Wednesday, May 31, 2006
The Lobster Pot
Just how dangerous is the religious right? That's a question that Red State Rabble has been asking himself for a long time now, and one, quite frankly, we haven't yet settled satisfactorily in our own mind one way or the other.
On the one hand, religious zealots, once thought to be on the lunatic fringe, now find themselves in positions of real power at the local, state, and national levels. Many of them are being financed by tax dollars provided under the largess of the president's program for faith based initiatives.
On the other hand, it's difficult to see how the religious right will escape their rural base in the South and West to make inroads into urban areas. We see signs that moderates have already grown tired of the fundamentalists machinations in Kansas and are preparing to throw them off the school board here.
Of course, all that could change if the country were to sustain a severe economic shock, another terrorist attack, or some other, as yet unimagined, calamity.
Michelle Goldberg, the author of Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism believes that for those of us who value secular society, "apprehending the threat of Christian nationalism is tricky. It's like being a lobster in a pot, with the water heating up so slowly that you don't notice the moment at which it starts to kill you."
Read an excerpt from Goldberg's book here.
On the one hand, religious zealots, once thought to be on the lunatic fringe, now find themselves in positions of real power at the local, state, and national levels. Many of them are being financed by tax dollars provided under the largess of the president's program for faith based initiatives.
On the other hand, it's difficult to see how the religious right will escape their rural base in the South and West to make inroads into urban areas. We see signs that moderates have already grown tired of the fundamentalists machinations in Kansas and are preparing to throw them off the school board here.
Of course, all that could change if the country were to sustain a severe economic shock, another terrorist attack, or some other, as yet unimagined, calamity.
Michelle Goldberg, the author of Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism believes that for those of us who value secular society, "apprehending the threat of Christian nationalism is tricky. It's like being a lobster in a pot, with the water heating up so slowly that you don't notice the moment at which it starts to kill you."
Read an excerpt from Goldberg's book here.
