Why the Christian Right Is Obsessed With the Collapse of Civilization

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/belief/why-christian-right-obsessed-collapse-civilization



Most of us are so familiar with the cluster of issues that compel the religious right—opposition to gay marriage and abortion, hostility to the separation of church and state, hostility to modernity—that we don’t often think about the underlying theme holding these disparate obsessions together. It might even be tempting to believe there isn’t a unifying theme, except for the fact that conservatives themselves often allude to it: “civilization collapse.”

Over and over again, right-wingers warn that all the things they hate, from pro-gay Broadway shows to immigration to multiculturalism, are not just signs of an evolving American society, but portend the actual end of it. The Roman Empire is often darkly alluded to, and you get the impression many on the right think Rome burned up and descended into anarchy and darkness. ( Not quite.) But really, what all these fantasies of cities burning down and impending war and destruction are expressing is a belief that the culture of white conservative Christians is the culture of America. So it follows that if they aren’t the dominant class in the United States, then America isn’t, in their opinion, really America anymore.

Once you key into this, understanding why certain social changes alarm the religious right becomes simple to see. Hostility to abortion, contraception and gay rights stems directly from a belief that everyone should hold their rigid views on gender roles—women are supposed to be housewives and mothers from a young age and men are supposed to be the heads of their families. School prayer, creationism and claims of a “war on Christmas” stem from a belief that government and society at large should issue constant reminders that their version of Christianity is the “official” culture and religion of America.

It’s hard to underestimate how much of a crisis moment the election of Barack Obama for president was for the religious right because of this. And his re-election, of course, which showed that his presidency was not a fluke. Even before Obama was elected, the possibility that a black man with a “multicultural” background was such a massive confirmation of their worst fear—that they are not, actually, the dominant class in America–that the campaign against Obama became overwhelmed completely by this fear. The media frenzy over the minister in Obama’s church was about racial anxieties, but it was telling that it was his church that was the focal point of the attack. The stories were practically tailor-made to signal to conservative Christians that Obama was not one of them.

[rucky]

1. This articulates all conservativism:

So it follows that if they aren’t the dominant class in the United States, then America isn’t, in their opinion, really America anymore.

It explains why poor whites consistently vote against their own interests. They feel that there's some privilege inherent in their race/gender/religion that being threatened by changing demographics (and values that lean more toward equality), and they'll lose out on some path to advancement that's really being blocked by their own leaders. That's why everyone else is seen as a threat to them, and they act like entitled babies, and as long as they're blaming "those people," corporate and religious leaders aren't going to tell them differently. In fact, that's why they cheer on the CEO pigs who are hoarding the wealth and power at an increasingly disproportionate level. That's why they can say and commit to anti-democratic philosophies and still claim to be patriots without a hint of irony.

Useful idiots, for sure.

[Fumesucker]

19. A lot of the Conservative Christians aren't poor, they tend to be middle class to upper middle class

The Conservative Christian churches are great big good ol' boys clubs, more business gets done there than on the damn golf courses. Getting business is why a lot of whites join such churches in the first place, it's an automatic captive clientele for whatever you are buying or selling.

Not that all churches don't act that way but with the megachurch conservative types it's more explicit than most.

http://themonkeycage.org/blog/2012/03/23/voting-patterns-of-americas-whites-from-the-masses-to-the-elites/

[1StrongBlackMan]

28. True ...

The Conservative Christian churches are great big good ol' boys clubs, more business gets done there than on the damn golf courses. Getting business is why a lot of whites join such churches in the first place, it's an automatic captive clientele for whatever you are buying or selling.

And because of the "church-connection", i.e., "we are both 'Christian', so you will not take advantage of me", there is a built in trust factor. However, law enforcement has a specific term for a lot of the business done in churches ... Affinity Fraud Schemes. http://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/affinityfraud.asp

[Laelth]

2. Excellent essay. k&r for exposure. n/t

-Laelth

[MrScorpio]

3. Kickage!

[dotymed]

4. Too bad

that Obama proved to be third way......

[1StrongBlackMan]

29. How is your comment ...

remotely associated with the OP?

[Berlum]

5. k & r

a good read

[Feral Child]

6. K&R n/t

[scheming daemons]

7. fantastic essay. hits the nail on the head.

[beachbum bob]

8. come on, the simple answer to their obsession is

the Rapture

[Bohunk68]

12. I was just going to post the same.

Although, I wouldn't call it the simple answer, it is certainly a part of the mix. It determines how they support any RW crap that the Netanyahu government does. I find it amazing that the Rapture shit isn't biblical at all, but from this person who lived in England in the 1830's. Sorry, but my mind just doesn't recall that pastor's name. Need more coffee this morning.

[RebelOne]

34. That's it. They are hoping the Rapture will come any day now.

If you haven't already been there, go to RaptureReady.com and check out the bulletin board.

[beachbum bob]

40. the the christian right is dominated by the rapture obession

this in itself, is the contributing factor to their unwillingness to deal with present day matters.....

[TBF]

9. Excellent article. K&R nt

[The Wizard]

10. Professional victims(NT)

[mdbl]

11. Religious leaders use simple minds for their own power base

They tell their followers they are doing God's will, when in actuality, God never said anything. How simple does a mind have to be to fall for that? Once the charlatan has believers, they can do anything else they please because all of the manipulations are based on non-reality. When someone tells me their beliefs, I tell them they are entitled to "believe" anything. That doesn't make it a fact or the truth. They follow a book they call sacred which was written by a bunch of men just as manipulated as they are. When you start from a base of non-reality, you get unbelievable results.

[FiveGoodMen]

24. " When you start from a base of non-reality, you get unbelievable results."

IOW: Garbage in, garbage out.

[og1]

13. correction it is fundamentalist christians that seek the end times

Fundamentalist christians that adhere to the teachings of paul and not christ seek the end times and cherry pick culture and fads to predict the end times. These fundamentalists believe they are predetermined to be saved by grace and faith and they believe they are exempt from the laws of god. That is why they behave the way they do to other people they believe are not of their cabal They are american seditionists

[beachbum bob]

20. the christian right is made up of christian fundementalists

about the only segment of the christian faith that the GOP hasn't pissed on yet

[hootinholler]

27. Technically it's the Calvinist/Rushdooney crowd

There are fundamentalists who aren't seeking the end of days, preferring to save it for a surprise.

Then there is "The Family" crowd who have little to do with fundamentalism at all, but aren't above using those who are enthralled with the rapture. The Family core belief is basically if you are in charge, you can do no wrong because God put you in that position. They appear to be an offshoot from Rushdooney.

Welcome to DU.

[KurtNYC]

14. It fits with 'all or nothing', 'with us or against us' type thinking but mostly

it raises the stakes on everything else in the minds of their customers.

For example IF the collapse of civilization is really at stake then gay marriage isn't just one issue that stands alone but rather another major battle in war on civilization by barbarians. That casts any random attacks that fundies make on secular society as being part of a noble fight to save civilization.

Fundies use these issues as fund raisers -- gay rights, Obama, abortion, racism -- so it helps to make each issue as big as it can be and the umbrella issue 'end of civilization' does that.

Interestingly (perhaps), similar arguments are advanced around global warming and in some of those the distinct between the end of Mankind and the end "of the world" (all life) are not made. Similar to the fundies, many ecologically minded writers and green-washing marketers equate the end of humanity with the end of all other life thereby elevating Man's importance to one that eclipses everything else. You hear flawed logic that says in effect 'you need to buy a hybrid to save the planet.' One more way in which "science is the new religion."

[DamnYankeeInHouston]

15. Brilliantly clear explanation. Thank you.

[RoccoR5955]

16. They are rotting in their own made hell!

good!

[Locrian]

17. dominator culture

We are all in a dominator culture to some degree - the christian right is more than most (sane) people tolerate. Any threat to it - *especially* women's rights provokes them as they try to maintain the 'stability' of their system.

In a real sense, progressive values and less 'authoritarian' rule *IS* a threat to them and their system (yay).

Hopefully we can push that change so hard that we snap past any of their abilities to maintain their system, but we will also have to deal with other more powerful dominator systems (ie the money interests, military industrial etc).

[The_Commonist]

18. I think there's much more to it than this.

This is fascinating, and certainly a big part of the Christian right's insanity. There's a much more basic issue, however, that I think is at the heart of why they want civilization to crash and burn.

Our science has gotten amazing! I fucking love it! We've put humans on the moon and sent cameras out of the solar system. We've taken pictures of a shadow of the Big Bang, and a shadow of the atom. Every day now there are news items about exoplanets with water, evidence of multiple universes, and other things that they don't understand.

We are about to figure out "what's really going on here" and it's going to show that their God is irrelevant. That freaks them out. They don't understand it and they don't like it and they know they will be "left behind" due to their embracing of ignorance. So they fight like hell to keep us ALL in the muck.

It's not just that they are beginning to feel left behind on this planet, it's that they intuitively understand, without being able to articulate it, that they will be left behind once we are really able to set out to the stars. Their only hope for keeping their god intact is to make sure that never happens. Again, it's intuitive, based on their own internal doubts. The most dangerous animal is a wounded animal, and they are wounded and lashing out.

Frankly, I believe that we are witnessing the death throes of the Abrahamic religions. That's why they are fighting so hard. They know science will prove them wrong, and they'd rather blow the place up than allow that to happen.

[mdbl]

41. Which leads to their survival pattern of behaviour

They are getting hung up on survival to the point where they will say or do anything to keep their power base whether or not it is counter productive to society or even the planet. The "feed me snake oil" mentality will allow this nonsense to flourish until they either eradicate themselves or they are forced into some kind of enlightenment. How many millennium this will take to play out is anyone's guess. At one point in my life, I thought we were on our way to enlightenment only to be kicked back to the dark ages starting with Ronny Raygun and winding the rest of the way down the hole during the Shrub administration.

[arely staircase]

21. yes and no

while cultural hegemony is a large part of it, so is this:

Dispensationalism is an evangelical, futurist, Biblical interpretation that understands God to have related to human beings in different ways under different Biblical covenants in a series of "dispensations," or periods in history.

As a system, dispensationalism is expounded in the writings of John Nelson Darby (1800–82) and the Plymouth Brethren movement,[1]:10 and propagated through works such as Cyrus Scofield's Scofield Reference Bible. The theology of dispensationalism consists of a distinctive eschatological end times perspective, as all dispensationalists hold to premillennialism and most hold to a pretribulation rapture. Dispensationalists believe that the nation of Israel is distinct from the Christian Church,[2]:322 and that God has yet to fulfill his promises to national Israel. These promises include the land promises, which in the future world to come result in a millennial kingdom and Third Temple where Christ, upon his return, will rule the world from Jerusalem[3] for a thousand years. In other areas of theology, dispensationalists hold to a wide range of beliefs within the evangelical and fundamentalist spectrum.[1]:13

With the rise of dispensationalism, some conservative Protestants came to interpret Book of Revelation not as an account of past events (with specific reference to the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, a position known as Preterism) but as predictions of the future.[4][5][6]

Estimates of the number of followers of Dispensationalist beliefs vary between 5 and 40 million in the United States alone.[7]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispensationalism

[blur256]

22. Exactly!

They reap what they sow. I have long believed that the fundamentalist "Christians" have been plotting to get power through fear, and that has worked for them for awhile. They get the powerless to believe their bigotry by spouting hate, and making people believe they are going to hell if they don't believe in their hate. All they are, really, are big bullies funded by others that want to be in power. And that has served them well. But I think people are starting to wake up a little bit. People CHOOSE to be religious. And they CHOOSE what they want to believe. They are so hypocritical. They fear the end times, but why? If they have been living such good, pious lives, what do they have to fear? What they fear, is that they could be wrong. Or that they know they are wrong. The way that they hate, goes so against actual Christian values, it is amazing. It is all a scheme, and it is going to blow up in their faces at some point. It just a matter of when. I don't knock religious people, I count myself as agnostic. But I CHOOSE to believe that if we have a higher power, it is kind and caring. What is the point of creating people just to hate them? It does not make sense.

[Gman]

23. This makes sense. And it also explains

an conversation with a client in South Texas. He and his wife are very nice, very kind people as well as very affluent in their small town, as well as very white. Of course, so am I. They pinned me down last year on for whom I would vote for president. I usually decline to discuss politics with clients so I just kept insisting I don't like any of them. His wife finally decided I would vote for Obama. And I agreed that's how I was "leaning". The husband sat me down and, while pointing his finger at me, explained how "our way of life" was at stake.

[MisterP]

25. it's a sort of masturbatory fantasy--back in the 1880s the US was flooded with books about

how China was going to raise the Dragon Banner over the Capitol, or how the Spaniards would ravish New Yorkers because we didn't have the foresight to build a good Navy; in the 1950s we constantly fretted about what we'd do when the Soviets overran Kansas and forced us into kolkhozes

frankly, we need some HS classes on various sorts of critical thinking, exegesis vs. eisegesis, history of theology, and some friggin' Augustine and Aquinas, so fewer fall for Robertson (and Dan Brown and Kersey Graves and and and)

[theHandpuppet]

37. Yeah, but then they deny the real threats to our future...

... like global climate change. Go figure.

[Warren DeMontague]

26. People who are afraid of the future, with limited worldviews & horizons usually freak out at change.

But the future is coming, whether people like it or not.

[shenmue]

30. I woke up today and I didn't even realize I wasn't civilized

I could have sworn I was in the same country as yesterday, but I must be off.

[1StrongBlackMan]

31. Here is something else ...

I do not understand about fundamentalist christians ... why would they be freaking out about the "end of civilization"? Isn't that their ticket to heaven?

[theHandpuppet]

38. Whatever's the logical argument, assume the opposite

That's the only way to even glimpse what's going on inside the fundamentalist brain.

[Thinkingabout]

32. I am amazed when I listen to Christians, they claim to be so righteous but speak so bitterly against

Those who do not agree with their hate. They proceed to shun those outside of their "circle". I do not follow their thoughts about the issue and having them say the bible says the gay lifestyle is wrong and in the same bible they are told to love one another

I have had the signs pointed out to me and my response is I allow God to do his work because he knows best.

[Mosaic]

33. Civilization will not collapse

Their protestant idea of civilization will collapse and be discarded, and mostly already has. Human societies will continue becoming more complex, stronger, sophisticated, and powerful.

[longship]

35. That's only part of it.

Bob Altemeyer's research into what he calls the authoritarian personality has shed light on what's really going on here. Yes, it is religion, but it also takes a specific personality type to leverage those beliefs.

The best exposition of this in recent years was John W. Dean's Conservatives Without Conscience, one of the best psychological political analyses of recent years. The fact that it was written by a former Watergate whistleblower makes it all the more compelling. Make no mistake, Dean has long since given up on Republicans. He was a regular on Keith Olbermann's Countdown program. He is exceptionally brilliant and a good writer. This book puts things into perspective like no other, in spite the fact that it was written before Barack Obama was elected. It is a deep, highly intellectual read.

I recommend it to anybody who wishes to understand today's GOP.

I recommend this book often here.

[Berlum]

39. A book review snippet - the threat to democracy & freedom

"...Their followers are blindly submissive to authority..."

"...Terrorism is a cover for their agenda..."

"In recent years our society has witnessed the rise of a right-wing authoritarian political movement hiding behind a self-described “conservative” label while engaging in vicious, confrontational and hypocritical tactics in all areas of political activity.

"The unholy alliance between this movement, the Republican Party and religious right extremists has created a grave threat to our democratic freedoms..."

http://www.peoplesworld.org/conservatives-without-conscience-an-insider-views-the-gop-s-ominous-politics/

[ck4829]

36. "If the apocalypse doesn't come around, then we'll make it come around ourselves!"