How the Christian right is reimagining U.S. history

Posted on Wednesday, January 10, 2007. Originally from December 2006. By Jeff Sharlet.

These are days of the sword, literally; affluent members of the movement gift one another with real blades crafted to medieval standards, a fad inspired by a bestselling book called Wild at Heart.

I have no idea what that is.

But this,  unfortunately, yes

As jargon, then, “maximalism” isn’t bad, an unintended tribute to Maximus, the fighting hero of Gladiator, which is a film celebrated in Christian manhood guides as almost supplemental scripture.

This guy is a pretty good writer.  Notice:

The old theories have failed. The new Christ, fifty years ago no more than a corollary to American power, twenty-five years ago at its vanguard, is now at the very center. His followers are not anxiously awaiting his return at the Rapture; he’s here right now. They’re not envious of the middle class; they are the middle class. They’re not looking for a hero to lead them; they’re building biblical households, every man endowed with “headship” over his own family. They don’t silence sex; they promise sacred sex to those who couple properly—orgasms more intense for young Christians who wait than those experienced by secular lovers

And this:

American fundamentalism—not a political party, not a denomination, not a uniform ideology, but a manifold movement—is moving in every direction all at once, claiming the earth for God’s kingdom, “in the world but not of it” and yet just loving it to death anyway.

That’s what I notice.  Talk of “standing against the tide”;  of “cultural warriors”,  but all the while,  right at the center of all that our culture calls success.   I was listening to an old presentation of Tony Campolo to the Youth Specialties Convention around 1981 or so,  and he asks the question “American Christianity: Is It Christian?”

The “American revivalists” say YES!  At least as “foreseen” and “established” by the “founding fathers”:

More important to fundamentalism is the belief that it did exist in the American past, not in the history we learn in public school and from PBS and in newsmagazine cover stories on the Founders but in another story, one more biblical, one more mythic and more true. Secularism hides this story, killed the Christian nation, and tried to dispose of the body. Fundamentalism wants to resurrect it, and doing so requires revision: fundamentalists, looking backward, see a different history, remade in the image of the seductive but strict logic of a prime mover that sets things in motion.

For instance,  Sharlet recalls the claims of William J. Federer, author of America’s God and Country (whom Sharlet describes as “an encyclopedic compiler of quotations” from the “founding fathers” aimed at uncovering the “real America” that the media and secular society tries their best to obscure)

 

Jefferson, Federer told me, was a believer; like all the Founders, he knew that there could be no government without God. Why hadn’t I been taught this? Because I was a victim of godless public schools.

“‘Those who control the present,’” Federer continued his quotation of 1984, “‘control the past.’” He paused and stared at me to make sure I understood the equation. “Orson Welles wrote that,” he said.

And a point which I am going to explore from the other side:

The first pillar of American fundamentalism is Jesus Christ; the second is history; and in the fundamentalist mind the two are converging. Fundamentalism considers itself a faith of basic truths unaltered (if not always acknowledged) since their transmission from Heaven, first through the Bible and second through what they see as American scripture, divinely inspired, devoutly intended—the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the often overlooked Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which declared “religion” necessary to “good government” and thus to be encouraged through schools.

It seems to me,  that from reading much of the literature from American Progressives,  including those of the Religious “Liberal Left”,  there is a similar insistence upon the “Founding Fathers” and corrections as to the sacred duty these founders were describing.  But there is a piety there that draws heavily on the same strain.  I noticed it dripping from the pages of the introduction to Taylor Branch’s third volume of the “America in the King Years”,  the 3 volume set that spans those “King Years” (1954-68) and  American political reactions and maneuverings to the King-led movement/projects of those years, is appealing heavily to the intentions of the founding fathers (I suppose taking his cue from King himself,  who invoked the American dream quite often.  But it would seem from our collections of King quotes,  that the church and the beloved community are a distant second to the Constitution as a guide to the impetus of the movement.  Charles Marsh (in his book,  The Beloved Community) does a much better job of understanding the locale from which King merged, worked,  and counted on for the ground of the movement,  than Taylor Branch,  who does good historical account,  but wraps his history in a way designed to palatable to those outside or independent of the church.  While I have a certain appreciation of that,  it also seems to me that Branch’s account (at least in the introduction of volume 3)  seems to come awfully close to making King out to be a secular prophet,  even though,  ironically,  volume 3 covers 2 issues at the close of King’s life that were most confrontive to the “secular” and “The American”;  the opposition to Vietnam and the Poor People’s campaign. 

Source: Through a Glass, Darkly (Harpers.org)