Through a glass, darkly | Harper's Magazine - December 2006

Through a glass, darkly: How the Christian right is reimagining U.S. history - Jeff Sharlet

One thing is clear:  Jeff Sharlet has a beef with Fundamentalists.  And I share it.  But is it worthy of an essay in Harper's?  Is this "movement" really so strong as to be a threat to our liberties?  He might have a point.  The stuff that is spouted by these folks comes off as cataclysmically dangerous.  In fact, it doesn't sound much more far-fetched than the nonsense that comes from radical Islam.

Yet these people are Americans, right?  They can't be dangerous.  Heck, aren't they pro-freedom?  Don't they want the government off our backs?  Well...that's one way of looking at it.  They certainly want government to be smaller (and I think that would be a good thing.)   But they would also pass laws that limit your actions to those things that are "approved", which means righteous, as in whatever the latest leader of the flock interprets the Bible to mean.

This is a truly dangerous thing.  The last thing we need is a theocracy.  Yet, even today, as we have seen in an earlier essay, the American people won't tolerate an irreligious person in the White House.  They have to pass a basic litmus test of at least believing in God and making a show of buying into the divinity of Christ.

Mr. Sharlet paints a picture of these radical Christians building an army of the future via homeschooling and tent revivals.  I simply don't buy it.  Are the ideas of these people dangerous?  Yes, it can certainly be seen that way.  Are they taking over?  Hardly.

The people that Mr. Sharlet profiles are on the fringe.  They are strange.  Given enough of them, we would be in big trouble.  But most people are smart enough to see that these folks are not quite mainstream.

My fear, and Mr. Sharlet does NOT suggest this in the essay, is that if we act, as a society, or via government, to suppress or stop these folks from their wacky ways, then we are committing the gravest sin that a society is capable of committing.  It takes all kinds.  For all of the silly right-wing hardcore the United States is a Christian nation believers out there, we have as many or more who believe and think in hundreds or  thousands of different ways.  Suppressing thought simply because we think it is dangerous is itself a dangerous thing to do.  What if our thoughts are the targets of suppression?

We should be vigilant against the bizarre and the foolish.  Reason, hopefully, will win out.  Mr. Sharlet is to be thanked for his consistent and relentless exposition of these fringe thinkers.  Read this essay and judge for yourself.  If you're a believer, then you'll think I am nuts, that I am lost and I cannot be saved.  If you're like the majority of Americans, you'll likely feel a bit uncomfortable by the behavior of the main characters portrayed there.

Hey, it makes for fun reading at least.  That's probably why it made it into Harper's.  It certainly wasn't because American civilization is about to collapse because of a handful of Fundamentalists.