While We Were Sleeping: Virginia’s New Theocrats

While many of us are increasingly impatient about the direction of our country, it’s important to remember the change we seek is all about infrastructure and the long term. It’s also about how we use that infrastructure, whether for the good of humanity or the good of the few. However, when it comes to infrastructure, we don’t even come close to our counterparts on the right, according to The New Yorker article, "God and Country" by Hanna Rosin. We must understand what’s happening, but learn the right lessons.

Rosin tells the story of how Mike Farris, lawyer, minister, and 1993 Republican candidate for Lt. Governor in Virginia has been busy creating one of the linchpins toward long-term ideological and theocratic control of the US government. He created a small conservative, rigorous Evangelical Ivy League for the “Moses Generation,” as he puts it. Built at the behest of both religious conservatives and right-wing politicians, including Karl Rove, Patrick Henry College (PHC) places its students and graduates at the highest levels in the government. They serve in the White House, Republican congressional offices and right-wing think tanks. As Rosin relates, in the final days prior to Election 2004, PHC canceled classes because students had to work in campaigns and get out the vote for George W. Bush. During the New Yorker interview, one intern received a call from Dick Cheney’s office. This same student works in the office of Strategic Initiatives, an office under the direction of Karl Rove.

First, an important aside: Rosin’s snide comments on the fact that many PHC students were home-schooled were unfair, stereotypical, and irrelevant. Shouldn’t progressives support individual choices for families? We say we do in matters of reproductive freedom, freedom of religion, end-of-life decisions, etc. Don’t parents of any persuasion, who dedicate their lives to educating their children, deserve our respect? Furthermore, I’m not questioning the presence of PH on the menu of college choices, but urging awareness.

The central issue here is really thinly-disguised religious infrastructure infused with political purpose. Coincidentally, the same week I read the Rosin piece, I had the privilege of attending a lecture by Episcopal Bishop (Ret.) John Shelby Spong. He spoke of the way religion is often appropriated to wedge divisions among us and promote tribal purposes, rather than bridge divisions. Spong specifically cited PHC as an example of the former. But we are all children of one world under one God. Our interpretations of God differ. Literal interpretations can be used to justify a host of political ideas, he pointed out. Furthermore, those purporting that God loves them more have missed the fundamental point of religious faith. As Spong chides, American politicians of both parties suggest at nearly every opportunity that God uniquely blesses America over other nations. Meanwhile, many Democrats are busy trying to out-religious the theocrats, and out-muscle the chicken hawks. Additionally, though we clearly have election contests, the business of running this country shouldn’t be a contest. zero-sum-game is decidedly irreligious, yet it’s pervasive.

Also recently, in the New York Times, Adam Cohen unmasked a perversion of the zero-sum game culture wars, the logic of Justice Stephen Breyer in voting to permit the 10 Commandments at the Texas State House. One side might have gotten too upset had he ruled otherwise, so he split the difference. In two separate decisions on the same day, Breyer threw a bone to each side. Now, by being aggressive enough, bullies can determine court interpretation.
Still, progressives shouldn’t allow themselves to become defensive of their personal religious beliefs. We owe no explanation or justification of our religious or spiritual lives. They are ours to have. We do owe it to ourselves and our God (for those of us believing in one) not to cheapen or appropriate religion for our own political purposes. The blueprint of sorts is not that we should go and do precisely likewise as Farris. Rendering to “Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s” sounds like a more effective prescription. However, we must take the lesson of infrastructure seriously. The road to a just society will require improved progressive infrastructure for promoting the greater good, even as some try to overcome it for particular advantage. We need benefactors to fund think tanks and other instruments to protect our most private rights, including the right to choose the time, place and manner of our worship. The disadvantaged shouldn’t need to ingest sectarian propaganda (via faith-based initiatives) to receive social services. Those in prison shouldn’t have to choose between coerced religion or longer sentencing, as is happening in some states. We also need TV and radio stations, newspapers, newsletters, rapid response teams in every county, blogs and ideas yet untried. The “free presses” tucked away in small towns and large could be a beginning. But it matters how we use them. Is it for the power merely to have it our way. Or is it to create infrastructures to bring about a just democratic system, cultivating respect and cooperation among all our people? To the latter end, we don’t have a lot to time to play catch-up.
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