An episode at the University of Oregon in 2006 was just as bad. The March edition of the Insurgent, the university’s student newspaper, contained a large graphic cartoon depicting a naked Jesus on the Cross with an erection; there was also a graphic titled Resurrection, which showed a naked Jesus kissing another naked man, both sporting erections. The entire issue was replete with the most egregious examples of hate speech directed at Christians. For example, there were several cartoons of Jesus—including Jesus crucified—that were so gratuitously offensive that only the most depraved would defend them. All of this occurred during Lent, at a state institution. What made it even more insane was that this obscene explosion was a response to a decision reached by one of the Insurgent’s rivals, the Commentator, to publish the 12 Danish cartoons that had inflamed the Muslim world. An Insurgent editorial said that because the Commentator published the Danish cartoons so as to “provoke dialogue,” they had a right to bash Christians as a way of provoking dialogue. 66
South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone played the same game. When Comedy Central refused to show some of their work lambasting Muslims, Parker and Stone answered by delivering an all-out assault on Christians, just to show how hypocritical the station’s managers were. But at least they didn’t lie. “That’s where we kind of agree with some of the people who’ve criticized our show,” Stone told ABC, “because it really is open season on Jesus. You know? We can do whatever—we can do whatever we want to Jesus. And we’ve had him say bad words, we’ve had him shoot a gun, we’ve had him kill people. And you know, we can do everyone. But Mohammad, we couldn’t just show a simple image.” 67 Parker is just as blunt: “We rip on absolutely everyone, in really horrible, terrible ways. And if you’re saying this is the one thing we can’t do, because they’re threatening violence, well, then, I guess that’s what everyone should do. If the Catholics don’t want us ripping on Jesus anymore, they should just threaten violence and they’ll get their way.” 68
Theocracy
Over the past few decades, religious conservatives have forged an alliance to confront the unremitting secular assault on the nation’s Judeo-Christian heritage. Unfortunately, whenever the conservatives fight back—usually to maintain or restore the status quo, for example, to keep “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance—they are demonized for doing so. In fact, demonization is one of the most popular weapons in the arsenal of those out to annihilate our culture. The most common accusation holds that traditional Catholics, evangelical Protestants, and Orthodox Jews desire nothing less than a theocracy in America.
Norman Lear’s organization, People for the American Way, is second to none in its vigilance of religious conservatives. Since its inception, it has considered them a serious threat to democracy. Indeed, it was one of the first secular organizations to brand religious conservatives Nazis; that occurred in the 1980s. 69 Now such labeling has become commonplace. Nicholas von Hoffman, for example, sees no difference between Christian activists and Muslim terrorists. “Like the Islamists, with whom they are brothers under the skin,” he writes, “they are intent on imposing a Christian form of sharia on believers and non-believers alike.” 70
John Dean of Watergate infamy says that “Christian Nationalists” are running the Republican Party, but that not everyone is aware of this coup. Using tactics “not unlike those American Communists once used,” he observes, “Christian nationalists often operate by stealth.” For instance, he says, when President Bush sought to appoint William Pryor and Janice Rogers Brown to the federal bench, few knew that standing right behind them “lurked the hand of the Christian nationalists.” 71 Less sensational is Andrew Sullivan, who prefers the term “Christianist” to refer to those who blend politics and religion, but unlike other commentators—and it is a credit to him—he makes it clear that the term “is in no way designed to label people on the religious right as favoring any violence at all.” 72
In 1994, Christian conservatives took a double-barreled hit when the American Jewish Committee and the ADL issued separate reports blasting them for promoting hatred. The first group was upset because Christians “adamantly oppose social acceptance of homosexuality as an alternative lifestyle.” Notice that Christians weren’t being blamed for rejecting homosexuals, but for refusing to accept the gay lifestyle. What is striking about this is that none other than homosexual activist Larry Kramer has called the so-called gay lifestyle a death style, 73 yet this is exactly what the American Jewish Committee implored Christian conservatives to accept. No wonder Rabbi Lapin branded the report, The Political Activity of the Religious Right in the 1990s, “biased and bigoted.” 74
The ADL’s volume The Religious Right: The Assault on Tolerance and Pluralism in America was a similar broadside. It was so over the top that Midge Decter, who has a long record of fighting anti-Semitism, said that the ADL had “become guilty of the one bigotry that seems to be acceptable these days—bigotry against conservative Christians.” 75 Her criticisms, however, were to no avail. In 2005, the ADL unleashed another attack.
At the end of that year, Abraham Foxman, national director of the ADL, and Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, held a private meeting to discuss what they said were plans to “Christianize America.” Speaking of religious conservatives, Foxman said, “Their goal is to implement their Christian worldview. To Christianize America. To save us.” He specifically mentioned Focus on the Family, the Alliance Defense Fund, the American Family Association, and the Family Research Council, all staffed mostly by evangelicals. Foxman’s demagoguery was outdone by Yoffie, who compared the evangelicals to Nazis. “We cannot forget when Hitler came to power in 1933, one of the first things that he did was ban gay organizations.” 76 If these were the remarks that were made publicly, God only knows what Foxman and Yoffie said about religious conservatives behind closed doors.
A year later, Foxman sounded the alarms again, this time accusing the “Christian Supremacists” of engaging “in an aggressive campaign to transform America into a theocracy ruled by their warped biblical law.” 77 This isn’t the discourse of disagreement—it’s speech designed to shut down debate. What is most incredible about Foxman’s remarks is that this was the way he introduced his comments on the subject “The Threat of Islamic Extremism.” One Jewish writer, Zev Chafets, had the guts to take Foxman on directly. “No mainstream secular Jewish leader had ever taken such a confrontational line against conservative Christians,” he said. He accused Foxman of arrogance, maintaining that what he had done was “an act of self-confidence not likely to be undertaken by the spokesman of a genuinely endangered minority.” 78
Michelle Goldberg, author of a highly critical book on Christian conservatives, calls them “Christian nationalists” and accuses them of wanting to impose a “totalistic ideology” on America. She really believes that “the ultimate goal of Christian nationalist leaders isn’t fairness.” So what is it? “It’s dominion,” she answers. According to her, these Christians are hell-bent on ruling. “That doesn’t mean nonbelievers will be forced to convert,” she says reassuringly. However, “They’ll just have to learn their places.” 79 While she wants us to understand that we are not “on the cusp of totalitarianism,” this is no time to drop our guard. That’s because “there are totalitarian elements in the Christian nationalist movement,” and already “it is changing our country in troubling ways.” Worse, “its leaders say they’ve only just begun.” 80 So where are we headed? “The influence of Christian nationalism in public schools, colleges, courts, social services, and doctors’ offices will deform American life, rendering it ever more pinched, mean, and divided.” 81
Goldberg comes across tame compared to what Rabbi James Rudin has to say. Having engaged him in conversation on the perennial fight over Christmas, I found Rabbi Rudin to be a reasonable representative of the secularist point of view. His book on the subject, however, is not reasonable. Indeed, the very title, The Baptizing of America: The Religious Right’s
Plans for the Rest of Us, suggests that religious conservatives are up to no good.
Rudin calls Christian conservatives “Christocrats” and says that their pursuit of a Christocracy is now “a clear and present danger” to America. With dramatic flare he announces, “I am not reassured that the Cross will not ultimately dominate and control the Eagle.” 82 He feels this way because he thinks “Christocrats believe it may even be necessary to destroy democracy in order to save the American people from the perils of secular humanists” and others. He cites no examples, but he does offer plenty of conjecture.
If religious conservatives win the culture war, Rudin writes, “all manifestations of public homosexual or lesbian acts—including holding hands or kissing—would be subject to a fine and a jail sentence.” 83 Additionally, “All government employees—federal, state, and local—would be required to participate in weekly bible classes in the workplace, as well as compulsory daily prayer sessions.” 84 He does not lack for specifics: “I am convinced they seek to control what takes place in every room of the American mansion: the bedroom, the hospital and operating room, the news and press room, the library room, the courtroom, the schoolroom, the public room, and the workroom—the major facets of American society.” 85 What is most unbelievable about all this is that Rudin and millions of secularists really believe this stuff to be true.
Perhaps the most humorless account of what religious conservatives are supposed to be plotting comes from Sam Harris. A few pages into his book Letter to a Christian Nation, he congratulates himself for setting out “to demolish the intellectual and moral pretensions of Christianity in its most committed forms.” 86 What bothers him is America. After citing survey data indicating that most Americans believe that God had a hand in creation, Harris erupts. “Among developed nations,” he says, “America stands alone in these convictions.” This is not good news. “Our country now appears,” he laments, “as at no other time in her history, like a lumbering, bellicose, dim-witted giant.” 87
It seems that there is nothing about religion, especially Christianity, that this man likes. It is responsible for our lackadaisical attitude toward animal suffering 88 and, of course, for the Holocaust. 89 Harris’s contempt for Christianity can only be called blind hatred. How else does one describe someone who blames the Bible for not containing a chapter on mathematics, and for not discussing electricity, DNA, or a cure for cancer? 90 Nor does it contain a recipe for chocolate pudding.
Ross Douthat, after having been given the assignment to read all these Christian-bashing books for First Things, opened his review by saying, “This is a paranoid moment in American politics.” 91 I can sympathize with him—I had to read the same books just to write this one. Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Gordon Wood agrees: “The modern notion that we’re being overtaken by a theocracy and that evangelical Christians are running amok—I think that’s just kind of a madness that comes from people who have no historical perspective.” 92
Stanley Kurtz sees the secular assault as “a systematic campaign of hatred directed at traditional Christians.” 93 Even someone not enamored of religious conservatives, Nicholas D. Kristof of the New York Times, blames authors like Harris for launching an “acerbic assault on faith.” Writers like Harris may scream all they want about Christian zealots, Kristof argues, “Yet the tone of this Charge of the Atheist Brigade is often just as intolerant—and mean. It’s contemptuous and even a bit fundamentalist.” 94
CHAPTER 3
Sexual Sabotage
Secular saboteurs not only seek to destroy the public role of Christianity, they seek to sabotage the Judeo-Christian understanding of sexuality. “Orthodox secularist moral belief portrays personal morality as being essentially concerned with extrinsic constraints upon appetite or passion,” writes Robert George. 1 An “everything goes” attitude is part and parcel of the secularist mind-set: if two guys want to get married, let them do so, and if another lover shows up, there’s nothing wrong with a threesome. Procreation is not important anyway, and may even be a problem. What counts is the right of every individual to satisfy his sexual appetites—no matter how perverse—and to do it now. Any precept that teaches restraint must be annihilated, and doubly so when the teachings are religiously grounded.
It is difficult to think of a more radical departure than this from what all the major world religions have embraced. In 1968, Will Herberg got it just right when he said, “Today’s culture comes very close to becoming a nonmoral, normless culture.” 2 Two decades later, Leszek Kolakowski would ask, “To put it crudely, shall we say that the difference between a vegetarian and a cannibal is just a matter of taste?” 3 The everything-goes mentality brooks no compromise, treating infringements on instant gratification as positively tyrannical. Nowhere is this delirium more evident than in sexual expression.
Delirium is not too strong a word to describe what happened on August 15, 2002, in New York’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral. At around four in the afternoon, in a church packed with men, women, and children—it was a holy day of obligation for Catholics—a man and a woman had sex in the pews while Paul Mercurio provided a detailed description of what they were doing on the radio show Opie and Anthony. The radio station, WNEW (an Infinity Broadcasting outlet), offered a prize to a couple having sex in the riskiest location. The complaint I filed with the FCC resulted in the two shock jocks getting canned (they later apologized, a gesture I found sincere; we are now on friendly terms). 4 But the larger issue remains: why do those who practice reckless sex typically lash out at Christianity, especially Catholicism? Are they that driven by guilt?
In the United States, if there is one man who epitomizes the nihilistic assault on the Christian sexual ethics, it is Larry Flynt, publisher of Hustler; he seeks to pulverize Christianity and all those who stand in his way. For instance, when Flynt had had enough of Reverend Jerry Falwell’s moralizing, it wasn’t sufficient to condemn him. Flynt had to create an ad showing Falwell discussing his first sexual encounter while he was drunk with his mother in an outhouse. Similarly, when asked to give a lecture at Georgetown University, Flynt went on a rampage against the Catholic Church, saying, “The Church has had its hand on our crotch for 2,000 years.” 5 When he set his sights on Bill O’Reilly, Flynt actually asked his fans to participate in a National Prayer Day, August 5, 2003, calling for O’Reilly’s death. Flynt’s prayer asked God “to afflict Bill O’Reilly with a brain aneurysm that will lead to his slow and painful death. O, Lord, may his blood vessels bulge out of his head and explode without mercy.” 6 Where are the exorcists when we need them?
Virtually all the diabolical secularists in Western history have strongly rejected the Judeo-Christian belief in the necessity of sexual restraint. The Marquis de Sade, for instance, not only celebrated every sexual perversion imaginable, he loved to portray nuns and priests fornicating. In 120 Days of Sodom, he portrayed a scrawny and weak bishop who had a passion for anal sex with girls and women. In addition to depictions of incest and torture, Sade created a character who had sex with nuns while watching Mass. The French atheist was so full of hate that he even paid a prostitute to trample on a crucifix; he was arrested for doing so, but it never changed his behavior. 7 In the United States, secular sexologists are fond of citing the work of Walt Whitman, an atheist whose free-love ambitions were matched only by his loathing of Christianity. Whitman was not without influence, and it would take more than a century before his 1855 classic, Leaves of Grass, would no longer provide shock value.
The assault on Christian sexual ethics has long been seen by secular saboteurs as integral to their radical political agenda. Wilhelm Reich, whose psychoanalytical writings are a blend of Freudianism and Marxism, was a prominent twentieth-century champion of this notion. For example, he argued, “There is no political revolution without first a sexual revolution.” Reich sought a sexual revolution that abolished traditional Christian morality and the family. 8 According to Catholic author E. Michael Jones, “Reich noticed a simple f
act. If you changed the sexual behavior of idealistic young Catholics in the direction of social liberation… then the idea of God simply evaporated from their minds and they defected from the Catholic Church, and the way to successful revolution was clear.” 9 It is for reasons like this that Reich has been called the Father of the Sexual Revolution. 10
The Hungarian scholar Georg Lukács, who did more to promote Marxism in the West than almost anyone, shared Reich’s contempt for Christian sexual ethics. Like Reich, he wanted to annihilate Christianity altogether, advocating “demonic ideas” in the spread of “cultural terrorism.” To accomplish this task, he established a curriculum for students in which they learned the wonders of free love and the horrors of monogamy. Lukács particularly focused on women and children, knowing that if he could sell libertinism to them, the big loser would be Christianity. 11
These Christian-hating revolutionaries often seek cover by pointing to the various studies produced by social scientists. And of all the disciplines that have long sought to cast Christianity as the devil that must be defeated, psychology is among the leaders. Freud, of course, was the most prominent exponent of the “Catholicism = sexual repression” school of thought. Self-described as “a godless Jew,” “a wicked pagan,” and “totally nonreligious,” Freud made it clear that “my real enemy” was “the Roman Catholic Church.” 12
Jung felt the same way. “Jung’s entire life and work were motivated by his detestation of the Catholic Church,” writes clinical psychologist Richard Noll, “whose religious doctrines and moral teachings he considered to be the source of all the neuroses which afflicted Western man.” Noll cites Jung’s New Paths of Psychology as his definitive work on the subject. “Jung wrote that the only way to overthrow the neuroses inducing Judeo-Christian religion and its ‘sex-fixated ethics’ was to establish a new religion—the new religion of psychoanalysis,” he writes. “Jungians understand that they must do everything in their power to eliminate the traditional understanding of Roman Catholicism.” 13
Secular Sabotage Page 4