You think Liberal Secular Humanists are a problem?
Try the Christian Nationalists on for size. Terry Gross, on WHYY's Fresh Air radio show, interviews journalist Michelle Goldberg, a senior writer for the online magazine Salon, and covers the Christian Right. In her new book, Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, she writes that Christian nationalists believe the Bible is literally true — and they want to see the nation governed by that truth.
Quotes:
"'Our Founders expected that Christianity, and no other religion, would receive support from the government, as long as that support did not violate people's consciences and their right to worship. They would have found utterly incredible the idea that all religions, including paganism, be treated with equal defference.'" -quoting letter of complaint from Family Research Council to Congress.
Unlike the pre-millenial dispensationalists who comprise the majority of Christian evangelicals, "Christian Reconstructionists are post-millenialists. That means that they believe that they first have to establish the thousand-year reign of Christianity before Jesus will return. So that makes them much more proactive, because there's just much more of a role for kind of human agency in bringing about the Second Coming. And Christian Reconstructionism is probably the most extreme form of Christian Fundamentalism. It prescribes something very much like a Christian Taliban: it calls for the imposition of Leviticus, the execution of homosexuals, the execution of adulterers, the execution of women who are unchaste before marriage. This is not a vision that is very attractive even among most fundamentalists. But Christian Reconstructionism, because it has a vision of the necessity of people transforming society, and taking over society, has developed a political philosophy called Dominionism, which hold that Christians have both the right and the duty to take over all aspects of society. That there is a Christian right to rule."
"It was realy Christian Reconstructionists [...] who first floated and developed the idea of impeaching judges whose rule contradicts the Bible, which is seen as the supreme source of law, and so if you see the Bible as the inspiration for the Constitution, any law that contradicts the Bible is kind of de facto unconstitutional. And so you've seen these legal arguments picked up increasingly by Republicans who are denouncing 'activist judges' and things like that."
These people worry me far more than..well..pretty much anyone else. THIS is becoming the American mainstream. The Left Behind series is THE best selling fiction series in America, and I note that this is among the same people who are completely incapable of making the distinction between fact and fiction: people who wonder if the The Da Vinci Code could be true, who sent fan mail to The General Lee, who sent telegrams to the U.S. Department of the Navy to inform them that seven American citizens were stranded on an uncharted desert isle, and who really think that one day, if they're very very good, Jebus will take them away to live forever in the sky.
Quotes:
"'Our Founders expected that Christianity, and no other religion, would receive support from the government, as long as that support did not violate people's consciences and their right to worship. They would have found utterly incredible the idea that all religions, including paganism, be treated with equal defference.'" -quoting letter of complaint from Family Research Council to Congress.
Unlike the pre-millenial dispensationalists who comprise the majority of Christian evangelicals, "Christian Reconstructionists are post-millenialists. That means that they believe that they first have to establish the thousand-year reign of Christianity before Jesus will return. So that makes them much more proactive, because there's just much more of a role for kind of human agency in bringing about the Second Coming. And Christian Reconstructionism is probably the most extreme form of Christian Fundamentalism. It prescribes something very much like a Christian Taliban: it calls for the imposition of Leviticus, the execution of homosexuals, the execution of adulterers, the execution of women who are unchaste before marriage. This is not a vision that is very attractive even among most fundamentalists. But Christian Reconstructionism, because it has a vision of the necessity of people transforming society, and taking over society, has developed a political philosophy called Dominionism, which hold that Christians have both the right and the duty to take over all aspects of society. That there is a Christian right to rule."
"It was realy Christian Reconstructionists [...] who first floated and developed the idea of impeaching judges whose rule contradicts the Bible, which is seen as the supreme source of law, and so if you see the Bible as the inspiration for the Constitution, any law that contradicts the Bible is kind of de facto unconstitutional. And so you've seen these legal arguments picked up increasingly by Republicans who are denouncing 'activist judges' and things like that."
These people worry me far more than..well..pretty much anyone else. THIS is becoming the American mainstream. The Left Behind series is THE best selling fiction series in America, and I note that this is among the same people who are completely incapable of making the distinction between fact and fiction: people who wonder if the The Da Vinci Code could be true, who sent fan mail to The General Lee, who sent telegrams to the U.S. Department of the Navy to inform them that seven American citizens were stranded on an uncharted desert isle, and who really think that one day, if they're very very good, Jebus will take them away to live forever in the sky.