Christian Nation (13 page)

By midday, the media other than Fox were asking why the president, the political leadership of both parties, and the governors were not calling for these crowds to disperse. Only a few governors spoke out against the fires. To their great credit, the Catholic archbishops of New York, Boston, and San Francisco held news conferences at which they called book burning “abhorrent,” reminding the reporters of the sad history of their own church and the great evils that had sprung from this sort of intolerance. Fox Faith & Freedom News was jubilant—pressing the theme that the rights of majority Christians had been denied for so long that this sort of jubilant release was perfectly understandable and appropriate. The theme for the F3 news coverage was a clip, played over and over, of Dr. Martin Luther King speaking the words “Free at last, free at last, Thank God Almighty I’m free at last.”

Late in the day, crowds at malls across the country swept into Borders, Barnes & Noble, and small locally owned bookshops and started pulling almost everything off the shelves to feed the fires. Police appeared on the scene, and the usual mix of hotheads and provocateurs on both sides created dozens of violent incidents, with mobs surrounding the police and demanding the release of “celebrants” accused of looting. In Oklahoma, Wyoming, and Texas, “Minutemen” and other “Christian Militia” appeared on the scene to protect the “celebrants” from the police. Police and officials seemed uncertain about how to deal with these armed groups, referred to by F3 as Second Amendment Militias, which were “simply exercising their rights to guard the people from tyranny.”

No one was killed in the few episodes of violence, and by nightfall the families had packed up and gone home. A few days later, the malls and parking lots were back to normal, the media had dropped the story, and most people settled into the comfortable illusion that this ugly spasm was an aberration, a letting off of steam, a reaction equally attributable to popular discontent over jobs and the economy as to religious fervor.

Sanjay, of course, saw things differently and was relentless in arguing that capitulation on the Christian Nation resolution was a mistake, not because it had any legal effect now but because the declaration itself could later provide a justification for the more tangible parts of the theocratic vision. Emilie and I, and most other people, thought he was overreacting. Palin seemed right—the cash in our wallets had the motto “In God We Trust,” and we had grown up pledging allegiance to one nation “under God,” and after fifty years these simple symbols and gestures had not undermined the Constitution.

“It’s actually smart of her,” said Emilie. “Throw the crazies a few bones where it doesn’t matter. I mean, presidents have been saying ‘God Bless America’ for years at the end of every speech. Even the Clintons went to the prayer breakfasts and made necessary obeisance to the Jesus freaks. You think Bill believed a word of it?”

As a lawyer, I had more sympathy with Sanjay’s horror at the other two pieces of legislation. Worst was the Houses of Worship Free Speech Restoration Act, which drove a stake through the principle that partisan political activity was not to be subsidized with a federal tax deduction but did so in a way that gave the benefit of the deduction to a single party. The evangelical and Pentecostal churches of America were, of course, overwhelmingly Republican and the largest single part of the charitable sector. Although the Christian right had long been politically active, pastors were not allowed to endorse specific candidates or invest their charitable revenues in political advertising. Although there were many egregious violations of these rules, most clergymen obeyed because loss of the federal tax deduction would have been devastating to the tithing and other contributions on which the movement relied. This would now change, with the $100 billion given to religious causes each year (about one-third of all annual charitable giving in America) suddenly available to support partisan politics. And “speech” included paid advertising. The act was challenged in federal court the day after it was signed. It was declared unconstitutional in the lower court, but after the government appealed that decision, it became clear that the matter would slowly wind its way to the Supreme Court and only there be resolved. In the meantime, the evangelical churches were stopped from leaping into the midterm election cycle.

The Academic Freedom Bill of Rights was more subtle but perhaps even more insidious. It wasn’t really expected that masses of students would sue their schools for liberal bias, but a few, funded by F3 and others, would. And the mere threat of such litigation might cause the universities themselves to think twice about promoting academics with liberal views or seek to balance the liberal faculty with conservatives who would not otherwise have been advanced on merit.

The schools with strong principles and, more importantly, vast financial resources, such as the Ivies, proved immune to this pressure, further provoking the wrath of the Christian right. But after a few years, in community colleges and small liberal arts schools around the country, the most liberal professors seemed less lucky when it came time for tenure, and Christian youth social networking sites systematically identified teachers with “liberal bias” and organized boycotts of their classes. With fewer students signing up for their courses, these professors retired or drifted off toward the larger schools and the coastal cities where the evangelical forces were less potent. This vacuum in talent at colleges and universities throughout the most conservative parts of the country was quickly filled by the graduates of Patrick Henry, Regent, Liberty, and other purveyors of “Christ-centered” education who did not conceal that their primary mission was not education in the traditionally understood sense but “taking your faith to the next level.”

O
NE NIGHT AT
dinner, Sanjay seemed unusually subdued.

“What’s up, San?” asked Emilie. “No doom and gloom for us today? No yogic pearls of wisdom?” Emilie had become somewhat more tolerant of Sanjay since he sold
You and I
and pocketed $400 million. It was impossible for her not to look differently at someone who had founded and grown a business and sold it to a well-respected tech fund. Sanjay, in Emilie’s eyes, was now a “player.”

I could see Sanjay wondering whether to take the bait.

“Have you seen F3 lately?” Sanjay asked.

“Can’t stand it. Did you know that the reason there are no coffee tables in front of the couch on F3 is so that the women’s legs aren’t hidden? They hire only girls as news readers and reporters who have truly outstanding legs. They’re on to something, because they make a shitload of money for Murdoch. I wish I had bought Newscorp stock five years ago. Not, that is, that I would ever want to profit from misogynist exploitation of women’s legs … and not their brains.”

She trailed off, vaguely aware of the mild incoherence resulting from the fourth glass of her favorite white Burgundy.

“You are right, Emilie. Nothing is left to chance over at Fox. And I have noticed something recently.” He seemed reluctant to go on. “You will say I am overreacting, but there has been a deliberate shift to a rhetoric of violence. I did not notice it until they fawned all over the Christian Militias who popped up during the book burnings.”

“Oh Sanjay dear, you really need to get out more,” Emilie said. “If you stare at the Internet all day, you’ll start seeing whatever you want to see. This is America. We’ve used the language of guns and war forever. Remember the war on drugs? And the war on … I can’t quite remember the other one. But it doesn’t matter. No one is talking about civil war. That’s utter bullshit.”

“Perhaps,” Sanjay said, looking thoughtful. “But think about this. When we were young, the religious right—groups like the Moral Majority—was obsessed with sex
and violence
on TV and in movies. They got the rating system introduced. They campaigned incessantly against gratuitous violence. Remember?”

Both Emilie and I nodded skeptically.

“When was the last time you heard a mega-church preacher criticize a film or television show or video game solely on the grounds of being too violent? Sex—yes, they still go on about that. But violence, not so much.”

He was right.

“It started in the mid-nineties. Their disapproval of violence in popular culture abated at the same time that their own use of violent rhetoric increased. I think it was deliberate. If you want people to take up arms and fight, you need two things. You need the people to have arms, which is what our forty-year fight over the Second Amendment and gun control has been all about. But second, you need to make the use of those guns acceptable. People have to lose their fear and abhorrence of violence. It has taken more than a generation, but they have almost succeeded.”

“I can’t believe that,” Emilie interjected. “You’re seeing ghosts.”

“Sorry, but it is true. The rhetoric of violence has exploded on their websites and in the speeches of the movement leaders. And, most oddly, it is not a rhetoric in which the evangelicals are talking of being at war or in violent struggle with their secular enemies. It is the opposite. All of a sudden, what they are speaking about is how the secularists are at war
with them
. The gays, they say, are conducting a war against marriage and family. Those who advocate separation of church and state are ‘at war with believers.’ The governor of Texas keeps saying that America has ‘declared war’ on religion. It is a rhetoric in which the evangelicals and their friends are ‘under siege.’ In which they are relentlessly and brutally attacked by what they call ‘the culture.’ It is remarkably clever. You do not advocate violence against your enemies; you just tell people that your enemies are engaged in a violent struggle against you. What follows is then natural. You fight back.”

“San, darling, all religious crap is violent as hell. They’re always smiting one another over something or other, especially in the Old Testament. Why do you think they call it ‘fire and brickstone’?”

“Brimstone,” I said. Emilie shot me a look; she hated it when I corrected her.

“What is brimstone anyway?” asked Emilie.

“I have no idea,” I answered.

“It is the sulfuric rock often found at the throat of a volcano,” said Sanjay matter-of-factly. “An apt metaphor, I’ve always thought, for divine wrath. Like the spewings of a volcano.”

Emilie went to the kitchen to open another $130 bottle of Chardonnay.

“Sorry,” I said to Sanjay.

“She meant no offense. But really, Greg, this is something new on F3, a militancy that was not there before, and it started shortly after the Christian Nation resolution and book-burning day. For example, there is a new series of reports on F3 called War Room. One episode had Glenn Beck interviewing right-wing generals and others about a civil war scenario. The basic message was that if their agenda is not respected, ordinary people will rise up in violent rebellion to ‘do the right thing’ and defend the Constitution. They said that if the federal authorities tried to arrest or resist what they called the ‘bubba militias,’ then the people would rise up and defend the militias, exercising their Second Amendment right to resist tyranny. It ended by saying that civil war may be inevitable, that history repeats itself. To be clear, this was all painted as ‘just one scenario.’ But the first step in making something real is to talk about it openly. Civil war, G—when was the last time you heard mainstream media talking about civil war? I think the taboo against violent means has been lifted.”

“San, you know the expression ‘to a hammer, everything looks like a nail’?”

“No, I have never heard that expression. A very interesting aphorism. Most apt.”

“Yeah, well, it is apt. You are Theocracy Watch. You are looking for evidence of theocracy. You want to find it. You need to find it. You have to be careful. This is a big country. There have always been lots of crazies. The militias were big under Clinton. There has always been a violent undercurrent in this country, and now with the Internet all the nuts preaching violence are there for everyone to see. They were there before, San, but with the web, now you can see them. Don’t confuse visibility with prevalence. It’s a question of perspective.”

Sanjay cocked his head in a slight echo of that typical Indian mannerism, and gave me one of his penetrating looks.

“You are right, my friend. Desire is a strong force. I must not will into existence that which I most fear.”

“That’s not exactly what I meant.”

Emilie came back in, and Sanjay knew it was time to stop talking business. Emilie entertained us with stories of her new boss, whose every word and action annoyed her terribly and provided further evidence of his essential character as an irredeemable jerk.

“What about George?” Emilie asked. “I mean I know you guys broke up, but do you ever talk to him, San? Do you know he’s left Credit Suisse?”

Most people betray some sort of emotion—whether lingering pain or anger—at the mention of an ex. I looked carefully at Sanjay’s face, which was entirely passive. This, I knew, was not Sanjay hiding his emotions but a reliable sign that pain or anger, if there had been any, had passed.