American Politics 2

2 Religious Conservatives:

First I want to say that I do see some real spirituality in conservative churches. People are really looking for the meaning of life in many of these churches, and they are considerably less superficial than ordinary, commercialized American souls like me.

BUT what I find shocking is the utterly superficial way in which they approach the Bible. I asked a cousin of mine, who is a religious conservative, what he would do if there were Jews in his house and the Nazis asked if he were housing Jews. He answered that he would trust in God to advise him at such a point. In other words, there is no real struggle with the text in the Bible, no discussion on which of the 10 commandments to prioritize if breaking one of them is necessary. No religious conservative really wants to discuss what it means that the stars were created on the third or fourth day and there was no sun on the first day so the days of creation are not literal days. No religious conservative wants to answer the question, "Were all the different types of monkeys, snakes, lions, bugs, etc. put into the ark of Noah?" Aside from the fact that many of these insects and animals eat each other, the many variations within each species is astounding?" If the religious conservative says, "2 of each kind," then it comes down to an argument of whether an ark can fit all those different types of animals. If he says, "only 2 snakes, male and female," he must admit that there is variation of species created by environment changes and time changes, which is an evolutionary belief. There are many other questions that are never answered in a religiously conservative church like "Where did Cain's wife come from?" In general, there is a style of radical simplification in religiously conservative churches. Nor are these churches limited to the American South. Gradually, over time, conservative churches have grown in the North. Pastored groomed in Southern Biblical Schools are sent to the North to teach the Northerners the True Religion.

Now, the reason that I mention religious conservatives as a political power is because they are a political power in America. Politicians and commentators in Britain are always shocked by the role that religious conservatives play in American politics. This is a fundamental difference between US and Britain.

As a political group, they believe in introducing "Intelligent Design" into the public school system, their first step into putting fundamentalist Christianity back into schools. They've been stopped so far, but it's too early to tell if they may not succeed in the future. Michele Bachmann, a member of the US House of Representatives, is certainly a religious conservative, and she supports "Intelligent Design." Just In case you are not familiar with the term "Intelligent Design," it is Creationism repackaged as a pseudo-science.

Generally, as a political group, religious conservatives want to bring back the good old days when Protestantism was the religion of the land and gays were not liberated and abortion was illegal. It never occurs to them that making abortion illegal has made no difference in amount of abortions in South Korea. In France, when abortion was illegal, there were still plenty of abortions. In a certain communist country, abortion was illegal but the political leader was a complete dictator. Also, what about wars in which so many women are raped or killed. Are fundamentalist Christians going to dictate that these women not get abortions? In a conservative church I once went to, all that mattered about Obama was that he was a very liberal supporter of abortions.

Single-issue voters do not just exist with religious conservatives, but I just wanted to stress that there are single issue religious conservatives.

Religious conservatives are supported by two other types of conservatives, Neoconservatives and Conservative Libertarians. Neoconservatives, in many ways, utilize conservative religious support for their own ends. Conservative Libertarians utilize religious conservatives for "limiting federal government's power." Neither Conservative Libertarians nor religious conservatives want the government stepping in on local problems. Let the local state or market solve the problem.

Although Conservative Libertarians and Neoconservatives now support religious conservatives like Michelle Bachmann under the "Tea Party," it is hard how much they will really support Michelle Bachmann. Religion, according to Leo Strauss, the founder of Neoconservatism, is a "noble lie", basically utilized by the government for its own ends.
Reagan utilized Christianity to attain conservative goals. George Bush and the Neoconservatives utilized the support of the Christian Coalition for the war in Afghanistan and Iraq. But religious conservatives are not simply going to be tools to achieve the ends of other type of conservatives. They have their own agenda to push. And they have... in many local levels, they are getting intensely involved in politics and succeeding at times.