Seminar: Democracy Matters More than Ever II

Session II: Democracy showed up and showed out on November 3. Voting is our primary voice. The peaceful, organized, observed act of voting is the keystone of American democracy. We are slow to understand when there’s a need for change, but when we get it, we really get it. Last Tuesday, the American people canceled the Trump Show. This country still knows how to throw the bums out. A Blue Tsunami, a Hispanic Hurricane, a Youth Earthquake and an African American community “coming to itself,” swept Democrats back into power.

Democracy arose from violence and has never strayed far from it. Democracy is much harder than authoritarianism. A woman asked Benjamin Franklin, “What kind of government are you giving us?” “A republic, Madam, if you can keep it.” Violence, disagreements, disputes, dissent, struggles, revolutions, reforms – democracy keeps rough company.

When someone asks me what I do, I say, “I’m a reader and a seller of books.” I recommend books to others. Kloppenberg, James T.. Toward Democracy: The Struggle for Self-Rule in European and American Thought.

American democracy has been revived but is in peril from an authoritarian movement mistrustful of our anchor institutions. Nearly everyone paying attention is trying to find the best way to say so. Half of Americans believe the US is likely to cease to be a democracy in the future.

4 dangerous dogmas threaten democracy

·   Religious fundamentalism

·   Free market fundamentalism

·   Aggressive militarism

·   Escalating authoritarianism

Session 1: Religious Fundamentalism

We are currently besotted with a tribe with no love for democracy. They  are a mixture of nativists, populists, and evangelicals, nursing old grudges, bringing back old enemies like Jim Crow. The evangelicals of the tribe are of the gravest concern to me. More specifically, the leaders of the evangelical movement.

These are the Christian nationalists among us. The term has been slapped on nearly anyone with even a bit of Christian faith. So I want to make it as clear as possible. American historian John Fea:

You are a Christian nationalist if you

1.    Believe the United States was founded as a Christian nation. I’m sorry to tell you but your salvation is in doubt and you flunk American history.

2.    Christian nationalists fuse the Bible and patriotism to advance a political agenda. I’m sorry to tell you your salvation is in doubt.

3.    Believe that God has chosen the United States to play a unique role in human history. (This is more than just American exceptionalism–it is providentially ordained American exceptionalism). I’m sorry to tell you your salvation is in doubt.

4.    That God has called Christians to “take back” or “gain control” of all spheres of culture. Sometimes this is called “7 Mountain Dominionism” or “Reconstructionism.” I’m sorry to tell you your salvation is in doubt.

5.    Reject the idea of American pluralism. The civil religion E pluribus Enum. I’m sorry to tell you your salvation is in doubt.

Here’s the good news. Christian nationalism IS NOT:

1.    Not all people who believe that rights come from God are Christian nationalists.

2.    Not all Christians who voted for Donald Trump are Christian nationalists.

3.    Not all people who take conservative positions on social issues such as abortion and marriage are Christian nationalists.

4.    Not all people who want to bring their faith to bear on public and political life are Christian nationalists.

5.    Not all conservative evangelicals are Christian nationalists. Civil religion – our mild form of faith – and Christian nationalism – our fanatical form of faith – are not the same, although both draw from Christian values and language.

By and large, you are not Christian nationalists. American Christians are mostly of the mild persuasion. They baptize their babies on a Sunday morning and never attend church again. They like their religion the way they like their beer – LITE. You may not be Christian at all, for our nation is now filled with human secularists. As Charles Taylor taught us in A Secular Age, “Belief in God is longer the default setting.”

If you are Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopalian, Lutheran, UCC, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Rastafarian, or Cooperative Baptist, you most likely are not a Christian nationalist. Most of you have a book of worship or a prayer book, keeping you Christian.

Here is everything you didn’t know you need to know about Christian nationalists. Christian nationalists are a danger to democracy.

They are authoritarian in mind, heart and spirit but claim to be the most democratic among us. The largest group in the tribe, the Baptists, have recently turned against the First Amendment. Ironically, when you ask what original or unique contribution Baptists have made to Christian history, you will only be able to name one such gift – the First Amendment. They were for it before they were against it.

They have a leader named David Barton. He claims to be a historian but he is not; he is a history hobbyist. He has a bachelor’s degree in religious education from Oral Roberts University. The current, but soon deposed Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, Shreveport Louisiana, is a disciple of Barton. Barton is a Republican consultant from Texas and he has been spreading false claims about the founding of America for more than 40 years. He now gives tours of the White House which is like inviting Ken Ham to conduct tours of Jurassic Park.

Every American historian has debunked Barton’s claims. His primary claim: America was founded by a group of evangelical Christians as a Christian nation. His primary allies are Robert Jeffress and Eric Metaxas. Metaxas has published a best seller, Revolution, surely the worst account of America ever written by a borderline historical illiterate.

He has a large evangelical following. Barton wrote a book, The Jefferson Lies. His publisher, Thomas Nelson removed the book from publication when conservative evangelical professors proved the only lies in the book were Barton lies. He has a habit of making up sayings of our Founding Fathers and is not to be trusted.

The idea America was born as a Christian nation is a form of idolatry. George Washington refused the presence of a clergy at his death bed. The French told Benjamin Franklin when he came to Paris as our first ambassador they were fearful of his religious convictions but after getting to know him they were delighted to discover he didn’t have any. The founders were a mixture of various kinds of Christians, deists, agnostics and probably at least one atheist. Their beliefs ranged from the evangelical Patrick Henry to Thomas Paine’s probable agnosticism.

The best reads on this subject: John Fea, Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? And also read his Believe Me. And David Holmes, The Faiths of Our Founding Fathers.

The evangelicals buy Barton’s lies because it fits their purposes of claiming the right to rule America as a renewal of Puritanism. The Puritans, of course, expelled dissenters, including Roger Williams. They sent him into a New England winter to perish. This is why Baptists are still nervous in ecumenical gatherings.

I recommend you read

Cornel West, Democracy Matters.

James Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree.

James Miller, Can Democracy Work?

The danger of literalism

Christian nationalism has a primary text: Isaiah 2:2. They

Seven Mountains Dominionism is based on Isaiah 2:2                                                     “In days to come the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream to it.”
Where are the 7 cultural mountains in Isaiah? In what remote sense can one think Isaiah is talking about America? Christian nationalists are engaged in the unmitigated quest for power. For example, do you know evangelical pastor Doug Wilson? He wants to take away the right of women to vote. He says he would have fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War. He is Pete Hegseth’s pastor.

Christian nationalist evangelicals do not play well with others. They don’t share. They really believe they should control every aspect of American life. They have a dangerous movement, Seven Mountains Dominionism. They claim to believe in the literal truth of the Bible. You know “literalism” is a metaphor, right? They are only literal when it pleases them.

According to the movement, there are seven cultural mountains and God intends to place a good evangelical over each of the mountains: family, government, arts and entertainment, media, business, education and religion. This is a scary movement. Mike Johnson is a part of Seven Mountains.

The greatest danger of evangelicals is how pitiful they are with metaphors. They claim to be literalists but not really. They live by a single metaphor: LIFE IS WAR.

And we know WAR IS HELL And they have engaged in the CULTURE WAR for more than 40years. They are always on a war footing seeing no need for cooperation, partnership, or interdependence. They are always mad at someone.

LIFE IS WAR

WAR IS HELL

POLITICS IS ANOTHER NAME FOR WAR

THE CULTURE WAR

They have no notion of one of the marvels and ingenious results of biological symbiotic partnership. A species of beetle and a mimosa tree in the Houston, Texas area. Each year, beetles cut into the cambium of mimosa branches effectively killing the branch end but it doesn’t fall yet. The beetle then makes a slit in branch and deposits her eggs. When the winds blow in March, the dead branch ends fall to the ground as food for the beetle larvae. The symbiotic partnership provides nourishment and survival for the beetles and mimosa trees pruned by the beetles live 25 years longer. And evolution has produced thousands of these symbiotic partnerships.

Part of the strength of American democracy has been the development of a civil religion. People of all faiths could understand themselves as participating in the motto, “E pluribus unum.” Evangelicals are fracturing this contract into “one nation under one God – the evangelical god. The only true American is now one with an evangelical faith. Charles Taylor says, “It is easier to be unreservedly confident in your own righteousness when you are the hegemonic power.” This leads to more authoritarianism.

This is a major reason why posting the Ten Commandments in classrooms (Louisiana and Texas) is so dangerous. The placard becomes a symbol of coercion and forced faith.

Vaclav Havel speaks of the greengrocer who puts the required government sign among his onions and carrots: “Workers of the World, Unite!” The state maintains the signs by tight monitoring and heavy legal sanctions. As Havel puts it,

He put them all into the window simply because it has been done that way for years, because everyone does it, and because that is the way it has to be. If he were to refuse, there could be trouble. He could be reproached for not having the proper ‘decoration’ in his window; someone might even accuse him of disloyalty. He does it because these things must be done if one is to get along in life. It is one of the thousands of details that guarantee him a relatively tranquil life ‘in harmony with society’, as they say. Havel, Vaclav; Keane, John. The Power of the Powerless: Citizens Against the State in Central Eastern Europe (pp. 27-28). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.

The greengrocer is indifferent to the sign in his window. he does not put the slogan in his window from any personal desire to acquaint the public with the ideal it expresses. This, of course, does not mean that his action has no motive or significance at all, or that the slogan communicates nothing to anyone. The slogan is really a sign, and as such it contains a subliminal but very definite message. Verbally, it might be expressed this way: ‘I, the greengrocer XY, live here and I know what I must do. I behave in the manner expected of me. I can be depended upon and am beyond reproach. I am obedient and therefore I have the right to be left in peace.’

The posters of the Ten Commandments have no pedagogical value as it only makes a political statement. Faculty and students will no longer notice the posted sign after a few weeks. It will be a useless image of a moralistic, authoritarian government. The irony: The posting of the greengrocer’s sign and the Ten Commandments – one from a totalitarian state and one from a democratic state – both have the same result – coercion.

The task of democracy is to turn antagonism into agonism – the forming of common bonds through nonviolent dissent.

This is not your father or mother’s civics course. This is Flannery O’Connor hard-hitting truth. “The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.”

H. L. Mencken: “Democracy, in the last analysis, is only a sort of dream. It should be put in the same category as Arcadia, Santa Claus and Heaven. It is always a mistake to think of it as a reality. It never really exists; it is simply a forlorn hope.” Lucky for us, he kept hoping.

I choose to rise in defense of democracy, especially the First Amendment. Our freedom of expression and freedom of speech matter now more than ever. And I will say so with all the passion, common sense and commitment I possess.

Who could have imagined we would need to shore up the foundations of democracy in our time? As American historian David Blight reminds us, “The democratic and the authoritarian instinct are both deep within us, forever at war.”

Democracy in America now exists in precarity. For years everyone paying attention has been sounding the alarm. We have produced reams of books and articles warning against the dangers posed to democracy by demagoguery and authoritarianism, disrespect for the anchor institutions of our nation and the rule of law. Our warnings have been dismissed as TDS, ignored by millions of our fellow Americans and dissed as exaggerated reactions by elitist scholars.

There are, of course, powerful voices of democracy available to nourish our souls. The poet of democracy is Walt Whitman.

I commend to you John Marsh’s book, In Walt We Trust: How a queer socialist poet can save America from itself.

And oh! how I love Walt Whitman’s fabulously open, infinite democratic spirit. We inhale Whitman’s verses and are captured by the hypnotic power of democracy. “O Democracy, for you, for you I am trilling these songs,” wrote our most exuberant democrat.

Read enough of the right Whitman and you can believe again that American democracy may yet be “the continent indissoluble … with the life-long love of comrades”.

Or simply pick up Whitman’s Song of Myself, all 51 pages, from the opening line, “I celebrate myself, and sing myself,” to his musings on the luck of merely being alive. Keep going to a few pages later when a “runaway slave” enters Whitman’s home and the poet gazes into his “revolving eyes”, and nurses “the galls of his neck and ankles”, and then to his embrace of “primeval”, complete democracy midway in the song, where he accepts “nothing which all cannot have”. Finally read to the ending, where the poet finds blissful oblivion, bequeathing himself “to the dirt to grow from the grass I love”. Whitman’s “sign of democracy” is everywhere and in everything. The democratic and the authoritarian instinct are both deep within us, forever at war.

There are 3 kinds of claims to be the voice of democracy, two bad, one good. The bad are the uncritical lovers and the loveless critics. Good voices, like yours, carry on a lover’s quarrel with America, a reflection of God’s lover’s quarrel with the world.

Our job, then, our anti-authoritarian Battle, is to find all available ways of making the evangelical distortions of religion apparent, in order that politicians of Trump’s kind in America be unable to perform a similar swindle.

O beautiful for pilgrim feet, whose stern impassioned stress

A thoroughfare for freedom beat

Across the wilderness.

America, America, God mend thine every flaw ,

Confirm thy soul in self-control,

Thy liberty in law.