'Republican Gomorrah Documents' the Christian Right Takeover of the GOP

Dismiss the Christian Right at your own risk

What Blumenthal has captured in chilling reportage is the reality that the Republican Party has been “shattered” by a socio-political movement that has raised political partisanship to the level of a cosmological struggle. Emilio Gentile, a political scientist in Italy, refers to this as the “sacralization of politics.” Not participation in political struggles by the religious, but the elevation of politics to the level of the sacred. For most in the Christian Right, if you are not working with God, then you are a witting or unwitting purveyor of ungodly sin. For the most apocalyptically-aroused participants in the Christian Right’s new political crusades, this involves the struggle against Satan in the End Times.

If you think that references to the Crusades are far-fetched, consider that at the Christian Right’s 2009 Values Voter Summit in Washington D.C., the exhibit hall had a table from the ultra-right Catholic group Tradition, Family, Property, for whom the Crusades and Inquisition were high points of Christian devotion. One earnest young man wore the ceremonial blood-red sash favored by TFP, recalling the red flags that accompanied Torquemada into a Spanish town and which preceded the condemned heading toward the flames at the stake. Not my brand of Christianity, thanks.

The Christian Right and its allies peddle a form of apocalyptic aggression that can be embraced by those anticipating Armageddon, those fighting corrosive sinful society, and secularists with a highly dualistic worldview. As sociologist Brenda E. Brasher has observed, in political struggles, dualistic apocalypticism “leaves no room for ambiguity in the stories told about the ‘Other.’ There is a real hardening of sides. We are good, they are evil. This is not a disagreement, but a struggle with evil incarnate, so there is no structure for a peaceful reconciliation.” The stories surfacing in the angry teabagger, townhaller, and birther movements reflect this aggressive apocalyptic dualism in both religious and secular forms.

Republican Gomorrah ends with a warning about the resilience of the Christian Right: when the country experienced the “worst economic crisis since the Great Depression…the entrepreneurs of personal crisis celebrated ideal market conditions for their next great crusade.”

Blumenthal’s book is a stirring trumpet call for those who have already written off the Christian Right as a powerful force on the political scene in the United States. The death of the Christian Right has been greatly exaggerated. By the end of Republican Gomorrah it is clear the leadership of the Christian Right is composed of many highly-motivated and skillful people. Disagree with them as you wish, denounce them if you must, but dismiss them at your own risk.