Crisis of Christian Identity,
Putting On Our Democratic Armour
excerpted from the book
Democracy Matters
Winning the Fight Against Imperialism
by Cornell West
Penguin Books, 2004, paper
p146
The religious threats to democratic practices abroad are much
easier to talk about than those at home. Just as demagogic and
antidemocratic fundamentalisms have gained too much prominence
in both Israel and the Islamic world, so too has a fundamentalist
strain of Christianity gained far too much power in our political
system, and in the hearts and minds of citizens. This Christian
fundamentalism is exercising an undue influence over our government
policies, both in the Middle East crisis and in the domestic sphere,
and is violating fundamental principles enshrined in the Constitution;
it is also providing support and "cover" for the imperialist
aims of empire. The three dogmas that are leading to the imperial
devouring of democracy in America-freemarket fundamentalism, aggressive
militarism, and escalating authoritarianism-are often justified
by the religious rhetoric of this Christian fundamentalism. And
perhaps most ironically-and sadly-this fundamentalism is subverting
the most profound, seminal teachings of Christianity, those being
that we should live with humility, love our neighbors, and do
unto others as we would have them do unto us. Therefore, even
as we turn a critical eye on the fundamentalisms at play in the
Middle East, the genuine democrats and democratic Christians among
us must unite in opposition to this hypocritical, antidemocratic
fundamentalism at home. The battle for the soul of American democracy
is, in large part, a battle for the soul of American Christianity,
because the dominant forms of Christian fundamentalism are a threat
to the tolerance and openness necessary for sustaining any democracy.
p147
Surveys have shown that 80 percent of Americans call themselves
Christians, 7 percent expect the Second Coming of Christ, and
40 percent say they speak to the Christian God on intimate terms
at least twice a week.
p148
As the Christian church became increasingly corrupted by state
power, religious rhetoric was often used to justify imperial aims
and conceal the prophetic heritage of Christianity. Immediately
after his conversion, Constantine targeted numerous Christian
sects for annihilation-such as the Gnostics and other groups that
questioned the books of the Old Testament-as he consolidated power
by creating one imperial version of Christianity. The corruption
of a faith fundamentally based on tolerance and compassion by
the strong arm of imperial authoritarianism invested Christianity
with an insidious schizophrenia with which it has been battling
ever since. This terrible merger of church and state has been
behind so many of the church's worst violations of Christian love
and justice-from the barbaric crusades against Jews and Muslims,
to the horrors of the Inquisition and the ugly bigotry against
women, people of color, and gays and lesbians.
This same religious schizophrenia has
been a constant feature of American Christianity. The early American
branch of the Christian movement-the Puritans-consisted of persecuted
victims of the British empire in search of liberty and security.
On the one hand, they laid the foundations for America's noble
antiimperialist struggle against the British empire. On the other
hand, they enacted the imperialist subordination of Amerindians.
Their democratic sensibilities were intertwined with their authoritarian
sentiments. The American democratic experiment would have been
inconceivable without the fervor of Christians, yet strains of
Constantinianism were woven into the fabric of America's Christian
identity from the start. Constantinian strains of American Christianity
have been on the wrong side of so many of our social troubles,
such as the dogmatic justification of slavery and the parochial
defense of women's inequality. It has been the prophetic Christian
tradition, by contrast, that has so often pushed for social justice.
When conservative Christians argue today
for state-sponsored religious schools, when they throw their tacit
or more overt support behind antiabortion zealots or homophobic
crusaders who preach hatred (a few have even killed in the name
of their belief), they are being Constantinian Christians. These
Constantinian Christians fail to appreciate their violation of
Christian love and justice because Constantinian Christianity
in America places such a strong emphasis on personal conversion,
individual piety, and philanthropic service and has lost its fervor
for the suspicion of worldly authorities and for doing justice
in the service of the most vulnerable among us, which are central
to the faith. These energies are rendered marginal to their Christian
identity.
Most American Constantinian Christians
are unaware of their imperialistic identity because they do not
see the parallel between the Roman empire that put Jesus to death
and the American empire that they celebrate. As long as they can
worship freely and pursue the American dream, they see the American
government as a force for good and American imperialism as a desirable
force for spreading that good. They proudly profess their allegiance
to the flag and the cross not realizing that just as the cross
was a bloody indictment of the Roman empire, it is a powerful
critique of the American empire, and they fail to acknowledge
that the cozy relation between their Christian leaders and imperial
American rulers may mirror the intimate ties between the religious
leaders and imperial Roman rulers who crucified their Savior.
I have no doubt that most of these American
Constantinian Christians are sincere in their faith and pious
in their actions. But they are relatively ignorant of the crucial
role they play in sponsoring American imperial ends. Their understanding
of American history is thin and their grasp of Christian history
is spotty, which leaves them vulnerable to manipulation by Christian
leaders and misinformation by imperial rulers. The Constantinian
Christian support of the pervasive disinvestment in urban centers
and cutbacks in public education and health care, as well as their
emphatic defense of the hard-line policies of the Israeli government,
has much to do with the cozy alliance of Constantinian Christian
leaders with the political elites beholden to corporate interests
who provide shelter for cronyism. In short, they sell their precious
souls for a mess of imperial pottage based on the false belief
that they are simply being true to the flag and the cross. The
very notion that the prophetic legacy of the grand victim of the
Roman empire-Jesus Christ-requires critique of and resistance
to American imperial power hardly occurs to them.
p154
Some ... prophetic Christians have been branded radicals and faced
criminal prosecution. During the national trauma of the Vietnam
War, the Jesuit priests and brothers Philip and Daniel Berrigan
led antiwar activities, with Daniel founding the group Clergy
and Laity Concerned about Vietnam. The brothers organized sit-ins
and teach-ins against the war and led many protests, notoriously
breaking into Selective Service offices twice to remove draft
records, the second time dowsing them with napalm and lighting
them on fire. "The burning of paper, instead of children,"
Daniel wrote in explanation of their action, "when will you
say no to this war?" Both brothers served time in prison
for those break-ins but went on to engage in civil disobedience
protests against later U.S. military interventions and the nuclear
arms race.
After a lifetime of eloquent Christian
activism, the Reverend William Sloan Coffin should be better known
to Americans today. Chaplain of Yale University during the Vietnam
War, he spoke out strongly and early against the injustice of
that incursion and went on to become president of SANE/FREEZE,
the largest peace and justice organization in the United States,
and minister of Riverside Church in Manhattan. The author of many
powerful books, including The Courage to Love and A Passion for
the Possible, he once said in an interview:
I wonder if we Americans don't also have
something that we should contribute, as it were, to the burial
grounds of the world, something that would make the world a safer
place. I think there is something in us. It is an attitude more
than an idea. It lives less in the American mind than under the
American skin. That is the notion that we are not only the most
powerful nation in the world, which we certainly are, but that
we are also the most virtuous. I think this pride is our bane
and I think it is so deep-seated that it is going to take the
sword of Christ's truth to do the surgical operation.
He also presciently said, "No nation,
ours or any other, is well served by illusions of righteousness.
All nations make decisions based on self-interest and then defend
them in the name of morality."
p157
When African slaves creatively appropriated] the Christian movement
under circumstances in which it was illegal to read, write, or
worship freely, the schizophrenia of American Christianity was
intensified. Some prophetic white Christians be came founders
of the abolitionist movement in partnership with ex-slaves, while
other white Christians resorted to a Constantinian justification
of the perpetuation of slavery. One's stand on slavery became
a crucial litmus test to measure prophetic and Constantinian Christianity
in America. The sad fact is that on this most glaring hypocrisy
within American Christianity and democracy, most white Christians-and
their beloved churches-were colossal failures based on prophetic
criteria.
The vast majority of white American Christians
supported the evil of slavery-and they did so often in the name
of Jesus. When Abraham Lincoln declared in his profound Second
Inaugural Address that both sides in the Civil War prayed to the
same God - "Neither party expected for the war, the magnitude,
or the duration, which it has already attained .... Both read
the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His
aid against the other"-he captured the horrible irony of
this religious schizophrenia for the nation.
Black prophetic Christians-from Frederick
Douglass to Martin Luther King Jr.-have eloquently reminded us
of the radical fissure between prophetic and Constantinian Christianity,
and King's stirring Christian conviction and prophetic rhetoric
fueled the democratizing movement that at last confronted the
insidious intransigence of the color line. In fact, much of prophetic
Christianity in America stems from the prophetic black church
tradition. The Socratic questioning of the dogma of white supremacy,
the prophetic witness of love and justice, and the hard-earned
hope that sustains long-term commitment to the freedom struggle
are the rich legacy of the prophetic black church. Yet Constantinian
Christianity is so forceful that it is even making inroads into
this fervent black prophetic Christianity. The sad truth is that
the black church is losing its prophetic fervor in the age of
the American empire. The power of the Constantinian Christian
coalition must be underestimated.
p164
... the Republican Party's realignment of American politics-with
their use of racially coded issues (busing, crime, affirmative
action, welfare) to appeal to southern conservatives and urban
white centrists. This political shift coincided with appeals to
influential Jewish neoconservatives primarily concerned with the
fragile security and international isolation of the state of Israel.
In particular, the sense of Jewish desperation during the Yom
Kippur War of 1973-fully understandable given the threat of Jewish
annihilation only thirty years after the vicious holocaust in
Europe drove the unholy alliance of American Republicans, Christian
evangelicals, and Jewish neoconservatives.
On the domestic front, the fierce battle
over admissions and employment slots produced a formidable backlash
led by Jewish neoconservatives and white conservatives against
affirmative action. The right-wing coalition of Constantinian
Christians and Jewish neoconservatives helped elect Ronald Reagan
in 1980. The fact that 35 percent of the most liberal nonwhite
group-American Jews-voted for Reagan was a prescient sign of what
was to come. When the Reverend Jerry Faiwell of the Moral Majority
received the Jabotinsky Award in 1981 in Israel, Constantinian
Christianity had arrived on the international stage, with Jewish
conservatism as its supporter. Imperial elites-including corporate
ones with huge financial resources-here and abroad recognized
just how useful organized Constantinian Christians could be for
their nihilistic aims.
The rise of Constantinian Christian power
in our democracy has progressed in stages. First, ecumenical groups
like the World Council of Churches, the National Council of Churches,
and liberal mainline denominations (Episcopalians, Presbyterians,
Lutherans, and Congregationalists)-who spoke out in defense of
the rights of people of color, workers, women, gays, and lesbians-were
targeted. The Christian fundamentalists (with big money behind
them) lashed out with vicious attacks against the prophetic Christian
voices, who were branded "liberal," and worked to discredit
the voices of moderation. In McCarthyist fashion, they equated
the liberation theology movement, which put a limelight on the
plight of the poor, with Soviet Communism. They cast liberal seminaries
(especially my beloved Union Theological Seminary in New York
City) as sinful havens of freaks, gays, lesbians, black radicals,
and guilty white wimps. Such slanderous tactics have largely cowed
the Christian Left, nearly erasing it off the public map.
The Christian fundamentalists have also
tried to recruit Constantinian Christians of color in order to
present a more diverse menagerie of faces to the imperial elites
in the White House, Congress, state houses, and city halls, and
on TV. The manipulative elites of the movement knew that this
integrated alliance would attract even more financial support
from big business to sustain a grassroots organizing campaign
in imperial churches across the country. The veneer of diversity
is required for the legitimacy of imperial rule today.
The last stage in the rise of the Constantinians
was their consolidation of power by throwing their weight around
with well-organized political action groups, most notably the
Christian Coalition and the Moral Majority. With this political
coordination they gained clout, power, legitimacy, and respectability
within the golden gates of the American empire-they were acknowledged
as mighty movers, shakers, and brokers who had to be reckoned
with in the private meetings of the plutocrats and their politicians.
Imperial elites recognized just how useful the Constantinian Christians
could be for their nihilistic aims. The journey for Constantinian
Christians from Ronald Reagan's election in 1980 to George W.
Bush's selection in 2000 has been a roaring success based on the
world's nihilistic standards.
Never before in the history of the American
Republic has a group of organized Christians risen to such prominence
in the American empire. And this worldly success-a bit odd for
a fundamentalist group with such otherworldly aspirations-has
sent huge ripples across American Christendom. Power, might, size,
status, and material possessions-all paraphernalia of the nihilism
of the American empire-became major themes of American Christianity.
It now sometimes seems that all Christians speak in one voice
when in fact it is only that the loudness of the Constantinian
element of American Christianity has so totally drowned out the
prophetic voices. Imperial Christianity, market spirituality,
money- obsessed churches, gospels of prosperity, prayers of let's-
make -a- deal with God or help me turn my wheel of fortune have
become the prevailing voice of American Christianity.
p168
Philanthropy is fine, but what of justice, institutional fairness,
and structural accountability?
p175
... one of the most effective strategies of corporate marketeers
has been to target the youth market with distractive amusement
and saturate them with pleasurable sedatives that steer them away
from engagement with issues of peace and justice. The incessant
media bombardment of images (of salacious bodies and mindless
violence) on TV and in movies and music convinces many young people
that the culture of gratification-a quest for insatiable pleasure,
endless titillation, and sexual stimulation-is the only way of
being human. Hedonistic values and narcissistic identities produce
emotionally stunted young people unable to grow up and unwilling
to be responsible democratic citizens. The market-driven media
lead many young people to think that life is basically about material
toys and social status. Democratic ideas of making the world more
just, or striving to be a decent and compassionate person, are
easily lost or overlooked.
p203
All systems set up to enact democracy are subject to corrupt manipulations,
and that is why the public commitment to democratic involvement
is so vital. Genuine, robust democracy must be brought to life
through democratic individuality, democratic community, and democratic
society.
p203
From the time of that first Athenian democratic experiment in
the fifth century BC to the birth of the American democratic experiment
in the eighteenth century, the consolidation of elite power was
the primary object of democratic revolt. This will to transform
corrupted forms of elite rule into more democratic ways of life
is an extraordinary force ...
p204
The historic emergence of Athenian democracy and the Greek invention
of Socratic dialogue must instruct and inspire our practice of
democratic citizenship in present-day America. Athenian democracy
was created by the revolt of organized peasants against the abusive
power of oligarchic rulers. These peasants refused to be passive
victims in the face of plutocratic policies that redistributed
wealth upward-from the vast majority to the privileged few. The
Greek conception of democracy elevated abused peasants into active
citizens who demanded public accountability of their elected officials.
Their democratic calls for land reform and the cancellation of
debts to greedy elites produced an unprecedented experiment in
self-government.
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