What's wrong with fundamentalist "Christianity"? This.

Here is an example of the ways the people who call themselves "Christians" sow divisiveness for no rational reason. From SF Gate:

(02-27) 15:08 PST SACRAMENTO, (AP) --

An evangelical chaplain who leads Bible studies for California lawmakers says God is disgusted with a rival fellowship group that includes people of all faiths.

"Although they are pleasant men in their personal demeanor, their group is more than disgusting to our Lord and Savior," Drollinger wrote on the Capitol Ministries' Web site.

The comments drew immediate fire from others in the capital, including the Republican lawmaker who sponsors Drollinger's Bible study group.

Drollinger said "progressive religious tolerance" is an offense against God and causes harm to its practitioners.

He said the other Bible study group was perpetrating a "deadly lie" by presenting Jesus as "a good moral teacher who loves everyone without distinction."

Drollinger believes that his unproven religious fantasies, of no better validity than those of Joseph Smith of the Mormons or Muhammad who established Islam, are sufficient reason to set men against each other. He'll not be happy until America is trapped in a set of religious civil wars like those bedeviling Iraq today.

Drollinger's behavior itself is totally immoral and is dangerous to others. He imagines that his personal beliefs are justification for shunning others, and if he were given government police powers, he would happily do worse in the name of his warped "God." He is quite unsuited to minister to elected politicians who are trying to make government work to improve society.

Beltway wisdom reflects imaginary past elections.

Yesterday Digby focused on the discussion between Michael Duffy (Time Magazine) and Chris Matthews (MSNBC - Hardball) on how the Democrats have somehow dissed "Christians" for 25 years, to their political disadvantage. She provides a transcript of their TV discussion and then explains how absolutely out of contact with reality it is. (Media Matters also provided some analysis.) The degree to which "Christians" and people of faith have been dissed is highly questionable, and even if true, the amount of political damage that has resulted for Democrats in Presidential elections is questionable.

Suffice to say that the inside the beltway common wisdom may be common, but it can't be wisdom when it is completely wrong. It is, however, powerful right-wing propaganda, and totally bought into by the inside-the-beltway media.

Today Digby has found a really good political analysis by Lance Mannion of the effect of so-called religious voters on national elections since 1980.

Very briefly, what happened with a significant number of religious voters was that in 1980 the mostly Southern evangelist voters came out to vote while the older conservative reactionary Catholics in the North Eastern U.S. switched to vote for Reagan in reaction against the social changes of the late 50's, the 60's and the 70's. Though they voted nationally for Reagan as President, they also voted for Democrats for lower level offices.

The inherent conflict between the reactionary Northeast Catholic voters and the (anti-Catholic) Southern protestant religious voters was papered over by the Catholics ignoring the fact that the evangelists do not consider Catholics to be Christian. Those groups were a nationally important voting block in the elections of 1980, 1984, and 1988, but decreasingly so ever since.

Manion points out that the religious right has not been the deciding factor in Presidential elections at least since 1988. The Republican candidate has lost three of the last four Presidential elections (including 2000) and may have lost in 2004 except that Rove was able to both suppress a number of key Democratic votes while stealing the election in other key locations. But let me quote him:

Reagan Democrats were not moved so much by their religious beliefs as by a reaction to trends of the 60s and 70s, one of which included Roe vs. Wade. Their motivations were also economic---times were tough and Jimmy Carter didn't seem to be helping or have a clue how to---and "patriotic"---they hated the anti-war movement which they confused with the counterculture in general; they accepted the cant that Democrats were soft, not just on defense, but on crime, drugs, and bad behavior by uppity women, uppity black people, uppity college kids, and uppity gays.

In short, Reagan Democrats were reactionaries, angrily at odds with the times. But times always change, and with them so do people's attitudes. Reagan Democrats have been disappearing from the political landscape since the middle of Reagan's second term. Many have died, many have gotten used to the changes they used to hate and fear, and many have just come to realize that, mad as they were at the "Liberals," the Republicans are not on their side, economically, culturally, or even spiritually---the Religious Right is anti-Catholic, after all.

Meanwhile, the evangelicals have allowed themselves to be used as tools for the Republicans' Southern Strategy, which has always been racist not religious. Piety is just the mask for the the racial animus of a great many white male voters.

The racism that has undergirded Republican victories for the last four decades has never figured in Beltway Insiders' analysis of the political scene. Republican Presidential candidates make the pilgrimage to Bob Jones University every four years because they like the food in the dorm cafeterias.

To the degree that the evangelical vote has been actually a vote of religious conviction, it has been an anti-abortion, anti-evolution, anti-gay, anti-feminist vote.

How Democrats are supposed to win that vote, or why they'd want to, just by talking more about God and Jay-sus, I don't know.
[Emphasis mine - Editor WTF-o[

Manion's evaluation is extremely insightful. He goes on to explain why the inside-the-beltway crowd does not understand the real impact of religious voters, and he points out that they refuse to factor in the fact that the Republicans are depending on the (aging and declining in numbers) racist voters.

The key point Manion makes is that the religious voters are of steadily declining importance in Presidential elections.

Besides, the Evangelists and Biblical Inerrantists are Christian fundamentalist extremists. They don't just reject Democrats. They also reject most other christian denominations, partly by claiming that they are not Christian since they don't follow the Biblical Inerrantists catechisms. They are not a growing political movement. They are powerful in the South, but even there they are coming under effective attack in the urban areas.

The key to the 2008 election is not going to be Southern religious fundamentalist (largely rural) voters. It is going to be suburban voters in suburbs of major cities, and they are increasingly moving towards the Urban Democratic voters. Americans vote their pocketbooks before they vote their religion.

Beside, Jerry Falwell is dead, Ralph Reed has been proven to be a corrupt politician, the Rev. Ted Haggard has publicly admitted that he is a homosexual and Pat Robertson is a nut job calling for the assassination of Hugo Chavez. Oh, and Mitt Romney is a Mormon, not a Christian, while Rudy Giuliani is a transvestite Roman Catholic who has been married three time, the more recent two times to the mistress he had while married to the previous wife. What unites the Republican Religious Right behind any Republican candidate for President?

The clash of cultures in America

Rick Perlstein discusses Sen. Vitter (R-LA) and his apparent hypocrisy. While Sen. Vitter looks to liberals as though he is a hypocrite, he is in fact a member of a culture in which such behavior is NOT hypocrisy.

Sen. Vitter (R-LA) is a conservative christian. He strongly believes in the proposed Constitutional amendment to "protect the sanctity of traditional marriages." He considers divorce and homosexuality to be symptoms that society is falling to pieces around him. Everyone is sinful, and Society is in a great war with Satan, who tempts everyone with sin. Since everyone is sinful, then when one gives in to Satan and sins, it is necessary to recognize it, stop the sin, and ask forgiveness from God - a forgiveness God will always grant to someone who is remorseful.

Once forgiven, then the person must continue the battle against Satan. This is not hypocrisy. It is man's role in the great battle between God and Satan in which the battleground it the souls of inherently sinful men and women. Since Sen. Vitter is aware that even he can succumb to the temptations of Satan, he will have to redouble his efforts to create a society in which Satan has no chance of winning.

So Sen. Vitter had an eleven month affair with a New Orleans prostitute, and Larry Flint identified his phone number as one the D.C. Madame, Jeane Palfrey, released as belonging to one her customers for $275.00-for-90-minutes girls in Washington, D.C. So what? Satan tempted Sen. Vitter's with sin and, as an inherently sinful man, he failed to resist. Now he has admitted his sin, asked (and received) forgiveness from God, and will continue his fight in the great war between God and Satan as before.

His admission of sin and his receipt of forgiveness from God remove any guilt or anxiety, and his christian conservative voters agree with him. He is a sinner, a flawed man, and they will expect him to redouble his efforts to create a more christian nation, one in which Satan cannot win.

This culture is not the culture of either secular or religious liberalism. We find his behavior to be more than just a sin against God. It is profoundly anti-social, and his failure to recognize that and to suffer anxiety over such behavior makes it very likely that he will do it again. Worse, we see him acting out his own failure by using government to punish others if they violate his sense of sin. He wants to pass laws to punish women for what he considers the sin (not the crime, though he would pass and enforce laws to make it such, but the sin) of sex outside of marriage and the (chosen - not innate) sin of homosexuality.

It is easy for Sen. Vitter and the christian conservatives to judge the people they consider sinners because they reject them and avoid direct knowledge of them. Instead of asking why someone did something they consider a sin, they will preach at that person. If a member of their own family or close circle of friend commits such sins, they refuse to talk about it, so knowledge of the impact of such things as the way they treat women and homosexuals is limited to the biblically acceptable language. The personal destruction in the lives of people they condemn becomes God's punishment for their sin rather than the results of the way they treat those they condemn.

Since they never discuss the reality (as opposed to the biblically sourced ideological view) of such events, they never become familiar with the real cause-and-effect sequences. Rick sums it up very nicely:

"Secular (and even religious) liberals will laugh and scoff, and call the whole sordid right-wing ritual a "free pass to sin".

And this will be a reasonable conclusion. It is true that this whole worldview contains within it a profound possibility of what economists call moral hazard - a perverse incentive built into a system that hastens the possibility of bad instead of good outcomes (by way of example, conservatives identify welfare payments as moral hazard: if you pay people who do not work, you give them an incentive not to work). The cynical - I would certainly count Gingrich among them - can exploit it to aggrandize their power.

But I have to insist that this worldview is not inherently about whitewashing accountability. At its best, the theology of sin and redemption is real - for those to whom Satan is real - and a real spur to moral living, to community-building, to humility, to compassion to grace. It can be a genuine and mature worldview - one that recognizes that people are both good and evil, both autonomous and compulsive, loving and hateful."

Rick professes to find good elements about this culture and system of thought. I find it more difficult to accept, since it requires sacrificing an awareness of reality to the requirements of someone else's ideology. Because he expects no punishment, personal or social, for his "sins", I expect Sen. Vitter to commit the same or similar sins again. worse, because he displaces what anxiety he might feel into the motivation to work for God's glory through passing laws that create God's world on Earth and he has no clue what he is in reality doing to people he will never know or admit can be hurt by his actions, I find Sen. Vitter and his worldview profoundly frightening.

But I will agree with Rick when he says that recognition of Sen. Vitter's hypocrisy is not going to cause him any real trouble being reelected. This is a culture clash that has moved from local American politics up to national politics - again.

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Addendum: July 11, 2007 - 12:35 AM CDT
There is the minor detail that then Congress-turkey Vitter was breaking the law when he visited a New Orleans Brothel located on Canal Street. But that is all just the male-dominates-women culture which is also such a big part of conservative christianity.

Sure looks like hypocrisy to me, but I guess if God has forgiven him ....

Naah! I really don't buy it. The man is slime.

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Addendum 2 July 11, 2007 - 1:15 AM CDT
Mark Kleiman has posted a news report on Sen. Vitter's extra marital dalliances.

It isn't yet public, though apparently it's widely known in Louisiana political circles, that Vitter's commercial romance was blessed with issue. Reportedly his natural child now lives with her mother in Alexandria, VA. That they are receiving financial support from the Senator has not been shown.

I wonder why the child's mother is living in Alexandria, VA. Perhaps to be near the Senator?

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Addendum 3 - July 11, 2007 6:26 AM CDT
Jeanette Maeir, ex-New Orleans brothel operator, says of former client, Sen. Vitter "He seemed to be one of the nicest men and most honorable men I've ever met."

MSNBC goes on to write:

Vitter, a first-term Republican who previously served in the House, recently played a prominent role in derailing an immigration bill backed by President Bush. He also is a key supporter of former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani's presidential bid, serving as regional campaign chairman for the South.

Nice, honorable, but unable to keep his sexual behavior consistent with that description. And Rudy Giuliani has chosen him as a key supporter in the South. That says a lot about Rudy, too.

Fear and Faith - the Republican offerings. No future, no progress. Is Bush playing a religious role?

Is bush really religious, or is it a role he plays to bring in the Republican religious right? Glenn Greenwald has one opinion, and booman has another.

Booman thinks it is a scam, one that Shrub took on the help his father get elected President. Glenn thinks that Bush is serious, that he has really needed the "belief in a higher power" to escape from alcohol.

I come down decisively in the middle. I think they are both correct. I suspect that Shrub originally did take on the job of Liaison to the religious right for his father, and he also was trying to quit alcohol at the same time. I think he did the typical addicts' game of talking to please his audience, and used his alcohol problems as an excuse to explain why he had suddenly found God. Then I think it grew on him. Not the religion, but the feeling that he belonged and was accepted.

Then I think he tried to get serious about quitting alcohol and getting back together with his wife. His problem with the twins suggests that it didn't happen early enough in their lives, though. His rather miraculous rise to first Governor of Texas and then to President may have convinced him that God had to be handing him those jobs, because Shrub sure knows that he didn't earn them. What more proof could he ask of God's existence?

If it had stopped there, I have no doubt that Bush would be a seriously religious person. Then came 9/11.

OK. That could just have been the challenge that God placed him into the Presidency to deal with. But then he listened to Cheney and the NeoCons as though they were speaking the words of God for him to follow.

The continued failures since then very likely have shaken whatever there was of his Faith. I really doubt that much is left now.

So I guess I am cynical enough to go with Booman mostly. Just not completely.

Rudi Guiliani - an example of the "new" GOP.

Does the apparent acceptability of the twice divorced Rudolph Giuliani mean that the Republican Party is moving away from dependence on the social conservative voters? Digby looks at that question. He starts from what Thomas Edsall wrote in TNR as he tries to explain how different Rudi Giuliani is from the recent sex-and-morality oriented Republicans. The difference does not seem to be hurting Rudi's polls as it would have in the 1990's.

...many members of the GOP elite--whose overwhelming concern is cutting taxes, a Giuliani forte--would privately welcome the chance to downplay, if not discard, the party's rearguard war against the sexual and women's rights revolutions. Much of the Republican Party's consulting community and country club elite always viewed abortion and gay rights as distasteful but necessary tools to win elections, easily disposable once they no longer served their purpose. Now, with most of the leading GOP contenders demonstrating at best equivocal support for the sexual status quo ante, that time appears to be drawing near.

So Thomas Edsall suggests that the Republican party is changing. The morality leaders of the last twenty years or so are reactionaries who lived through the sexual revolutions of the 1960's and 70's, but they are now disappearing. The recent death of Jerry Falwell and the obvious decline are examples of this disappearance. No clear leaders have replaced those two.

Digby agrees that this change is occurring. However, he disagrees that that this is a symptom of a basic change in reactionary and Southern nature of the modern conservative Republican Party.

I agree with the fact that the GOP is ready to vote for "a hero," but I don't think it signals any kind of substantive change in the GOP. The "values" obsession was just the code of the times for the standard Southern Strategy of white male prerogatives and macho ass-kicking that the Republicans have been running on for 40 years. They are just once more re-packaging their tired old crap in patriotism instead of the Bible, (which they often cycle with "states rights" and "traditional values" among other things.)

Nothing has changed. The Republicans are actually just being more honest than they've been in recent years when they didn't have a boogeyman to beat liberals over the head with and needed to erase the hideous image of that nasty man Newt Gingrich as the face of the Republican Party. "Values" was always just the girly-man version of "Giuliani Time."

The modern Republican party is all about authoritarianism, militarism and domination over minorities, women and gays. Rudy is a perfect candidate. After all, there is no candidate in the race who has humiliated women more masterfully or condoned official violence against racial minorities with more fervor. Of course the South Carolina Republicans love him.

I think this is a really insightful point made by Digby. The Republican reaction to Rudi is a clear example of a change in the nature of the Republican Party. When the Republicans lost the national security issue as a tool to beat the Liberals over the head with they shifted focus to the issues of sexual morality and dominance over women. These were code for the new version of the Republican "Southern Strategy" in which they win by attracting the white Southern racist and anti-immigrant vote.

But now they have 9/11 as a touchstone for everything they do to win elections, and they are shifting back to the more natural Republican issues of national security. The reactionary core nature of the conservative Republican Party has not changed during the twentieth century. Only the messages they use to attract different reactionary voting groups to support them has changed.