Last week Terry Gross at “Fresh Air” gave two hours to people who are critical of Christian movements. First was an interview of Rachel Tabachnick, who has documented an evangelical movement to which Rick Perry has ties. Then novelist Tom Perrotta, whose latest book is The Leftovers (a takeoff on the Left-Behind series) was on to run down the apocalyptic Christian movement that believes in the rapture.
Yes I know it’s all hokum, and some of it is dangerous hokum.
But these hours are evidence of a lack of proportion, and of a fear of Christian power. And Terry Gross is important because she’s so intelligent and such a cultural gatekeeper. People in the blue states trust her judgment. My father, for one.
The Tabachnick interview was especially fear-producing:
Gross: An emerging Christian movement that seeks to take dominion over politics, business and culture in preparation for the end times and the return of Jesus is establishing a presence in American politics. The leaders are considered apostles and prophets, gifted by God for this role… My guest, Rachel Tabachnick, researches the impact of the religious right and end-time narratives on American politics.
Ms. RACHEL TABACHNICK: I would say the basic beliefs began with the idea of dominionism, and dominionism is simply that Christians of this belief system must take control over all the various institutions of society and government. They have some unusual concepts of what they call spiritual warfare that have not been seen before in other groups.
I’m sure that the movement is as unhinged as Tabachnick says, I find Rick Perry a scary figure. But I would challenge Gross and Tabachnick to show me the ways that this movement they are so afraid of has actually taken “dominion over politics, business and culture.” I heard about a lot of political activity, but I didn’t hear of any such concrete accomplishments.
I’ve written before that my whole political worldview was given to me by my mother in one phrase– The Bastards. It was an understanding, of evil powerful Christian bastards who controlled our world, and it came out of the shtetl Jewish relationship with the czar in Russia.
It’s not that there aren’t Christian bastards in the world. Dick Cheney, to begin with, George W. Bush. And lo, Rick Perry. But the false bottom in the consciousness is the belief that Jews are always powerless. This is simply not very helpful at a time when Jews have fully entered the American establishment. It is striking that even as 1/5th of the Congress is in Israel as the guests of the Israel lobby, and Eric Alterman has the guts to write “a great many pundits in the media happen to be Jewish,” Terry Gross is doing a show about Christians who want dominion over our politics and culture and business life.
When Tabachnick went on about this fearful movement–
I would call it a religio-political movement in that it has networked across the United States in something that looks like a hybrid between a religious denomination and a political party.
I thought about Israel supporters, and their incredible achievements in lobbying Harry Truman to defy the State Department in the first case, in nullifying the right of return though many presidents were for it, or in keeping Dennis Ross in one White House after another because, as Foxman says, he’s a “melitz yosher” or advocate for Israel. That seems pretty religious and political to me. And as the 9/11 Commission said, our support for Israel was a factor in the hijackers’ motivation.
I have never heard Gross anatomize Jewish nationalism and American support for that nationalism, these religious ideas that have wrought such havoc in the Middle East. She hasn’t had on Shlomo Sand to talk about “the invention of the Jewish people.” I have never heard fearful conversations about neocons and the extent to which they drove the Iraq war. Or as Tom Friedman said in an interview that has never been highlighted in the American media:
It’s the war the neoconservatives marketed. Those people had an idea to sell when September 11 came, and they sold it. Oh boy, did they sell it. So this is not a war that the masses demanded. This is a war of an elite. Friedman laughs: I could give you the names of 25 people (all of whom are at this moment within a five-block radius of this office) who, if you had exiled them to a desert island a year and a half ago, the Iraq war would not have happened.
Gross’s beliefs are generational. Though she’s still pretty young, she reflects an era when Jews were victimized and we had to be vigilant. I understand that, I grew up with those beliefs. But her dial is stuck there. She can’t reckon with an era in which some Jews have real power, and responsibility. No, we can’t be the bastards.
UPDATE: Originally, I stated that Gross had never had Walt and Mearsheimer on to discuss their paper/book The Israel Lobby. I’m wrong: I am informed that she had Steve Walt on to discuss the book for 20 minutes. And that she had on Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League for 18 minutes, evidently on the same day, Sept. 4, 2007, to counter Walt. I can’t wait for those evangelical Christians to get their equal time…
