Christianity in Politics: The Quest for Power

By Rogene A. Buchholz

Democracy is in peril and on the brink of extinction in the United States of America.
There are many reasons why it has gotten to this point, but this book looks exclusively at the role Evangelical Christianity has played in the process. By infusing the Republican Party with its values, world view, and its vision for America, it has contributed to the divisiveness that has made it virtually impossible to govern.
Our government is hopelessly crippled because of two different world views: one that is inherently racist and exclusionary where evidence doesn’t matter and authoritarianism is favored, and the other that is more inclusive and progressive—where evidence matters, science is respected, and democracy is valued.
It is difficult to find a common ground between these world views and get anything done for the country, making alternative means of governing more attractive to people throughout the world who are watching what is happening in America.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Dec 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781665545815

Rogene A. Buchholz

Rogene A. Buchholz is currently the Legendre-Soule Chair in Business Ethics Emeritus at Loyola University New Orleans. He held this endowed chair at Loyola for thirteen years until his retirement in 2002. Prior to this position he taught at various business schools as a full-time faculty or visitor. Dr. Buchholz received a B.S. Degree from North Central College in 1959, a M.S. Degree in Economics from the University of Illinois in 1960, an M.Th. Degree from Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University in 1964, and a Ph.D. Degree from the Business School at the University of Pittsburgh in 1974. In 1995 he received the Summer Marcus Award for outstanding contributions to the field of Business and Society and outstanding service to the Social Issues in Management Division of the Academy of Management. He is the author or co-author of 15 books that were mostly textbooks while in academia and has had four scholarly books published by Routledge since he retired. Dr. Buchholz currently lives with his wife, a former philosophy professor at Loyola University in New Orleans, in Denver Colorado.

Book preview

© 2021 Rogene A. Buchholz. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse  05/21/2022

ISBN: 978-1-6655-4583-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6655-4582-2 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6655-4581-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021924032

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1 Democracy in Peril

Chapter 2 White Christian America

Chapter 3 The Christian Worldview

Chapter 4 The Rise of the Religious Right

Chapter 5 A Christian Nation or a Nation of Christians

Chapter 6 A Polarized Nation

Chapter 7 The Culture Wars

Chapter 8 A Fearful Religion

Chapter 9 The Assault on Truth

Chapter 10 The End of Democracy

Selected Bibliography

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

During my childhood and teenage years, I was brought up in as fundamentalistic and evangelical a church as one could hope to find anywhere. It was all about a literal interpretation of the Bible, a belief in miracles and the resurrection of Jesus, and a pressing need to accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. During the fall, there was a whole week of evening revival services conducted by a husband-and-wife team from Minnesota that we had to attend. When the time came, I was pressured to get saved as I had reached the age of accountability and needed to confess my sins and seek forgiveness through the blood of Christ shed on the cross. So one Sunday morning I realized this was something I could not avoid and trotted up to the altar joined by my cousin so it was a two for one deal for the minister. My way of treating this was more of a rite of passage than anything else, one of those things you have to do to stay in everyone’s good graces.

Nothing dramatic happened during this event but at least it was over and I could say with some conviction that I had been saved. But then I joined the Air Force after high school and rapidly abandoned the moral principles of this religion which were no dancing, card playing, drinking, and smoking and eventually abandoned religion altogether as it never did make much sense to me and became something of a humanist I guess. After being discharged from the Air Force I went to a church related liberal arts school for four years majoring in Business Administration and then on to a state school for a master’s degree in economics. After working for a year to pay off my debts, I then did a rather strange thing considering my deteriorating relation with religion.

Off I went to seminary for three years and was a clergyman for another three years as a campus minister for two of those years and pastor of an inner-city church for another. Seminary was a great experience for me as I actually enjoyed the study of theology. This may also sound strange but most of the professors I had in seminary encouraged us to challenge the great theologians of the time rather than just write an exposition of their thinking. In this sense they taught me how to think not only about theological matters but about issues in general. So when I left seminary I kept on reading and thinking about theological and philosophical matters and ended up in a place that they would probably not be pleased about, but in a sense it was all their doing and I thank them for helping me think for myself about theological and philosophical issues.

After three years I left the ministry and worked for a large Fortune 500 company in the Management Information Systems department designing computer systems. This was a good position and had a promising future, but I wasn’t satisfied with such a technical job that provided no outlet for my theological and philosophical interests. So I went back school and got my Ph.D. in a field that was most often called Business and Society where I taught and did research in corporate social responsibility. Later on I also got into Business Ethics and taught myself about ethical theories and issues which was right up my alley. And then I also learned about environmental issues in a project with the National Wildlife Foundation and taught a course about environmental issues in the business school where I was employed.

During much of this time I still went to church and became a member and was even on the administrative board. But then two events happened that completely soured me on organized religion and I left the church I was attending and have not seen the inside of a church since that time. The first event concerns the Associate Minister of the church I was attending. He was a graduate of the same seminary I attended and it was nice to talk to him from time to time and share our experiences in theology school. He was after me to join the church but at the time I was going through a very messy divorce and talking with him helped deal with the conflicts I was experiencing. So eventually I joined the church and then never heard from him again. The second event involves the minister of the church who wanted me to become the recorder of what went on in the administrative board meetings, sort of like a secretary. But I had to refuse the position telling him that I was such a basket case because of the divorce that I could not concentrate on things enough to do the job. One would have thought he would have suggested we talk if I was in that bad a shape, but that never happened. So I concluded the church was more interested in membership and organizational matters than people, and just left not being angry but being sad that church couldn’t do better than this.

When I retired from teaching I audited courses in philosophy, sociology, and political science at the University of Colorado at Denver which broadened my horizons and introduced me to new ways of thinking. Thus I would like to thank all the instructors and students who I interacted with in these courses that gave me new ideas about many things including religion and introduced me to books and articles that were relevant to this book. So I have kept on reading and thinking and the more I read and thought about the matter the less sense Christianity made and I came to see it as downright harmful as described in this book in poisoning our politics and dividing the nation. It is something that I think needs to be eradicated from politics in order for us to come to grips with problems like global warming and a pandemic because it involves living in a fantasy world rather than the beautiful world we were actually given and are rapidly destroying.

This book was also made possible by my wife with whom I have had many conversations over the years about religion in general and Christianity in particular. These were very enlightening discussions and eventually made me be honest with myself and my lack of belief in God and all the other supernatural baggage that goes with Christianity. In time I came to realize that I was a thoroughgoing naturalist that did not believe in any supernatural realm. Everything we experience and know anything about comes from the natural world in which we live and there is nothing beyond like a deity that resides in some other place that deserves to be worshiped or looked to for guidance. Since Christianity is only possible unless one believes in a supernatural realm it was obvious I did not have the kind of faith Christianity requires. But I did not want to call myself an atheist so I consider myself to be just a nonbeliever.

Thanks are due to Derrick Austin, a Senior Publishing Consultant of AuthorHouse, who was my first contact that encouraged me to publish my book with them. In addition, I would like to thank Eve Ardell, my Check-In-Coordinator with AuthorHouse whom I worked with for the actual production of the book. This is the second book I have worked with her in getting a book published by the company. Thanks also go to Marvin Maxwell, Senior Publishing Consultant and Supervisor at AuthorHouse and to everyone else at AuthorHouse who was involved in getting this book published. They all were a pleasure to work with and made many suggestions for improvement of the book.

INTRODUCTION

The title of this book is Christianity in Politics rather than Christianity and Politics because of the influence Evangelical Christianity has had in American Politics over the past four decades and counting. They have essentially taken over the Republican Party since Reagan welcomed them into the Republican tent in the 1980 election and have infused the Republican Party with their beliefs, their values, their way of thinking, and their vision for America. The Republican Party is no longer the party of conservative values regarding fiscal responsibility and free market capitalism. It is now the party of reality deniers who compare the insurrection of January 6, 2021 with a normal tourist event, scientific geniuses who ask the Forest Service if they can change the orbit of the moon to combat global warming, conspiracy theorists who believe that some people in Italy used military satellites to change the outcomes of voting machines in this country, QAnon people who allege that there is a cabal of Satanic cannibalistic pedophiles that run a global sex-trafficking ring that conspired against Trump during his term in office, gutless wonders who call out Trump for inciting the riots on the capitol and then quickly backtrack and refuse to vote to remove him from office which would have led to another vote to bar him from ever running for president again and hurriedly make the trip to the palace in Florida to kiss the ring of King Trump and beg for forgiveness and pledge their loyalty be faithful servants, and obstructionists who don’t want to do anything constructive for the country and are only good at appealing to people’s basest prejudices and fears about blacks and other minorities taking over the country as they see the demographics stacked against them and want to hold onto to power even if it means destroying democracy in the process.

There are many reasons for the sorry state of the Republican Party, but in this book I want to focus on the role Evangelical Christianity has played in this process, and how it has influenced the decline of the country in general with its contribution to the divisiveness in the country that has emerged in recent years and made it almost impossible to govern effectively. Our government is hopelessly crippled because of two different worldviews that are operative in the two parties, one a worldview that is inherently racist and exclusionary where evidence doesn’t matter and authoritarianism is favored, and the other that is more inclusive and progressive, where evidence still matters and science is respected, but that doesn’t know how to throw a punch, as some pundits have said, and thus is outmaneuvered and drowned out by the bullies and loudmouths of the most extreme elements of the Republican Party which seem to be the most vocal and visible.

All of this puts democracy in peril and puts the country in danger because of the fear engendered by the thought of diversity taking away the rights and privileges that whites have enjoyed in this country since its inception. It is only recently that Joe Biden, the duly elected president in 2020, and other Democrats from another era have started to realize that the Republican Party is not what is was when he was in the Senate and could work with them in a bipartisan fashion, nor is it even what it was during his tenure as vice-president in the early part of the century when some bipartisan efforts were still possible. He has finally called out the anti-democratic spirit running wild in the Republican Party and exposed it for what it is, an attempt to ensure white minority rule into the distant future so that they can continue to hold power and determine the future of the country.

They have been infused with a sense that they have a divine right to rule and see the Democrats as the evil ones trying to keep them from assuming their rightful role as the legitimate rulers of the country. This comes from Evangelical Christianity whose leadership thinks they are the chosen ones to save this nation from secularism and restore it to its rightful place as a Christian nation that has lost its way by banning prayer in public schools and preventing other displays of their brand of religion in public places. They have a mission to take over and rule the country according to so-called Biblical principles as interpreted by them and them only. This has morphed into the Republican attempt to keep minority rule at all costs, even if it means lying to the voters about non-existent voter fraud or being thoroughly hypocritical about appointment of Supreme Court judges. None of this matters if one is on a divinely ordained mission as one can justify doing whatever is necessary to save the country from the evil Democrats where winning at all costs becomes the primary mission.

The subtitle of this book suggests what I think contemporary Evangelical Christianity is all about, namely the quest for power. They apparently became tired of waiting for the Second Coming of Christ when the Kingdom God will be established and they will take their rightful place in a new heaven and a new earth and decided to take matters into their own hands and create the kingdom themselves or some semblance thereof. When Reagan allowed them into the Republican tent, they jumped at the chance and subsequently have taken over the Republican Party and infused it with Evangelical values and goals and ways of thinking that have made the party an arm of their war against secularism. The Republicans have been enlisted in serving the Evangelical cause and have found it to be consistent with their aims in politics as they face becoming a minority in American society.

The first chapter examines the many ways democracy is in peril including the voter suppression efforts many states are making to disenfranchise people of color so that they can never deliver the presidency to another Democrat. Black lives mattered in the election of 2020 as they made Joe Biden president with their record turnout in cities in battleground states. The state of Georgia was first out of the gate with these suppression efforts as not only did the state go for Biden, but blacks helped elect two Democratic Senators in a runoff election. Other states followed suit with their own laws to make voting more difficult rather than easier in hopes to suppress the minority vote and keep white supremacists in power. All of this was based on the Big Lie about a fraudulent election and is racist to the core as the election was believed to be stolen by blacks who voted in record numbers. When Trump talked about taking back the country, he meant taking it back form Blacks and other minorities who stole it from him and need to be blocked from voting in the future so the Republicans can stay in power.

The second chapter is about the emergence of White Christian America (WCA) as a political force in the country that had become frustrated in their failed attempts to overturn Roe vs Wade and restrict the rights of the LBGT community for same-sex marriage among other things. They hoped Trump would extend the exemptions of religious groups from certain laws regarding discrimination that they believed violated their religious liberties so that they could refuse to provide services to gays who wanted to marry, for example. When Trump promised to Make America Great Again what they heard was that he was promising to make White Christian America Great Again by appointing Supreme Court justices that would pursue their goals and make cabinet and other appointments that were consistent with their view of making America a Christian nation or returning it to its Christian roots.

They came to believe that Trump was their savior and were willing to overlook the character flaws that emerged in Trump’s behavior toward women that had always been a major concern for them in previous elections, because Trump promised to do things that were consistent with the goals they wanted to pursue. This was their last gasp, so to speak, as they could see that their influence in the political process was waning because of declines in membership and changes in the demographic makeup of the country that did not bode well for their future. They suggested that God works in strange ways and that even with all his obvious flaws Trump was God’s messenger to restore the values and goals of White Christian America and make them a priority in his administration. They wanted to believe that this was the person who could make them great again and restore them to their rightful place in American society.

Next comes a brief discussion of the Christian story that starts with the creation and ends with the establishment of God’s kingdom in a new earth and a new world, a story that is much different from the story of science that also has a beginning and an end to the earth. Then several characteristics of Christianity are examined including belief in an anthropocentric God, the absolutist nature of Christian belief, the supernatural with belief in miracles and the resurrection, the dehumanization that results from believing one is merely an instrument in God’s plan for the world, digital thinking where there is black and white or good and evil and no gray area in between, the certainty that goes with Christian belief even though we live in a highly uncertain world, a certain kind of morality where anything goes if it can be justified as God’s will and a Santa Clause ethic where Christians expect to be rewarded if they stay on the straight and narrow path to eternal life, and finally the attitude towards truth where evidence is not needed but only a strong belief that the Bible is the word of God and tells us everything we need to know about living a righteous life and pleasing God to attain eternal life in the hereafter.

Then comes a chapter on the rise of the Religious Right tracing its growing influence in American politics ever since Reagan brought them into the Republican tent. Apparently, they tired of saving one soul at a time and believed they could have more influence in American society it they became politically involved. They have been influential in public policy and court decisions particularly in the realm of religious liberty where they have attained a privileged status being allowed to discriminate against gays and transgender people under the guise of religious liberty and deny them service because it offends their religious beliefs. This chapter also examines the threat to democracy the Religious Right poses as it is hostile to democracy and wants to establish a theocracy to impose it values and worldview on the rest of society.

A discussion of whether this nation was founded on Christian principles is the subject of the next chapter, as Christian Evangelicals contend that the United States was meant to be a Christian nation that has lost touch with its Christian origins. However, nothing could be clearer than that the founding fathers intended to create a constitutional separation of church and state after careful deliberation and extensive and documented debate. The perpetuation of the Christian myth, however, allows for the promotion and insertion of Evangelical beliefs into all aspects of our public life on the basis that all contemporary social ills are the result of the removal of God and religion from the public sphere. The separation between church and state is one of the things that is always under threat by religious fundamentalists, but it is not at all clear what a Christian nation would look like and whether our country even approaches this status is an open question.

The emergence of White Christian America and the Religious Right has divided our nation into two tribes that are at war with each other. The idea that America is a moderate nation and that most Americans are moderate is a myth as not even a slim majority of Americans are moderates as evidenced in recent elections. Both our political parties and the American electorate are highly polarized with substantial differences in political perspectives across the single ideological dimension of liberal and conservative. This polarization is deep and widespread and is not an artifact manufactured by political parties or politicians nor is it limited to a few political leaders or zealous activists. Those to the left and right of our political spectrum outnumber those in the middle as there are distinct sides in the American electorate with strongly held and divergent views on many issues who see the political world in diametrically opposite ways making governing the nation more and more difficult.

This discussion of this polarization occupies the next chapter as it is quite clear in modern times that the Democrats are the liberals and the Republicans the conservatives, whether one is looking at leaders of the parties, party activists, or the voters themselves. Both parties have become more unified in opposition to each other in recent decades as during the 1950s there was little polarization as the parties overlapped a good bit with many conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans. But this changed in the 1960s with a large and growing civil rights movement, intensifying anti-Vietnam War protests, and an emerging so-called counterculture, all of which served to divide the nation. Turmoil replaced tranquility as the nation faced unprecedented social and political upheaval and the electorate became more issue oriented and more ideological. Both the Democratic and Republican parties are not what they used to be in past years when there was room for a broad spectrum of opinion in both parties. There were liberals and conservatives in both parties and differences within parties as well as between the parties themselves were largely settled by compromising which was not seen as selling out to the enemy in those times. But in recent decades positive feelings the parties have toward each other has plummeted and people have been more consistent in voting for a particular party, not necessarily because the like their party more but because they came to dislike the opposing party even more.

The so-called cultural wars are the subject of the next chapter, as the differences conservatives and liberals have over specific issues and the battles fought over these issues is often referred to in this manner. One author claims that the culture wars are not a modern phenomenon and traces these kinds of conflicts from Jefferson’s contested election in 1800 to debates over Catholics and Mormons, the era of prohibition, and from abortion to gay marriage. He argues that these conflicts follow the same cycle: conservatives always start the cycle by rallying their supporters to a cause and capitalizing on their fear and frustration to start a war in American society over an issue of concern. But while they often win elections, they almost lose the war because they choose causes that are already lost. Cultural conservatives do not need a revolution to go to war, all they need is enough change in society to activate the anxiety that their world is passing away. The rhetoric of cultural decline is the most characteristic and consistent manner by which conservatives have expressed their conservativism and is their signature mode of politics. Given this narrative of loss and restoration, conservatives in America have affinities with modern evangelicalism which also offers meaning in the midst of uncertainty through a sense of loss and restoration of a Christian America that has been stolen by secularists. But liberals usually win these wars because they have tradition on their side not the least of which is the Bill of Rights which protects the rights of minorities against the imposition of the will of the majority. They also win because the causes conservatives pick to wage war about concerns that are already lost in that change is too far along to be reversed.

Another author argues that the influence of conservative Christianity on American politics is not what we think it is as Christianity has had to respond to changing political and cultural values rather than shaping then to accord with its beliefs. This author describes five issues in American history to make his case including slavery, divorce, homosexuality, abortion, and women’s rights. In each case he shows how conservative Christians have had to adapt to the changing values of society and Christian leaders while initially resisting change, eventually have had to acquiesce when their positions are no longer tenable. Evangelicals hold strong religious beliefs and claim their moral standards are derived from a transcendent authority and confront progressives who ground their morality in a rational and subjective approach to reality without appeal to a transcendent realm. These are two very different worldviews with no common ground, so they wage endless what have been called culture wars over schools and their function, the role of government in society, the family, the arts, and the entertainment media. More recent issues include mask wearing, vaccinations, the rights of gay and transgender people, and critical race theory. But this author maintains that culture is more powerful than religion in determining the morals of people in that culture, and shapes how Christians define their beliefs, interpret scripture, and form political positions. Religion exists within a society and is not something outside of it as many Christians claim, and their moral and political stances evolve within the society in which they exist, as they often either ignore or reinterpret the Bible to fit the positions they have adopted on other grounds.

In the next chapter, one author argues that a religion of fear has developed since the 1960s that has moved from being a marginal influence on American politics to one of prominence such that ideas of a fearful religion and violent politics have become normalized. He describes links between the activism of the New Christian Right (NCR) and the political exhaustion facing democracy in America. This movement is politically motivated and engaged, influencing American culture through social critique as expressed in popular entertainment venues. The religion of fear is a salvation narrative to save the nation that has fallen into a state of moral decay but uses fear to influence people to accept its worldview and seems to delight in the forbidden, the illicit, and the demonic. It seems fascinated with darkness and appears to be drawn to exactly that which it seeks to drive away, as the things which threaten the purity of the self and must be eliminated are written into to the very cultures and symbols they employ, what is called the demonology within. This demonology within is a register of evangelical power, but as it attempts to make everything fearful it also reveals the anxieties and terrors of its leadership and those who speak for the movement who seem to be erotically attracted to dark elements of existence. This darkness is both within the self and without in the society at large.

In our time this apocalyptic fervor is all over the place, particularly in the Republican Party and its attempts to promote the Big Lie about the election of 2020 being stolen from them. Trump was their savior but was crucified by the Democrats in the big steal which insurrectionists tried to overturn during the assault on the Capitol to stop the certification of the Electoral College votes. The insurrectionists believed they were patriots saving the country from a takeover by Blacks and other minorities and restoring the rightful rule of White Christians, in effect taking seriously Trump’s statements about fighting like hell or you won’t have a country anymore. They were driven by fear about what was happening in America and had an apocalyptic vision of taking revenge against the evildoers to restore a new heaven and earth where Christian values would reign supreme. Since this effort failed, they are working hard to suppress the votes of minorities all across the country to assure the second coming of Trump in the 2024 election.

The book of Revelation contains what has been called some dangerous baggage as the dreams of a new heaven and a new earth have a dark side that is all too obvious. The Left Behind series mentioned in the previous section, contains the same dualistic theology and revenge seeking rhetoric that burns so hotly in the book of Revelation, and reduces all the complexities of the modern world to a simple conflict between God and Satan. Tim LaHaye, one of the authors of this series, sees the world in black and white, that the cultural war in this country is over two different worldviews, one based on the writings of man and the other on the writings of God. If only things were that simple, and of course, that is a large part of its appeal, that enables people to understand in simple terms what is happening in the world and how it is all going to end in their favor.

This intentionally provocative text is capable of moving some men and women to madness and others to acts of violence and to some both of these at the same time. Once an adversary is regarded as a satanic beast instead of a fellow human being, then killing them can be justified and even sanctified as an act of vengeance. Revelation tempts people to occupy themselves with fantasies of revenge and redemption and spend their time looking for signs that the end is near and ignore other Christian passages that call for believers to care for the poor and the homeless. Revelation provides the other bookend to the Christian story that begins with Genesis and the original sin of Adam and Eve that plunges the world into a state of fallenness and ends with the redemption of the faithful who will live in a new heaven and a new earth restored to its original state of pure bliss and eternal life.

Time magazine’s cover for the April 3, 2017, issue read Is Truth Dead?, a question that was most appropriate for that time as well as for our own several years later and is the subject of the next chapter. One author has claimed that during Trump’s presidency, a new era of ruthless, relentless, denialist propaganda at a scale we used to see only in dictatorships was ushered into American discourse. Trump persuaded countless Americans that the coronavirus was nothing to fear, that masks were useless, and that the election was stolen, something he continues to maintain to this day and most Republicans believe is true. The author goes on to state that politics in this country is no longer a fight between the left and the right but is between those who respect evidence and those who do not need evidence. There must be a common standard for judging truth, and that standard must be evidence, something science has used with spectacular success. Politicians prefer to deny reality or create their own, but for democracy to continue in existence, we must rely on evidence as the only way to solve our problems and escape paralyzing polarization.

This is not just a matter of there being alternate facts, something a Trump administration official said early is his presidency, but that there are two alternate realities where facts come from, one where facts are based on evidence, and one where facts can be made up out of whole cloth to suit the interests of the person creating them. Right wing media outlets such as Fox News create the kind of relativism that conservatives oppose, an epistemic free-for-all where the truth is a matter of perspective. This is the kind of cultural landscape Trump intended to create where truth in in the eye of the beholder and facts are fungible and socially constructed. Ideals of reason and progress are assailed as part of a liberal plot to undercut traditional American values such as liberty and freedom. Evangelicals have been creating their own reality for decades as there is no evidence to support stories about miracles and the resurrection in the Bible, but evidence is not necessary as one needs only to have faith, in other words, these truths exist only in one’s mind and if enough people believe something to be true, then it in fact happened.

Thus, the direct influence Evangelical Christianity has had on our politics is the subject of the last chapter. Religion will always be a factor in our democracy and in our culture and religious extremists will want to inject their religious beliefs into the public policies that government formulates. One can make a case that religion has poisoned our current political process ever since it became involved in politics and sought to have more and more influence over government decisions and actions. The current impasse in government and its inability to act in many instances because of divisions in Congress that cannot be breached may very well be due in large part to the religious commitments that many of our lawmakers have made which limits their ability to compromise and work with the opposition to get something done. The absolutism and certainty that go with Evangelical Christianity are not consistent with the necessity of compromise and viewing politics as the art of the possible.

There is the conviction that one is a righteous warrior for God’s cause in carrying out his will for the world. This gives Christians the ability to violate all customs and moral norms in a society because they are doing God’s will and answer to a higher power than mere democratic norms and the laws of a democratic society. This attitude of a divine right to rule has infused the Republican Party and allows them to view the Democratic Party as evil doers that must be stopped at any cost. Then comes a characteristic that may be the most dangerous characteristic of all, namely the idea that because one believes something, that alone makes it real and factual. Mere belief is all that is necessary and no evidence is needed. If one believes that the election of 2020 was fraudulent that makes it so, and the more people that believe if the more it becomes real despite all evidence to the contrary. Evangelical Christians are anti-science for this reason. Science requires evidence not just belief, and challenges Christian beliefs about creation and the end of the world and is therefore rejected, as science and Christianity are incompatible worldviews.

Evangelical Christians found Trump perfectly compatible and they used each other while he was in office to implement a common agenda: finally overturn Roe v Wade and get rid of abortion on demand, restrict the voting rights of blacks and other minorities as they are not God’s chosen people, strip science out of policy as much as possible and follow the beliefs of those whose authority should not be questioned, ignore issues such a global warming because Christ is soon to return and it will not matter, and most dangerous of all, get rid of democracy and establish an autocracy from Trump’s perspective, or a theocracy from the Evangelical Right’s perspective, which in reality are both the same thing.

There are three contradictions playing themselves out in our current society any one of which has the potential to tear it apart, but all three together at the same time do not bode well for our future. These contradictions are embedded in the soul of the nation or in its collective unconscious if you will that have never been resolved. They usually stay buried and do not affect the behavior of people to an extent that it becomes problematical but when tensions arise because of external events like a pandemic and a critical election they come to the surface and can lead to major conflicts. If not resolved peacefully, they can result in actual warfare as in a Civil War that tears a country apart and pits one part of the country against another, one group of people against another, one person against another.

These contradictions in our country have to do with race, the self, and truth, and Evangelical Christianity plays a major role in every one of these contradictions. Regarding race the contradiction is between the ideal that all men are created equal vs the racism that persists in America as manifested in the voter suppression bills mentioned above being passed by Republican controlled legislatures at the state level. The self involves a contradiction between the individual and the common good where many people refuse to wear a mask or get vaccinated and some governors have issued a ban on mask mandates for children returning to school emphasizing the individual freedom of parents to choose what is best for their children and individuals right to choose not to wear a mask or get vaccinated rather than a concern with the common good of getting rid of the virus in all its variants. With regard to truth the contradiction is between belief vs evidence as manifested by the number of people who still believe the election of 2020 was stolen from Trump (the Big Lie) despite all evidence to the contrary.

This book is very timely as the nation faces a crisis that as the president put it is the most severe threat to democracy since the Civil War. Taking away the right to vote can have serious consequences and while some people have called these voter suppression efforts Jim Crow 2.0 this is not the same country as it was during the Jim Crow era when any Black person who dared stick their head above water was lynched. Blacks and other minorities are better educated, they have money and power, they have many white supporters, and they are capable of taking to the streets if that is there only option as we saw in the summer of 2020 in the Black Live Matter protests. If millions of minorities are disenfranchised in the elections of 2022 or more likely in the presidential election of 2024, they are not going to take this sitting down, and will make the protests of 2020 look like a walk in the park. And if a Republican controlled legislature overturns an election that did not go their way, it would not be surprising to see the capitol building in that state occupied by protesters or even burned to the ground. The country will be torn apart once again by race and there does not appear to be another Lincoln anywhere in sight.

51331.png

CHAPTER ONE

DEMOCRACY IN PERIL

Democracy in the United States in hanging by a thread. In the 2020 elections, it was saved by a handful of courageous Republican judges who ruled against Trump’s baseless claims of voter fraud in several key battle ground states, by the Supreme Court refusing to hear two cases of a similar nature including one case brought by the state of Texas to overthrow the election results in other states, by courageous Republican election officials who held firm against claims of voter fraud in their states and one who resisted Trump’s efforts to pressure him to find more votes so he could win the state, and by members of Congress who went ahead with certifying the electoral college vote after the insurrection on the Capitol had abated.¹ The 2020 election was not just an embarrassment for the country as foreign nations could not but wonder if the nation had lost its mind, but an outrageous assault on democracy that was unprecedented and was perpetuated by an unhinged individual who had no business being in the office of the presidency to begin with and by his enablers who tried to make his case of voter fraud without any evidence to support their claims, as well as all those who participated in the insurrection on the United States Capitol in an effort to stop certification of the Electoral College votes. They became traitors to their country and while some of the insurrectionists have been put in jail, any lawmaker who supported this effort should be banished from ever holding public office again.

Many of us cannot understand how some 74 million people could vote to give this poor excuse of a human being and thoroughly incompetent leader another four years in office. His niece was absolutely correct in that it would be the end of democracy in this country if her uncle were elected for another four years.² He was an autocrat that would have completely undermined democracy and established an autocracy that would have spelled the end of democracy. Has close to half the country become so tired of democracy that so some many people fought for and died to preserve that they were willing to have a demagogue in the presidency for another four years that flouted all the norms and rules that keeps democracy going and would do anything to keep the office that he disgraced over the past four years? And have so many Republicans in Congress and in the Trump administration let their ambition to get ahead in politics override their commitment to preserve and protect the country they should be serving and uphold the Constitution of the United States?

In my opinion Trump should not have received a single vote and I cannot understand how anyone in their right mind could vote for this person. Of course, I had the same opinion four years ago and was proven wrong.