The Interregnum, Part Four: The Religious Right

[Cain]

"Talk to the people who rule the world, and help them obey. Obey Him. If I obey Him myself, I help others do the same. You know why? Because I become a warning. We become a warning. We warn everybody that the future king is coming. Not just of this country or that but of the world."
- David Coe

"The injunction of Jesus to love others as ourselves is an endorsement of self-interest.  We have to tolerate the inequality as a way to achieving greater prosperity and opportunity for all."
- Brian Griffiths, international advisor to Goldman Sachs and Theology Fail 'winner', 2009

"I say to the worshippers of the cross, to the sons of apes and pigs, the Jews, and to their lackeys, the infidels and apostates, in the East and the West – live in fear."
- Abu Zubeida

So, we at last come to the religious right.  As I've hinted before, the case of political religion is a special one, because it transcends the divide between the fake, proto-fascist 'populism' and technocratic, hierarchical elitism of the financial giants and their government proxies.  It exists among them both, yet at the same time stands apart, or beyond, a far higher calling than either could hope to match.

I imagine there is already a feeling of smugness among certain Europeans in the crowd.  "Well, the Christian Right doesn't have nearly as much influence here, we don't need to worry."  Wrong.  Firstly, I gave them the name of the Religious Right.  That isn't an accident.  And secondly, you do need to worry, because Europe is weak and divided and follows American political trends (if unwittingly) in almost every area.  Even the much vaunted European opposition to the Iraq War has only fuelled the creation of new, Neoconservative political parties who challenge the Christian Democratic tradition in Europe, or even infiltrate its ranks.

The Religious Right is a global enterprise.  What started as disparate and local increases in religious belief and fervour – from the streets of Tehran to the mid-west of the USA - started to link together and network with each other.  They realized, for all their inter-faith squabbling, the real enemy were the non-believers and those who agitated for social progress on issues like abortion and birth control, population control, global warming, poverty and other issues.  Even socially progressive members of their own denominations were treated as enemies, whereas those who you would think would have a natural enmity (Catholics and Baptists, for example) found common ground in shared political beliefs, and were willing to put aside theological differences for policy goals.

I assume most of us here have read Jeff Shartlet's The Family, or at least know of its contents.  For those of you who do not, a small refresher course.  The Family are a Christian fundamentalist organisation who operates almost exclusively within elite circles – that is to say, they target businessmen, politicians and connected figures for conversion and to further their own goals.  Utilising a cell structure with an emphasis on invisibility, they bring politicians as disparate as Sam Brownback and Hillary Clinton into a single network, to work on goals of mutual interest.  They also have a heavy presence in the third world, with a tight grip on Uganda (whose recently proposed homophobic legislation was put forward by a Family member) and Fiji.  Their aim of using third world dictatorships is to eventually "encircle" the USA, Europe, Canada and other more secular states, and add a Christian flavour to international law.  At the same time, Family advocates within national governments try to do the same on the individual state level.

Pretty scary stuff.  Of course, The Family are only one group, and their secrecy may indicate a sign of weakness, as opposed to strength.  Nevertheless, they are only a single node in this globalised network.

Religious Right NGOs within the United Nations are a phenomenon which is, at best, 15 years old or so.  Most religious conservatives had, in the past, avoided the U.N. for a number of reasons, usually along the lines of Bircher conspiracy theories about an impending New World Order.   From the mid-90s onwards though, seeking to outmanoeuvre the left's supposed moral high ground, religious right activists started to make a stand on issues such as AIDS, religious freedom, sex trafficking and rape in warzones.  And surprisingly, such work did mobilize far greater resources than feminist or human rights NGOs had been able to, though it also constrained the responses to such issues that could be used.

At the same time though, these religious right NGOs are undermining the secular and progressive credentials of global civil society, and often allying with very unpleasant individuals in order to do so.  For example, at the Beijing+5 conference in 2000, the Vatican allied with Sudan, Iran, Libya and Syria and U.S. protestant conservatives and derailed the talks with symbolic acts of protest – or as some of the feminist NGOs considered it, intimidation – and by bogging down discussions with debates over homosexuality and contraception use.  By 2003, a European coalition of feminist NGOs had become so worried by the undermining of international human rights by such groups that they sought to get the direct intervention of Kofi Annan to limit their influence.

Beyond the unusual Catholic/Protestant alliance, a few others are worth noting.  Mormons make up a massive contribution to the religious right on the global stage.  With highly motivated members spread over South America, Australia and Canada in addition to the USA, they have very international credentials and put their wealth to work in promoting the Church's goals.  Another is the Christian Zionist coalition, whose disastrous approach to the Middle East barely requires mentioning.  Finally there is the Christian-Muslim alliance.  This one is tentative, for obvious reasons, namely that conservatives on both sides claim the others as evidence of Satan's power in the world.  Nevertheless, Mormon and Muslim youth groups have cooperated in taking over the U.N.  Youth Caucus and now speak on behalf of the world youth to the United Nations.  Farooq Hassan, former Pakistani ambassador, works as a consultant for many Christian groups seeking alliances within the Muslim world. 

As Phillip Jenkins described in the excellent The Next Christendom, the "Clash of the Civilizations" is not between the Islamic and Christian worlds, but between the mostly secular global north and an increasingly religious and unified global south.  That religious groups are gaining grounds here, in the "secular" north is only a small part of a much larger and complicated process.

The recession will only aid these efforts.  As government support runs out or is reduced, whether due to money problems or the "new austerity" some conservative parties are callously promising, people will more likely turn to the only support networks that still exist – religious ones.  Bankers are already cloaking excuses for their actions in the name of God.  Educational services – so badly needed to dispel the superstitions of the past and the stranglehold that religious groups once held over education – are having their budgets cut so that debts can be paid off, or at least have those debts deferred until the next hiccup in the international financial system brings us to the brink of ruin.  Disdain for the manipulations of currency, once the preserve of Christian and Muslim fundamentalists, may well come back in fashion.  And religious violence, a problem even at the best of times, will almost certainly get worse.  Not only will Jews almost certainly get blamed for the crisis, as they always do, but other processes of radicalization that arise from the conditions of the crisis will take effect.  For example, with a "liberal" U.S. President in power, we've already seen the assassination of Dr Tiller, along with a torrent of threats unleashed against those who work against socially conservative sentiment, by newly risen and religiously orientated militia organisations.  And I barely need to mention the vast amounts of religious violence currently occurring in the Middle East, from Jewish fundamentalists provoking Arab opinion through to Islamic terrorists who seek to topple all the governments in the region, and create a new Caliphate on their ruins.

In the current climate, a promise to return to moral principles of government is appealing.  The rot of corruption and incompetence has spread far, normally aided and abetted by the sort of technocratic wonks who, while not necessarily bad people in their private lives, hold disdain for ethics and value only efficiency and process – not towards any particular goal, but as ends in themselves.  An "ethical" backlash will almost certainly take a religious form, in the broader, societal sense.

And where does that leave the rest of us?  Not in a good place, really.  Well, unless you care nothing for abortion, contraception, laws concerning blasphemy, pornographic material, drugs, stem cell research, evolution, an accurate view of history...and many other things besides.  We all know the agenda of such groups; it is not something we would really want to see in power, or preferably anywhere near power.

But this is the inevitable result of the policies of the past thirty years, the concept of "fuck them, let the poor fend for themselves" pushed by the economic Social Darwinists, and the general (and not entirely undeserved) disdain for religion of all sorts among the more liberal and progressive crowds.  John Robb talks about a concept called "primary loyalties", that is who people ultimately will stick with, when forced to choose.  In most first world countries, civic nationalism was considered the normal primary loyalty, in that citizens professed to value most highly the principles their nation claimed to represent.  But when such a nation spurns you, fails to help you and ignores your needs, people fall back onto other groups.  And the biggest one is, of course, religious organizations.  Who would you trust, a state that has turned its back on you and interfered in how you live your life for decades, or a religion that gives you meaning and purpose to life, while seeing to your family's needs?

The problem is, of course, such faith can and will be abused, by those who wish to create a New Jerusalem in the West.  Such beliefs, stripped of their context and intent, turn into superstition and intolerance.  And leaders of such groups are among the most powerful people in the world right now, with the means, the political access, the legitimating ideologies and, most importantly, the lust for power to enact changes as they may see fit.

[Triple Zero]

Ahh, part four! Great stuff again, Cain!

[Freeky]

Wow. I thought a lot of this would be over my head, being written by Cain and all, and a lot of it is, but not too much that I can't see what it all amounts to. Thanks for the read, Cain.

[Requia ☣]

So the religious right is recruiting people who get neglected by the country to help prop up the people doing the neglecting.

Do I have this right?

[Cain]

Pretty much.

I mean, there is more to it than just that.  The power and wealth many of the churches have gained, through powerful patrons, has made them fertile grounds for networking, and the "propserity theology" neatly plays to middle-class pieties concerning wealth and who deserves to have it.  Going into that would've tripled the length of the essay though. 

Of course, you have to recall, they're only propping up the people who do the neglecting for as long as it takes to enact their own policies and visions of the future.  I'm sure once they get what they want, they will drop them like a stone and do the work of governance themselves.

[Triple Zero]

btw for easy retrieval, twittering and just because I can, I bookmarked the current parts on bit.ly as:

http://bit.ly/interregnum-1
http://bit.ly/interregnum-2
http://bit.ly/interregnum-3
http://bit.ly/interregnum-4

the fifth part will be the last, am I right? do you already know what its topic will be? I'm curious

[Cain]

I do, yes.

[Cramulus]

Great work, Cain. It's really terrifying when you frame it like that.

If the goal is to present this to a larger audience, my one minor critique would be that you assume more familiarity with the subject matter than many have! I'm familiar with the Family, but I haven't read Jeff Shartlet’s book. Nor have I heard of the Christian Zionist coalition.

Anyway, I like how you've painted a picture of how these independent cells are accomplishing the same goals through different avenues. It chills me to think of the Family not as an isolated unit, but just one symptom of a larger, more pervasive egregore.

[Cainad (dec.)]

I have all the current parts formatted into an OpenOffice document, printing now so I can finally stop being a pansy and read this.