Following up on last weekend’s unintentionally amusing Justice Sunday II event, Rob Garver noted in The American Prospect that there was one theme that tied all the speakers together — the religious right movement is feeling sorry for itself.
In the imaginary world painted by the leaders of “Justice Sunday II,” conservative Christian Republicans may control the White House, the Congress, and several seats on the Supreme Court, but they remain oppressed and victimized. Speakers invoked Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., and Susan B. Anthony, all in service of the meme that Christians in America are being silenced, persecuted, and prevented from practicing their religion.
Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, who emceed the event, whipped up the crowd with bizarre and patently false claims like, “They’ve said that our children don’t have a right to pray.”
And he introduced speakers who generally paid less attention to questions of judicial appointments than to messages designed to convince listeners that Christians are being repressed by powerful forces in society (read: liberals) against which they must begin to take action.
Taking the prize for the most shameless appropriation of imagery from past civil-rights struggles was Catholic League President Bill Donohue, who raged against “the left” that had forced Christians to “sit in the back of the bus” when it has come to governing the country.
“It’s time we moved to the front of the bus and that we took command of the wheel!” he thundered. “That’s what I want to see.”
They’re victims. They’re being persecuted. Big-bad liberals won’t let them undo American democracy. They are, according to one speaker, “second-class citizens.” African Americans who suffered under Jim Crow laws — where they experienced segregation, the inability to vote, denied access to public and private facilities, routine police brutality, and the occasional hanging — offer an analogous historical example of the plight facing evangelical Christians today.
It’s not as if all of these people have simultaneously suffered some kind of extraordinary head trauma. Why on earth would a powerful majority with access to the highest levels of government whine like a spoiled child about “persecution”? I have a few ideas.
One, because it’s financially necessary. Now that far-right, white, wealthy, Christian Republicans are dominating American government, there’s a practical concern. How does a movement that’s already won keep raising money? The right needs its supporters to continue to feel like victims or complacency might set in. It’s also hard on the religious right’s fundraising. Ask yourself, what’s the more effective fundraising pitch for the Dobson crowd: “Send money and I might get to go to another White House dinner!” or “Send money because Christian-hating liberals are trying to force us to the back of the bus!”
Two, because they don’t yet have everything they want. Their close buddies run the country, but far-right theocrats aren’t getting the legislative attention they want.
And three, because it intimidates their enemy. Peter Beinart explained this very well shortly after last year’s election.
[W]hat conservatives call anti-evangelical bigotry is simply harsh criticism of the Christian Right’s agenda. Scarborough seized on a recent column by Maureen Dowd, which accused President Bush of “replacing science with religion, and facts with faith,” leading America into “another dark age.” The Weekly Standard recently pilloried Thomas Friedman for criticizing “Christian fundamentalists” who “promote divisions and intolerance at home and abroad,” and Howell Raines, for saying the Christian Right wants to enact “theologically based cultural norms.” This isn’t bigotry. […]
Identity politics is a powerful thing — a way of short-circuiting debate by claiming that your views aren’t merely views; they are an integral part of who you are. And who you are must be respected. But harsh criticism is not disrespect — and to claim it is undermines democratic debate by denying opponents the right to aggressively, even impolitely, disagree. That is what conservatives are doing when they accuse liberals of religious bigotry merely for demanding that the Christian Right defend their viewpoints with facts, not faith. Once upon a time, conservatives knew better. I hope some still do.
If the government promotes evangelical Christianity, the right considers it justice. If the government remains neutral on religion, the right considers it persecution. If you embrace an evangelical agenda, you’re a good American. If you oppose that agenda, you’re not only wrong, you’re an anti-Christian bigot forcing Dobson & Co. to the “back of the bus.”
You’re either with them or against them.