A book with similar themes is Kevin Kruse's One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America.
While there is important information in this book, I disagree with the author's exhortation in epilogue to vote harder. While voting is a tool, the USA's and the world's veering towards fascism isn't going to stop because liberals win an election here or there.
My second criticism is that, while no such book can cover all aspects of a movement as broad as oligarchically-directed religious nationalism, the author neglects aspects which would lead one to skepticism regarding the effectiveness of liberal politics. For example, there's no mention of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks & the decades-long War on Terror & the influence Christian nationalists have in the military. There's no discussion of the Muslim Ban & other Christian nationalist-backed schemes such as opposition to the Islamic cultural center in Lower Manhattan aka "the Ground Zero Mosque," many other proposed mosques and Muslim cemeteries and private schools. There's no discussion about the influence Christian nationalists exercise in police departments and prisons and parole proceedings. The book doesn't discuss the central role of Christian Zionism in animating white American Christian nationalist identity and the use of the US military to further Zionist ethnic cleansing in Palestine through its relationships with the reactionary regimes in the region and opposition to states which support resistance. There's no discussion of the active and ongoing suppression of the First Nations of this continent, which has been a Christian Nationalist project in North America since Columbus arrived in Hispaniola. How can the author discuss charter schools and not acknowledge that senior Obama administration officials and other Democratic Party figures championed them and only recently backed off?
Since most Democratic Party leaders are also on board with these projects, discussions of these would lend less credibility to the "vote harder" recommendation.
We need radical politics because our problems are radical. People are attracted to people who promise solutions, and, as long as the only radical politics available is Christian Nationalism, people will support it.
Chapter 11, "Controlling Bodies: What 'Religious Liberty' Looks Like from the Stretcher," drew my attention because a family member was an obstetrician. I asked him whether he recognized the horrifying neglect Ms. Stewart attributes to the reluctance to terminate pregnancies enshrined in the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops's Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services (6th Edition). For example,
Married and thrilled to be expecting her second child, [Mandy Swank of Illinois] was at home one day when her water broke prematurely at twenty weeks. Through testing, she learned that the fetus had no chance of survival. But Swank was being treated at a Catholic hospital. The doctors at the hospital would not perform an abortion while there was still a fetal heartbeat--even though continuing the pregnancy put her health and and life at risk. p. 237
Despite returning to a different nearby hospital after waking up bleeding, that hospital, which also adhered to the same directives, refused to induce labor. Only when she continued the pregnancy until week 27, when she again began hemorrhaging, did the hospital induce labor, and the baby died shortly after delivery.
My family member, who had not worked in a hospital which followed these directives and expressed discomfort with those directives, said that he would often hospitalize women with premature rupture of membranes in the hopes of their carrying the pregnancy to the point of fetal viability. He questioned the sentence "Through testing, she learned that the fetus had no chance of survival." He also said that they didn't use the term abortion at 20 weeks, but instead talked about induction of labor.
In any case, I don't want to place too much weight on this personal conversation, both because I'm not sure if I conveyed Ms. Stewart's words accurately to my family member or if he understood exactly or if he was too committed to clinical description to judge Ms. Stewart's claims reasonably. Ms. Stewart does have references to each chapter, and you can read the American Civil Liberties Union report which describes this case and others.
Is delay of labor medically warranted or standard practice? I haven't found out yet, and I'm not sure that I am qualified to do so. But it seems to me at minimum patients should be informed that induction of labor is an option and that her caregiver is refusing to provide it in compliance with the directives.
The predominance of Catholic hospitals in some regions of the country and the restrictions many patients' insurance plans place on "in-network" care often restrict patients' ability to choose other providers. The fact that all hospitals rely on federal funding through Medicare and Medicaid should compel them to adhere to standard medical practice in any case.
So, gentle readers, if you can shed any light on this, please do so in the comments!
Here are some passages I thought valuable to highlight.
But the Bible of Christian nationalism answers to the requirements of the individuals who fund the movement and grant it power at the highest levels of government. p. 34
In the late 1970s a curious combination of religious and political activists assembled to ponder the strategy of a new political movement ... They were angry at liberals, who threatened to undermine national security with their unforgivable softness on communism; they were angry at the establishment conservatives, the Rockefeller Republicans, for siding with the liberals and taking down their hero, Barry Goldwater; they were angry about the rising tide of feminism, which they saw as a menace to the social order; and about the civil rights movement and the danger it posed to segregation, especially in education. One thing that they were not particularly angry about, at least at the start of their discussions, was the matter of abortion rights. p. 57
It would be hard to overestimate the degree of outrage that the threat of losing their tax-advantaged status on account of their segregationism provoked. As far as leaders like Bob Jones Sr. were concerned, they had a God-given right not just to separate the races but also to receive federal money for the purpose. p. 62
BTW, I think the Wikipedia entry for Bob Jones Sr is too kind to him.
The many paradoxes and contradictions of Christian nationalism make sense when they are taken out of the artificial "culture war" framing and placed within the history of the antidemocratic reaction in the United States. To any outside observer, it must seem odd that Christian nationalists loudly reject "government" as a matter of principle even as they seek government power to impose their religious vision on the rest of society. p. 124
[David] Barton's pseudo-history is too valuable to the Christian nationalist machine to let facts and scholarship get in the way, and his standing with his own audience has continued to soar. For at the heart of Barton's project is an assault on the very idea of history as a meaningful subject of scholarly investigation and a source of objective truths. Embedded in Barton's enterprise--and visible in the very title of his magnum opus, The Jefferson Lies[: Exposing the Myths You've Always Believed about Thomas Jefferson]--is the message that history is just a political battlefield where the votaries of "the Left" spin their secularizing falsehoods from the comfort of "the Academy," and the only alternative is to spin better stories from those who believe rightly. ... [T]he fact that liberal critics find no end of lies and contradictions in his work only serves to confirm in the minds of his followers his authentic commitment to a deeper truth. [p. 135]
For many years critics have warned that concessions to the Christian right on "symbolic" issues--erecting religious monuments and emblazoning religious mottos on state property, for example--would set the nation on a course leading to the establishment of religion. We now know that the critics were right--because pushing the states down a slippery slope to a more "biblically based" society is precisely what the authors of Project Blitz propose to accomplish. p. 159
It's Not a Grassroots Movement
But the Bible of Christian nationalism answers to the requirements of the individuals who fund the movement and grant it power at the highest levels of government. p. 34
It's Not About the Unborn Fetus
In the late 1970s a curious combination of religious and political activists assembled to ponder the strategy of a new political movement ... They were angry at liberals, who threatened to undermine national security with their unforgivable softness on communism; they were angry at the establishment conservatives, the Rockefeller Republicans, for siding with the liberals and taking down their hero, Barry Goldwater; they were angry about the rising tide of feminism, which they saw as a menace to the social order; and about the civil rights movement and the danger it posed to segregation, especially in education. One thing that they were not particularly angry about, at least at the start of their discussions, was the matter of abortion rights. p. 57
For an Important Segment, It Is About White Supremacy
It would be hard to overestimate the degree of outrage that the threat of losing their tax-advantaged status on account of their segregationism provoked. As far as leaders like Bob Jones Sr. were concerned, they had a God-given right not just to separate the races but also to receive federal money for the purpose. p. 62
BTW, I think the Wikipedia entry for Bob Jones Sr is too kind to him.
Don't Say "Culture War." It's Antidemocratic Reaction.
The many paradoxes and contradictions of Christian nationalism make sense when they are taken out of the artificial "culture war" framing and placed within the history of the antidemocratic reaction in the United States. To any outside observer, it must seem odd that Christian nationalists loudly reject "government" as a matter of principle even as they seek government power to impose their religious vision on the rest of society. p. 124
Fact-Checking Professional Liar and Confidence Artist David Barton, Dean of Christian Nationalist Historiography, Doesn't Work
[David] Barton's pseudo-history is too valuable to the Christian nationalist machine to let facts and scholarship get in the way, and his standing with his own audience has continued to soar. For at the heart of Barton's project is an assault on the very idea of history as a meaningful subject of scholarly investigation and a source of objective truths. Embedded in Barton's enterprise--and visible in the very title of his magnum opus, The Jefferson Lies[: Exposing the Myths You've Always Believed about Thomas Jefferson]--is the message that history is just a political battlefield where the votaries of "the Left" spin their secularizing falsehoods from the comfort of "the Academy," and the only alternative is to spin better stories from those who believe rightly. ... [T]he fact that liberal critics find no end of lies and contradictions in his work only serves to confirm in the minds of his followers his authentic commitment to a deeper truth. [p. 135]
There Should Be No Concessions to Establishment of Christian Nationalist Symbols
For many years critics have warned that concessions to the Christian right on "symbolic" issues--erecting religious monuments and emblazoning religious mottos on state property, for example--would set the nation on a course leading to the establishment of religion. We now know that the critics were right--because pushing the states down a slippery slope to a more "biblically based" society is precisely what the authors of Project Blitz propose to accomplish. p. 159
Non-Christian Nationalists Are Here by Invitation Only
[Project Blitz Phase II legislative proposals] are a means of spreading the message, among children especially, that conservative Christians are the real Americans and everybody else is here by invitation only. p. 160
We Get Respect, You Get Contempt
The emotional impact of [Project Blitz] bills like these really has two sides: It singles out a target population as worthy of state-sanctioned contempt, and it identifies another group as worthy of state-sanctioned respect. p. 165
Christian Nationalist Political Activity Based on Big Data Facilitated by Churches' Legal Status
All major political operations--of all parties--now rely on big data and activist networks to sharpen their effectiveness in election campaigns. ... One key difference, however, is that United in Purpose's voter turnout machine is at the top of a long pyramid that largely operates in the religious sphere, almost all of which is exempt from taxes and shielded from public scrutiny. p. 178
How "Religious Liberty" Works in Christian Nationalist Circles
You maximize the moral anguish of those whose "values" you share and protect their "rights" whenever possible. And you minimize the suffering of those who don't belong to the group and treat their rights as merely selfish demands. p. 246
No comments:
Post a Comment