Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party
By Max Blumenthal
Nation Books, 2009
In his first book, released just last month, Max Blumenthal has written a scorching polemic in the muckraking tradition of George Seldes and I.F. Stone. As teabaggers, townhallers, and birthers rage against the machinations of the Obama administration, the arrival of a book that surfs the waves of revolt isn’t just timely; it is, well, prophetic. Republican Gomorrah is a Jeremiad, and while some Republican partisans will naturally be outraged, others will nod their heads in agreement. Democrats are already rejoicing at the prospect of the Republican Jericho crumbling.
Blumenthal spent years attending Christian Right events, tracking their leaders, and monitoring their media. The well-crafted book is packed with details, anecdotes, and vignettes assembled into a widely-accessible and logical sequence.
Republican Gomorrah opens with two chapters that explore the philosophical call to resistance by popular theologian Francis A. Schaeffer and the insurgent theocracy of Christian Reconstructionism developed by R.J. Rushdoony. This fascinating historic tour firmly establishes the foundation of the book’s main argument: that the Republican Party has been “shattered” by a right-wing political movement justifying its claim to secular power in theological arguments.
Schaeffer’s view was that two incompatible philosophies were vying for power in the modern world—Godly Christianity and godless secular humanism. From their base in Switzerland at the L’Abri Fellowship which they founded, Schaeffer and his wife Edith issued book after book calling for an intellectual revival of Christian activists. Their son Frank made a series of well-crafted and visually powerful films featuring his father and pediatric neonatal surgeon C. Everett Koop making equally powerful intellectual arguments about why Protestants needed to take up the cause of ending abortion. Koop went on to become Surgeon General of the United States under President Reagan.
Rushdoony argued that biblical law—especially Old Testament Levitical law—superseded the Constitution and Bill of Rights, as well as federal and state laws. Rushdoony thought he was extending the views of Schaeffer, who instead rebuffed Rushdoony’s overtures.
The turbulence in evangelicalism created by the clash of ideas put forward by Schaeffer and Rushdoony tantalized American conservative evangelical thinkers, and resulted in a broad tendency called “Dominionism” by its critics. It is the resulting claim that God has mandated devout Christian men to gain control over secular society that led to the takeover of the Republican Party by the Christian Right.
Schaeffer repudiated the conspiracist interpretation of his work, and was upset by the anti-intellectualism of some of his most ardent evangelical supporters in the United States. Schaeffer’s focus on confronting the sinfulness of secular society was later converted by Christian Right leaders (including Tim LaHaye and Pat Robertson) into a set of gothic and aggressive conspiracy theories that would make Stephen King blush.
Blumenthal covers this ground adroitly. The depth of Blumenthal’s understanding of Francis Schaeffer is supplemented by interviews with son Frank, who over time emerged from the evangelical subculture to become a forceful critic of the same Christian Right that his father inadvertently helped create. Now that’s a story of biblical proportions.
Howard F. Ahmanson Jr. (a major funder of the Christian Right) is the next profile, followed by Christian Right leader James Dobson of Focus on the Family. Blumenthal traces the influence of Schaeffer and Rushdoony, the godfathers of Christian Right Dominionism, not only on Ahmanson and Dobson, but also other well-known figures including Jerry Falwell, Tim LaHaye, Pat Robertson, Chuck Colson, and even Jack Kemp. Blumenthal traces the influence of Schaeffer on the founders of Operation Rescue, Randall Terry and Rob Schenck. Terry has described himself as a Christian Reconstructionist, and credits “Schaeffer as his inspiration,” reports Blumenthal.
The book has 25 brisk chapters. Part Two introduces more players, while Part Three focuses on the Republican Party itself. The chapters on the sexual peccadilloes of clay-footed leaders of conservative Christian evangelical political troops are deliciously served in cold dishes with hot sauciness. The hypocrisy of gay functionaries in Christian Right organizations (and the offices of elected representatives who toe their homophobic line) is revealed in paragraph after paragraph of relentless reporting.
Gomorrah Stumbles into the Centrist-Extremist Trap
In places, Blumenthal twists his ankles while hiking the convoluted landscape of American syncretic religious beliefs. There is undoubtedly a posse of academics hunched over their keyboards documenting chapter and verse of Blumenthal’s slips; each explication of which will take far more words that I have here, but will not reduce the value of the book by a mustard seed.
Where Blumenthal really falls down is with his social science paradigm, based on the work of Erich Fromm, Eric Hoffer, and Richard Hofstadter, among others. These observers of right-wing countermovements were ahead of their time. Alas, their time was 50 years ago. These men made many pioneering observations and some of their insights stand the test of time. Most scholars, however, now see their analytical views as based too much on psychological explanations, and their theories about why people join right-wing social movements have been displaced by more recent social movement theories in sociology and social psychology.
One of the earliest sociologists to challenge the paradigms of Fromm, Hoffer, and Hofstadter was Michael Paul Rogin at Berkeley, whose 1967 book The Intellectuals and McCarthy: The Radical Specter argued that centrist scholars sought to demonize radical ideas and thus developed theories about radicals and “extremists” of the left and right as being dangerous to civil society.
According to this “centrist-extremist” theory, “psychologically fit” people cluster in the political center, while unstable and dysfunctional “extremists” of the left and right populate the fringes of the political system. Furthermore, people with “authoritarian personalities” tended to cluster on the political right. That was the view of mainstream sociology until the mid-1970s. I was taught this paradigm in sociology classes in the late 1960s.
As participants in 1960s left-wing social movements garnered their sociology doctorates, the scholarly paradigm shifted with dramatic speed. First, scholars discovered no evidence that left-wing social movements demonstrated the madness of crowds or collective mob lunacy. It wasn’t until the late 1980s and early 1990s that academics including Sara Diamond (Rogin was a mentor), Jerome Himmelstein, Kathleen Blee, and others pushed the boundaries further and found that right-wing social movements followed some of the same patterns as left-wing social movements. They also found that most right-wing activists were “strategic” and “instrumental”—or in popular language, they were not crazy or stupid, and could implement effective campaigns in political and social arenas. These right-wing folks elected Ronald Reagan, for example.
Tags: birthers, chuck colson, eric hoffer, erich fromm, francis schaeffer, george w. bush, himmelstein, howard ahmanson, jack kemp, james dobson, jerome, jerry falwell, jonathan alter, kathleen blee, keith olbermann, laura flanders, michael kazin, michael paul rogin, newsweek, pat robertson, rachel maddow, randall terry, republicans, richard hofstadter, rj rushdoony, ronald reagan, sara diamond, sociologists, tea party movement, teabaggers, thomas frank, tim lahaye, town hall meetings
I haven't been able to find it at Borders, Barnes&Noble, or BooksAMillion.
It's still relatively new, but it should be available by request at all those outlets. It may still be shipping. The book is worth the effort of tracking it down. It was a great read.
Christianity is in the soul business. You offer your soul for promises, such as life after death. To Christianity, this is a one way street, you can be born again one time, and when the deal is consummated it is final. But that is not the end of the story because souls can be bundled and resold on the derivatives market to the highest bidder. The highest bidder is crafty, and knows since the soul has no actual monitary value he never has to actually pay. In fact trying to pay would be counterproductive because then Christianity would see the deal is rotten and might try to pull out. The only way to keep value in the deal (for the bidder) is to string it out and keep it as a futures promise. As I am writing this paragraph, I am starting to feel frightened because the Republican party is doing to Christianity the same thing that Christianity has been doing to its people.
Well, as a lefty Christian, I argue that there will always be a struggle over the meaning and heart of Christianity. Ruby Sales defines it as the difference between liberation Christianity versus empire Christianity. Works for me. Not all forms of Christianity reflect authoritarian hucksterism.
We (non-believers) are here to help. When you are too close to the issue, it can be hard for you to see the big picture.
Hi,
Sorry, but that felt really patronizng and snarky to me.
I know, but I guess that is from a lifetime of dealing with this. I come from an extremely loving, caring Christian family with liberal roots on many issues, but that turned into a gulf between us because of the importance of questioning just to be sure, and now they are following the conservative church into the pit, and they refuse to discuss it. There is so much they could learn if they weren't locked into thinking they already have the answers. One example is the creation/evolution debate where science tried to ignore the creationists for many years, then after Bush took office they engaged and made so much new progress and answered virtually all of the actual evolution questions from creationists, and we are on the verge of DNA sequencing showing in an even more powerful way that there is a tree of common inheritance, not separate creation events. Their answer is silence. I would like to find an honest progressive, one not afraid to follow the questions and answers wherever they lead, even if it starts to feel snarky which I am sure it will.
Thank God for the internet, I don't think I could survive in a conservative part of the country without it.
You seem to assume that the questions and answers can only lead to one place. One can be an "honest progressive" and a believer at the same time. Your posts as a whole do not seem to allow for this possibility. Being "locked into thinking" that one has all the answers is not a condition limited only to conservatives.
You just have to guard against that believer part leading to basic assumptions that can't be questioned. The problem is not questions and answers. The problem is questions that must not be asked. If a religion starts to take itself too seriously, it eventually starts suppressing questions, and at that point it it dead.
Find the US News dated before Barry Goldwater's death and read the interview they had with him. He told exactly what would happen to the GOP if they followed Falwell, Robertson, Colson, Dobson, and the other god fathers of whacko religion, and he was a true prophet. Please read that interview. Amen. -Wendell Franklin Wentz
He knew, he knew.
My uncle was a member of the Administration of Jimmy Carter and was extremely concerned about the Fundamentalist Christian Right even at that time (1976). The Fundamentalists had an agenda that included the prevention of a Department of Education--How could the Fundamentalists change the schools'history and science books if liberals were in power; how could the Fundamentalist deregulate the regulations for U.S. checks and balances if mid-conservatives and Democrats continued in power?
Deregulation would allow many advantages to the Fundamentalist thought and, eventually, lead to a Christian Theocracy in the United States. My uncle told us all this in 1976, so it is frightening to see this Fundamentalist movement growing even stronger. The House on C Street, by the way, in Washington, D.C., needs additional investigative research as the original organization for The Family" is rooted in the Fundamentalist Movement from many years back. My uncle would be appalled to know that "The Family" is making great strides within the American Government.
There were many more concerns that my uncle had about Fundamentalist takeover. Perhaps this new book will discuss all of this; I am anxious to read it.
Read it a ways back. Old Barry had it right. I was a Goldwater supporter in 1964. I moved left, but always thought he had a sharp mind.
"The Democratic-centrist Democracy Alliance has raised tens of millions of dollars to fund a coterie of people whose main activity appears to be demonizing and belittling the very right-wing activists who have regularly out-organized them and other liberals and Democrats over the past 30 years. Who’s crazy now? Laura Flanders has explored this sad reality in her book Blue Grit, where she bemoans the lack of funding to build a progressive movement infrastructure to counter the well-funded social movements of the political right that yanked the Republican Party to starboard."
This is a great passage. People with a pro-authoritarian temperament are by definition more easily organized than than those on the liberal/hippy end of the spectrum. So there are built-in factors that contrast the two movements. Mocking those who behave like sheep is sometimes the best solution.
I'd also add that such people appear to be more comfortable with negative emotions than the contrasting liberal/hippy personality type. Fear, resentment, distrust, hatred- the shadow side of humanity is the concomitant of rigid hierarchy, absolute values, and the delusion of control- of self and of others. It is the classic case of ... "if everyone does just as I say, no one gets hurt!". It is exactly those who do not recognize complexity, diversity, and inner conflict in the human condition who are destined to act it out, as they do on the smaller stage of sexual hypocrisy.
Mocking those who behave like sheep is sometimes the best solution.
Yes. But by agreeing am I behaving like sheep?
But there are not only authoritarians and totalitarians on the left, but also liberals who defend the status quo and are afraid of supporting real fundamental restructuring of society to be more egalitarian.
Yes. Obama is looking more and more like one of those kinds of liberals. Liberal elites, no matter where they came from then, do indeed like the view from where they are now. It is indeed "hard for a rich man to enter heaven," even if he started out poor.
I will gather that you did not base your argument about the Liberal Elite on any research you have done. This is a statement of your perspective, not a fact.
Thanks for a great assessment Mr. Berlet. I have been examining the Christian Right and Reconstructionists since the early part of this decade, and it seems to me that they are indeed gaining momentum.The Christian Right continues to insist that the United States was intended to be, and is still meant to be, a theocracy. They began, as early as the 1980s, to accomplish there mission by running stealth candidates for local school boards, utility oversight committees, and the like. Gary North, chief polemicist for the Christian Reconstructionists, has written many articles and full-length books in which he lays out the strategy of the Christian Right. The plan has been to use the principles of democracy and pluralism to undermine the system. By starting at the grass roots level and then working their way up into increasingly powerful positions of authority, they have been able to gain control of major elements of state and federal government. Now they are also embedded in the media, as represented by Dobson and Robertson, etc. I am looking forward to reading the book, not just for the gory details of Republican moral malfeasance, but also because I believe that Blumenthal, and you, Mr. Berlet, are on the right track in assessing the potential negative impact that these people can have on the ultimate goal of creating a just society in the 21st century.
Yes, it is quite daunting and a bit scary.
It's a great time to be alive. It really is! The horrific train wreck that we euphemistically refer to as "the American political system" is so interesting and indescribably amusing. I am up every morning before the crack of dawn just so I can be at the Kwik Stop grocery store down town when the papers arrive (There's a shameless plug for you, Ben. I'll expect a check in the mail). After a mere ten minutes with the New York Daily News or the Times, I look up to the heavens with profound gratitude and quietly say, "Thank you." For someone who makes his or her name by writing about politics, these people can only be described as a celestial gift. And while we're on the subject, is it just me or have you noticed lately that C-SPAN is starting to look more and More like Comedy Central? I was just wondering.
http://www.tomdegan.blogspot.com
Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
I agree entirely with you, Tom, about C-SPAN.
Progressive Baptist Robert Parham at www.ethicsdaily.com has great essay on the difference between the politics of US GOP Senator Lindsay Graham and his fellow Southern Baptist Richard Land, Karl Rove's great friend.
This is a faultline Berlet, Randall Balmer and Max should pursue in wake of this book.
Follow the discussion at www.baptistlife.com/forums.
Consider having Parham post his opinion piece here at Rel Dispatches.
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