedge issues out of such made-up horrors as Bill Ayers and ACORN, while at the same time, whipping up their rallies into a frenzy with that original secessionist--Sarah Palin.

But they have lived in their own world for so long now that they failed to realize that the rest of the country was moving on. This is why they keep pushing issues that voters just don't care about--especially now that there are two wars going on and the economy is imploding. It's why, to the mystification of pundits everywhere--they continue to ignore polls which state--loud and clear--that Americans not only don't care about these things, but that the constant referencing of them is only causing a backlash for their candidate.

They HAVE to ignore the polls now, because the vocal minority of religious right-wingers that dominate their rallies and fund-raisers INSIST upon it. Even as McCain was tanking in the polls on such non-issues as Bill Ayers, the religious right-wing was demanding that he push it harder.

There's a reason for this, too, and Frank Schaeffer discusses it in CRAZY FOR GOD:

"Fundamentalists never can just disagree. The person they fall out with is not only on the wrong side of the issue; they are on the wrong side of God...

"A church split builds self-righteousness into the fabric of every new splinter group, whose only reason for existence is that they decide that they are more pure and moral than their brethren...

"And each splinter group within our culture...sees itself as morally, even 'theologically,' superior to its rivals. It is not just about politics. It is about being BETTER than one's evil opponent. We don't just disagree, we demonize the 'other.' And we don't compromise."

It must be stated here that we can be just as bad on the left sometimes, but the sheer organization and size, and cultural reach of the evangelical movement puts its self-righteousness in bold-face, as Christopher Buckley, son of conservative godfather William F. Buckley found when, after recently endorsing Barack Obama online, he was hounded out of the magazine his father had founded, the National Review:

"Within hours of my endorsement appearing in The Daily Beast it became clear that National Review had a serious problem on its hands. So the next morning, I thought the only decent thing to do would be to offer to resign my column there. This offer was accepted--rather briskly!--by Rich Lowry, NR's editor, and its publisher, the superb and able and fine Jack Fowler. I retain the fondest feelings for the magazine that my father founded, but I will admit to a certain sadness that an act of publishing a reasoned argument for the opposition should result in acrimony and disavowal.

"My father in his day endorsed a number of liberal Democrats for high office, including Allard K. Lowenstein and Joe Lieberman...

"My point, simply, is that William F. Buckley held to rigorous standards, and if those were met by members of the other side rather than by his own camp, he said as much...

"So, I have been effectively fatwahed (is that how you spell it?) by the conservative movement, and the magazine that my father founded must now distance itself from me. But then, conservatives have always had a bit of trouble with the concept of diversity. The GOP likes to say it's a big-tent. Looks more like a yurt to me.

"While I regret this development, I am not in mourning, for I no longer have any clear idea what, exactly, the modern conservative movement stands for. Eight years of 'conservative' government has brought us a doubled national debt, ruinous expansion of entitlement programs, bridges to nowhere, poster boy Jack Abramoff and an ill-premised, ill-waged war conducted by politicians of breathtaking arrogance. As a sideshow, it brought us a truly obscene attempt at federal intervention in the Terry Schiavo case.

"So, to paraphrase a real conservative, Ronald Reagan: I haven't left the Republican Party. It left me."

Christopher Buckley is not the first well-known thinking conservative who is breaking away from the current direction of the party, as I detailed in my own blogpost, "Hell Just Froze Over."

What we're witnessing right now is a fragmenting of the Republican party as the religious right-wing breaks away from the conservative and/or moderate wings of the party. They've had power for a while now, and they don't want to let go. This is part of why there is so much rage and nastiness at their rallies. And you can bet that if John McCain loses, the religious right-wing will say it was because he wasn't fundamentalist ENOUGH, that he didn't push Bill Ayers and ACORN and other wedge issues ENOUGH, that he didn't get mad ENOUGH, and they will back someone wild-eyed enough for them next time--maybe Sarah Palin herself.

But this country, the world, and the Republican party itself will have moved on by then. They will have to do some serious soul-searching to rediscover what it means to be conservative. And if that happens, expect the religious right-wing to put forth a third-party candidate. (And be stunned when they don't win.)

As Roger Cohen put it in the New York Times, in his op-ed, "Presley, Palin, and the Heartland,""And it dawned on me that Palin, with her vile near-accusations of treason against Barack Obama, her cloying doggone hymns to small-town U.S.A., her with-us-or-against-us refrain, is really an impostor.

"She's the representative of a kind of last-gasp Republicanism, of an exhausted party, whose proud fiscal conservatism and patriotism have given away to scurrilous fear-mongering and ideological confusion.

"It's a party in need of a break from power after the Bush years in order to re-learn what (Branson, Missouri mayor, Raeanne) Presley represents: the can-do, down-to-earth, honest, industrious, spend-what-you-earn civility of the heartland. That civility has been usurped into Palin's trash talk."

But I think Christopher Buckley should get the last word, part of his original piece, "Sorry, Dad, I'm Voting for Obama," the one that got him thousands of hate e-mails and letters and threats: "Dear Pup once said to me sighfully after a right-winger who fancied himself a WFB protege had said something transcendently and provocatively cretinous, 'You know, I've spent my entire life time separating the Right from the kooks.' Well, the dear man did his best."

Comments

[jayhawkeye2]

Like most of my friends, I am a Libertarian who until recently was registered as a Republican. I was willing to put up with the bible-beating, Darwin bashing, bedroom-intruding, First Amendment Stomping antics of the right wing in the name of fiscal restraint. As seeing the current president and last congress didn't even uphold that last tenant of traditional republican ideals, I saw no reason to remain with the party. I became GDIs this summer.

While the GOP"s stance on gay marriage and abortion should have forced me from the party long ago (honestly, how could I justify to my gay friends that the political party I belonged to did not believe they should have the same rights as every other American), it was the choice of Palin as VP that made me realize this was no longer my party " with Palin, the GOP was flipping the bird to every moderate republican. I am no Obama fan, but if it takes 8 years of democratic rule to force the GOP back to the center and safeguard civil liberties visavis the Supreme Court nominations, then it will be worth it.

Until the centrist, limited government voice reclaims the party from the fanatics, I do not see how the party can survive, and frankly, at this point, I hope it doesn"t. My fear is that that the GOP, through their skewed world view, will view the 2008 loss as G-d"s punishment for them not being conservative enough.

[Whinger]

They're living in a world of their own, but want to force feed everyone else with their take on Christianity!

[rgersmrk]

Another great article Deanie! Keep up the great work!

Growing up in Alabama I see people everyday who believe in the religious right. This election has really frustrated me in particular because it seems like the religious right has gone beyond the normal jabs they take at the candidates. I even feel the far left has gone overboard as well. I just don't get where or why both extremes have to have so much hate for the opposite candidate

The reason why I say the far left has gone overboard as well is the plain fact that I've seen bloggers and posters on Huffington insist (at least in the past) and demand that Obama get angry and nasty to McCain. Ms. Huffington has even suggested it.

To me, Obama's biggest plus has always been his even temper. I also think it's going to take a leader with that temperament to get us through the mess we are in. Hot heads and knee jerkers will cause us more problems. There is no doubt in my mind about that.

I hope one day both the far right and left can get beyond the polarization of their beliefs and understand that there isn't just black and white but a whole lot of gray and it takes reasonable people to work out the gray areas.

[TheVicar]

Remember, everyone: during the Spanish Civil War, it was right-wing religion which gave Franco his support. Without them, he would have been arrested in about two days, and we would have been spared tragedies like Guernica. These people are seriously dangerous. Probably the most effective method of dealing with them would be to remove tax exemption for religion, so that the people taking advantage of them would be forced to move on to some other scam. Let the churches who provide genuine charitable functions apply for tax exemption like secular charities do, with all the rules that come with that exemption.

[DemoMom]

This is such a good post and I'm going to forward it to all my family and friends with whom I have discussed this so many times. I'm a church-going Christian but these people have nothing in common with me. I'm a liberal Democrat, an environmentalist, an evolutionist and my children went to public schools. I cannot see how they can call themselves "followers of Jesus" and still vote for the present day GOP! It's the party of the rich and powerful, and the way in which Reagan, Rove and the current McCain campaign have exploited the naivety and ignorance of these people is truly outrageous. This is best argument yet for improving our education system and banning home schooling!

[Oregon Ivy]

We've already taken the steps toward becoming a fa scist nation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z586rnEI6Qo&feature=related

Read the book: Naomi Wolf: Give me Liberty

If it doesn't sc are the he ll out of you, nothing will.

[zanzig]

"they have failed to understand that the rest of the country is not as conservative or fundamentalist as they are."

This is very true, but I think what has also happened is that the rest of the country failed to understand that the religious right were a vocal, even noisy, minority, and should not have had the wherewithal to so consume the Administration. By sheer numbers alone the rest of the country could have put a stop to this a long time ago.

[PaulL2]

The AP reported on Sarah Palin's rally at Elon University, a small university nearby, oddly enough not affiliated with a Christian Right church. Read my excerpt (due to 250 word limit) of Sarah's "creation science energy policy" below to get a full taste of "the base."

ELON, N.C. (AP) -- Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin said Thursday that God blessed the nation with oil and gas resources and other forms of energy that should be tapped to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign suppliers.

"God has so richly blessed this land, not just with the oil and the gas, but with wind and the hydro, the geothermal and the biomass," Palin said. "We'll tap into those."

"We need to drill here and drill now," Palin said as the crowd chanted "drill baby, drill." A protester at the back of the crowd shouted "No blood for oil."

But Palin remains an asset to McCain in the South, where GOP voters had remained skeptical of him until he put her on the ticket. She appeals to Southern voters by talking about God, gun rights and abortion -- shoring up aspects of McCain's lacking Southern credentials.

"She's a hunter. She opposes abortion. She's religious," said John Shirley, 63, of Pittsboro, who cited those issues as among his top concerns. "She reflects a lot of the values we have here in the South."

Associated Press writer Glenn Adams in Bangor, Maine,
contributed to this report.

[KathyIndiana]

Here in rural Indiana religious fundamentalism is rampant - lots of evangelical churches, home schools, long hair and long skirts, Christian everything. This isolation has kept Indiana about a century behind the rest of the world for a long time, and even if Obama wins the presidency I don't see that changing. They will simply see themselves and their movement as martyrs, and go on in their isolation. Sad, because they are not only backward and uninformed, they don't care because they are convinced they are right.

[Oregon Ivy]

I've been trying to reason with my Christian friends not to vote for McCain to no avail. They can't or won't see the true evil and divisive spirit that will haunt American for all of Obama's presidency (if he should win) that is being forged in that campaign.

We cannot let them win or it'll be disaster for America!

Please, do NOT get over-confident. I saw on a Republican blog that they were deliberately "padding" the polls by lying to pollsters so that Obama supporters would think they were way ahead and stay home on voting day.

And there is still the possibility that the McCain camp could pull a very dirty trick to try to influence votes.

VOTE! Take your friends and family to vote. Go if the weather is bad or you're sick or you have to skip work or school.

We need every single vote!

[sgi]

They must have taken some plays out of the hard left rule book.

[MajorKong]

I wouldn't know. Other than the 5 Maoists that show up at our Community Festival every year I haven't met too many "hard left" people in recent years.

Of course, you guys think that anyone to the left of Generalissimo Francisco Franco is "hard left".

[Linda Hansen - Huffpost Blogger]

Ah, Deanie! You strike just the right chord again (no pun intended).

Down here in South Carolina, the Southern Baptists, Pentecostals and Freewill types run rampant, their blinders Crazy-Glued in place and their eyes fixed on the Teutonic Jesus, blonde-streaked and blue-eyed, who hangs over their beds. Their Son of God looks suspiciously Scots-Irish in these parts and that's a mighty comforting Revelation, with The End comin' and all...

For those of us Southerners, heathen liberals all, who keep hollering "Christ said 'The last shall be first...' and 'Blessed are the peacemakers...'", there is a collective fundamentalist aversion. When The Rapture comes, we're toast.

One can only hope the McCain/Palin effort will fail miserably. Then the two of them and their radical-religious fringe can shuffle off to Palin's AIP Heaven (May the good Lord help the more rational Alaskans who may find themselves outnumbered).

[southernoldie]

OMG, I hear ya. Although not in SC, but in another southern type state, we are deluged w/ bible beaters like you wouldn't believe. You'd think none of us were christians that don't vote right wing & if you're actually a Democrat, watch out, you're a heathen. The holier than thou are alive and well, just hopefully not everywhere. I'll never understand their stinkin thinkin. Anyone not believing as they do is going to hell and is also a socialist, according to their pastors & them. I feel for them, since they surely will have to awaken one day to the rest of the world and learn to be open minded and will have to get along with these people, maybe? Nope, they cannot do that. Amazes me that otherwise bright people fall for this tripe the conservatives put out there. Cheney & Rove were brilliant in that area, to be able to dupe them so badly. So was Reagan, their savior. Thanks so much for that brilliant article. I needed that. Makes one feel they aren't alone in their saneness.

[medici]

I think of Republicans in general as closed-minded. The fundamentalist section of the Republican party, though, seem to have closed their minds to such an extent that they've forced out all the previous contents and can rightfully be thought of as empty-minded.

[rjmiller]

"To religious fundamentalists, it is always either-or. There is no nuance in their world."

I'm having trouble coming up with the words to properly express my disgust with this view. The world is full of nothing BUT nuance. Nothing is absolute unless it can be proven mathematically.

[BlueMist602]

Wow..I was just saying the same thing last night after the debate.

They see only black and white and miss all the other colors the world has to offer. No wonder they are so hostile, what a miserable existance it must be to miss out on so much!

HOW SAD!

[brizzle]

I don't understand how religious conservatives can claim that the world is black and white. I mean, doesn't their own book talk about their god giving them a rainbow as a sign or something?

Please...if you're a religious conservative reading this post, consider this: Rainbows don't include black OR white...and rainbows are a sign directly from your god. So next time you think of the world as black and white, remember that god prefers rainbows...at least he sees color.