Thursday, September 22, 2005
(3:37 PM) | Brad:
Governing from the Fringe
The most recent edition The New York Review of Books is well-worth tracking down. Several very good articles, not least of which being Garry Wills' insightful take on the parallels between the conservative hierarchy of Catholicism and the Bush Administration (sorry, it's not available online for free). This parallel, Willis argues, is represented by four influential Catholics whose names I should've known prior to reading the article: Michael Novak, George Weigel, Joseph Fessio, and Richard John Neuhaus. Willis notes the very powerful coalition formed between old-line Catholicism and major players in Protestant evangelicalism (Chuck Colson, James Dobson, etc.) -- a coalition symbolically solidified, he argues, in the 'miraculous' reception of The Passion of the Christ, and politically mobilized in their passionate struggle against the scientific / cultural mainstream.All very fascinating and terrifying, but I think Wills errs slightly in emphasizing that a minority voice -- of the Church hierarchy, of the American electorate -- is now illegitimately, and dangerously privileged. That is only one part of the analysis, and perhaps the easiest one to make. And thus, too, the easiest to elude.
I grew up a born-again evangelical in the Midwest, washed in the blood of the lamb, and I vividly recall the lessons of my youth which told me that I was a persecuted minority, that secularists, New Agers, Satanists, etc., all had subtly subverted America from within. Friends & family who still consider themselves evangelical tell me that the rhetoric has not changed much, even though the political realities do not support the message -- that is, as Wills notes, the message is always that of the struggle against the secular horde in order to disguise the fact that theirs is a minority holding all the cards. What he fails to appreciate, however, is that evangelicals (perhaps in a way that deviates from the Catholic position detailed in the article article) fully realize the power of a future-based political economy, whereby the enjoyment of the present -- the full actualization of its power -- is never enough; it is, rather, but grounds for more investment & future returns. This explains, in part, their sustained rhetoric as outcast and repressed Other, even in the face of unparalleled political power. And, very cynically, their unwillingness to press their political agenda with the same fervor that they preach it from their pulpits. I.e., instead of calling for a ban on stem cell research, they call for a ban on gvt.-funded stem cell research; instead of insisting that Intelligent Design be theistic, they obfuscate and say they're talking about a 'higher intelligence'.
Apropos the thinking of the newest friend to The Weblog, Tom Altizer, I can't help but wonder: with religion now thoroughly realized in the political arena, and politics played out in the religious, are we living a perverted version of the Hegelian Absolute? A version in which the apocalypse has not yet come, indeed will never come, so long as investment can still be made.
