McCain has the Republican nomination, but Huckabee’s continuing ability to win certain states is still a major story. Now that he can’t get the nomination and the schadenfreude pleasure is over, it’s time for us to very carefully examine why an out-and-out ayatollah is so fucking popular in this great, modern nation. Regardless of his supposed cover story about being a nice guy, let’s face it—when he wins, it’s because people support his Bible-thumping, intolerant, sexist philosophy. They are largely voting on Christian identity politics, and their definition of “Christian” is very specific. We’re all familiar with it—extremely misogynist, with the fetus as the symbol of the male property rights over women, and abortion as the symbolic rejection therefore of male dominance. Extremely homophobic and not just a little bit racist. Creationist. Believes that the Rapture is nigh.
Fundamentalist Christianity, I believe, gets its hooks in people primarily by trying to define human beings in way that discounts the certainty of death. All these obsessions that are prime political motivators above and beyond the legitimate avenues of politics in a secular democracy speak to a definite desire to get away from our dirty, animal, mortal selves and escape the certain fate shared by us all. Hell, they call themselves “pro-life”. It’s written right there for us—they literally feel they are battling death when they battle liberals, moderates, and basically anyone who doesn’t see it as the government’s role to shove a fundamentalist Christian theocracy down our throats. Bill Hicks did a routine once about how “pro-lifers” should really take it to the next level, and lock arms and guard cemeteries. He was being satirical, but long after his death, satire was overtaken by reality as “pro-lifers” did precisely that when they fought to keep Terri Schiavo’s body alive.
Creationism is largely about denying that we’re animals who are going to die. I agree with the Bible-thumpers that evolution is a troubling reality for those who wish to believe we were made by god in his image, and like him are going to be singing in heaven forever after we die. I just disagree that the fantasy should be preserved at the expense of the reality. The Rapture is an obvious fantasy about not even having to go through the physical death before getting the heaven cookie reward. Abortion is clearly about this fear, and even the homophobia is an attempt to separate ourselves from our biological reality of sexuality that indicates, yep, we’re flesh and going to die.
My question then is this—considering that the fear that’s dwelled upon is mortality and that’s a pretty universal fear, why do the fundies get their hooks on people in some times and places and not others? Is it just that economic opportunities are draining out of some areas, leaving people scared and dwelling on their mortality, desperate for any bullshit stopgap on their fears? Or is there something else? What can we do to save the people of places like Kansas from getting eaten up by this paranoia?
66 Responses to “Enough on the Democrats, let’s talk about Huckabee”
Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>
I think the answer is pretty simple. We live in an incredibly isolating, unfeeling world. We will likely toil in obscurity, bumping our ass to get by until we fall into a cold, lonely grave. Many of us learn the hard way that our heroes are incredibly flawed people. Fundamentalists offer an alternate foundation to base your life on: Jesus is perfect, will love you always no matter what, and can offer you a better deal once the world ends than the shitty world you’re trying to deal with now.
My experience is that people aren’t drawn into crazy rightwing congregations because the doctrine resonates with them, the are drawn into these congregations because the congregations offer them a loving community that they’ve lacked in their secular life. Adopting the crazy is part of the membership price, although that usually happens unconsciously.
Fundamental Christianity is a symptom of the real root cause. Those who vote for Huckabee want a strict social order that provides certainty and orderliness that they fear more “liberal” ideas and systems would undermine and thus, make it much more easier for individuals to deviate from what they consider to be the “straight and narrow”.
Short version: They want things to be the way they always wanted it and HATE CHANGE/DIFFERENCE/ETC.
Of course, while this may be the majority of Huckabee’s supporters, don’t discount some who voted for him because of Chuck Norris’ endorsement.
As for whether there is anything you or anyone else can do,….beyond publicly protesting and advocating your point of view…no. Not unless you want to be seen as a “Missionary” who is trying to forcefeed your worldview on others.
As someone who has been subjected to frequent browbeating from both overly sanctimonious intolerant Christian Fundamentalists of many denominations and college campus atheists, I can assure you such personal efforts to “save” are almost always unwelcome.
“Fundamentalist Christianity, I believe, gets its hooks in people primarily by trying to define human beings in way that discounts the certainty of death.”
You partially answered your own question right here, Amanda- just exchange “lemmings” for “human beings”. But since lemmings aren’t extinct, not all of them buy into “faith cliff= salvation”.
But that’s my usual half-assed, foolish approach. I’ll be interested to see what smarter folks come up with.
Usually I think your analyses are spot-on, but the fact that this framework:
>>>>>My question then is this—considering that the fear that’s dwelled upon is mortality and that’s a pretty universal fear, why do the fundies get their hooks on people in some times and places and not others?>>>>
doesn’t, as you point out, explain anything should suggest to you that this explanation is not the right one.
I don’t think it’s a good rubric under which to fit things as diverse as creationism and anti-choice obsessionism. Although those two things often in practice do go together, there don’t necessarily implicate one another. I think you are mixing up “general belief in the divine” with “specifically the evangelical right in the United States” and the two don’t align. While it would be hard to think of a pro-choice creationist, patriarchal anti-choice fans of Darwin who think white people are being outbred by non-whites abound. Which one fears death more isn’t even relevant; you don’t have to look to the afterlife to see what kinds of interests they are promoting in the here and now.
just like the movie Pleasantville
There’s some southern white tribalism and Appalachian tribalism going on, too. “People who look and talk and pray ‘like us’ have to stick together.”
Just ask someone who thinks pro-life is the ruling issue, this: China pressures and sometimes forces women to abort their second child. Should each state welcome 100,000 young Chinese couples trying to escape this fate? Should YOUR small town take in 1,000 Chinese couples, with all the other towns taking on their “fair share” to save the unborn Chinese babies?
Watch the fundamentalists squirm about how much they REALLY want to save all the fetuses in the world.
The link below to is a long article from the NY Times about the success of inner city “storefront” churches and the people to whom they minister. These churches are often pentacostal and/or fundamentalist.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/14/nyregion/14storefront.html
The ideas in the article piggyback on Mighty Ponygirl’s post from above.
Mighty, good point. Dan Savage had a caller on his show the other day who went into a long story about how she “believed” for a long time to placate her husband, and when she couldn’t lie to herself any longer, her husband went apeshit. It’s an enormous amount of pressure.
Non fundie Christianity (as well as Islam, Judaism, some forms of Buddhism, Hinduism, and any of the 50,000 New Age religions floating about) all promise life after death, as well as our conventional civic religion (he’s in a better place”), so I don’t think that answers it.
Fundie Chrstiaanity, unlike many others,is a tribal God-worship. Quite literally nothing is required for salvation but allegiance to Baal–er, Jesus, and no ethical standards are expected (that would be ‘works’, you see)–and carefully twisted reading of scripture justifies all their tribal prejudices and taboos.
That’s why patriotism and fundie piety are interchangeable. It’s just we’re the Family and they’re not.
(I always wonderd about the dominionsts and their relation to the Apocalypse. The Bible says that all nations will fall before the Antichrist–which goes fro any ‘Christian’ nation around at the time. And if the Left Behind Bookocalypse is coming soon, isn’t it a bit pointless?) But it’s just we’re great and you’ll all be sorry.
It’s not “I’m going to hrraven”, I think, but “I’m going to heaven and they’re not.”
Amanda, were you eavesdropping? My partner and I were talking about this very idea - fundamentalism is about never having to die - this weekend. Were you under the couch?
I think a lot of fundamentalism is that it offers a way to cope with not having economic opportunities in life. Most religions offer the message “This life sucks but here is a way to escape into a better life after death/the rapture”. I think that is why many fundamentalist generally despise education. Additionally it may explain why so many of the faithful haven’t actually read the Bible but simply let others tell them what it says.
Yeah, but they could hang at home in their jammies on Sundays with this as easily, Rachel!
http://astore.amazon.com/idiotcom/detail/1592573894/105-3771687-0857236
Frequent lurker, but infrequent writer.
I had a friend when I was growing up whose mother was a rabid fundi (in the 60’s), which was very unusual in my then part of the country which varied between German background Roman Catholics and German background Lutherans (mostly ELCA’s or one of its predecessors). Southern Baptists were very exotic.
Anyway, what I noticed most about this woman was her fear: her fear for herself and her fear for her children. She was so afraid of the way the world was changing (which was fascinating, because her spouse was an engineer @ NASA: one of the brighter people I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting!) She wanted the world to be like Her world had been in the 30’s (apparently that depression thing didn’t hit much in her part of the country), or better yet, how things had been at the turn of the century.
Her son that was my age was a reasonably bright kid, but there was so much that he wasn’t allowed to learn about, or was required by Mom to have programmed back out of him.
So, I became convinced that the biggest issue with the fundies is that they’re afraid. 40+ years later, and I live in a part of the country where “they’re everywhere, they’re everywhere (like Chickenman!)” and I’m more convinced than ever that while I may not have the complete hook, I’ve got part of it.
Fundi’s are afraid: their lives have been scary experiences, they’re not willing to confront why they’ve been scary, they can’t conceive of taking control of those lives and doing something with them. They want somebody to tell them what to do, because then they don’t have to cope, they just have to do. And if things don’t work out, it’s someone else’s fault. They have missed the boat on life, and only by making everything someone else’s fault can they escape the reality that mostly they did it to themselves. They need a leader, just as their pastors need followers.
A union made in a very dysfunctional hell.
In my experience clinging to religion happens when people have little else in the way of community. If a group takes you in and makes much of you when you’re at your lowest, you’ll believe anything for them.
Also fundamentalist women accept that they are baby machines because it seems an easy way to power. When it backfires (no real power forthcoming), they have to believe it even harder about the afterlife - cause this life is ***ked.
It works well in the US due to exceptionalism. I’m mericun, so I shouldn’t have to die. I didn’t come from no monkey cause I’m special. bah - you get the idea.
Doesn’t the Silver Surfer have better things to do than associate with riffraff like Huckabee?
Mighty Ponygirl, Nothip I think have it right.
Religious fundamentalism is a complex, global phenomenon which is affecting most, if not all of the world’s major religions. The desire for immoratality is certainly a major attraction for many people - but not all of them (ex. Jewish fundamentalists). There is also the desire to retain whatever scraps of privledge that you might have due to your gender, class, ethnic or racial group; the desire for solidarity as a member of an oppressed group (even if you’re not a member of a group that is actually oppressed - hence the ‘war on Christmas’); the desire for certainty in a rapidly changing world; the desire to feel superior to those around you without having to put any effort into actually doing anything special.
As I was typing this - I realized I kept writing in terms of ‘desire.’ The flip side of many of these ‘desires’ is fear (a factor which the Illogical Planner wrote about while I was trying to finish this post) and the inability to accept reality.
Fundy is the way to be if you are poor, uneducated, and isolated. It gives you a worldview that you can accept and support when you need it.
You-all laugh mightily at their travails, did any reach out to help? Well, the fundies did. When their crappy, boring, dead-end jobs were shipped overseas did you vote out that leg? Or did you enjoy the cheaper labor?
They know they are the stoopid ones. They also can do the math. There are more “C” students.
Being a funnymelodist gives you a real sense of community. The transplants I know who have the least trouble fitting in are Bible thumpers. They move in, and join a church, which has clubs and activities for every age and gender. Presto: instant social network. They all believe the same thing so there are no nervous-making conversations.
Because these folks tend to be working and middle class, Huckabee is really their enemy: His “Fair-Tax” will shift Bill Gates’ tax burden to them, because the wealthy can spend only a small fraction of what they earn, and thus what they pay in consumption tax will be a fraction of what they pay in income tax.
According to Karen Armstrong in her book “The Battle for God” - which is a really great erudite read on this very subject for anyone interested, fundamentalism in religion is a direct result of a group feeling threatened by outside forces. Those forces can range from the “Western Imperialism” that gives rise to so much Islamic fundamentalism, to economic change and scientific progress in the west that has many people genuinely frightened. I think if you add to that the sense of community and belonging that people get from a church which rarely seems to be found anywhere else and you’ve got a recipe for the rabid fundamentalism we are seeing now around the world.
I don’t think it’s that deep. I don’t think it’s fundamentally about mortality– i mean, perhaps in a mass psychology way, but not really. I think it’s about the racism and sexism and having a reason to vote against your economic interests. This is the most compelling way the Republican party has drummed up support for their agenda and they’ve worked really hard at it. For decades. This is part of the reason why Reagan is the idol of the generation of Republicans who are currently dying to be President. He was a racist, sexist, economically-deceptive tool, and that’s what they’re running on. To chalk it up to a fear of mortality that’s a sort of secret, a thing you could get people to reveal if you ask them the right questions, i think, is working too hard. Racism and sexism are fundamental values that people hold dear, at least as powerfully as they hold onto a fear of mortality.
I’ve always seen the rise of fundydom as part of the general ‘Jihad vs. McWorld’ power struggle. As globalization increases in scope and reach, forcing local ways of life to adapt and evolve, reactionary elements will, well, react.
The same basic fear of the unknown and “not how it used to be” underlies pretty much anything from country songs deriding “that fish that ain’t cooked”, Thomas Kinkaide’s book making fun of latte drinkers, idiots complaining about having to press 1 for English, etc., etc.
At least as a former baby fundy, I know the fear of change is intimately connected to the belief in Hell. Change is risky, because if it’s sinful, you lose out on Heaven, and get sent to torment. Whereas if you just do what all the “good” people around you say to do/think/believe, then you’re safer. The opportunity cost of being “moderate” is too high if you really believe that one false move equals eternal suffering.
Hell is definitely one of the more effective tools for controlling people used by Christian fundamentalists, and as someone who had to struggle to stop worrying about being sent there, despite a liberal college education blah blah blah, I know how powerful it can be. The fear that we’ll be punished for screwing up or sinning isn’t really that hard to implant in people, I suppose.
After growing up in a pretty secular household, my sister converted to fundamentalist Christianity. I’ve spent the last 20 years trying to figure out why.
The no-death thing is only part of it, not all. Because really, most religions offer that, and some do it much better than fundamentalism.
What I think appealed to my sister was the structure of it, the very clear cut rules. Do X, Y, and Z, and you are a good person, and you will be loved. My sister is the kind of person who needs a lot of outside affirmation of her worth. My parents, by saying ‘whatever you want to do with your life is okay as long as you’re happy’ actually made it harder for her. The church stepped in and simply said, live your life THIS way and you’ll be happy. That was a relief for her.
Freedom can be very scary for a lot of people. With greater freedom comes the possibility for greater failure. Never underestimate the power of that fear. Never underestimate the appeal of something that offers to take away those fears and replace them with easy answers.
In the play “The Deputy,” one of the pope’s acolytes at the Vatican makes a remark along the lines of, “When soldiers start to die, Hitler cannot do without the church.” That remark, in all its hideous cynicism, points up what’s being talked about above: that one of religion’s greatest appeals is comfort in the face of mortality.
So many good comments and yet no synthesis. It’s all fear at the bottom. Fear of death. Fear of change. Fear of being alone. Fear of life.
There will always be fundies, but religious extremism is most popular during uncertain times. There have been many waves of this phenomenon in American history and a good example is the rise of fundamentalism in the 1920s. America had been going through the Progressive Era, and after WWI we had girls in short skirts and short hair, we had jazz, radio, cheap cars and the Charleston. A bomb went off on Wall Street and there was the great boogeyman of Communism. In response, we got the Scopes Trial and a resurgent KKK, among other things. It was a sort of “Shut the barn door, Mabel– the horse got out!” response.
What we’re living through now is something similar. The confidence and security of the 1950s led to the liberalism of the 1960s and 1970s. Freaked out by all the changes, the fundies hit back, seeking comfort in a more familiar social order. History says they’ll tire themselves out or run their credibility into the ground. In fact, it looks to me like that’s what’s happening now. Time will tell, though.
I think it’s about certainty — feeling confident, secure, accepted, powerful. So much of the rhetoric is about that — how many times have you heard “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me”? David and Goliath, miracles and wonders — when you live in a world where you are powerless, economically and socially insecure, unsure of whether there is a purpose — then religious fundamentalism offers you a code to live by, social acceptance and power, and a firm belief that you Know What You’re Doing.
And yeah. At bottom I think it’s about fear. I recently thought that I wished I could still believe in God, because then I could believe that someone was protecting me and looking out for me, and I could stop feeling like I had to be vigilant and watching my back every second, stop feeling like I was always walking a tightrope.
Hector B pretty much called it. I just don’t see them as middle class. They have neither the money nor the attitudes that define that status.
Pbg–
I must agree with you about the exclusion idea of this–my former parish priest once gave a sermon about how wonderful God’s kingdom in heaven would be–and then said that the only way to get there was “through Jesus–no Allah or Buddha or other false gods.”
This is probably the main reason why I decided there was no way I was a Christian anymore.
Lapinette noted that fundamentalism rises in times of cultural uncertainty (economic, geopolitical, etc). I read a book about this recently, and I recommend it to people who are interested in cultural panics, because the analysis is sterling (although the author is discussing history, she clearly wants to apply the lesson to modern times). The book is “Ancients vs. Moderns: Culture Wars and the Making of a Fin de Siecle”, by Joan E. DeJean. Conveniently, it’s on Google Books for free (as I discovered while googling to check the author’s name)!
Roughly, it’s about the way that people tend to get nervous about the ‘decline of a culture’ in the decades surrounding the turn of a century. DeJean traces one examples of this in-depth, but mentions others, and applies her conclusions to the modern day, with interesting results. Amanda (and anyone else who’s interested in this sort of thing) might want to check out the free version.
My freshman roommate recently converted to a strain of fundamentalist christianity. She was a very troubled girl (and a horrible person to live with as a roommate, let me just add). She hit college and immediately began boozing and sleeping with many, many men. It’s not that I disapprove of promiscuity (I’d be a very hypocritical feminist if I did). Rather, what troubled me was the way in which she sought affirmation for her very being from the men around her: if they thought she was sexy, if they wanted to sleep with her, she had worth as a human being. She simply could not find a way to define herself outside of men’s perceptions of her. I distinctly remember her telling me once, when we were both reading a philosophical text for class, how much she wished someone would just tell her what to do with her life, down to the details, so that she wouldn’t have to worry.
Well, all of the men treated her like shit, as men are wont to do with strung-out, bipolar depressed drunk freshman women. And she changed schools - too much bad blood. Last I heard, she’s living with a Mennonite cousin and thinking of converting to a particular strain of Anabaptism. I very much hope she’s happy - she was a nice girl, despite all of her troubles - but she is apparently not able to find a sense of self outside of some outside person or group’s definition of what she ought to be.
I think, at root, the issue is insecurity, particularly in the social, economic, and physical senses.
This strikes me in particular in relation to the commenters that have mentioned the deep and growing prevalence of alienation in modern capitalist societies in contrasting continental Europe to the US. I ask myself, why are fundamentalist religions so much more successful in the U.S. than they are in Europe while both feature comparable levels of alienation?
The answer, I think, is the much greater levels of insecurity which American’s are exposed to in terms of vastly less extensive social safety net, less job security, healthcare, etc. In fact, if you really stop to consider it, American’s are probably subject to higher levels of uncertainty and insecurity in their lives than anyone else in the developed world. This, I think, is probably at root of the much greater pull of fundamentalism in the U.S. as opposed to, say, Europe.
I think this rubric also holds true in other parts of the world. The middle east for instance, I’d venture, tends to broadly follow this pattern, fundamentalism being heavily concentrated in the areas where people face the most insecurity and uncertainty and tended to progressively lessen in the areas with more security and less uncertainty.
Fundamentalist religions offer more than a community in world where the alienation of individuals from each other and their society at large is well advanced, they offer a kind of psychological and communal security blanket against that insecurity and uncertainty, they offer a false sense of security and certainty of how the world works, they offer structure and order in a world increasingly devoid of those things.
Let’s not forget the fact that people aren’t picking up this fundamentalism on their own. There is a big industry in encouraging people in it - PARTICULARLY the homeschoolers, who often spend small fortunes on materials.
People like Vision Forum (who front my all-time favourite fundie site, ‘Ladies Against Feminism’ - please Google both as I don’t want to give them the links) are selling an image - like other posters pointed out it’s one of pre-1950s America, Laura Ingalls pioneerism, and Jane Austen all rolled into one attractive package. Who DOESN’T want happy children in a family that loves each other, supportive spouses, a satisfying sense of self-sufficiency, the promise of a ’safe’ lovelife with ‘courtship’ aka daughter selling?
Then they (’they’ being companies who make tidy profits from selling people ‘Beautiful Girlhood’ dolls (because those American Girl dolls are so slutty!), and preachers and pastors whose very livelihood depends on this) foster FEAR in people who follow them - popular books released by Vision Forum allege that men who let their wives be breadwinners are worse than heathens, and daughters who go to college are acting like harlots (yes, they really do - I can go into this more if anyone’s interested!). Marxists and Feminists are in control, and they want to get in your daughter’s pants.
What’s most interesting is that all this is designed to sell to WOMEN - they after all control most family’s spending on things like this. So why on earth do women want to believe that they’re weak and sin-prone, and they should just let men ‘lead’ and stop being so ‘unsubmissive’?
I think it’s mostly insecurity. Fundie women get similar doses of the anti-woman bullshit the rest of us get. They have made the choice that the patriarchy wanted them to make - they are at home, totally dependent on their husband, pouring energy that might go on issues of social justice into their children instead, but they are still plagued by the sense that maybe their decision was the wrong one. (Note: Obviously, if someone freely chooses to become totally dependent on their spouses income and devote their life entirely to their many, many children, that in itself is fine. Hell, there are far far worse ways to spend your life. My only issue is that they aren’t choosing it freely, their assbackwards religion is coercing them by telling them that going to college and using birth control means you’ll go to hell). So, as other posters also mentioned, they cling to this ideology that reinforces the decisions they wanted to make. It not only tells them they made the right decision, it makes them feel like their very small lives (nothing wrong with small lives, we all have small lives!) are being spent like warriors in a great battle against Society.
There’s more - like how the Bible, written when Christianity was a tiny cult in real danger of dying out completely, encourages its true believers to feel like they too are in a tiny, embattled minority. But I’ve already written way too much.
I’ve often wondered if there is a religion gene….a strong one, I guess, since most people seem to have it and some do not. And, having said that, I think too that the people who are in these religions just want someone to tell them what to do…..not having to make any decisions on their own is what they are looking for. That ties into the big daddy desire for leaders….they want that candidate of theirs to be the leader who will tell them all.
Andrea Dworkin wrote a book called “Right-Wing Women”, and although it’s outdated, it has a lot of parts of that ring true for me. Notice how the harlot/everyone is trying to get in your daughter’s pants stuff is all over the place in fundieland. The unspoken premise is that men are powerful, will not share power, and are always waiting for an opportunity to treat women like crap. And if you accept this, and accept that there are these rules you can follow that are guaranteed to stop men from treating you like crap…well, of course you’re going to do your absolute best to follow those rules and regard anyone who tries to alter the rules as foolhardy at best, traitorous at worst.
I was reading about misogynist Bible stories a while back, and really struck me. It’s an analysis of the story of the rape of Tamar, which even fundies have to acknowledge is an unambiguous rape — but the fundie writer manages to work in a plea to young women to remember that any and all men will despise you if you have sex with them before the wedding night. (Why buy the cow, etc.) Again, men are just waiting for an opportunity to treat women like crap.
Drat, I screwed up the HTML. Link is here. Again, fundie worldview — no real difference between the rapist Amnon and the average man, at least not a big enough one that you can’t spin a story of forcible rape into a lecture to young women about how he won’t respect you in the morning.
Care to clarify that statement?
I know I wasn’t the one who said it … but….
I think a generation ago this could be said. My mom grew up middle class in the middle of nutty fundie Bible Belt and anything that didn’t have a liturgy, a 10-minute sermon, and coffee and donuts after the service was highly suspect because testimonials, half-hour sermons, and hymns where your arms were not occupied by holding the hymn book were what those people did. It wasn’t a race issue, it was a class issue. The thing about the middle class is that they know exactly how tenuous their position is. One fuckup could have them living in a trailer park with their kids eating cold Spaghetti-Os straight out of the can.
Previously, belonging to a fundamentalist church: So. Baptist, Pentecostal, Charismatic, etc, would have you associating with people of a lower social class than yourself, which could potentially drag you down.
I’m not sure if the same could be said these days. The middle class is even more in trouble now than it was then, so they have to be a lot more careful about who they associate with. But, if your town is full-up of Non Denominational 7th-Sermon Stretchers who have the audacity to have a 3-bedroom ranch house, you might find yourself testifying just to keep your clients and customers happy.
“The thing about the middle class is that they know exactly how tenuous their position is. One fuckup could have them living in a trailer park with their kids eating cold Spaghetti-Os straight out of the can.”
So. Very. True!
Welcome to America v2.0…
Oz
The most obvious way to reduce the paranoia is to strengthen the social safety net, especially by providing universal healthcare.
The problem with that is the deep-seated fear many lower-class and fundamentalist people have of The Government, which they see as an unwelcome nuisance at best and a force for evil at worst.
Government is the one force answerable to citizens which is strong enough to counter the power the corporate world wields over us all. But because it is so feared, it isn’t used enough.
Part of the mission of the Cheney/Bush administration is to reinforce the fear and loathing of government to ensure it continues to be seen as a problem and not a solution. In that regard (and that regard only), Mission Accomplished!…
He’s a man for the times…
Read this gem.
Is he ‘pro-exorcism’ or ‘anti-exorcism’?
Somewhere, fundies are getting wood…
Caroline said it:
It’s about certainty. At least it has been for my family. I grew out of the Southern Baptist church as soon as I was able to hold two apparently inconsistent, but equally valid points in my head. My parents and siblings still have trouble with that, and we still get in uncomfortable arguments on precisely this point. They assume that I can’t believe in anything because I “believe in everything.” I argue that with the exception of a few fundamental truths, uncertainty is an unavoidable by-product of being, and there’s nothing to fear from it; in fact, my faith is deepened by considering alternatives. We rarely get anywhere with each other.
There was a moment over the holidays that disturbs me more now than it did then, when we were talking about my future plans. I said I couldn’t come back home and get a job, (1) because there are no jobs to be had, and (2) because the community I grew up in doesn’t want me there. I’d be that loud-mouthed ball-busting commie bitch, instead of that confident feminist professor-woman. And my parents agreed with me. I know they love me, but damn, it sounds more and more like they don’t want me in their community either. Too uncomfortable?
That’s why patriotism and fundie piety are interchangeable.
Change the “patriotism” to “nationalism” and you’re right. Huge difference and we need to start making that clear.
Fear. Bottom line, I think. The fundies are afraid of everything and everybody.
I think that being open to the fundamentalist mindset is a certain personality type. Whether it’s nature or nuture, I don’t know. But I do know that my brother and I grew up 2 years apart in the same family and he’s been a conformist, color-inside-the-lines, “because that’s how it is” kind of person from birth and I’ve been questioning authority and shaking up the status quo from birth. He’s not exactly a fundamentalist, although he was married to one, but he’s a conservative Republican who voted for Bush twice (I know! but I love him anyway). He’s very fearful of change and he loves rules.
The difference in mindset was made very clear to me one day when I was arging with a pro-life, ultra-conservative Christian missionary about god and religion. Frustrated, I asked him, “Doesn’t it worry you that you think you know all the answers to everything?”
He looked at me, shocked, and said, “Doesn’t it scare you that you don’t?”
AHA.
I think the whole fundamentalism ball of wax is pretty similar to a dark tragedy version of jack and the beanstalk, with fundie religion play the role of a hill of “magic” beans.
The problem with that is the deep-seated fear many lower-class and fundamentalist people have of The Government, which they see as an unwelcome nuisance at best and a force for evil at worst.
And yet it’s apparently fine for the Government to make reproductive decisions for people. I guess that works if you decide a) I’m not going to be someone for whom the Government will be making those decisions, and/or b) it won’t be so bad because the Government will be Christian.
Sorry, I can’t articulate that well so this is more like a vent than a solid argument. But it bugs me, the wrongheadedness regarding “Government Interference.” Social safety net = horrifying! Making reproductive and end-of-life decisions = A-OK! Nevermind what’s actually in the Bible, nevermind what the founders actually wanted.
In my experience, it’s not just the fear of death that motivates fundamentalists. As several other commentators have pointed out, most religions have some concept of survival after death and many religions have less strict ethical codes than fundamentalism. From a game theory perspective it would make a lot more sense to embrace a religious system that promises immortality but has few strict rules governing behavior if one’s only objective was to escape death. That way, there would be fewer opportunities for mistakes that could bar a person’s path to salvation. Fundamentalists, though, revel in how strict and exclusive their rules are and how special that makes them.
It seems that what is most important to many fundamentalists is not only that they will escape death and wind up in paradise, but that most other people won’t. This allows them to feel superior to everyone outside their faith community regardless of how successful their own lives actually are. Unlike real achievements that require talent, effort, and luck, it is comparatively easy to feel superior to others solely on the basis of accepting a specific religious worldview. If that worldview is strict it will likely have fewer followers and therefore its “specialness” is increased. A fundamentalist can say to themselves, “I may be poor and unhappy, but at least I’m more religious than those folks over there.”
Many good comments, but Mold really resonated with me:
perhaps because I struggle with the impulse toward intellectual, if not outright class, snobbery myself.
Just because “we” graduated from an elite college, or live in on one of the coasts or in a larger city, or have an i.q. = x plus, or have all of our teeth* (yuck, yuck), we cannot forget something important about the masses. They are many. They matter.
Someone as gross and grasping as Karl Rove did not forget them. These megachurches have a lot of people and a lot of money. We would better serve our country by putting the populace back into progressive populism. The Democrats need to re-embrace the American Dream and show how they are the ones who can make it happen.
*This is an interesting societal division to me. There is a true absence of dental or orthodontic work, just as there is a lack of medical care, among our working poor. This is visible in the loss of teeth among relatively young people. I may be overreacting, but it reminds me of Christopher Reeve urging that America is not the kind of country that lets its citizens slip through the cracks.
I go round and round in my head about what the cause/effect pattern, etc might be, but the thing that always strikes me as an underlying thing in all the fundamentalist experience, is the need for One Right Answer.
I’m always amazed by how closed they are to the idea that what works beautifully for one person might not be ideal for someone else.
It is some kind of simplified understanding of Truth. (capital T). That if something is True, everything else must be false.
I am convinced it is behind the deep belief that, for example, gay marriage is an attack on straight marriage, and why we get idiocy like “We can’t allow gay marriage, because if everyone was gay, we’d never have another generation.”
That for something to be True for me, it has to be True for you, and that to acknowledge something being true for you, I have to embrace it as the only true answer. So, if “they” can marry someone of the same gender, then “we” have to, too. Or our church has to bless it.
Women with careers have a different answer to the women who want to be full-time homemakers. How can one be right if the other isn’t wrong?
And for some reason, the One Right Answer can’t be “Do what makes you happy and fulfilled” (or, Goddess forbid, “An ye do no harm, do what you will.”)
Because diversity means choices, and choices mean the very real possibilty of choosing wrong. And choosing wrong, whether it makes you happy, fullfilled, gracious, etc, means you go directly to hell for all eternity. Diversity must be battled, because their very souls are at stake.
All I have to say is, I am forever grateful that I became terrified of fundamentalism before I had a chance to be terrified of death.
It’s more than that. As has been discussed lately, North American Christian churches are dependent on the women in the congregations to make them viable. Start losing the women and there’s almost inevitable doom for a particular congregation.
Marketing to women is simply the acceptance of this fact and an attempt to use it to do the reverse: draw more women in and their families come with them.
Note that this is a basic human psychological effect. The in-crowd at high school, the fans of a small indy rock band, science fiction fans, exclusive country clubs, all sorts of groups use the “I’m in this group and you’re not, neener neener neener.”
Most of these comments contribute to understanding. I do, however, want to respond to Chris’s citing David González’s article about the hispanic storefront church. As a social worker in the Bronx, I have had many years experience with hispanic evangelicalism, and it is rather different from the fear-ridden authoritarianism of the white evangelicals. Over time it has relaxed a good bit and gotten closer to mainstream protestantism. The white evangelicals are a conscious rejection of mainstream protestantism.
More basically hispanic evangelicalism is a development over a couple of generations away from an agrarian, and very poor society where most people were minimally literate. Their religion was formally Catholic with a large syncretic mixture of paganism, whether derived from native american sources, or, in the case of Santería, from African, chiefly Yóruba religion. Each Yóruba deity has another identity as a Catholic saint. Changó, for example, who is a strong masculine figure is represented by images of Saint Barbara.
Hispanic evangelicalism has appealed to people who are fairly systematically adapting to urban life and what you have to do to be successful in it. If you read Max Weber’s PROTESTANT ETHIC, it gives a pretty fair idea of what is happening here. Hispanic evangelicals are experiencing the Reformation, which is a basically progressive development. White evangelicals, while saying the same things, are really an example of regressive authoritarianism, and share a lot of characteristics with the European fascism of a few decades ago.
“It’s more than that. As has been discussed lately, North American Christian churches are dependent on the women in the congregations to make them viable. Start losing the women and there’s almost inevitable doom for a particular congregation.
Marketing to women is simply the acceptance of this fact and an attempt to use it to do the reverse: draw more women in and their families come with them.”
No, I know, of course. What’s interesting though is that in the face of these facts, the extreme fundies embrace a hugely anti-woman ideology AND STILL SUCCEED.
Elinor you’re right about the negative opinion of men/fear of them as a factor.
They even make their utter disdain for ‘normal’ church (ie the sort one’s granny might go to, consisting largely of pot lucks and food drives and love thy fellow man) very plain - part of the ‘othering’ the enemy I think. They spew invective at the ‘feminisation’ of non-fundie churches and have generally across-the-board no women in any positions of power - usually the highest position a woman can hold in the church is Sunday school teacher (and the really wacky ‘family-integrated’ churches don’t even have that because they hate Sunday school). HOW do they succeed? Do they just attract the really nasty men - the bullies, who love the thought of total power and their superiority being divinely granted?
(Because there’s two sides to this - there’s women buying into it, and lots of women blog and so forth about how their husbands really aren’t that in to ‘leading’ the family and were really happy letting their wife make most of the domestic decisions, and they don’t get why he won’t get up off his ass and start letting her submit - and then there’s the men who drive it at upper levels).
Freedom can be very scary for a lot of people. With greater freedom comes the possibility for greater failure. Never underestimate the power of that fear. Never underestimate the appeal of something that offers to take away those fears and replace them with easy answers.
I (luckily) don’t have much experience with fundamentalists, but I’ve been getting involved in the fat acceptance movement, and something strikes me about this. Tell a co-worker that you’re not dieting because you like your body the way it is, flaws and all, and she looks at you like you just sprouted a few more heads. For a lot of people, it’s a lot easier to take all of you negative traits and put them all on something else - I would be outgoing and fun and smart and popular, but I can’t because I’m fat. That way, you don’t have to deal with the fact that you’re quiet and reserved because that’s who you are. I get the feeling that, for fundamentalists, this is taken to a whole other level. If you can say the world isn’t perfect because gay men have sex and women are doctors and people aren’t listening to me, you don’t have to deal with accepting the fact that the world isn’t perfect, period. So I guess it is about fear of freedom, of responsibilty, of handling the negatives without a crutch. But I think this is more wide-spread than just fundamentalists, and I must admit, I’m not sure that everyone can get over it.
Elinor,
Most fundies seem to have the working-class incomes and atitudes. The middle class is not simply a matter of getting a job in a union plant or being appointed to a government position. There are also defining choices that separate the middle from the working classes.
Others have written books on how the MC will pick European or foreign travel over Disneyworld, wines instead of beer, BMW as opposed to Ford.
You may be confusing fudies with evangels, some of whom are part of the middle class. Agonist has a lovely blog on going to Langley for a position with the CIA and finding the parking lot filled with cars bearing PTL bumper stickers.
Mold -
Um…your definition of the middle class (European vacations, wine, BMWs) sounds distinctly upper-class to me. I grew up quite firmly middle-class in rural Indiana, and I can guarantee you we weren’t driving BMWs or going on foreign vacations.
Mold,
I have to agree with bibliothecaire as European vacations, wine, and BMWs sound like something only the upper/upper-middle class families living in the most expensive section of the Upper East Side could afford. You may as well consider anyone owning property in the East Hamptons of Long Island as middle class if we’re to use that rubric (Ha!).
Middle class folks I knew tend to vacation in Disney World or travel around the states.
Anyone lower than the middle-class rarely had the fiscal means to vacation further than a two hour drive outside of NYC….assuming, of course that their jobs allow enough vacation time to allow for such leisurely activities. Most in the lower-middle/working class are struggling just to get by on basic necessities…..vacations beyond the immediate tri-state area rarely factored in their lives.
You follow the ‘Merican habit of calling everyone middle class. I used easily understood demarcations as to wealth and choice.
Upper class goes into what you might term “rich”. Those whose income depends on trusts, investments, and non-wage income.
To make it easy, assume that a MD is middle class if they are a general practitioner. This would give you a better view of what is truly middle class as opposed to what is working class with benefits.
I try to use the European and American academic standard for middle class. This derived from the fields of sociology and economics. So, it is not to demean your sense of self but to use what scientists claim are the actual ranges.
Mold,
I was not trying to call everyone middle class. My argument was that the definition you used is skewed too much towards people who would be more accurately termed upper/upper-middle class.
I don’t know where you live, but someone earning enough to enjoy European vacations, wine, and BMWs would be more accurately described as upper class….or at the very least…upper-middle class, not middle class.
I guess my question would be whether the “academic standard” for middle-classness is useful in this context.
I’d also question whether the evangelical vs. fundamentalist distinction is all that useful these days, especially with regard to voting behaviour.
My question then is this—considering that the fear that’s dwelled upon is mortality and that’s a pretty universal fear, why do the fundies get their hooks on people in some times and places and not others?
Just my hypothesis:
Dying is the ultimate loss of control over one’s life, and all the old songs go into loving detail about how power and privilege won’t save you.
Now, most people that live and ever have lived have been quite aware that shit happens, and death has often be regarded as “at least I’m done with the shit now”.
But people who are privileged enough to avoid most of the common flavours of shit feel outraged that death (and a lot of other things, really, and most of them in some way physical) escapes their control, and they don’t feel like leaving the party, except at their own terms. Which is why the choose a cult which promises them their own terms.
You get apocalyptic cults whereever there is change and the loss of certainties. You get this specific flavour by adding privilege to the mix.
Amanda, with all due respect, I think it’s probably a mistake to use “ayatollah” as a word for “fascist misogynistic religious leader.”
I live in whitest Dumbf**kistan and I am often told that $100,000 per year is rich. For this area it might be.
For statistical and academic purposes this is incorrect. The above income is more truly termed middle class. We in ‘Merica tend to lump everyone between despairing poor and grotesquely rich into the middle class. I try to use definitive texts for the assertion of class as a function of both wealth and choices(opportunities). The French, English, German and American tomes I have read all seem to agree on this. That is I use what I see the science holds to be the best definition at this time.