In a special
feature just before midnight on November 14, CNN looked at the
evangelical movement in America leading up to the re-election of
George W. Bush. Much was said about the influence this group (numbering
anywhere from 33 to 40% of eligible U.S. voters, according to
surveys) had on the election and about the "values" it promotes, not
only within
its own community but as measures it seeks to impose on the nation as
a whole through political channels. I don't need to enumerate those
"values" here. But what struck me most in this CNN Special was the
impression so starkly conveyed about the evangelical
mentality, both of its leaders and of its followers. Its main feature
is Absolute Certainty, Certainty about its proclaimed Truth, about
"moral
absolutes," about the inerrancy of the Bible as the word of God, about
the nature and role of Jesus
Christ. A Southern Baptist spokesman, when asked by an interviewer if
the only way to heaven for any human being was through Jesus Christ,
replied with Absolute
Certainty. He quoted the Gospel of John: "Jesus said: 'I am THE Way,
THE Truth, and THE Life' " (his emphasis). Never mind that most
critical
New Testament scholars regard virtually all of the Gospel of John's
sayings as inauthentic, the product of a later community and later
time. An inerrant bible tied to a complete ignorance (or rejection) of
mainstream
biblical scholarship has given this man, and millions of others like
him,
a measuring rod by which to pronounce upon the most profound workings
of the universe and humanity.
(An essential element of those workings was declared to be Satan and
his demonic forces.) Armed with Absolute Truth
and Certainty, he and his fellow
evangelicals are working tirelessly and uncompromisingly to transform
the country into a reflection of
those convictions. They have now reached a number and an influence
which
are threatening to put that goal within reach.
One of the issues raised on the program was
that of divisiveness. There a deep polarization within
society
as a whole, with one side viewing the other as immoral and in league
with the forces of evil (not to mention doomed to damnation), while the
other side sees its opposite as sliding ever deeper into ignorance and
fanaticism, an alarming threat to basic
rights. But there is also a growing divisiveness within the religious
community itself. Someone on the program noted that "the stronger one's
beliefs and the greater the importance one attaches to them, the harder
one will fight for them." And the more
difficult it is to achieve compromise and tolerance. One interviewee
who belonged to a mainstream religious denomination lamented the
politicization of "the gospel of Jesus Christ" and the aims of the
evangelical community, but she herself voiced a wrenching concern over
her own church's consecration of an openly gay bishop, something she
felt would force her (and others like her) to break away from that
church. As the nation's religious population
increasingly fragments, the largest and most conservative group, united
in its radical reactionary and dogmatic stance, is gaining the
upper hand and the loudest voice.
The Absolute Certainty with which this voice
proclaims its beliefs and goals is now the prerogative even of
children. In CNN's focus on evangelical communities and the families
that comprise them, a few home scenes were featured. In one, a girl of
perhaps eight or nine, looking solemnly at the interviewer and the
camera, declared that she knew one thing for sure, that "Jesus had died
for me" and that this was all she really needed to know. One can only
shudder at what else must have been delivered along with this, the
degree of
indoctrination to which her family and community had subjected this
young and impressionable mind. How did she look at the world around
her, at a multi-cultural and multi-faith (including lack of faith)
society? What sort of future did she envision for herself, and how was
she being equipped to prepare for and construct that future? What
skills of logic, common sense, judgment and critical thinking were
being overlooked or deliberately excluded in her education, not to
mention a proper scientific
and psychological understanding of the world and the human condition?
What burden of guilt was she taking upon her shoulders at the thought
of Jesus' death "for me" and the obsession with "sin" that is the
hallmark of the evangelical religious mentality? What bigotry and
intolerance was seeping into that mind toward those who do not share
her beliefs and certainty? There are all sorts of abuses that are
inflicted upon the bodies and minds of children, but the worst and most
destructive is surely the imposition of irrational and
unquestioning faith in the supernatural, and a mythology fixated on the
forces of evil and the division of one's fellow human beings into the
saved and the damned.
This was brought home in an interview with the
girl's mother (one presumes it was the mother of the same family). This
mother
made an astounding statement. She is part of a community that believes
in the Rapture (the 'taking up' of the faithful bodily into
heaven) and the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, both expected soon. But
she, the mother of
several children, voiced the opinion
—and
it was an emotional one
—that
"in view of all that I see around me" she
would not mind, indeed she would welcome, the arrival of Jesus this
very day. The classic ambition of the good parent is to
encourage and provide for a full and rewarding life for one's children,
and yet this parent was willing to see all of that foregone, willing to
have
those lives and its world brought to an immediate end, for the sake of
a deluded fantasy. When the mind of a parent
(likely both parents) is so distorted, so perverted from reality,
what hope is there for a healthy maturation of the child? What
hope for a "full and rewarding life"?
And what is this "all that I see around me"
that would lead a parent to yearn for the destruction of the world as
we know it? In prosperous America, no less? Where life is a boon
compared to
much of the second and third world? An America—for the most part, and
certainly
within the evangelical community—of opportunity, wealth, culture and
good living, unprecedented scientific and technological achievement,
music, literature and entertainment, love and family,
fine homes and food in the kitchen, unlimited scope for knowledge,
discovery, invention and the improvement of the human condition.
(Ironically, much
of the third world's situation has been worsened by the
American government's cutting off of aid funds to countries and
organizations therein that promote women's and societal health by
providing contraceptive resources and counselling that includes the
option of abortion.) What, in the face of all that, has so warped this
parent's brain to make her view society and her own children as a
candidate
for termination, regardless of what alternative one might believe
awaited them
afterward?
What else but the distortion of reality which
religion, and especially the evangelical brand of religion, has visited
upon the minds of believers? What else but the obsessive imaginings of
sin
and evil they see around them, threatening to overtake even
themselves through their own weak and inherently sinful natures?
Evangelical preachers have made a tidy career out of instilling that
obsession and outlook on the world into those who sit in pews and
listen to them week in and week out, who indoctrinate their children in
turn with a bleak and twisted view of reality
from their earliest emergence into awareness. What better reason to
relegate for destruction a world you are convinced is populated by evil
spirits, controlled by an arch-devil Satan whose supernatural energies
are devoted to dragging you and yours to eternal damnation and
horrific punishment? What of those non-believers (infidels, heretics or
atheists) already under the control of such demonic forces: would it
not be best if they were eliminated and the world they have adulterated
destroyed? With what strange reasoning has that
parent infected her daughter, to supply a meaning for Jesus' death
and his imminent return?
The obsession of the evangelical community over
"values" is never centered on the true evils of the world: poverty,
overpopulation, crime and cruelty, war and persecution, the ruination
of the planet
through environmental poisoning and the indiscriminate rape of the
world's resources. No, it is centered on "moral" issues, on the general
fear of
sex, on the abhorence for the idea of same-sex
orientation as a natural part of human nature and for its impending
legitimization, on the recourse to abortion which women always and
everywhere have indulged in for as long as human society has existed.
What genuine threat do any of these pose to the lives of those so
vehemently opposed to them, in contrast to the true 'evils' listed
above? Rather, the role they play is psychological. The mind that
believes in sin and evil forces needs a personification of that sin and
evil. Gays and lesbians,
pro-choicers, those who indulge in pre- or extra-marital sex, supply
handy
targets. They exist at the mundane and immediate level in society; they
are supposedly amenable to correction or suppression.
For many, they represent the demons that haunt their own minds while
they struggle to
purify and gain salvation for their own souls and the souls of their
loved ones. (One might also point out that such views held against
others help
foster a sense of superiority and elitism, which has always been one of
the chief appeals of religion, whether at the national or cult
level.) In addition, they are fodder for the priests and
preachers who need something to rail against, to capture the minds of
their audience, something simple and
close to home. "Moral values,"
along with a vast array of mythology and superstition, are needed to
keep the fear and fantasy going. In the evangelical industry and
mindset, they are indispensable for a continuation of the system.
As I watched the CNN Special, with its scenes
of dutiful ranks of believers filing into their seats in affluent
churches,
to listen, rapt and responsive, to their evangelists, I formed a
disturbing image. Recently, I saw a Public Broadcasting presentation of
the two versions (1956 and 1977) of the science-fiction classic,
"Invasion of the Body
Snatchers." An alien life-form was taking over the world, seeded from
space, growing in the form of pods that became exact replicas of the
humans around them. Upon maturation, each pod extracted the life force
and memories from the human it was replacing, while the original body
disintegrated. The resultant beings were a kind of automaton, uniform,
docile, emotionless, secure in their heaven-sent origin and
superiority. The dwindling humans who fought a losing battle against
them resisted succumbing to such a "life" as was urged upon them by
those already converted into the pod replicas. Evangelicals may feel
and show more emotion than the film's new humanity, but their minds
have been no less seized and converted to mush. And they are no less a
threat to the health and survival of the old race, one that felt secure
in having passed
through the Enlightenment, achieving considerable social and scientific
progress, including the recovery of its million-year-old memories. That
security may have been an illusion.
Earl Doherty
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