by Frederick Clarkson
trade paperback, $15.95
[Common Courage Press, Box 702, Monroe, ME 04951]
Reviewed by Bill Meyers
We've watched Moslems, Orthodox Christians, and Catholics kill
each other in the former Yugoslavia for a few years now. Can such
insanity happen here? In the U.S. there now exists a large group of
people who want to kill people of opposing faiths, and homosexuals,
and anyone who provides or has an abortion. And they have killed
enough people to show they are serious. More incredible, in many
areas they have captured the Republican Party organization.
They are the radical Christian right. They operate in a myriad
of sometimes-interconnected groups, and number from a few hundred
thousand people to tens of millions, depending on your criteria for
counting. You've heard a few of their names: Paul Hill and others
who have murdered doctors who performed abortions; Pat Robertson,
the candidate for President who won the Iowa Republican Caucus in
1988; Ralph Reed, the ubiquitous front person for the Christian
Coalition. Frederick Clarkson's new book gives an in-depth view of
the movement: how it originated, what it thinks, how it operates.
Arm yourself with this information, because neither the Christian
Right nor the mass media want you to know, until it is too late.
The stated goal of the Christian Right is to establish a
theocracy, a state in which government and religious rule are
united, not unlike the Puritan colonies in Massachusetts in the
17th century. Non-Christians would be considered heretics and
executed, as would Christians who do not agree with the theocrats.
Homosexual behavior would be subject to the death penalty. Women
would work only in the home. Needless to say, only white male
Christian property owners would be allowed to vote. In most
versions, non-whites would be slaves. That's the hard core:
moderates usually soften some of the positions.
The theologian who got the movement rolling is R.J. Rushdoony,
who has published over 30 books and "insists that Biblical law
requires 'death without mercy' for 'idolatry.'" The movement
towards theocracy is called Reconstructionism. This goes far beyond
Fundamentalism, which simply states the Bible is God's literal
word, or charismatic (born-again) Christianity, which promotes
Jesus as a personal savior. But recruits are often found among
these broader groupings. Abortion is usually the wedge issue: by
defining a fetus as a human, they are able to label ordinary people
as murderers and themselves as saviors of the unborn. With emotions
high, recruits can be led to the other positions of the
Reconstructionists.
You'll learn from the book how a tiny percentage of the
population was able to seize control of much of the Republican
Party (the key: the apathy of your opponents). This is the Stealth
method of organizing: don't state your real positions, which would
alienate moderate voters. Don't mention killing homosexuals: just
say "family values." Don't say you would execute scientists: just
say "Creation science should be taught in the schools as an
alternative explanation of evolution."
The book has good sections on the cross pollination of the
Christian right with the militia movement (most militia have
Christian Right members, but many are not controlled by them), and
the Fully Informed Jury movement, but while it points out the
Right's racism, it does not do much to document any connections
with the Klan or Neo-Nazis (maybe there aren't any significant
ones.)
One issue the author does not bring up is the conflict between
the Christian Right and the more modern mainstream Protestants, and
liberal Catholics. The conflict clearly has psychological roots:
liberal Christians prefer the New Testament and the body of
theology based on Jesus's stopping a crowd from stoning an
adulterer, and his admonition to "love one's neighbor as oneself."
The Christian Right treats Jesus as a warrior-prince, and prefers
the severe patriarchal values of the Old Testament.
Where anarchists will probably part company with the author is
his methods of defeating the Christian Right. The author is coming
from a liberal to middle-of-the-road viewpoint, and hence sees the
need to shore up the current "democratic" system. Our question is,
how can we tear down the current system, and not lose a civil war
to either the capitalists or the Christian Right?
Eternal Hostility is well-researched, well-documented and well
worth reading for anyone who does not want to live under the rule
of some half-insane Christian ayatollah.
Buy Eternal Hostility from Amazon.com
EOF