Gene Lyons...God I love this guy!! (In a literary way, of course...)

Embattled faith needs enemies for focus

Gene Lyons



Posted on Wednesday, November 17, 2004



To hear the TV preachers tell it, the Lord ordained George W. Bush’s 

election over Sen. John Kerry. Fundamentalist divines and their media 

accomplices haven’t sounded this smug since Prohibition. Indeed, 

possibly not since 1928, when Herbert Hoover crushed "blue state" Roman 

Catholic Democrat Al Smith of New York. (Ironically, Deep South states 

loyal to segregationist Democrats supported Smith when even his home 

state did not.) Anyway, we all remember how well that worked out. "This 

was Providence," said former Nixon aide Charles Colson, Watergate era 

jailhouse convert. "Anybody looking at the 2000 election would have to 

say it was... a miraculous deliverance, and I think people felt it 

again this year." Bush’s second term, Colson thinks, is God’s way of "giving 

us a chance to repent and to restore some moral sanity to American life." 



Had Kerry prevailed, maintained Southern Baptist leader Richard Land, 

who meets regularly with White House political strategists, it would 

have signaled that God had cursed the United States. "The Bible says 

godly leadership is a sign of God’s blessings and a lack of godly 

leadership is a sign of God’s judgment," he opined. "I don’t see Kerry 

as a godly leader." 



Now call me anything you like, but I see no evidence that God ordains 

the winners of elections any more than football games. (I’ve yet to see 

a quarterback point heavenward after throwing an interception.) But 

having lived in the Bible Belt for many years, I’ve learned a few things 

worth keeping in mind as we stumble toward the second term of God’s own 

president. 



First, fundamentalist Christianity is an embattled faith, requiring an 

ever evolving enemies list to keep its focus. One year it’s Satan 

worshippers, "secular humanists" the next. Panic over supermarket bar 

codes allegedly harboring the Mark of the Beast yields to worry that 

Harry Potter novels may seduce America’s youth into witchcraft. This 

year’s enemy is Democrats. Even secular pundits have taken up the cry. 

The soulless pseudo-sophisticates of Boston and Seattle, we’re told, 

must henceforth take moral instruction from backwoods Mississippi. 



Lest you think I exaggerate, here’s one GOP thinker’s question. If no 

longer the party of Truman and Kennedy, "who, apart from effeminate 

latte drinkers in New York cafes, Hollywood airheads and gangsta 

rappers in inner-city ghettoes, do the Democrats represent now?" 



By "Hollywood airheads," he presumably doesn’t mean Mel Gibson or 

Arnold Schwarzenegger, and certainly not the sainted President Ronald Reagan. 

The rest requires no translation. The 49 percent of Americans who voted 

against Bush, see, aren’t "real Americans" like you and possibly me. 

They are perverts, subversives, heretics and mongrels, fit for kicking. 



It’s the secular version of a recent open letter addressed to Bush by 

Rev. Bob Jones of Bob Jones University: "You owe the liberals nothing. 

They despise you because they despise your Christ." 



Which brings up another aspect of the Falwell/Robertson/Jones/Dobson/LaHaye

world view certain readers may find controversial. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. 



Apart from the timeless topic of Other People’s Sex Lives, nothing gets 

fundamentalist Christianity’s spiritual entrepreneurs going like 

vengeful Old Testament tribalism. The basic con is to insist upon the 

literal, historical and scientific accuracy of every syllable in the 

Bible while focusing selectively on passages confirming pre-existing 

phobias. Hence, they rarely are more dogmatic than when they are 

ignoring, if not actively contradicting, the essence of Christ’s 

teachings. 



I recently read much of Rev. Tim La-Haye’s "Left Behind" series of 12 

novels about the coming Apocalypse for an essay in the November 2004 

Harper’s. Nowhere did I find any of that sentimental rubbish about 

blessed peacemakers, turning the other cheek, loving your enemies or 

judging not lest you be judged. Nothing about caring for the poor and 

afflicted or warning sinners against casting the first stone. 



To read the series’ roughly 1 million words, you’d never know that 

Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount—or that he specifically and repeatedly 

warned his followers against idle speculation about the "End Times." 

Yes, Leviticus calls homosexuality an abomination. Also wearing 

garments of two fabrics, eating pork and shellfish, and planting two crops in 

one field. It recommends stoning to death anybody who works on the Sabbath. 

Exodus stipulates how to sell your daughters into slavery. My point is 

simple: Faddish fundamentalist tribalism is currently riding high for 

several reasons, real fear and genuine moral confusion among them. Lost 

on America’s perpetual frontier, millions yearn for a faith that 

promises the comforts of certitude and the enchantments of sorcery in a 

single beguiling package. Historically, however, these jokers have 

always overplayed their hand; I’d say they already have. Meanwhile, the 

millennium has passed, the End remains as near and far as ever, and the 

best argument against these ecclesiastical con men remains a moral 

vision they only pretend to honor. 



•• Free-lance columnist Gene Lyons is a Little Rock author and recipient 

of the National Magazine Award.



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