Tristero hits the nail on the head with his post about the possibility of a National Christian party (NaXis)—as much as we liberals would like to see the Republicans self-destruct under the influence of the Religious Right, it does us more harm than good if it further weakens the Rational Right.
So, yes, Republicans should boot the Bible-thumpers out of positions of serious influence in their party. But no, the christianists should not be encouraged to form a NaXi Party as that could rapidly lead to Very Bad Things which all of us, especially liberals, would come to regret. And let’s not make the mistake many liberals (and mainstream conservatives, too) made in the 70’s and 80’s. The christianists represent a very, very dangerous element in American culture; they should not be ignored, dismissed, underestimated, or in any way encouraged.
This is exactly right. I was doing an oral history interview with the daughter of a famous logician whose girl scout troop in the Black Forest was annexed by the Hitler Youth. She said that at the time, the Social Democrats were seen as “ineffective, little grey men” and this made the extreme seem much more acceptable. When we look at our own “ineffective little grey men” I must say that this possibility scares me too.
It would certainly be nice if such a party split off from the Republican Party — it could do for that party what the Greens did for the Democrats.
More seriously, such a party could promote alternatives to the all-too-common first-past-the-post voting system, which is not very third-party-friendly. Which could help shake up our Democratic-Republican duopoly.
I’m tempted to agree with Loren, but SteveG reminds me that when you play with fire sometimes you get burned…
I’m afraid, america is rapidly succumbing to the “Those ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it” curse, and turning into weimar republic II
Hmmm…I don’t agree. SteveG’s arguments about the Social Democrats are compelling, but do we have the social and economic conditions in the US that helped to propel the SD’s into power in Germany? Would a Christian Right party offer an economic plan to solve these problems (as it was perceived that the SD’s would)? I don’t think so, and I think a split could offer the political left in the US an important opening.
IMHO, there are at least two major factions in the Republican Party, with only a small minority actually representing the extreme religious right. These people are well organized and represent a key portion of the voting block, sometimes just enough for the Republicans to win (or at least to make a race close enough that a bit of vote fraud will carry the day), so the party in general has curried favor with them, and the present administration (and some of the present Congress) has made full use of their support.
But the fact of the matter is that ideologically the extreme right are very different than the mainstream, even among conservatives–they simply do not represent the majority of the voters (not by a long shot). And the wrong-headedness of their policies, economically and morally, are finally causing moderates in their ranks to take pause. What are they really willing to agree to in order to win? It is a noble and responsible question to ask and it is now being asked, at least on a few issues.
I do not think that a Christian Right party will have significant national power. They will be strong in certain regions, but even in these regions a break within the Republicans would open up opportunities for the Democrats. To the best of my understanding this has happened in previous US national elections. Abraham Lincoln anybody? Woodrow Wilson?
And really, while recent conditions have cause me to favor the Democrats (I don’t feel the Democrats represent my politcal views that well, though they are improving and they are certainly a better fit than the Republicans), I’d much rather see a sane Republican Party (I know, that smacks of oxymoron, but one can hope) that operates without its Psycho-Armaggedon wing. Voting in the US needs to stop feeling like choosing sides in a Star Wars movie.
missed some tags, so it ate the first part of my comment :
She said that at the time, the Social Democrats were seen as “ineffective, little grey men”
I’m afraid, america is rapidly succumbing to the “Those ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it” curse, and turning into weimar republic II
And the wrong-headedness of their policies, economically and morally, are finally causing moderates in their ranks to take pause.
Unfortunately, I don’t see how this could happen “moderate-ness” is very prone to the “boiled frog approach” – extremists will keep slowly but steadily tighten the screws, and nudging the middle ground naziwards, till someone moderate will find herself being moderate betweeen skining and disemboweling of all unbelievers and just gasing them as fast as possible.
“If we keep choosing the lesser of two evils, the choices will only get more evil.” -Some guy.
Of course, I’m not well-versed in politics, so I don’t know any solution for that problem.
“I do not think that a Christian Right party will have significant national power.”
It already does! And it’s not over. Don’t be in denial. I want to scream when my colleagues in the humanities dismiss the religious right and Bush as just a bunch of morons. Morons about evolution they may be, but they know how to organize and they do believe that they “think,” and they are neither stupid nor powerless, whereas my affable colleagues “know” that evolution is true and that HIV causes AIDS, etc., but don’t know how they know, and don’t really care anyway, so how stupid and powerless is that? (They look at me weird, too, for my interest in science. Among a certain class of educated female liberals, it is fashionable and even a social act to claim to be hopeless at math/computers/physics, etc.)
I grew up among seemingly rational, nice, friendly people who embody the religious right. For pity’s sake, they’re out there, they’re middle class (whatever middle-class means today) they like puppies and ice cream and don’t have dripping fangs, they look and sound normal because they basically are (whatever normal means today), and then they vote the way they do and talk about the Rapture, and death penalty for adulterers, and sin as a cause of sickness, like they’re chatting about gardening. They comprise a political movement. This is about politics. Dispensationalism is a 19th-century invention that has replaced traditional Christian doctrine, and it is about politics! And as we have seen they are doing politics very, very well.
Science, too, is a political concern. To assert that evidence should determine what we consider to be true, as opposed to faith–that’s political, make no mistake. And politics is about power. We can either fight for power, or surrender it. Maybe I’m radical, but that’s how I see it.
Dispensationalism is a 19th-century invention that has replaced traditional Christian doctrine, and it is about politics! And as we have seen they are doing politics very, very well.
Forgive me for splitting theological hairs, but I grew up in an Plymouth Brethren household and I’ve had dispensationalism drilled into my head long enough that I know it inside and out. Plymouth Brethren dispensationalism is most certainly not about politics. Far from it. The exclusive brethren (those that followed Darby) don’t even vote. What true dispensationalists believe is that they must completely severe all contact with the outside world. Where dispensationalism comes into politics is how the reconstructionionists borrowed Darby’s reinterpretation of the Bible for their own purposes. What’s more, most dominionists are postmillenialists, which are far more terrifying than those selling off all their stuff waiting for the rapture.
Oh, man, I would laugh out loud if the NaXis split off from the GOP! NOTHING would make me happier about national politics in America.
Heh. First of all, we have this ready-made name for them: NaXis. Whew. Too good.
Second, because, well, look at what happened to the Nazis. THEY LOST. They lost big, and they lost — in Germany, but probably most of the western world — for all the generations to follow.
Sometimes the “period” of political movements is longer than you think. The Scopes Trial was a definitive moment in the evolution/creation controversy, and it took this long for the creationists to get some traction again. The 1925 trial set back the creationists for more than 70 years.
So we were free of them in the U.S. for 70+ years … but only AFTER they had their ascendant moment, and came out into the light, and everybody realized how stupid, and wrongheaded, and simultaneously laughable-but-dangerous they were.
The NaXis would lose too, and lose big. True, they might cause some turmoil for a while … but I have my doubts even about that.
I think they’re so weak, so silly, that the only way they have been able to get THIS far is by parasitizing the Republican Party, and riding on this idiot war, and fear of terrorism, and so many other factors. They skulk in the shadows, and they lie and lie and lie.
The minute they come out into the open, and OPENLY spit their hate, they become mainstream laughingstocks every time. Think of the recent gaffes made by Pat Robertson, Oral Roberts, Jerry Falwell. I can remember twice just in the past year that Brother Pat has retracted or “explained” his idiotic statements.
If this massive parasite departs from the GOP, we have a chance that the party might become a decent place to be sensible again, and the center of what remains a two-party system would move more toward the moderates.
Liver flukes are scary … until you see them out by themselves in the light of day. Then they’re just soft, defenseless little bits of mush who can’t even survive sunlight.
By all means, let’s all hope the parasitic christers get so disgusted with the GOP that they split off to triumphantly form their own political party.
Five years from now, we’ll we watching their leaders starring in a Reality TV series, cloistered away for a week with H. Ross Perot, Corey Feldman and Carrot Top.
There’s a Christian Slate for student politics at my school:
http://www.daviswiki.org/Christian_Slate
But they’ve only just organized, and are passing themselves off as serious when they have no candidates and no platform save advancing the christian agenda. No kidding, they actually say that. Those that are more likely to organize on those religious lines tend to be conservative, and in the case of this pseudo-slate their members are mostly conservative. Thus, a national party is going to draw from the same group of people, and might only be successful in alabama for local stuff.
One serious problem, which has already kind of happened with the Christian Slate here at UCD, is that opponents will be slandered as “anti-christian,” or intolerant, a conveniently set-up way for them to tar political enemies. There could be some really bad stuff thrown around in the political sphere if they form a NaXi party, but it could be good for progressives when the opposition is divided.
woofster, I’m afraid I can’t agree with your assessments of the post-Scopes status of creationism. Sure, the positive part of their message was little in evidence after that. But the negative part- not teaching creationism, but also essentially refraining from teaching much of anything about evolution- has never ceased to be the status quo in all but a small handful of school districts, and the treatment of evolution in K-12 biology has always ranged from inadequate to derisory. That is the result of continuous behind0the-scences pressure from conservative Christians throughout the post-Scopes era, at levels ranging from individual districts to the textbook-adoption process in states like Texas. All they have to do to put the kibosh on serious teaching of evolution is to impress on spineless school officials that it’s “controversial” and will cause them problems they don’t want to deal with. This situation is still very much with us.
Hi, PZ! I’m glad to see people are using the term “Christianist”; I only saw this term last week in a piece in time by Andrew Sullivan, and I thought the way he explained the distinction was wonderfully straight-forward.
I’m wondering if Sullivan originated this term, and if not, where did you folk first hear it?
Cordially,
NON-Christianist Scott Hatfield
Todd, I respect your expertise on the subject, but perhaps I have not made myself clear. Not voting is a political act, whether or not it results from an individual political decision. Not voting and “not caring about worldly politics” has political consequences for everyone, including the believer. Selling off your stuff waiting for the rapture is a political act, too–and certainly an economic one. It results in real costs for the children being raised in those situations, upon their later social, educational, economic, and political development.
Everything is political and to pretend otherwise is like saying that celebate priests have no sexuality just because they’re not (we assume) having sex. However, yes, postmillenialists are the real culprit here, for they are the ones who, instead of creating a just world for Jesus to come to, want to destroy the present for a fantasy future. Some are even preparing their children for the Second Coming rather than high school graduation, which will surely have political consequences for these children. But my point is, I have concluded that “not being of the world” is merely another way of being in the world, because no matter what, we are of the world and in the world, and religion is politics, even if everyone thinks that it is not, because ultimately, the consequences are felt on earth, not in another world which does not exist.
Second, because, well, look at what happened to the Nazis. THEY LOST. They lost big, and they lost — in Germany, but probably most of the western world — for all the generations to follow.
Um, woofster, a few little things went wrong before they lost, and it would be nice if we could avoid that kind of trouble, really.
The christianists represent a very, very dangerous element in American culture; they should not be ignored, dismissed, underestimated, or in any way encouraged.
What does that leave? Because they can’t be debated… Can we mock them?
I’m wondering if Sullivan originated this term, and if not, where did you folk first hear it?
No, Sullivan did not originate the term, nor the explanation thereof. It’s been around for at least a couple years. Here (by way of example), is a post of mine from April 2005 where the term is batted around in comments.
Sully just stole it without attribution to the lefty blogosphere.