Strange days...

Ok, it is a strange day when Al Jazeera TV needs to remind us about the importance of the separation of church and state in the USA but... apparently we NEED it! (check it out: http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/07/20117413402398376.html)

+ Today, Gov. Rick Perry of Texas declared that he was in the race for President on the Republican ticket just a week after organizing a religious rally invoking God's judgment on a godless, morally bankrupt secular American society.

+ Representative Michelle Bachmann won today's Iowa straw poll with her bizarre mix of Evangelical spirituality, lies and fear-mongering. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/13/michele-bachmann-iowa-straw-poll-results_n_926273.html?igoogle=1)

+ And Southern Baptist minister and Fox News Commentator, Mike Huckabee, advises Tim Pawlenty to stay the course.

Five days ago, Susan Thistlethwaite of the Chicago Theological Seminary, ran an insightful column in the Washington Post that bears further reflection given the return of the Religious Right in the 21st century. (check it out: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-faith/post/recession-20-what-can-we-learn-from-faith-during-the-great-depression/2011/08/08/gIQAkfvx2I_blog.html)

Her two key points are clear:

+ Not only are we making all the same economic mistakes today that gave rise to the crash of 1929, and then prolonged it during the Great Depression of the 1930’s, like unregulated boom times and then the failure to sufficiently invest in a recovery, we’re making all the same religious mistakes... In the 1930’s, most people failed to heed the depth of the critique of the economy and of religion by Reinhold Niebuhr, the thundering Protestant theologian who sought a return to “Christian realism” in the 1930’s in order to bring about a new Social Gospel that reckoned with the reality of evil. Instead, in the Great Depression, the only sector of American Protestantism that actually grew was the “sectarian” type that emphasized individual conversion and the imminent return of Jesus in a Rapture.

+ In the 1930’s, most people failed to heed the depth of the critique of the economy and of religion by Reinhold Niebuhr, the thundering Protestant theologian who sought a return to “Christian realism” in the 1930’s in order to bring about a new Social Gospel that reckoned with the reality of evil. Instead, in the Great Depression, the only sector of American Protestantism that actually grew was the “sectarian” type that emphasized individual conversion and the imminent return of Jesus in a Rapture... This is, of course, exactly what is happening now. Harold Camping recently (and incorrectly) predicted the end of the world for May 21, 2011, making him 0-2 for end of the world predictions. Camping, of course, could accurately be described as a sectarian.Even more in the “mainstream” than Camping, however, is the kind of call to repentance and the threat to the nation of the failure to repent that was the main text of Governor Rick Perry’s recent Texas prayer event, “The Response.” Perry’s prayer and bible reading presentation fit into the sectarian framework of individual repentance leading to salvation. This also fits the Niebuhrian critique. While a host of problems from poverty to division in families and nation are decried, very little is actually being done in terms of social justice to correct these conditions.

I have noted before that this strange but troubling hybrid of quasi-spiritual fear mongering - that is obsessed with the End Times - when mixed into a scape-goating political message bears too great a resemblance to the rise of Hitler to remain silent. The economic and social fear in the US is palpable - and President Obama better get off his academic perch and address it head on with prayer AND get-us-back-to-work populism.  Because the alternative of a Bachmann/Perry theocracy is terrifying to consider...

Without a clear, bold and assertive alternative to the fear and scape-goating of the current Religious Right - and without a true moral challenge to indifference - the United States is set to relive the 1930s on many different fronts.