Do You Know Who Our Actual Adversary Is? --A Fresh Look At American Religious Fundamentalism
In the spirit of the great author Sinclair Lewis, the creator of the characters Elmer Gantry and Babbitt, I present the following--
America's religious Right Wing of all persuasions, particularly Evangelicals, hard right Catholics and Ultra-Orthodox Jews, have embraced Fascism, Insurrection, and the authoritarian model of Trump's GOP. This is an incontrovertible fact.
Why is this, one should ask? In part, because corrupt fundamentalist religious leaders do not think about the world as we wish to believe. They think in terms of millennia in regard to their institutions, and the short term with respect to their personal ambitions. They reject Secular institutions and treat politics, government, and social movements as either a recruitment vehicle for their own ends, or something which is seen as a threat, not as a means for doing the good or advancing society for all.
Autocratic Religious leaders live by an amoral sort of ethical calculus of power which sees themselves in conflict with science and the modern world. They treat their Churches and Synagogues as sanctuaries protecting them from the supposed ill effects of economic and social change, whose role is to insulate their flocks from the decay and degeneracy of modern times.
Why would anyone oppose the progress of science? Fundamentally because science empowers people. It enables the deeper understanding of our Universe, living processes, history, changes in the natural world, and validates the concept that those questions of life and death which have confounded people as "mysteries, miracles, and myths" are actually intelligible to the human mind. It makes the deeper truths accessible to those who choose to live something more than a "simple life". Those wonders of our world made understandable by the discoveries of the human mind then need not be accepted on faith alone, and therefore they contribute to the freedom, independence and happiness of the sovereign individual.
Science in particular negates the power and influence of those who cynically use fear, superstition, ignorance, and fatalism to exert control. Likewise, these modern "prophets" use the pretext of a promised afterlife to coerce their suggestible flocks to subordinate their temporal lives to the strategic goals of their Churches. Priests, Pastors and Rabbis who tend towards extreme fundamentalism build their influence upon an edifice of dogma, doctrine, textual interpretation, prophecy, and faith, to discourage independent or critical thinking. They substitute ecstatic or divine revelation for reason, hypothesis, discovery and invention. It is a form of autocracy rooted in obedience to authority, exerted by those who claim to have an "inside track" in knowing the intentions of the Creator, and who amongst them will in the end get the best reserved seating in Heaven for the afterlife.
Therefore by giving up one's freedom and independence of thought in this life, you are fulfilling a contractual arrangement with God through your religious authorities who are acting as your broker. As long as you agree to the terms of tithing, acceptance and support of the endorsed political candidates, reject scientific discoveries which appear to contradict the mythologies and contrived history of archaic or arcane religious texts, and live the simple life of one who looks at social change as an attack on their faith and heritage, you will have reserved seating waiting for you in a floating timeless place next to your chosen deity. Therefore in this twisted theological universe, problem solving through science is dismissed as tampering with God's plan, a form of idolatry, and even satanic hubris.
Meanwhile, the cynical pious fundamentalists of these religious institutions live like medieval potentates, flouting the very Commandments and moral imperatives which they preach about every week, living in their mansions, flying here and there in their private Jets, canoodling with their "Poolboys", and soliticing investment in their Church real estate ventures for tax shelters. . They look upon their flocks as an undisciplined rabble which needs to be herded here and there, and dole out their weekly doomsday tirades about eternal fire to put the fear of God into them. And "caaa-chiiing", that, means $money$. Lord have mercy!
Ultimately such religious leaders feed upon increasing the sense of powerlessness of their believers, dismissing historic events as the fulfilment of prophecy or God's Will, over which they have no control. Problems big and small become unsolvable unless the right prayer is sent up requesting divine intervention. Football players pray in the End Zone. A plumbing backup at home impels such folks to hit their knees and pray that God will drop in and fix it, when they have a plunger sitting right next to them on the floor. They substitute Deus ex Machina for "Mother's Magic".
They pay lip service to concern about the immortal souls of their followers, but are consumed with personal ambition. They do enough good works to maintain a front, and perpetuate the delusion. They tell their believers that the world is a moral sewer and is consumed with sin, and that the Church is their protector from the evils of the modern world. They thrive on spreading the culture of "us vs. them". Therein lies the source of their embrace of racism historically and the demonization of foreigners. It is a symptom of a psychopathology masquerading as Theology.
And this is how you arrive at the galactically heinous contradiction which leads them to direct their flocks to join with the most anti-religious, anti-Christian, anti- science, anti-human immoral and destructive individual in the history of the United States to ever achieve power, Donald Trump. "Life is simple" they say. Us vs them. And there it is.
The hypocritical and lying manipulators of the religious right have hitched their wagons to an individual who embodies sociopathic hatred and the glorification of the seven deadly sins, in the name of a God and Creator of Universal Love with whom they have little or no functional relationship.
They are bureaucrats for religious organizations and bogus non-profit corporations which are in perpetual "mergers and acquisition" mode to build their base of power. The Bible is their "sales manual". Eternal Life their "value proposition". They "close" their deals on Sundays when they pass the plate.
Fundamentalist Religious leaders who support Donald Trump's GOP, reject science and the modern world are recruiting their gullible followers to join with the very same "World Dictatorship" which they preach to be inevitable under prophecy and claim to oppose.
Why, you may ask, am I once again stuck on this seemingly endless rant about fundamentalism? Because too many people fall into shallow populism and are misled to believe that our problem is Billionaires. That has never been our main problem. Our problem is people who have never acclimated to thinking for themselves, or gave it up a long time ago. You know this is true, and don't like hearing it. And that is why I write about it. We have met the enemy, and it is us.
