"Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism"

[yesthattom]

"Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism"
Across the United States, religious activists are organizing to establish an American theocracy. A frightening look inside the growing right-wing movement.

I heard Michelle Goldberg interviewed on NPR. To be honest, it terrified me. Her account included how they have created their own parallel country-within-a-country... their own institutions, their own "science", their own re-invented history, etc. And as they move along this path, they will stop at nothing to run this country.
http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2006/05/12/goldberg/index_np.html

Comments

[sierra-nevada.livejournal.com]

I want to know demographics of the movement, with an eye towards answering the question, "have they captured the young?"

If the answer is no, or only a small percentage, I don't care what they do - they'll be dead in 10 or 20 years, and I can mostly ignore them while living in (or in my case, near) the urban archipelago.

[la-directora.livejournal.com]

If the film Jesus Camp (http://lokifilms.com/site/index_synopsisJC.html), which I saw at this year's Tribeca Film Festival, is any indicator, you should hang onto that fear. Some of the statistics in the film were terrifying, including the fact that of the children in this country who are homeschooled, 80% come from families that self-identify as evangelical Christians. In fact, the filmmakers said that part of why they made the film was specifically because us "urban archipelago" liberals are probably unaware of this particular trend, the rise of evangelical Christians in the country and the degree to which they are now attaching their religious ideas to their political ones.

[sierra-nevada.livejournal.com]

And the Reality Check™ they get when they enter the Real World™ would be fun to watch. Would probably make riveting TV. Kinda like The Simple Life in reverse.

This is why I want demographic data. Percentages of the population at large. That will give a sober evaluation as to whether this is a significant trend, or just a trendy worry.

[la-directora.livejournal.com]

According to the film I saw, 40% of the country self-identifies as evangelical Christian, and of those, 80% vote consistently, and vote Republican. They are a big part of why Dubya won the second time around, in spite of approval rating issues. His campaign, quite smartly, really went after the evangelical vote, and those guys got him back into office. This is not just trendy. It's a growing trend.

[xthread.livejournal.com]

Oh, and for what it's worth, the entire 'Christian Evangelical' voting block is believed to have been between three and four million total voters (or, at least, that's what Karl Rove estimates it to be, and since he's trying to get them to back his candidates, I'm willing to broadly accept his math). Which is a big number, but, well, in a country of 250 million eligible voters, is a much smaller number than it first seems.

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

But if 100% of them vote the same way it is a big number compared to the low voter turn out of the other 245 million people. When elections are very close, you only need a few percent to turn the election.

[marmota.livejournal.com]

*shrug* I'm not worried about home"schooled" kids. From my own experiences in the workplace and job market, homeschooled == permanently unemployable.

[la-directora.livejournal.com]

The very trend Tom started talking about in the first place is leading to that not being the case. I read an article in the New Yorker last year about colleges that were seeking the homeschooled kids, and then conservative groups in D.C. specifically seeking to hire those college's grads.

Your experience may not involve a lot of homeschooled kids getting hired. But that's because you are probably not working for the companies that are trying to assist this surge in evangelical Christian "control" of the country. And the statistics on homeschooled kids don't bear out your experience. That's the whole point of what Tom is talking about. It's happening quietly and unnoticed by folks like you and me. And we need to stop being unaware of it.

[xthread.livejournal.com]

Mmm, not to quibble, but there are only a bit over a million homeschooled children in the country, so based on the most forgiving reading of the data, we're still only talking 800,000 'young' who've been captured. Given that not even remotely all of them are likely to stay captured, I'm not sure that there's a large enough population to be of any real concern.

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

It would be less quibbley if you told me you've listened to the interview.

[xthread.livejournal.com]

I did in fact listen to the interview, when it was originally broadcast.

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

Ok.

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

Well, then I have bad news for you.

The scariest part was the way they have been successful with the youth.

(The second scariest part is how they've avoided any activity on the coasts so that nobody in the east coast/west coast power structure notice the growth of their movement. al-la surprise attack.)

Listen to the piece on NPR. It is worth it.

[kimuchi.livejournal.com]

They didn't avoid the coasts. I've had several evengelical recruiting attempts aimed my way right here in the bay area. It's just that the population is large enough in coastal cities for people to isolate themselves in their own subcultures and not notice each other so much.

What really scares/bothers me is their "attack from within" strategy towards liberal/mainline Protestant churches, a la my parents' UCC church, which has seen a fundamentalist couple join up and take on the youth ministry (and bring a *very* un-UCC flavor to it), while others have joined and worked to bring in an anti-evolution guest speaker among others. It just seems like such a disrespectful and wrong strategy.