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Freethought
Association of West Michigan
Meeting Minutes for April 9, 2003; #136
Topic:
The Fundamentals of Extremism
There were
82 people in attendance at this meeting.
The next
Freethought Movie night was announced. It is scheduled for April
13 at 7PM and hosted by Jason and Deanna Pittman at their house.
Call 616-634-2471 or e-mail jpittman@backpacker.com for more info
on this or upcoming movie nights.
As a reminder,
the American Atheists Convention is slated for April 18-20 in
Chicago, IL. For more information visit: www.atheists.org/convention.
Our Board
Meeting is scheduled for April 23 at 5:30PM at the Yankee Clipper
Library. We will be discussing long term planning and all members
are welcome to come early for this meeting that is held prior
to our regularly scheduled meeting at 7PM. The regular meeting
is on the topic of "US Foreign Policy in the Middle East,"
presented by member and Political Science Instructor at GRCC,
Keith St. Clair.
Camp Quest,
the secular humanist youth camp that has been eight years in coming
to Michigan, will begin its first week of operation on the 1st
week in August of this year. It will be at a YMCA camp area near
Battle Creek, MI. For more information on how you can help with
volunteer services, to learn more about Camp Quest and/or to look
into sending your own child/ren there, contact Jeff Seaver directly
or via info@freethoughtassociation.org.
Our topic
for this meeting was "The Fundamentals of Extremism"
presented by Kimberly Blaker who edited a well- researched and
accessible book with the same title, which is published by New
Boston Books, Inc., Michigan. She also contributed three chapters
and the introduction to this book. Ms Blaker is a syndicated columnist
and writer, social advocate, and staunch supporter of the separation
of religion and government. Her column, The Wall, covering issues
pertaining to the religious right and civil liberties, appears
regularly in news publications around the country. Her commentaries
have also appeared in The Detroit Free press. Detroit News, San
Francisco Examiner and Los Angeles Daily Journal. Her syndicated
articles have appeared in more than 90 regional magazines. She
has also been published several times in the national Complete
Woman Magazine. The Fundamentals of Extremism was inspired by
her award- winning research paper, "Christian Fundamentalism:
A Growing Danger."
The Religious
Right knows the importance of capturing the minds of the very
young. As James ("Focus on the Family") Dobson said:
"Those who control what young people are taught, and what
they experience-what they see, hear, think, and believe-will determine
the future course for our nation." This is an understood
tactic for all forms of indoctrination. It is easier to foist
blind obedience to authority figures when the child is dependent
upon such figures; easier to lay a belief system that will be
powerfully resistant to new information when a youth is still
innocent of critical thinking skills and operating on a more emotional
level. Organized religions have long known of the effectiveness
of very early programming in creating an often- unshakable worldview
and we see creationists working tirelessly to insinuate their
anti-scientific sectarian creation myth in the public schools
while students are still highly impressionable.
Blaker's
book examines how the Religious Right, whom zoologist, Richard
Dawkins (who enthusiastically endorsed her book) called America's
Taliban, is not content to work its will only upon children, but
has a well- funded, highly energized agenda to transform all of
America into a Christian theocracy. It opposes reproductive choice,
homosexual rights, free speech, liberal sex education and the
right to die with dignity.
The links
to terrorism, violence and abuse by fundamentalists is very strong
and they often feel they are waging a war against their perceived
enemies, be they abortion providers, civil libertarians, those
associated with public secular education or equal rights advocates,
among others. The rhetoric takes on a dichotomous us versus them
approach, with fundamentalists on the side of God and others as
the enemies of God and morality. They allow no alternative approach
to any view outside of their narrow constructs.
Christian
fundamentalists, being Bible literalists, believe they have the
definitive truth for every occasion to draw from. They consider
themselves to be the sole purveyors of "family values."
Their form of child rearing, often employing extreme corporal
punishment and the undermining of individuality and liberty of
thought, is the only right way to bring up children for them.
Their view of women and minorities as inferior beings, are seen
by them as biblically endorsed. When a fundamentalist from the
Army of God slays a doctor who performs abortions, or someone
with ties to the Christian Identity Movement kills innocents to
send a message to our secular government, or fundamentalist Christian
homophobes beat and leave a homosexual to die tied to a fence,
they are all doing "God's will."
Since theirs
is not a private, quiet, contemplative system of thought but one
that espouses cultural revamping and domination, all women are
affected, whether from fundamentalist homes or not. Lack of reproductive
choice, educational and career opportunities, spousal abuse, rape,
sexual and mental disorders, and welfare dependency are all highly
related to Christian fundamentalism. And while the Fundamentalist
woman is sharply discouraged from seeking a divorce and is given
to understand that suffering is her lot in life; statistically,
Fundamentalist Christians have the highest incidences of divorce
among all religious groups. Frustration mounts for many women
trapped in living only to give and feel ashamed or sinful when
they have thoughts of pursuing their own interests. Sex is limited
to procreation in the extreme Fundamentalist mind, but if sex
is experienced for pleasure it is the man's sole domain and to
be yielded to him on demand regardless of circumstances.
This secretary
in his own research on fundamentalism and abuse found connections
going from pre-birth, to skin-level, to familial, on outward all
the way to the entire planet. Women are "supposed to suffer"
in childbirth as decreed in the fundamentalist interpretation
of the Bible and they are to propagate abundantly, regardless
of the conditions the child is born into and the burden upon the
woman. Babies learn through their skin before their other organs
play a significant role in their development and since there is
more corporal punishment inflicted upon babies and small children
by patriarchal authoritarian fundamentalists, they begin to associate
themselves with helplessness in the face of forces larger and
more powerful than themselves. A dominating, capricious and cruel
God can replace the same sort of mortal parent experienced. Self
abuse in and of itself has been highly correlated with a fundamentalist
upbringing, but even more specifically, only those brought up
in the Christian faith traditions where the inerrancy of the Bible
is taught are known to number among self abuse cases who amputate
their own hand or remove their own eye(s), in response to the
Bible verses about plucking out the offending eye and cutting
off the offending hand. Female genital mutilation (as well as
the less severe male circumcision) and rites involving torture
of self or others are a part of many religious rituals. Then there
is spousal and child abuse, relating to educational and other
developmental and achievement areas besides physical abuses and
then onto attempts at curtailing the liberties of, and inflicting
violence upon, others outside the kin group and finally all the
way to environmental abuses since those who believe as did fundamentalist
James Watt (Reagan Appointee to Secretary of the Interior) did,
that the End Times are nigh and care for the environment is therefore
unnecessary. And since humans are to have dominion over all the
rest of Earth's biota, the plundering of natural resources and
the abuse of animals is in keeping with fundamentalist beliefs.
Extreme fundamentalists
make a sharp distinction between "Man's law" and "God's
law" and they see the policies of the nation as needing to
conform to their belief as to what their god dictates. This fosters
a holy mission to institutionalize discrimination against blacks
(who suffer, in their view, from the Curse of Ham) or a woman's
place as subservient to men, since they believe a male God made
woman from and for man and that men rule over women as Jesus rules
over the church, or to undermine public education ("Our goal
is not to make the schools better…the goal is to hamper
them, so they cannot grow…Our goal as God-fearing, uncompromised…Christians
is to shut down the public schools…step by step, school
by school, district by district." [Robert Thoburne in The
Children Trap]) in their plan for a Christian theocratic rule.
The overthrowing of secular society is to be achieved by any method
necessary and is fueled by a hatred and intolerance that is seen
as righteous. "I want you to just let a wave of intolerance
wash over you. Yes, hate is good…Our goal is a Christian
nation. We have a Biblical duty; we are called by God, to conquer
this country. We don't want equal time. We don't want pluralism."
(Randall terry, founder of Operation Rescue).
In dealing
with our "godless" Constitution and secular government,
spokesmen for the Religious Right resort to historical revisionism
and outright falsehoods to portray America as a "Christian
nation." They harken more to the Puritans than they relate
to the mostly deistic Framers who founded a country based on strong
disentanglement of government and religion. They ignore the Treaty
of Tripoli that actually proclaims that our nation was not founded
on the Christian religion. They turn a blind eye regarding how
the Founders knew from bitter personal experience the problems
arising from state decreed religion. They do not recognize that
American law was set up to protect the rights and freedoms of
the infidel and minority religion while not actively undermining
the majority religious beliefs. Various bills have been propagated
and heartily endorsed by the Religious Right allegedly to instate
"religious freedom" even though these anti-constitutional
bills would favor and garner governmental endorsement for only
one religious sect, thereby annihilating any sense of the already
existing religious freedom that our country enjoys. As Ms Blaker
noted, America is the most religion saturated industrialized country
on the planet and this is in large part due to the liberty all
religious faiths have to flourish here.
Besides the
strong desire for science to be supplanted by creationism and
other Bible "truths", Fundamentalists have labored long
and hard to have prayer reinstated in public schools. Of course,
this would be their approved version of prayer-they do not seek
to have students on mats facing Mecca, or for them to honor Hindu
deities, Allah, Zeus, etc. They claim that society has slipped
into a moral abyss since "God was kicked out" of public
schools, though the evidence actually runs counter to this, showing
a decline in violent crime, teen pregnancy and a whole host of
other societal ills, upon the heels of Engles vs. Vitale, Murray
vs. Curlett and other cases that removed coerced prayer and Bible
recitation from public schools. Blaker's book notes that nothing
frightens the perpetrator of a bad idea so much as education (literally:
"leading out"). Along with this thought there is the
quote from Adolf Hitler touting religious instruction for youth
and the need for believing people. Prayer has never been excluded
Constitutionally anyway as a personal freedom, but for the Fundamentalist,
quiet personal private prayer is not what is sought. Rather all
must participate in the worship of their god and savior, no matter
what faith or non-faith background the students come from in schools
that are precisely for a diverse student body. They seem to look
the other way as to Jesus clearly forbidding public prayer (Matthew
6:6) as a hypocritical activity.
The spate
of school violence that shook America was not found in hotbeds
of secularism but exclusively in Bible-believing U.S. locations.
There is
also the push by Fundamentalist Christians to have the Ten Commandments
placed in public spaces. It is seen as a panacea, as if seeing
"Thou shalt not kill" would cause a would- be murderer
to slap his head and say: "Oh yeah---whew, that was close-almost
slew a bunch of people today. Good thing I re-read the Decalogue!"
There are many other problems besides direct Establishment Clause
violations in posting this sectarian document (with its many dictates
for monotheism) including that woman is seen as chattel, people
are not allowed to make images, etc. Also there are different
versions of these ten religious laws, creating further division
even among proponents of such postings. Little riles the masses
more than religious disagreement, as can be seen throughout the
history of humanity. Therefore the endorsement of one sectarian
view by government can only lead to trouble (to be euphemistic).
In addition
to the high divorce rate and spousal and child abuse found in
Fundamentalist homes, teen pregnancy is also higher in these settings.
Children from Fundamentalist families are often ill equipped to
deal with sexual matters. Sex education is taboo, condom use or
distribution or any other birth control information is considered
evil and these children learn only guilt and shame for their natural,
sexual feelings that are wrapped up in sin. Unquestioning obedience,
easy, pat answers, a single source for authoritarian decrees and
a fear and shunning of progress, change or any of the trappings
(for good or ill) of modernity all make for a youth who will not
likely explore issues deeply or examine other modes of thought
critically. "Because the Bible says so!" is an easy
out but no more helpful in developing a thoughtful individual
than "Because I said so!" The young person becomes ill
prepared for life in general, not just in dealing with his/her
own body.
In the chapter
"Little Ones to Him Belong", Bobbie Kirkhart relates
a personal Bible-belt experience where teen friends lost their
parents in a car accident. They were denied a eulogy at the funeral
but instead were forced to listen as the gathered people were
told that their dead parents were going to Hell (though no explanation
was given for this declaration by the Fundamentalist clergyman).
He then used this personal tragedy solely for a sermon to the
congregants to leave their sinful ways. The orphaned children's
parents were completely dehumanized; used as a tool to win souls,
while devastating the already traumatized, grieving children.
The author goes on to say: "If Americans can do no more than
protest many of the cruelties and bad judgment that belie the
loud protestations of 'family values,' then we must speak out.
When ideology rules over reality, people suffer, and the most
vulnerable suffer most."
Christian
Reconstructionism (or "Dominionism"), founded by R.J.
Rushdoony was discussed in both the book and Ms Blaker's oral
presentation. This branch of Fundamentalism advocates the stoning
to death ("Stones are cheap and plentiful.") of homosexuals,
adulterers and disobedient youths (among other "offending"
groups) is too extreme to gather a large overt backing, but is,
nonetheless, highly influential to Fundamentalist thought and
many of its most outspoken proponents, including D. James Kennedy
and Jerry Falwell, among others, who have publicly endorsed Reconstructionist
literature. And those who temper their comments to exclude the
more unpalatable aspects of Reconstructionism, still believe fully
that the Bible provides a blueprint for running government. This
sentiment has driven conservative Christians into the political
arena and has found great success in promulgating their agenda
in recent times.
In the chapter
"Inerrancy Turned Political" Herb Silverman quotes Pat
("700 Club") Robertson regarding his vision for the
Christian right take-over of this country. The Religious Right's
political savvy has grown over the years. Stephen L. Carter, author
of God's Name in Vain is also quoted in this chapter: "…the
Christian Coalition has been a force in the Republican Party.
With its member churches, its ability to drum up letter writing
campaigns as well as votes and its stated goal of training 10
political activists in every electoral district, of any size,
in the United States-a projected 1.7 million activists-it has
been, for many conservative candidates, a welcome source of energy
and on the ground troops…and a group nobody wants to have
as an enemy."
In other
parts of the book there is much about the tremendous censorship
and bullying done to prevent any negative information to leak
out about the Religious Right, its stealth tactics, unconstitutional
activities and the abuses in Fundamentalist churches, homes, daycare
centers and camps. What does manage to seep out to the public
is only the tip of the iceberg. The former Christian Coalition
director Ralph Reed said: "I do guerilla warfare, I paint
my face and travel at night. You don't know it's over until you're
in a body bag. You don't know till election night." Continuing
the war analogy he said another time that this was a war…one
fought not with bullets but ballots.
Realizing
that their more extreme views are not mainstream (and therefore
unlikely to garner political success) political advisor for the
Christian Coalition, Antonio Rivera said: "You keep your
personal views to yourself until the Christian community is ready
to rise up, and then wow! They're gonna be devastated." Rob
Boston (assistant director of communications for Americans United
for Separation of Church & State) claimed that the Coalition
was "essentially a far-right political action committee dedicated
to getting the most conservative Republicans possible elected
to public office." This, even though they had tax- exempt
status as being a religious organization. The Family Research
Council was founded (by Gary Bauer) to serve as a political wing
for Dobson's "Focus on the Family" to keep him just
a step removed from direct political involvement in the public
perception. Dobson's attacks are generally of the typical Religious
Right variety. He outdid himself however in attacking the Girl
Scouts for promoting "humanism and radical feminism."
Feminism itself has been tied to lesbianism, and even witchcraft
by other Religious Right spokespersons. In summing up the political
objectives of the Religious Right, Conway and Siegelman (culling
from a wide variety of interviews) said this: "To Christianize
America, to fill all government positions with Bible- believing
Christians, to gain ascendancy over the national media, to have
fundamentalist beliefs taught as science in public schools, to
dictate the meaning of human life and ultimately convert every
person on Earth."
In the chapter
"Winning the 'Battle Royal'" Edward M. Buckner states
the core reasons fundamentalists are dangerous and extraordinarily
difficult to counter are: They "…are absolutist and
unyielding in their certainty they are right; are sure an all-powerful,
all-knowing God is directing them; are part of churches demanding
strict obedience to doctrine and expecting unquestioning loyalty;
are more emotional than rational in maintaining their beliefs
than others, and…are aggressive, militaristic, militant
in their approach-in short, willing to be violent in the course
of doing 'battle royal.'" This chapter also, more than the
rest, compares Christian fundamentalism with that of other fundamentalist
religions. The comparisons are many and the tactics employed and
goals gone after are also quite similar. Nearly all the chapters,
however, take pains to not generalize their critique to religion
itself or devout persons in general. All who address this label
state repeatedly that not all fundamentalists engage in the more
objectionable and horrific activities and beliefs recounted in
the book as a whole. It is noted however that those who see things
in a very dichotomous, black and white fashion, have deep- seated
prejudices, hold a strong belief in men's authority over women,
are more reactionary and less tolerant of other belief systems
and "lifestyles" are much more likely to find a comfortable
home in Fundamentalism.
In the question
& answer period there was discussion over the rejection of
AD/HD as a real medical condition and using medication for its
treatment by many Fundamentalist spokespersons (as explored in
the book and oral presentation); the high incidence of Rapture
belief in the U.S.; the ties of religion, money, power and political
influence; the problems associated in healthcare with religious
organization- owned hospitals (where some conditions are seen
as "sins" rather than health issues to be tended to);
the Catholic Church being the country's second largest land-owner;
the possible links to Islamic Fundamentalist terrorist activity
and the mindset of Christian counterparts; a quoted statistic
of 47% of Americans believing in a literal interpretation of the
Bible, End Times, etc., with Fundamentalist church growth seen,
while mainstream churches are losing congregants; the troubled
times fueling a search for comforting, simple and absolute answers;
the potential problem of news agencies under religious influence
or control; and questions about what can be done in the face of
all this. Is awareness enough, or is a more concrete plan of action
called for?
Secretary:
Charles LaRue
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