What do the Pope, Obama, and Johnny Rotten Have in Common?: Observations on Gender and the Antichrist

by Charity Carney

Thanks to Kelly Baker for suggesting a series on masculinity and religion during Paul's hiatus. Here's the first of my installment.

Americans’ fascination with the Antichrist has only grown over the past decade with an increasing number of pop culture references and politicized rhetoric surrounding the evil symbol of a coming Armageddon. Obama was/is accused by some as being the Antichrist—Obama beginning as relatively unknown politician who rose to power swiftly and won the hearts of many Americans with a message of hope. He made promises that were too good to be true, many said, and some accused him of acting like a messiah to lure unsuspecting Americans into his trap. (Google “Obama and Antichrist” if you haven’t before. It’s amazing what people can do with Photoshop.) The racialized overtones of this depiction of the president cannot be overlooked. Many Americans were terrified of Obama’s candidacy and election because he was an “other” in their worldview and so their fear blossomed into anger and denouncements of the “Yes We Can” Man as evil. Racist motivations aside, Antichrist accusations and personas have power (to scare, to motivate, and to actually empower) and much of that power resides in the masculine meme of the position.

White Women, Rape and the Power of Race in Virginia, 1900-1960 as well as cultural works on more recent America like Michelle Alexander’s thought-provoking new book, The New Jim Crow). But beyond the masculine world of racialized sexuality and crime there are other gendered factors that contribute to the current Antichrist discourse.

An alternative view of the Antichrist is that promoted by the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS). Current Republican presidential candidate contender Michelle Bachman once belonged to this group but recently demanded a written statement from the synod about a year ago asserting that she was no longer affiliated with them or their anti-Catholic beliefs. The WELS doctrine regarding the Antichrist states:

“Since Scripture teaches that the Antichrist would be revealed and gives the marks by which the Antichrist is to be recognized, and since this prophecy has been clearly fulfilled in the history and development of the Roman Papacy, it is Scripture which reveals that the Papacy is the Antichrist.”

The Pope is perhaps the most powerful religious figurehead alive in the Western world and by imbuing him with the religious authority of the Antichrist, the WELS has given him even more influence, although that is obviously not their intention (see http://www.theatlantic.com/ for the full story). The Pope and Catholics and many other Christians (including Lutherans) certainly do not view the Papal position as connected to the Antichrist, but the debate alone grants the Papacy more power because it is simply being debated. The Pope and the Catholic leadership, too, have a preponderance of masculine authority despite their sworn celibacy. The Church has maintained its commitment to male authority since its founding and continues to rely on an all-male cast of Pope, Cardinals, and priests, etc., giving nuns duties that reflect a more maternal role (teaching and nursing, for instance). The Pope, I contend, would not be accused of being the Antichrist if it was not necessarily a male occupation and if the Catholic Church did not imbue it with masculine power.

And it is here where I will play “devil’s advocate” (pun, sadly enough, intended): Antichrist imagery can also be used as a hyper-masculine badge of honor. Take, for example, the role that Antichrist played in the punk music scene of the 1970s. The Sex Pistols’ lead singer, Johnny Rotten, even went so far as to declare himself an antichrist in “Anarchy in the UK”:

“I am an anti-christ

I am an anarchist

Don't know what I want but

I know how to get it

I wanna destroy the passerby caus’ I

I wanna BE anarchy!”

The Sex Pistols might have been Nietzsche’s favorite band. In The Antichrist, the nihilist wrote: “What is good?—Whatever augments the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself, in man.” Ultimately, the concept of an Antichrist is a positive one to Nietzsche because it empowers man to challenge a blundering God whom impedes science and knowledge. Although Nietzsche is not speaking directly of the biblical Antichrist, he is pressing the notion that anti-Christian, anti-God, anti-religious views are what give men control and intellect. The Antichrist may be the supremely masculine symbol—with power and virility and ferocity representing his most cited characteristics.

The dangers of this discourse, however, are immense. As seen with Obama, declaring a public personality to be the Antichrist only engages widespread animosity and fear, which, when combined, can lead to vehement and violent reactions. So maybe the WELS should reconsider its charged doctrine concerning the Pope as well as those who have labeled the president as the Antichrist.

It's mine! (America, that is)

Randall Stephens

The late D. James Kennedy hosted and broadcast his "Reclaim America for Christ" campaign. His efforts won the ire and disgust of commentators across the center and left of the political spectrum. "Reclaim" it from whom? Who would be excluded?

So it's not all that surprising that "Take Back America" crusades and "The Response," Rick Perry's August 6 rally in Houston, which Paul wrote a little about below. Here's the official line from the website for the gathering:

On August 6, the nation will come together at Reliant Stadium in Houston, Texas for a solemn gathering of prayer and fasting for our country.

We believe that America is in a state of crisis. Not just politically, financially or morally, but because we are a nation that has not honored God in our successes or humbly called on Him in our struggles.

According to the Bible, the answer to a nation in such crisis is to gather in humility and repentance and ask God to intervene. The Response will be a historic gathering of people from across the nation to pray and fast for America.

The first line of the last paragraph probably wouldn't set well with an Anabaptist, liberal Protestant, or just about anyone left of Mike Huckabee. But it does bring up an interesting matter about evangelicals' relationship with their country.

I'd like to see the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life ask a broad sample of citizens some questions related to God-and-country matters. How about: Do you believe that America has a special relationship with God? Does the Constitution describe America as a Christian nation? Does God punish countries for national sins? Has America been chosen by God for a special purpose? (Maybe those are all too rhetorical!)

I Got More Qualms than the Bible's Got Psalms

Darren Grem

What do you get when you take the head of Sojourners and the director of the Southern Baptist Convention’s ERLC and toss them in a virtual room with one another?

This video throwdown on the federal budget!

Well, maybe "Skyped airing of qualms" is more accurate. In any case, for anyone interested in the rivalry between true believers on the American left and right, this one is ripe for analysis. (Bonus points for anyone keeping track of the number of hiccups in logic and fact made by both sides). Available for watching in 5-6 minute-long segments or 35-minute-long director's cut.

P.S. Good to see all y'all again after the long hiatus.

Rick Perry, Come On Down!

Paul Harvey

Amy Sullivan reports (HT Charles Marsh), in a piece for Time, that Tony Perkins (of the Family Research Council), David Barton (you know who he is), and John Hagee (he's not dead yet, evidently, despite the 2008 debacle) teamed up on a phone call a few weeks ago to express their displeasure with the current crop of Republican primary candidates -- either because they're not conservative enough, or they're not the right kind of religious conservative (i.e. they're Mormon), or they're not "southern enough," or they're just flakes (i.e. Gingrich and self-immolating campaign). Huckabee's not around, so enter their dream candidate, Rick Perry, who fits the bill on all fronts. Read all about it here. And then follow up with some more background information on all this by Sarah Posner here. And there's reporting on Perry's strategic breaks with his fellow Texan George W. Bush here.

Just a bit from Amy Sullivan's piece:

So, come on down, Rick Perry! He may be the favorite by default, but the Texas governor is also a terrific match for the Christian Right. Sarah Posner of Religious Dispatches recently outlined Perry’s social conservative bona fides and they’re impressive:

• **Signed a gay marriage ban into law at a Christian school in Fort Worth with evangelical heavyweights Tony Perkins (Family Research Council), Rod Parsley (Ohio mega-church pastor), and Don Wildmon (American Family Association) in attendance
  
  
• **The Sunday before his 2006 re-election, Perry attended Cornerstone Church and sat by the side of controversial pastor John Hagee (in 2008, John McCain had to reject Hagee’s endorsement after critics pointed out the pastor’s many extreme statements, including calling the Catholic Church “the whore of Babylon”)
  
  
• **Supported and was a primary beneficiary of the Texas Restoration Project, an effort to increase the electoral involvement of conservative pastors
  
  

All of this, however, pales beside Perry’s current project–a Christian all-day prayer event called “The Response” on August 6 in Houston. The governor is sponsoring the event along with the American Family Association, which is footing the estimated $1.5 million tab for the gathering. The Response is intended for Christians only, although one spokesman said that if people of other faiths attend, he hopes they will see the light and “seek out the living Christ” for their lives.

Luckily for us, Historianess will be attending the all-day prayer event on the 6th (hey, it's local, it's free, and it's air conditioned), and giving us live updates. Or not :)

Sunday, in the Park

Paul Harvey

You wouldn't think it was the 4th of July in the showdown between the KKK and the Westboro Baptist Church at some Memorial Day remembrances at Arlington National Cemetery. You can't make this stuff up, even when you just so happen to have a historical analysis of the 2nd Ku Klux Klan's white Christian nationalism on its way out soon. My co-conspirator Kelly Baker looks at this bizarre confrontation here, in an op-ed piece for History News Network.

Some other pieces catching attention lately in our Sunday roundup:

I just finished reading Jennifer Burns's book Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right, a completely fascinating biography and analysis of the impact of Rand's works as a historic "gateway drug to the right." The religious metaphors quickly come to mind when looking at how the aggressively proselytizing atheist worked to control her own cult of personality, how heretics from her "Collective" were shunned and exiled, how "The Collective" was sardonically named but eerily apt as a descriptor, and how her novelistic heroes operated as godlike mythical heroes and heroines.

Unlike Hobbits or children residing in Hogwarts, Rand's heroes have proven impossible to transfer to movies or television mini-series, the genius of the market having rejected at the box office movie adaptations of her agitprop novels. Peter Travers writes of this most recent screen adaption of Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand's monumental 1,168-page, 1957 novel gets the low-budget, no-talent treatment and sits there flapping on screen like a bludgeoned seal. Our local (Colorado) AM agitprop specialist Mike Rosen, of 850 AM radio out of Denver, hosted a special screening and wrote a series of god-awful editorials for the Denver Post attemtping to flog the film. Rosen provided post-screening commentary together with Michael "heck of a job" Brown, lately of FEMA and Katrina fame, and host of the nightly show on same said "blowtorch" of Colorado radio. The rapture is sounding better by the moment.

Author Jennifer Burns also covers how much William F. Buckley, Whittaker Chambers, and others of that pioneering conservative generation hated Rand, and how she returned the favor. Rand also apparently didn't think much of that noted collectivist sympathizer Friedrich Hayek, but then there was almost no one else that she did like. Hayek didn't really have a problem philosophically, for example, with national health insurance, which of course put him in the same camp with the slaves rather than the individualists, in Rand's eyes. All of this has come back in the news now thanks to the Rand-inspired politics of Paul Ryan, a development discussed further over at Mark Silk's Spiritual Politics blog.

(A side note unrelated to this blog but just interesting to read about in this book anyway: In the late 60s/early 70s, Rand opposed the Vietnam War, which further angered many conservatives, while she celebrated in Kennedy-esque language the Apollo space program, which pissed off libertarians who already had sort of broken from her. As for her temper, let's just say that good thing Twitter wasn't around then).

Speaking of money uber alles and the cash nexus, my friend Lerone Martin has a very popular "Open Letter to Creflo Dollar," concerning Dollar's defense of Bishop Eddie Long, here.

In other news:

John Schmalzbauer has an outstandingly interesting review of Darren Dochuk's From Bible Belt to Sunbelt in the new Evangelical Studies Bulletin. No link for it, but click on the ESB link for quick and very inexpensive addition to the mailing list of this very informative newsletter. The link also gives you access to a number of back issues from 2007-2010, with lengthy and very substantive reviews of important recent works by Barry Hankins, Thomas Kidd, and many others.

In "Roots of Bachmann's Ambition Began at Home," the New York Times goes over some of the same material that the Rolling Stone did in Menckenian excess (except not as funny as Mencken), about the origins of Michele Bachmann's political career in Minnesota, only without the hypervenilation. Of her appearances speaking in church basements early in her career, one attendee remembers, “It felt like we were in a tent, like a revival,” Ms. Cecconi said. “It was obvious Michele was the star."

While Huntsman and Romney split families and compete for the same donor base, Bachmann is competing equally with Romney and trouncing the relatively unknown Huntsman in Iowa. The two candidates Romney and Huntsman have Tea Party trouble alike, while Huntsman moves away from Romney's position on his faith and his politics articulated in 2008; Matt Bowman explores Huntsman's new generational Mormonism here for New Republic. See also Russell Fox's response to Bowman's piece here -- Fox feels that it is not a generational difference between the business Mormonism of Romney and the more renegade style of Huntsman, but rather that "Huntsman doesn’t take his Mormonism quite as seriously as pioneer-stock Romney does." Both pieces are well worth reading.

Blackness, The Book of Mormon, and Broadway: Part II

Christopher Jones

(cross-posted at the Juvenile Instructor)

When the news feed on my facebook began to be flooded with links to the same page last week, I excitedly clicked over the the Washington Post On Faith Op-Ed by John Mark Reynolds, professor of Philosophy at Biola University. Reading the title,"Amos and Andy and the Book of Mormon," I hopefully (but mistakenly) assumed that the article was evidence of Jared Farmer's critique--that lurking beneath the portrayal of religion in the Book of Mormon musical was not-so-subtle racism in the show's portrayal of Africans--starting to gain traction.

Instead, I proceeded to read the following:

"The Book of Mormon is a minstrel show for our present age with Mormons as the joke.

Ugly plays did not by themselves produce the Klan or keep some Americans from voting for African-Americans. Original sin was enough for that, but minstrel shows did give racism an artistic and comedic whitewash. When Americans were hurt by the cruel stereotypes, they were told it was 'just a joke' and were painted as petty for not laughing along."

Mormon, Reynolds appears to suggest, is the new Black. The comparison is problematic to say the least, even with Reynolds's caveat that "no group has been as cruelly treated as African Americans." Mormonism's "history of being persecuted" that Reynolds mentions certainly deserves attention, and has received such quite recently from several up-and-coming historians and scholars, including Patrick Mason, whose excellent new book on anti-Mormon violence in the postbellum South deserves wide readership, and Spencer Fluhman, whose forthcoming monograph from UNC Press on anti-Mormon literature in the nineteenth century can hardly come soon enough. In fact, instead of situating the Book of Mormon musical within the tradition of minstrel shows of yesteryear, Reynolds would do well to pick up a copy of Megan Sanborn Jones's recent volume from Routledge Press, Performing American Identity in Anti-Mormon Melodrama. Anti-Mormonism, it turns out, has its own history of being portrayed and performed on the stage; perhaps we would do well to look at and understand that history before making comparisons to blackface and minstrelsy.

Besides, by invoking Mormonism and race in the same breath, Reynolds wades into troubled waters. The subject is far more complicated than he acknowledges, and no op-ed can adequately address the topic. Mormons, to be sure, have a history of being portrayed as something other than racially white. Nate Oman's fine research on the legal aspects of this story is telling, and Paul Reeve's book-in-progress (under contract with OUP and entitled Religion of a Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness) promises to expand on the social and cultural aspects of it all in the 19th and 20th centuries.

And Mormons, of course, have not always been innocent victims in America's racial history, as even a quick glance over at the Juvenile Instructor's posts on Mormonism and race reveals. From the so-called priesthood ban, which denied the admission of Africans and African Americans to the Mormon priesthood and restricted their entry in Mormon temples until finally being rescinded in 1978, to the Book of Mormon's complex portrayal of American Indians, to the public opposition to the Civil Rights Movement by several high-ranking Mormon officials in the 1950s and 1960s, Mormons have often found themselves on the wrong side of America's pathetic history of racism. Mormons themselves even participated in and put on their own minstrelsy shows well into the 20th century.

Perhaps most glaringly, though, Reynolds's comparison of the Book of Mormon musical to "Amos 'n' Andy" passes over entirely the portrayal of Africans in the show. While lamenting "the cruel, tasteless jokes" and "mindless mockery" leveled at the Mormons, he ironically seems to have missed the "talented African American actors hamming up 'African-ness' for cheap laughs."

And in a final touch of irony too rich not to mention, several of my Mormon friends--most of whom, like the op-ed's author, are politically and socially conservative and outspoken supporters of Mitt Romney--who linked to Reynolds's piece on facebook with apparent satisfaction that someone from outside the church was finally defending their religion and co-religionists, excerpted the following paragraph to accompany their link:

"This new play will pander to our prejudices and treat our Mormon neighbors as we would never wish to be treated. Some Americans will allow it to confirm unthinking prejudice, while cowardly Mormons will applaud it hoping for crumbs of respectability."

Mormons applauding something while hoping for crumbs of respectability, indeed.

Faith of the Founders (My Review of John Fea in the Christian Century)

Paul Harvey

I was very happy that the Christian Century asked me to review John Fea's Was America Founded as a Christian Nation: A Historical Introduction -- and even more glad they gave me relatively ample space (over 1200 words anyway, better than the average review) to develop some thoughts on John's book. The review is here. Here is an excerpt, and then continue at the jump:

BOOKS

Faith of the founders

Jun 03, 2011 by Paul Harvey

Was America founded as a Christian nation? No, is John Fea's answer to the question posed in his title. But the answer is yes if we consider how Americans (especially from 1789 to 1865) understood themselves as a Christian nation. And then again, maybe it's just a bad question, Fea concludes, because it arises not from a rich understanding of the past but from present-day polemics. Only when we remove it from that context can we begin to make sense of it.

Continue <<<

IT is Happening Here (Re-reading The Handmaid’s Tale)

by Steven P. Miller

Recently, I have been thinking about how the rise of the evangelical right influenced late twentieth-century American liberalism. My inquiry led me to take another look at Margaret Atwood’s dystopian classic, The Handmaid’s Tale (1985). I first encountered the novel during my high school days in the mid-1990s. Reading it—or at least knowing about it—was something of a rite of passage for aspiring members of the new class. (I never went through an Ayn Rand phase, thankfully, and hence never aspired to join the productive class.) The Handmaid’s Tale may or may not have inspired some of its readers to spray paint X’s across the ubiquitous Oliver North for Senate signs in Harrisonburg, Virginia.

The Handmaid’s Tale is a riveting story driven by the alternately righteous and resigned, but always ironical, narrative voice of “Offred.” She is the handmaid of Commander Fred; which is to say, she exists to bear his seed; which is to say, the Republic of Gilead (nee New England) is a nightmarish patriarchy. In fact, the “early Gilead era” is the conflation of all things right-wing; not merely patriarchal, it is also theocratic, nativist, racist, and belligerent. The only thing missing is capitalist, although Offred’s Commander does have a background in market research. The regime is a composite of past models: the predictable Stalinist USSR-Nazi Germany template (Born of a coup, Gilead is in a continuous state of mobilization; the state police force is known as the Eyes), antebellum slavery (The handmaids are breeders subject to the whims of Commanders and the spite of Commanders’ wives), and Puritan Massachusetts (The book is dedicated to convicted witch Mary Webster, an ancestor of Atwood’s). More striking are the contemporaneous analogues: apartheid South Africa, Khomeini’s Iran, Ceausescu’s Romania . . . and, most importantly, the religious right’s looming Christian America, which in the novel is firmly in place by the 1990s. Thus, fundamentalism—a category then in the process of being conceptually stretched from Dayton, TN, all the way to Tehran—was the new “it” (more like an IT) that can happen here (or there, for the Canadian Atwood), specifically, in a city not unlike Cambridge, Mass. (not too far from Canada, when you think about it).

If Gilead’s complementarian view of oppression is a little too convenient, its religious politics are downright incoherent. (Why exactly does Gilead war against the Baptists down South? Are they the Socialist-Revolutionary Party to Gilead’s Bolsheviks?) Theo-ideological consistency was not really the point, though, in this unabashedly political novel. Fundamentalists, after all, are not averse to making up some rules as they go along; they’d rather play Geneva than wait for the promised new Jerusalem. Gilead’s basis for legitimacy is the law-and-order God of the Old Testament. But the basis could just as well have been some other IT rooted in some other reactionary resource, so long as IT provided an alternative to a sexual revolution that, by late 1970s and early 1980s, had created an opening for counter-revolution. As Norman Lear said during the early days of People for the American Way, “every generation must deal with its own Infallibles.” For Atwood, the more historically distinctive thing was the target: sexual freedom and, by extension, women’s bodies, and by further extension, women’s humanity. (Here, Atwood’s own targets included feminist anti-porn activists as well as anti-feminist female dupes.)

So much for my very impressionistic re-reading of Atwood. Has this novel served any serious political significance—other than to scare the hell out of impressionable readers? Atwood’s attitude toward the Christian Right is that of the distant literalist; fear trumps contingency as a heuristic device. Thus, the book offers little in the way of counter-intelligence. It tells us next to nothing about the Christian Right’s appeal, save to point out its ironic—in the novel, tragic—overlap with feminist moralism. While gallows humor spills forth from the oppressed, the villains remain predictable in their two-dimensionality: The Commander is a traditionalist who makes an exception for himself; his wife, a former televangelist (“Serena Joy”) who now chafes at her separate sphere.

Still, The Handmaid’s Tale undoubtedly reminded many readers of what they had to lose. Perhaps Colorado Springs was the Salem of our time, and the Republican National Convention the new Munich. At the very least, the novel gave young liberals such as myself a handy foil during the mid and late 1990s—a time when, amid my mistaken belief that Michael Kelly’s The New Republic really was a liberal publication, it was not always easy to gauge the stakes of political discourse (Boy, did Michael Kelly hate Bill Clinton). Opposing the Christian Right seemed a clearer vantage point; if liberalism was anything, it was not fundamentalism. In an age of presumed backlash, it seemed more pressing to be libertarian than liberationist on social issues; the best way to celebrate freedoms was to defend them. But what about religion? If The Handmaid’s Tale was to be believed, then religion was an inherently destabilizing force in politics. But didn’t such talk play into the hands of the opposition? Wise figures on the right long had warned (with a wink) that, should the decadent tide fail to ebb, the back-lashing masses would find recourse in authoritarianism.

Then came “W.” A decade later, I teach this stuff. So many of my students interpret religion-in-general through the lens of politically-conservative-religion-in-particular. They may have read The Handmaid’s Tale (I will take a poll next semester), or perhaps they have just absorbed its echoes.

Jesus and Jefferson: Mark Noll Reviews Dochuk and Williams in The New Republic

Paul Harvey

Here's a discussion of interest to many: Mark Noll reviews Daniel Williams, God's Own Party, and Darren Dochuk, From Bible Belt to Sunbelt, in the most recent New Republic -- a teaser is online, but you'll have to get the magazine for the rest (or, email me and I'll send to you). Here's a small excerpt:

Recent studies have begun to do better, with two of the best being these books by Daniel K. Williams and Darren Dochuk. Williams, who works from the top down in attempting a broad national perspective, does as well as any writer to date in answering the basic questions of what went into making up the religious right and specifying when the movement coalesced. Dochuk, who works from below in a superbly researched study of grassroots political mobilization, goes far to answer the question of where it came from. The solid history in these volumes should be applauded by all as a welcome alternative to the frenzy of earlier efforts. Yet neither Williams nor Dochuk addresses directly what should be one of the most compelling questions about the political history they describe so well: what exactly is Christian about the Christian right

You will remember we have posted extensively about these important new works, and have put up interviews with Williams here and Dochuk here. Noll adds to the discussion with an interesting conclusion reflecting on historians' own moral evaluations. Noll writes: "neither of these writers carries out the moral evaluation, that, especially, in tandem, their volumes make possible," and then a bit further down,

The merger of Jesus and Jefferson that propelled the New Christian Right was neither made in heaven, as in the eyes of its proponents, nor was it a cynical exercise in hypocritical self-interest, as often portrayed by its opponents. It was rather a historically constructed contingency that, judged from a broad Christian perspective, deserves to be both applauded and denounced."

And he concludes:

Theirs [evangelicals'] is not the tradition of Rerum Novarum, Quadragesimo Anno, or Mater et Magistra. It is instead the tradition of Charles G. Finney, who in the 1830s declared that the problem of slavery could be resolved “in three years’ time” if only slaveholders would recognize that slaveholding was a sin. It is the lineage of Billy Sunday, who in 1919 predicted that Prohibition would empty American prisons and transform the country into a heaven on earth.

The flourishing of conservative evangelical politics in recent American history has done considerable good through the exercise of instinct, anger, energy, and zeal. It would have done much more good, and also drawn nearer to the Christianity by which it is named, if it had manifested comparable wisdom, honesty, self-criticism, and discernment.

"To Normalize the False Teachings of Mormonism the World Over"

Paul Harvey

As the long -- very long -- Republican primary season just begins to get going, here's a little reminder that anti-Mormonism didn't die out in the 19th century, or in the 20th century, or after that: Warren Cole Smith, "A Vote for Romney is a Vote for the LDS Church." A little taste:

Placing a Mormon in that pulpit would be a source of pride and a shot of adrenaline for the LDS church. It would serve to normalize the false teachings of Mormonism the world over. It would also provide an opening to Mormon missionaries around the world, who could start every conversation: "Let me tell you about the American president." To elect a Mormon President is to advance the cause of the Mormon Church.

Yes, like the election of Richard Nixon normalized the teachings of Quakerism, and the election of Clinton the teachings of Southern Baptists. Anyway, further discussion of the evangelical division about Romney's faith may be found here, and doubtless in a million other places in the months to come. As for said pending discussion, don't you know that you can count me out.

Our friend Joanna Brooks is about to fire up a post about this, so I'll update here when that is up.

Update: It gets worse. Joanna recounts her conversation with the author here.

In the meantime, that little blast from the past requires an antidote, so here's an interview with the South Park-ers Trey Parker and Matt Stone talking about their musical The Book of Mormon, the full soundtrack of which I'm looking forward to hearing sometime soon. Maybe they'll follow with a sendup musical about the United Church of Christ, or the Unitarian Universalists.

Update: Also, I meant to put this in the original post, but blog friend and part-time basketball analyst Matt Bowman of Georgetown University reflects here, in The New Republic, on the comparative "business Mormonism" of Romney and contrasts that with the much hipper public image of Jon Huntsman. Taking the two together, he says, suggests a sort of generational shift in internal LDS dynamics and culture. Very interesting reading.

Not into History

Randall Stephens

We've been having a lively discussion on this blog, thanks to Paul's post, and there have been other discussion raging in the blogosphere about David Barton and the uses and abuses of history. The selective use of anecdotes, prooftexts, and the decontextualized way of doing history are closely connected. And, thanks to David Barton and his recent headline grabbing, we have a case in point.

Suppose an amateur Bible scholar said "I know everything there is to know about the Old Testament books of Genesis and I and II Chronicles." Then imagine you asked him/her about what he/she knew about Bronze and Iron Age religion and society, or the development of monotheism in the ancient Near East, or the Epic of Gilgamesh, or the original languages, or the extensive secondary literature written by thousands upon thousands of scholars who know way more about the subject. Then suppose he/she replies "no" on every count. Now, how is it again that this person really knows something important about Genesis and I and II Chronicles? This is a Theron Ware situation if there ever was one. Ignorance of context sometimes gives people remarkable confidence!

Barton does not recognized the idea that the past is like a foreign country. Instead Barton tends to flatten out time and space and make it almost seem as if the Founders are our contemporaries, motivated by the same concerns that motivate us now. Yet people in the past--whether we're talking about leaders of Bronze Age tribes or bewigged 18th century nabobs who tinkered on their mansions, read Montaigne in their spare time, or enjoyed arm-chair speculation about nature and providence--are not the same as us. This seems like a kindergarten point, but it's apparently lost on David Barton. (See his famous and repeated misuse of the word "seminary," in which he makes no effort to explain how that word meant something markedly different in the 18th century.)

At the Way of Improvement Leads Home John Fea makes an excellent, related point about context and Barton's ignoring an avalanche of inconvenient information:

I challenge you to go to Wallbuilders website and find much of anything about the fact that the many of the most important founding fathers rejected orthodox Christian doctrines such as the Trinity and the resurrection of Jesus. Good luck finding any sustained discussion about Thomas Jefferson and James Madison's successful attempt to separate church and state in colonial Virginia or the fact that their efforts were supported by evangelical Baptists with a theology similar to Barton's. These facts of history do not help Barton promote his ideological agenda, so why bother with them?

Right on.

Nearly any trained historian worth his or her salt who takes a close look at Barton and his hyper-politicized work will see glaring gaps in what he writes and talks about. He dresses his founders in 21st-century garb. He's not interested in knowing much about the history of colonial America or the US in the early republic. Why? Because he's using history to craft a very specific, anti-statist, Christian nationalist, evangelical-victimization argument in the present. (Remember the many unconfirmed quotations Barton used in the 1990s? He did so because, first and foremost, he was trying to make a political point.)

In history circles this is what we call "bad history."

Barack Obama and Óscar Romero

By Christopher Jones

Just over a week ago, I returned from a restful and relaxing vacation in El Salvador, where I enjoyed the beach, fantastic food, stress-free post-comps reading (in a hammock, no less), and spending time with family. I also spent a day in Santiago de María, a relatively small town located in the mountains of Usulután where my mother-in-law grew up (and where some of her family still lives). Among my favorite things in Santiago de María is driving down Ave. Monseñor Óscar Arnulfo Romero, named after the martyred Catholic archbishop whose assassination at the hands of U.S.-backed death squads in 1980 helped trigger the outbreak of the Salvadoran Civil War (Romero's brief stint at Bishop of the Diocese of Santiago de María immediately preceded his advancement to Archbishop of El Salvador). I noticed this time that the mural of Romero downtown had been touched up since my last visit there, with a note indicating that it had been done as part of last year's commemoration of the 30th anniversary of Romero's death.

My visit to El Salvador came almost exactly one month after President Barack Obama's visit to Central America's smallest country--a trip that included a much-heralded stop at the tomb of the deceased Archbishop. In large part because of the events in Lybia and elsewhere turned Americans' attention elsewhere, Obama's trip to El Salvador and Romero's tomb received little attention from pundits and commentators--an unfortunate oversight for those interested in the intersections of religion and politics on the international stage. I've been able to track down two insightful pieces reflecting on the significance of the event. The first, authored by Greg Grandin and published at The Nation, uses the opportunity to decry the immorality of the Central American Free Trade Agreement, concluding by offering his hope that

Obama finds inspiration in Oscar Romero’s life: Romero, after all, started his public career as a cautious moderate who believed he could quietly work with El Salvador’s ruling class to coax needed reform. The reality of Salvadoran society forced his conversion into an outspoken, confrontational leader who directly attacked those who perpetuated what he called “structural sin:” “When the church hears the cry of the oppressed,” Romero wrote before his murder, “it cannot but denounce the social structures that give rise to and perpetuate the misery from which the cry arises.” If Romero was alive today, he would recognize CAFTA’s Chapter 10, along with the broader, disastrous policies Washington is pursuing in the Mexico-Central America-Colombia security corridor, as prime examples of “structural sin.”

The second article, posted at Religion Dispatches by Michelle Gonzalez Maldonado, who speculates on the potential affect Obama's visit might have on Romero's candidacy for beatification, but who ultimately sees "Obama’s visit as symbolic of a shift in US attitudes toward Central America":

Gone I hope is the era of intervention and manipulation. The Central America of today is different from the one that saw Romero’s blood shed while saying mass. Some would argue that the crisis of gangs and drugs that is engulfing this region is leading to a crisis that will eclipse the civil wars of the 1980s and 1990s. And yet in spite of the growing violence, figures like Romero give us hope.

As Romero prophetically stated, “I should tell you that, as a Christian, I don’t believe in death without resurrection. If they kill me, I will be resurrected in the Salvadoran people.” The Salvadoran people today, the Catholic Church as a whole, and all who stand as defenders of human rights and denounce injustice should take after Obama and spend a moment remembering this modern-day martyr who did not die in vain but whose dangerous memory continues to empower and inspire us today.

While both of these scholars know much more about Latin American politics and religion than I, their reflections only scratch the surface of this all, and questions regarding the significance of Obama's visit to Romero's tomb remain. (Among the least-significant but most-perplexing is how on earth right-wing pundits did not jump on this opportunity to smear Obama by linking him anew to liberation theology). We're left to wonder with Maldonado if Obama's visit may in fact play any part in Romero's potential beatification (and the contested politics of memory and memorialization more broadly). And what, if anything, does Obama's visit reveal about his own Christianity? Perhaps most significantly, what does all of this mean to the Salvadoran people (including the million-plus Salvadoran immigrants in the U.S.)--those to whom Romero devoted his own ministry?

Commemorating Haymarket

By Heath Carter

2011 is proving to be a challenging year for organized labor in America and yet also a year full of banner anniversaries. Just over a month ago I blogged about the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. This weekend, meanwhile, Chicagoans will mark the 125th anniversary of the notorious Haymarket Affair, which transpired at Randolph and Des Plaines Streets on 4 May 1886. The tragedy that unfolded that night had dramatic ramifications for the American labor movement, spelling the doom, of course, of the Knights of Labor. It had profound reverberations in the world of the religious elite as well, fueling Protestant nativism and a joint Protestant/Catholic backlash against anything that remotely hinted of radicalism. All this is well-attested in the literature. But we know much less about the religious dimensions of the Great Upheaval. The years prior to 1886 saw not only a dramatic spike in the incidents of strikes but also in working-class criticism of the churches, which wage earners perceived to be moving ever more into solidarity with capital. In late-nineteenth-century Chicago, notably, the working classes' critiques were often framed not in materialistic but rather distinctly Christian categories: Jesus was a carpenter and "the laborer is worthy of his hire" were two frequent refrains. More on this at some point soon, but in the meantime, here's an interesting NY Times article that discusses the anniversary in light of current controversies; and also a list of events that the Illinois Labor History society is sponsoring to commemorate the occasion, including Saturday's reenactment and re-dedication of the Haymarket monument in Forest Park, IL. If you know of other events in your area, please feel free to share in the comments section. Finally, for those who don't know about the excellent teaching resources available via the Chicago History Museum website, both the digital collection and Dramas of Haymarket are well worth a look.

The OKC Bombing, the Millennialist Right, and Terrorist Realities and Phantoms in the work of Michael Barkun

Paul Harvey

On a more serious note than the below, and in remembrance of a hugely significant day for my home state, today of course is the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, an event that didn't entirely surprise me (albeit the scale and destructive force were shocking) given the level of conspiratorial and hate-mongering rhetoric amongst the various far right groups that was prevalent in the state prior to that time (although the perpetrator was from New York, and his accomplice from Kansas, so not to overly provincialize the causation). Incidentally, if you ever find yourself in downtown OKC, the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum is a terrific memorial site, largely free of the treacly sentimentalism that I feared would dominate. Instead, the memorial is simple, stark, and reflective, as good a remembrance as one could hope for.

Reflecting on the Oklahoma City tragedy, and its antecedent in the David Koresh and the Branch Davidian debacle at Waco two years previously, the religious studies scholar Michael Barkun produced one of the most thoughtful examinations of the subject, one that foreshadowed a good deal of the culture of fear that emerged after 9/11, in his essay "Reflections After Waco: Millennialists and the State," originally published in the June 2, 1993 Christian Century, and later reprinted in The Columbia Documentary History of Religion in America Since 1945, edited by Phil Goff and myself.

In his essay, Barkun traces the tragic story of the misunderstanding between Koresh and the ATF, and how the inability of the ATF and other agents to understand Koresh's millennialism had the ironic and terrible effect of feeding further into that very millennialism, leading up to the conflagration at the compound and the deaths of the agents attempting to storm it. He wrote of how "the single most damaging mistake on the part of federal officials was their failture to take the Branch Davidians' religious beliefs seriously." Instead, the natural impulse was simply to result to the tag label of "cult": "The very act of classification itself seems to make further investigation unnecessary," made worse by the reliance on a network of so-called "cult experts": "Like many other law-enforcement agencies, the FBI hass relied heavily on this questionable and highly partisan expertise--with tragic consequences. It was tempting to do so since the hostility of those in the 'anti-cult' movement mirrored the authorities' own anger and frustration." The end result, according to Barkun, was that "the government's actions almost certainly increased the resolve of those in the compound, subdued the doubters and raised Koresh's stature by in effect validating his predictions."

Barkun furthered his investigation of millennialist groups on the right with his 1996 book Religion and the Racist Right: The Origins of the Christian Identity Movement, a study of the long history of the Anglo-Israelite movement which somehow wound its way down, in a somewhat bowdlerized but nonetheless potent form, to the latter-day militia movements and other groups who influenced Timothy McVeigh and others of his ilk. Barkun then went on to produce a far-ranging survey of A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America.

Today's UNC Press blog features an interview with Barkun about his new book (the first I had heard of this text) Chasing Phantoms: Reality, Imagination, and Homeland Security Since 9/11. A brief excerpt:

Q: How did you get interested in government homeland security policy?

A: If we think of homeland security in the broadest sense, it goes back to the mid-1990s, the years of the armed standoff at the Branch Davidian compound outside Waco, the growth of the militia movement, and the Oklahoma City bombing. The FBI had failed to grasp the importance of religion in the Waco standoff and was now trying to figure out how to factor religion into their decision-making process, an enterprise in which I was involved. In that period, of course, the emphasis was on domestic sources of violence, not foreign terrorism, a focus that didn’t change until 9/11.