There's a fiction book on BARD called, This Is How It Starts, which describes a
right wing Evangelical Christian plot to take over the government by starting
with getting all the homosexual teachers in Massachusetts fired. It's just a
coincidence that I'm reading this book now. I've had it on a cartridge for
quite some time. The actual planning for a Christian takeover started in the
70's and we are now seeing its results.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Sunday, October 18, 2020 8:58 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Evangelical leaders like Billy Graham and Jerry
Falwell Sr. have long talked of conspiracies against God's chosen - those ideas
are finding resonance today
The ability of the human mind to imagine a "Perfect Being" who has handed down
His perfect word, leading to aa Perfect Closed Mind. No room for debate.
Carl Jarvis
On 10/18/20, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The Conversation
Evangelical leaders like Billy Graham and Jerry Falwell Sr. have long
talked of conspiracies against God's chosen - those ideas are finding
resonance today October 12, 2020 8.20am EDT Author Samuel Perry
Associate professor, Baylor University
Disclosure statement
Samuel Perry does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive
funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this
article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic
appointment.
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President Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House.. AP
Photo/Alex Brandon Email
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President Donald Trump sees many conspiracies around him.
He has described investigations into both Russia's interference in the U.S.
election and alleged violations of campaign finance laws, as well as
the entirety of his impeachment, as "witch hunts" and a "hoax."
He is not the only one seeing sinister forces at play. Some of his
supporters do the same. A number of books on conspiracy theories
chronicle alleged failed "deep state" attempts to take down Trump.
Even Trump's COVID-19 diagnosis and hospital stay spawned a range of
conspiracy theories, with some conservative sources suggesting
Republicans were infected deliberately.
In my recent book, "Rhetoric, Race, and Religion on the Christian
Right," I examined conspiratorial themes and rhetoric of some of the
leaders of the Christian right during the Obama administration.
I argue that the rhetoric of conspiracy, now used by Trump, was
foundational for many prominent figures of the Christian right.
The Christian right and conspiracy
In the late 1970s and 1980s, evangelical leaders such as Jerry Falwell
Sr., Billy Graham and others resisted social and cultural changes such
as racial integration of schools. For some, social and cultural
changes were signs of a fallen country.
As religious historian Randall Balmer explains, some conservative
evangelicals and fundamentalists began to coalesce around resistance
to desegregation in the mid-1970s. Conspiracy theories circulated in
some conservative political spheres concerning civil rights protests.
These conspiracy theorists suggested that the student protesters in
the civil rights movement were outside agitators. Others suggested
that Martin Luther King Jr. and student protesters and organizers were
in league with international Communist organizations.
Then in the late 1970s, Republican political strategist Paul Weyrich
brought disparate religious factions and conservative politicians
together and named them the Moral Majority.
Weyrich and his companions saw Christianity as under attack and
suggested that America had fallen away from its values. In 1980
Falwell Sr. argued, "What's happened to America is that the wicked are
bearing rule. We have to lead the nation back to the moral stance that made
America great."
Falwell saw the nation as fallen and secular forces as the enemy of
Christianity. Theological and political differences, rather than
differences of approach or argument, were figured as a battle for
America's soul.
Popular religious figures like Francis Schaeffer, a Presbyterian
minister, framed the survival of Western culture as a battle between
secular humanism and Christianity.
In explaining his father's place as a foundational figure on the
Christian right, Francis Schaeffer Jr. argued, "For the first time in
American history, what you've got coming out of the '70s and
evangelical subculture is a world that looks at its own country as the enemy
to be feared."
This new brand of evangelicalism grew quickly. According to
sociologist Sara Diamond, 20 to 40 million Americans identified as
evangelical by 1989.
Exact
numbers of evangelicals are hard to pinpoint, because the term
encompasses a wide range of denominations.
Frank Newport, editor-in-chief of the Gallup Poll explained it this way:
"the term has been associated with a particular group of Christians
who hold conservative and generally Republican ideological and
political beliefs."
According to a Gallup poll aggregating data from 1991 to 2018 about
40% of Americans identified as evangelicals or born-again Christians.
The number has remained steady for the past three decades.
To clarify, not all evangelicals are conservative. But a defining
feature of the Christian Right is political involvement. While younger
evangelicals are less politically committed, older evangelicals
associated with the Christian right remain deeply politically
committed.
A Pew Research Poll shows that 79% of white Protestant evangelicals
voted Republican in the 2012 presidential. Exit polls show about 80%
of white evangelicals voted for Trump in 2016.
Christian values and conspiracy
Some Christian right leaders have named groups they held responsible
for the fallen nature of America. Tim LaHaye, a political organizer
and co-author of a series of best-selling Christian books, "Left
Behind," claimed that a group called the "Illuminati" coordinated a
global conspiracy to undermine Christian values.
The historical Illuminati were members of a secret society founded in
Bavaria, modern-day Germany, in 1776 to oppose the abuse of power by
the state. Today, a mythological version of the Illuminati is a
favorite among conspiracy theorists.
LaHaye, for example, claimed the Illuminati faltered in their attempts
to establish a New World Order because the Christian right mobilized
the vote for Ronald Reagan. One-time presidential candidate and
televangelist Pat Robertson similarly has attributed other conspiracy
theories to the Illuminati.
More than culture wars
Since the late 1970s, the rhetoric of some of the Christian right
leaders has been used to wage culture war battles against racial
integration, marriage and gender identity protections and compulsory public
education.
In 1986, prominent evangelical leader and political activist Beverly
LaHaye, wife of Tim LaHaye, lamented feminism and those advocating for
the Equal Rights Amendment, saying, "Well, nobody really likes their
unisex, lesbian, radical philosophy either."
LaHaye describes equal rights and pay equality as radical and suggests
feminism seeks to undo biological sex and is intrinsically linked to
same-sex relationships. Rather than a civil rights issue concerning
individual freedoms, LaHaye framed the women's movement as an attack
on conservative communities and their values.
Phyllis Schlafly, founder of STOP ERA, an organization formed to stop
the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, rose to national prominence
in 1964 with her book "A Choice Not an Echo." She claimed: "From 1936
to 1960 the Republican presidential nominee was selected by a secret
group of kingmakers who are the most powerful opinion makers in the
world." Schlafly claimed powerful elites took the power of the
conservative party from the people.
Fifty years later, in her 2014 book "Who Killed the American Family?"
Schlafly claimed, "The American nuclear family made America great, but
few are now defending it against forces determined to destroy it." In
Schlafly's telling, the American family is monolithic. Variance in
family structures signals destruction of conservative notions of the
nuclear family.
Schlafly's monthly newsletter, renamed the Eagle Forums Report after
her death, forwards similar positions with regard to immigration.
Authors on the site suggest ending birthright citizenship and make
generalizations about Muslim immigrants being terrorists. They frame
these matters as a means of protecting American culture and values.
Birther theories
Donald Trump seems to have joined himself with conspiracy theorists on
the Christian right early in his political career.
Even before his campaign, Trump joined with conservative Christian
figures like Joseph Farah, the founder and editor of WND, or World Net
Daily. WND is a far-right website that entered the mainstream during
President Obama's presidency. The website was a hub for the birther
conspiracy.
Participants at a rally in Washington in 2010 that questioned
President Obama's eligibility. AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin According to
some birthers, Obama was a "secret" Muslim. A 2009 article in the
Columbia Journalism Review noted that some of the right-wing media had
attacked him for being "un-American."
In the middle of the Obama presidency, WND attracted 4 million unique
visitors a month. WND also ran a publishing house that featured book
titles from conservative figures like Schlafly.
Trump and the Christian right
Trump's presidency brings together two lines of argument from some of
these evangelical leaders through his rhetoric. First, God punishes
America when Americans are unfaithful to his commandments. Second,
Christianity is under attack.
In an article the Rev. Billy Graham wrote in 2012 during the lead-up
to Obama's reelection, he recalled his wife, Ruth, telling him, "If
God doesn't punish America, He'll have to apologize to Sodom and
Gomorrah."
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The reference to the Old Testament story in which God laid waste to
two cities for their sinful nature reinforces the idea that American
leadership is responsible for American decline just as the leaders of
these ancient cities were responsible for the wickedness of their people.
The underlying and unstated premise of Graham's argument is that Obama
is responsible for a fallen America that will bring God's punishment.
The Sodom and Gommorah example is telling. For Graham and some other
evangelical leaders, Obama's leadership represented an intentional
move away from Christian values toward immorality.
Trump offered himself as an antidote to that fallen America and as a
savior from the destruction. One way people came to accept that
narrative is, I argue, through his use of conspiracy theories.
