American Fascists

by Chris Hedges

  “Some people think that dinosaurs were too big, or there were too many of them, to go on this ark,” a museum display reads. It goes on to explain that in fact there were very few different kinds of dinosaurs. And then there is the speculation that perhaps not all the dinosaurs were full-grown when they mounted Noah’s gangplank. “Even though there was ample room in the huge ship for large animals,” the museum material explains, “perhaps God sent young adults into the ark that still had plenty of room for them to grow.”

  We stand in a display room called “the dig site.” In front of us is a replica of a pit with the re-creation of fossilized bones of the dinosaur. The room is meant to explore, from the biblical perspective the work of paleontologists.

  The paleontologist “creates a story based on her assumption about ‘millions of years’ of earth history with the help of artists and sculptors,” reads the sign over the dig site. “She transforms the story into ‘believable history’ that appears in films, books and papers. The room shows how the false assumptions of evolutionary scientists end up ‘as facts’ in our public schools and museums.”

  This pseudoscience is part of a wider assault on all scientific studies that challenge the radical fundamentalist worldview. There are Christian scientists who challenge research regarding global warming, AIDS, and pregnancy prevention. Christian Right organizations such as the Traditional Values Coalition, whose founder, Paul Cameron, once called for AIDS “leper colonies,”19 are lobbying to end all programs by the National Institutes of Health related to HIV infection. Members of the Christian Right, positioned inside government agencies, have worked to discredit or silence research by public health officials and censored data that conflict with the radical fundamentalist vision, especially regarding birth control.

  Self-appointed Christian “experts” produce glossy studies to displace genuine research. Joe McIlhaney, one of the most prominent compilers of this pseudoscience, has published a brochure, Why Condoms Aren’t Safe, which uses discredited science to prove that condoms do not work. The number of pseudoscientists peddling falsehoods inside the government is part of what triggered the Union of Concerned Scientists in March 2004 to write in its report Scientific Integrity in Policymaking: “There is significant evidence that the scope and scale of the manipulation, suppression, and misrepresentation of science by the Bush administration are unprecedented. . . . World-renowned scientific institutions such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health take decades to build a team of world-class scientific expertise and talent. But they can be severely damaged in short order by the scientifically unethical behavior such as that displayed by the current administration.”20

  One of the final displays in the museum shows how “a contemporary family experiences daily life without God.” It portrays a household in disarray, with fights and teenager drug use. Licentiousness, alcohol abuse and the breakdown of parental authority are tied to the failure to believe in the creation myth. In this gloomy section of the museum, there is also a darkened, graffiti-covered alley and a sign that asks: “What happens when absolute authority is eliminated and man’s opinion is the only measure of good and evil?”

  “A walk through an inner-city alley is the backdrop for a virtual and auditory display of the horrors of a culture that had made man’s opinion the final authority in life,” another sign reads. These displays depict women and men out of control, hooked on drugs, sexually promiscuous, suffering in the stench of a modern Sodom and Gomorrah.

  Numerous books purport to offer scientific evidence to back up creationism, including the 550-page The Genesis Flood, coauthored by Henry M. Morris and John Whitcomb. The book, published in 1961, has gone through 40 printings and is the movement’s opening manifesto, the first assault by creationists against evolution from a “scientific” position. It seeks to lay out “evidence” to support the biblical account of creation, attacking an array of research methods that are usually obscure to the lay reader, such as the modern methods of radiometric dating. The authors write off modern research tools as unreliable and trumpet contradictory studies within the scientific community about issues such as the age of the Earth. The heavy use of scientific jargon gives the work a scholarly appearance.

  Whitcomb, a graduate of Princeton, where he arrived in 1942 as “a godless evolutionist,” had a conversion experience as a freshman. He interrupted college to serve in the army in World War II, including the Battle of the Bulge, and returned to complete his degree and attend Grace Theological Seminary. He stayed at the seminary for nearly forty years to teach Old Testament. He has spent his life peddling creationism. Soft-spoken, good-humored, he rattles off his theories with the aid of an overhead projector that shows time lines for the account of creation, diagrams of the planets and measurements of Noah’s ark. The morning I find him in Independence, Missouri, his audience is made up of several hundred Christian schoolteachers from Midwestern states. They take notes and laugh as he pokes fun at or appears to puncture the research of secular scientists. The audience, at times, is giddy with excitement. Whitcomb assures the teachers they will be amassing the scientific ammunition to demolish the work of geologists, biologists and paleontologists who dismiss the creation account in the Bible.

  “Now you say, ‘Lord, you don’t really expect intelligent, scientifically-minded people to believe that, that the whole universe was created in six days, do you?’ ” Whitcomb asks. “And God says, ‘Dear reader, I have written a chapter in the Bible called Genesis 1. And it’s called a time block, which means it is not fluffy, frothy and cannot be manipulated, stretched or accommodated.’ ”

  Whitcomb brings up some of the stickier problems in Genesis, such as the account that God created light on the first day and the sun on the fourth day. He posits that God created a “temporary” light until the sun was formed. The reason for this, Whitcomb explains, is that God wanted to abolish the cult of sun worship.

  “And don’t think for one minute America has abandoned sun worship, either in public school textbooks, which starts this way on how the world began: ‘Billions of years ago, solar radiation bathed the primeval seas and somehow activated lifeless chemicals and coalesced them into highly complex, self-reproducing organisms that have evolved under solar radiation for billions of years, and as long as the sun keeps shining, life will continue, and when the sun dies out, life ends.’ What you have just heard was a sun-worship service.

  “Friends,” Whitcomb concludes, “it took no work at all for Jesus to do this. But astronomers in their debates and arguments on a horizontal, rationalistic level will never discover the correct answer. Don’t expect any textbooks, in any university, as long as the world goes on as it is, to ever, ever come to the right conclusion. Only the infallible, inspired, inerrant, unique written revelation of God has the answers.”

  The lecture is met with rapturous applause. The teachers close their notebooks, and several hurry forward to ask more questions or buy books, many by Whitcomb, on the table outside the door.

  Similar seminars are being held by creationists around the country. On an April night at Pennview Christian School in Souderton, Pennsylvania, about a half hour outside of Philadelphia, Dr. Jason Lisle, who works for the Creation Museum, sets up his slide projector for a lecture. He begins his presentation by disabusing his audience of about 150 people, mostly students, teachers and parents, of the notion that dinosaurs were frightful creatures.

  “God didn’t make monsters,” he says, explaining his theory of the dinosaurs’ diet. “The first T. rex would have eaten plants. Dinosaurs, along with all animals originally, were vegetarians.

  “People say, ‘Wait a minute—but T. rex has those incredibly sharp teeth.’ And indeed, T. rex had six-inch serrated fangs—perfectly designed for ripping and tearing into watermelons and cantaloupes and cabbages and all kinds of fruits.

  “You see, you think of a watermelon as soft. But in order to get to the soft stuff on the inside, you have to c
ut through the hard outer exterior. But not T. rex. He was quite ready to eat it off the vine.”

  Lisle shows fanciful slides to the audience, of raptors and stegosauruses outfitted with saddles, a caveman fighting an infant T. rex, and Adam and Eve strolling in the Garden of Eden alongside triceratops.

  “Dinosaurs were docile, gentle, when they were first created,” says Lisle. “All life’s animals would have been gentle when they were first created.”

  “People say, ‘Wait a minute. Wouldn’t T. rex try to eat people—try to eat Adam and Eve?’ ” Lisle asks. But he blames the question on “anti-God, humanistic-based evolution movies” like Jurassic Park.

  “I’m not saying it’s wrong for you to see movies like that. But you need to think about things when you watch things like that. How do I process this from the biblical worldview? Is this really accurate?”

  He tells the students he did not admit he was a creationist to his professors at Ohio Wesleyan, or at Colorado where he received his PhD in astrophysics. He speaks of the dilemma faced by creationists at secular schools, urging that students not “come out” until after graduate school. “Some professors will just stop you from getting your PhD if you’re a creationist.”

  Lisle’s final image on the screen shows a small church with a cross on its roof. Next to it is a large white cross. The large cross has the words “The Church” emblazoned on it. A network of white tree roots, labeled “Creation,” secures “The Church” to the earth. Lisle explains that secular science is attacking the biblical view of creation. In his drawing is a salvo of cruise missiles with phrases “Ape = Man,” “Millions of Years” and “Evolution” printed on their sides as they head in an arch toward the roots. These attacks, he says, are aimed to bring down the cross, to destroy the church.

  He shows a slide picturing a small hut with a radar dish on the roof. The hut is labeled “Answers in Genesis,” the church’s early warning system. He flips to a new slide.

  The church begins firing lasers—emitted from its cross—at the incoming missiles. The cascade of laser beams strikes the missiles, causing them—and their blasphemies—to erupt into flames.

  “Come to the Cross and be saved!” proclaims the final slide.21

  All attempts to seek truth, however elusive and difficult, challenge the blind obedience and suppression of conscience championed by those who teach one “truth” and one way of being. When only one “truth” is allowed, empirical data becomes irrelevant. Intellectual, scientific and moral inquiry becomes unnecessary. In this new world followers are robbed of the capacity to think. The lies, however enormous and absurd, defy criticism and unmasking because the rational world is discredited and finally silenced. The Creation Museum, standing with its imposing pillars, its sea of parking lots for school buses, 52 acres of groomed landscaping, pond, looping nature trails, animatronic dinosaurs and “Christian” paleontologists, presages a society where truth is banished.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The New Class

  To tell men that they are equal has a certain sentimental appeal. But this appeal is small compared with that made by a propaganda that tells them they are superior to others, and that others are inferior to them.

  —Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, Vol. 11

  The elevator at the Hilton Hotel in Anaheim, California, fills floor by floor, as it descends with delegates for the National Religious Broadcasters annual convention. There is a slightly forced camaraderie and an awkward cheerfulness as we head down to the lobby. People glance quickly at the plastic name tags on one another’s chests. They smile as new passengers step inside and say good morning. They sprinkle the words of the converted into their banter, talking about how “blessed” they are to be here, beginning brief dialogues with phrases such as “Where is your ministry?” and ending them with “Praise the Lord.” This call-and-response is a form of initiation, an easy way to draw the lines between themselves and nonbelievers, to establish the parameters of their exclusive community. All subcultures have their linguistic codes of identification. This new class is no exception.

  The convention has brought together some 5,500 Christian broadcasters from radio and television, who reach, according to their figures, an estimated 141 million listeners and viewers across America. And they see themselves as both the persecuted and the powerful. These twin themes run through the event. They are both threatened by conspiratorial forces that seek to destroy them and empowered by the certainty of Christ’s return. These emotions bond them together as a crowd, as comrades in the battle against the godless.

  Southern California, along with Colorado Springs, is one of the epicenters of the radical movement. Numerous television evangelists, including the disgraced Jimmy and Tammy Faye Bakker, got their start in these huge, soulless exurbs. These large developed tracts of housing are isolated, devoid of neighborhood gathering places, community rituals and routines, even of sidewalks. The isolation, coupled with the long, lonely commutes in a car; the cold, impersonal world of the corporate office; and the banal, incessant chatter of talk radio and television create numbness and disorientation. This destruction of community is one of the crucial factors that has led to the rise of the Christian Right. The megachurches, which have prospered in these environments, have become surrogate communities, places where people can find clubs to pursue common interests, friends, a sense of belonging, and moral direction. In these sprawling churches, which often look like shopping or convention centers, believers are reassured, told that affluence is blessed by God—a sign of their righteousness and the righteousness of their nation—and that in the embrace of the church they have a place, a home.

  There is a Starbucks in the Hilton Hotel lobby. Dee Simmons from Dallas is waiting to order a coffee. Around her neck she is wearing a gold cross studded with diamonds, and on her face, smooth and unwrinkled, makeup is artfully applied. The line of men and women, in front and behind us, is conservatively dressed in skirts or coats and ties. They are about to head into the convention hall next door. Simmons and a friend, Samantha Landy, with red hair, are chatty and friendly.

  In 1987, Simmons says, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and had a “modified radical mastectomy.” Five years later her mother died of cancer. These events led her, she says, to turn her focus away from the designer clothes boutiques she owned in Dallas and New York to nutrition.

  “When God gave me my life back, I decided to make a difference in people’s lives,” she says.

  She reaches into her purse and pulls out some pamphlets for Ultimate Living, her company. She tells me about her books, including The Natural Guide to Healthy Living, and mentions the numerous Christian talk shows she regularly appears on, including Pat Robertson’s The 700 Club, as well as Hope Today, Praise, Something Good Tonight and the Armstrong Williams Show.

  “I was saved and found Christ when I was 3,” she says. “I’m 64. My daughter is 36.”

  She appears to wait for the effect of her age, which she will repeat a few more times, to sink in.

  “I also have skin care products which are all natural,” she says. “I am on Living the Life once or twice a month, the show with Terry Meeuwsen, who was Miss America. There is a huge crossover with my nutrition work. Everyone is interested in nutrition, even nonbelievers. I use organically grown papayas. I have eight laboratories where I make Green Miracle. Green Miracle combines greens and roots that are ground up. They have all the vital nutrients. I sell it at cancer hospitals. It is good for diabetes, heart disease, immune support, hormone problems, any issue, really.”

  Landy tells me she runs “Christian celebrity luncheons” in Palm Springs as part of her work of “salvation outreach for snowbirds.” Her ministry, she says, focuses on country clubs and golf courses, places “where people do not often hear the word of God.

  “A lot of people go to churches and assume the pastor has a personal relationship with Christ,” she says, “but they often do not. I bring in celebrity speakers like Gavin Ma
cLeod, he was the Captain on Love Boat; and Rhonda Fleming, she was in over 40 films and starred with Bing Crosby—speakers who have really accomplished things in the world who are Christian. Rhonda Fleming did her own stunts.”

  Her list of Christian celebrities available to speak includes Donna Douglas from the Beverly Hillbillies; Ann B. Davis, who was Alice on The Brady Bunch; and Lauren Chapin, who played Kathy on Father Knows Best.

  “Tell him about the wedding,” Landy prompts.

  Simmons’s daughter recently got married in Dallas. The wedding was filmed for broadcast on a show called Sheer Dallas. She urges me to watch it. The wedding theme, she says, was “Sultan’s Palace: Her Majesty the Queen.” There were 500 guests who gathered in a building known as the Hall of State and “flowers from all over the world.” She says she would rather not mention the cost. Her husband—who, she says, is “very, very wealthy,” adding “I don’t need to work”—refers, she says, to the wedding expense as “the national debt.”

  “Her husband is quite a bit older,” Landy interjects.

  “There was a huge fireworks display,” Simmons says, “but I am too embarrassed to tell you how much it cost. When the fireworks stopped, a quartet sang ‘God Bless America.’ There was a saxophone solo. Everyone had chills.”

  “It was awesome,” Landy says.

  The cake took three months to make. There were jewels and semiprecious stones both on the cake and in the bridal bouquet. Both had to be brought the day of the wedding to the Hall of State in an armored truck.

  “The bridal gown took five and a half months to make,” she says. “It had mink this thick,” she adds, holding her thumb and index finger about four inches apart.

  The women, minor celebrities in the world of Christian broadcasting, capture the strange fusion between this new, flamboyant gospel of prosperity and America’s celebrity-driven culture. Not only are the wealthy blessed by the Lord and encouraged to engage in a frenzy of outlandish consumption, but also those who are famous, those who have achieved any celebrity or notoriety, no matter how minor, or those who have power, are seen as having important things to say about faith. Wealth, fame and power are manifestations of God’s work, proof that God has a plan and design for believers. This new class of celebrity, plutocrat Christians fuses with the consumer society, one where the lives and opinions of entertainers, the rich and the powerful are news. The women tell me they are in Anaheim because the yearly convention is the only time they can see all the major Christian broadcasters in one place. But it is clear they also come to be seen.