“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.”
ONE 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.
“I did not know. And no, we have not spoken recently. Have you?”
“Nope. Too bad. I mean I hope you don’t blame me,” Emilie said.
“Of course not. That would be irrational,” Sanjay answered.
“Right. So, how ’bout it, want me to set you up again?”
Sometimes Sanjay’s transparency was revealing. He paused, and you could sense the neurons firing as he weighed the tempting aspects of Emilie’s offer against all the negatives and complications.
“That is very kind, Emilie. But no thank you.” He obviously did not think that any further explanation was required, but I sensed that perhaps he had just made quite a major decision. I changed the subject.
“I had my review yesterday.”
“My God,” said Emilie, “why didn’t you tell me?”
“Sorry, forgot. It went fine. Well, not to be immodest, better than fine. They said I was doing fantastic work and was in the very top part of my class. That’s a pretty strong signal for RCD&S, especially after fourth year.”
Emilie got up from the table and, oblivious to Sanjay’s presence—or, perhaps, because of it—straddled me on the chair, took my head in her hands, and delivered an intense and passionate kiss, which I reciprocated. Sanjay slipped out without our saying good-night.
DESPITE MY ADVICE, Sanjay was not to be deterred from his increasing preoccupation with the notion that the long-standing battle over gun control and the theocratic program of the Christian right were deeply synergistic. In a blog on the TW website, Sanjay wrote that it was entirely possible that the most radical evangelical leaders understood well that their ultimate goal of Christian dominion could never be achieved without force of arms. Suspecting that Christian militias were already organizing, he decided to spend a week in Tulsa and see for himself. A few days before he left, I called his office, and the receptionist who answered the phone asked if I had a moment.
“Greg, he probably wouldn’t want me to tell you this. But, well, he listens to you. We had a comment on the website that, well—it was a death threat against Sanjay. It’s probably nothing, you know, but … Well, I wanted you to know.”
I was not worried. Given his subject, it was inevitable that abuse and threats of all sorts would ricochet around the web. But I did insist that he report the threat to the authorities and take two staffers with him to Oklahoma.
When he returned a week later, Sanjay reported that his worst fears were confirmed. He found that the Christian media there was filled with talk of apocalyptic violence. Informal militia and military groups were springing up everywhere, including branches of the Christian Identity movement, which believed that religious war was inevitable. The ranks of these nascent militias were filled with what one brave investigative journalist called “thugs, felons, and low-lifes.” His exposé showed that the shadowy organizers of these militias recruited ex-cons on the day of their release, gang members, and the chronically unemployed who had become homeless.
Sanjay told me he had attended a rally of twenty-five thousand young people organized by the Battle Cry Campaign, a fundamentalist youth movement whose founder wrote, “This is a war. And Jesus invites us to get into the action, telling us that the violent—the ‘forceful’ ones—will lay hold of the Kingdom.” In the stadium, the chant was “We are warriors.” San showed me the transcript of the speech by an Ohio pastor, Rod Parsley:
“The secular media never likes it when I say this, so let me say it twice. Man your battle stations! Ready your weapons! They say this rhetoric is so inciting. I came to incite a riot. I came to effect a divine disturbance in the heart and soul of the church. Man your battle stations. Ready your weapons. Lock and load …”
“I was really not expecting this,” Sanjay told me. “They cite Romans 13:1 all the time: ‘For there is no power but of God; the powers that be are ordained of God.’ In other words, follow orders as long as those giving the orders wear the cloak of an earthly government ordained by God. They say that violence in the service of God is an act of devotion. At these rallies in Oklahoma, I met homeschooled evangelical kids who referred to themselves as Generation Joshua. They told me their purpose in life is to retake the land for Jesus.”
“San,” I said, “that’s got to be a very small slice of the population. It’s not going to amount to anything.”
“Perhaps. But they are not content to leave it at kids and stadium rallies. The Oklahoma legislature is actively considering a proposal that the state officially recognize and sanction a Christian militia.”
This surprised me.
He continued. “Do you know about the Militia Act—a law originating in 1792 that is still on the books in modified form? It provides federal sanction not only for the state national guards but also for something that is called an ‘unorganized militia.’ That concept has been hotly debated in far right circles for decades, but most believe it means that the states are free to recognize and permit private armies in their own states. The so-called Constitutional Militia Movement really got going sometime in the mid-1990s, and the motivating concept was that the people needed to be well armed and organized to defend themselves against unconstitutional regulation by the federal government, such as gun regulation. They are firmly convinced that the Founding Fathers so distrusted both the federal government and the idea of a federal standing army that they insisted on an armed population ready to resist federal overreaching.
“What the Oklahoma legislature is now trying to do is somewhat different,” Sanjay continued. “Most of the militiamen call them
selves Liberty Boys or Freedom Fighters. But the Oklahoma legislation proposes to recognize what it calls a Christian Militia. Imagine, G, all the red states. The most committed fundamentalists organized into armed militias. With ranks, regimental headquarters, advanced weapons, Saturday drills—all sanctioned by the state but not subject to state or federal government control. Most people would have thought it impossible in America. After all, only a few years ago private militias, like the white supremacy groups and neo-Nazis, were hunted down by the FBI and prosecuted. Now they are being sanctioned by the states themselves. What has changed?”
It was a rhetorical question. I had to concede that Sanjay was right about the cultural undercurrent of violence and its embrace by the Christian media and F3. But, as always, it was a question of perspective. America’s libertarian streak, its infatuation with arms, and the use of militarist rhetoric all had deep roots in American history, waxing and waning with the ebb and flow of popular content and discontent, prosperity and distress. Was this different? That was the question. During the siege, we spent many evenings debating whether our collective blindness to the militarization of the Christian right was in fact an understandable error of perspective or some lethal combination of historical myopia and wishful thinking. Does the explanation matter? I’m starting to think that it might.
In any case, when Sanjay returned from his trip to Oklahoma, I expected him to write aggressively about the militias, the quasi-official status they were being granted by that state, and the threat posed by the gradual development of an armed wing of the Christian right. Instead, to my complete surprise, he wrote and published, above the fold on the opinion page of the New York Times, a concise essay on virtue. In the face of the potential for political violence, his instincts turned to the stronger power of the traditional personal virtues celebrated across all human cultures and religious traditions. He wrote of the civic and political fruits of a society in which generosity, gentleness, humor, and politeness were practiced and celebrated. He explained how these simpler virtues in turn depended on a foundation of humility, tolerance, and sincere truthfulness without which the other virtues could not flourish. He demonstrated how, in turn, the practice of these qualities leads inevitably to the more profound virtues of compassion, mercy, and love. He then asked, with the gentleness and spirit of forgiveness indicated by these great virtues, how those who advocated a “more moral society” could engage in behavior that was, by this standard, anything but Christian. He picked quotes from Palin and Jordan to show that their own morality was arrogant, full of pride, and fundamentally intolerant. If these were their words, Sanjay argued, their behavior was inevitably going to be rude, devious, and intemperate, as it was. Their idea of justice, he argued, was harsh and bereft of charity. For them, the enemy was to be defeated, not, as Jesus had preached, to be loved. Evangelicalism in America was a movement, he concluded, launched in the name of the most compassionate role model man had ever known but was now on the verge of being irrevocably infected by bitterness and hate.
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