The Collision of Religion and Politics: A Review of Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism by Michelle Goldberg

Title: Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism
Author: Michelle Goldberg
Edition: Paperback
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company (2007)
Pages: 253
Challenges: GoodReads 2011 Reading Challenge
How I Came by This Book: I've mentioned before that I'm researching a book that encompasses myriad topics. This particular book was cited in something that I read (although I can't remember what) and I was instantly interested in reading it. It was obtained from my library.

About the Author: Michelle Goldberg is a contributing writer to Salon. Hew work has appeared in Rolling Stone, the New York Observer, the Guardian (London), Newsday, and elsewhere. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Synopsis: In this journey through an America in the grips of a fevered religious radicalism, Michelle Goldberg takes us from the classroom to the megachurch to the federal court, demonstrating how the growing influence of dominionism--the doctrine that Christians have the right to rule nonbelievers--is threatening the foundations of democracy.

Review: I've discussed my views on religion (as well as my own non-religious identity) on here before, but I think that it's important for me to revisit that before I review this book. I'm a live-and-let-live kind of guy. I respect the right of every citizen to hold their own beliefs, whether they be highly religious or not at all. I do, however, strongly believe that no one's personal views on the existence of a higher power should ever infringe on someone else's freedoms. This means that you can believe what you want to but you can't tell anyone else what they can or cannot do based on those beliefs. This is why the idea of Christian Nationalism scares the crap out of me.

There are many in this country who erroneously believe that Muslims in America are just itching to implement Sharia law. After reading Goldberg's book, my attention has been turned elsewhere--to the small but vocal population of evangelical Christians who are actively seeking to impose Christian law on an increasingly secular United States. Kingdom Coming is well-researched and uses sources from evangelicals, secularists, and everyone in between to construct a convincing and terrifying picture of the growing influence of Christian fundamentalism in U.S. politics.

Relying not only on books, journals, and newspapers, but also on her skills as an investigative journalist and a number of interviews conducted with leaders and followers within evangelical Christianity, Goldberg shows the ways in which those with radical religious beliefs are trying to mold domestic and foreign policy to fit their own agenda. From abortion and sex education to gay marriage and charity work, Goldberg provides ample evidence for her claim that the growing number of evangelicals in this country have set their sights on taking control of government. This is not to say, of course, that every evangelical believes in dominionism or that every single leader in one of these churches is using his or her position of power to influence their followers into voting for a fundamentalist agenda. Yet, Kingdom Coming does an excellent job of raising awareness of those who do and it uses their own words as well as incredibly sound analysis of the available evidence to shed light on what is becoming a big movement within Christianity.

One of the most troubling aspects of the Christian Nationalist movement is the use of revisionist history and other agents of disinformation. Rewriting history to suit one's own needs is always verboten in my mind, regardless of who is doing the rewriting. What's really scary is that these misinformation artists are gaining popularity and believers, people who truly don't realize that the founding fathers didn't create the United States as a Christian nation and who will fight to their last breath to prove the complete falsehood that separation of church and state is an evil to be eradicated. Even people as notable as former VP Dan Quayle are guilty of pushing the idea that only those who believe as they do should have freedom in the U.S. Goldberg's book is full of well-documented and damning evidence showing the large number of people in power who have bought into the nationalist movement and who are using it as an excuse to curtail liberty and justice for all.

Kingdom Coming is a short, easy-to-read book that raises (and answers) a lot of interesting points. Although published before the advent of the Tea Party and other current radical right-wing movements, the information contained within its pages is just as (if not more) relevant to today's political landscape. Even after the end of the Bush presidency, the influence of radical Christianity in government and society is pointedly obvious to anyone paying attention. This book is a must-read for those who are looking to place this influence in context or for those who simply wish to gain an understanding of dominionism and Christian Nationalism.

Much of the book is shocking and quite a bit of it will make you rethink what you thought you knew about religion, the political process, and conservative politicians. Her interviews give a human face to the movement and to its people. You find that many of its proponents are regular people who only want the best for their families and who have been sucked into powerful religious organizations because of their fears about the world at large. They are people of faith who have been led to believe things that aren't true by people with lots of influence and deep pockets. This, I believe, is the saddest part of all. I truly feel that a good, honest education (without an underlying agenda) is a right for all Americans and the fact that there are people who are being purposely miseducated makes me beyond angry.

I'm giving Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism 5 out of 5 Gabriels.

-Gabe

Resist the Temptation of the Beast: A Review of Perelandra by C.S. Lewis

Title: Perelandra
Author: C.S. Lewis
Edition: Hardcover
Publisher: Macmillan Co. (1944)
Pages: 238
Challenges: GoodReads 2011 Reading Challenge
How I Came by This Book: Nonners from Ridiculous Reviews has gotten me hooked on C.S. Lewis, first by suggesting that I read The Screwtape Letters and then insisting that I check out the first book of his Space Trilogy, Out of the Silent Planet. This is the second book in that trilogy, which I intend to finish by the end of this year. Perelandra was obtained at my library.

About the Author: Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) was one of the intellectual giants of the 20th century and arguably the most influential Christian writer of his day. His major contributions in literary criticism, children's literature, fantasy literature, and popular theology brought him international renown and acclaim. He wrote more than thirty books, allowing him to reach a vast audience, and his works continue to attract thousands of new readers every year. His most distinguished and popular accomplishments include The Chronicles of Narnia, Out of the Silent Planet, The Four Loves, The Screwtape Letters, and Mere Christianity. (taken from a much longer bio at HarperOne)

Synopsis: Written during the dark hours immediately before and during the Second World War, C. S. Lewis's Space Trilogy, of which Perelandra is the second volume, stands alongside such works as Albert Camus's The Plague and George Orwell's 1984 as a timely parable that has become timeless, beloved by succeeding generations as much for the sheer wonder of its storytelling as for the significance of the moral concerns. For the trilogy's central figure, C. S. Lewis created perhaps the most memorable character of his career, the brilliant, clear-eyed, and fiercely brave philologist Dr. Elwin Ransom. Appropriately, Lewis modeled Dr. Ransom after his dear friend J. R. R. Tolkien, for in the scope of its imaginative achievement and the totality of its vision of not one but two imaginary worlds, the Space Trilogy is rivaled in this century only by Tolkien's trilogy The Lord of the Rings. Readers who fall in love with Lewis's fantasy series The Chronicles of Namia as children unfailingly cherish his Space Trilogy as adults; it, too, brings to life strange and magical realms in which epic battles are fought between the forces of light and those of darkness. But in the many layers of its allegory, and the sophistication and piercing brilliance of its insights into the human condition, it occupies a place among the English language's most extraordinary works for any age, and for all time.

In Perelandra, Dr. Ransom is recruited by the denizens of Malacandra, befriended in Out of the Silent Planet, to rescue the edenic planet Perelandra and its peace-loving populace from a terrible threat: a malevolent being from another world who strives to create a new world order, and who must destroy an old and beautiful civilization to do so. (taken from GoodReads)

Review: While I obviously wrote a review of Out of the Silent Planet, I've found that, when I'm trying to actually talk to people about it, I'm never quite able to get at the heart of what I love about it. A friend of mine recently found the Space Trilogy at a used book store and while I was attempting to explain why he should read it, words actually failed me. Maybe I'm better at writing about books than I am at talking about them. Or maybe it's just that over time, as the book has settled into my brain, I've found so much to love about it that it all gets jumbled up on the way out.

With this undying adoration in mind, I turned to Perelandra, the second book in the trilogy. Once again Dr. Ransom travels from the safety of Earth to a far off planet--this time, Venus--and finds himself inextricably linked to what happens to the inhabitants of that world. I had been expecting another Out of the Silent Planet, with Ransom's humanity allowing him to connect with the Perelandrans and becoming a better man for it, and in some ways that was what I found. I was dismayed, however, by the fact that Perelandra was more of a treatise on temptation than it was a novel. Lewis' signature writing style--warm, sweeping, and highly imaginative--was present, but the book seemed to be more in line with The Screwtape Letters than with the first book in the trilogy.

I think The Screwtape Letters is a fantastic book and I would read it again in a heartbeat. That doesn't mean, however, that I enjoyed Perelandra. The book follows Ransom as he befriends one of only two sort-of human inhabitants on Venus. She is the Green Lady, the Eve of this world, and has become separated from her Adam (the King) due to the fact that most of the planet is water with a few floating islands and that Maledil (God) has forbidden either of them to live on the "fixed land." Soon after Ransom's initial encounter with her, Weston, one of the men who had kidnapped Ransom in the first novel, falls from the Perelandran sky in a space craft and begins trying to befriend the Green Lady as well. Ransom soon realizes that this is not Weston at all, but a demon, possibly even the Devil himself, using Weston's body in order to achieve his nefarious goal on that planet--to cause the Green Lady to disobey God, thereby leading once again to the Fall of Man.

Now, I have no problem with the premise of this novel. The idea is fascinating and I rather liked the Green Lady. I think she has a point when she insinuates that it is knowledge and not time that makes you older. I also think that this is a book that could have been done well had it not devolved into the three main characters sitting around talking the entire time. Lewis is a masterful writer and his ideas about philosophy and theology are usually well-reasoned--even if I don't agree with them, I enjoy reading what he has to say. But Out of the Silent Planet was a novel with a plot and it was exciting. Perelandra, while beautifully-written, was more an exploration of an idea than a novel.

Towards the end of the book, things did begin to pick up. I won't give anything away, but there are a few chapters that had me wondering what was going to happen next. These chapters soon gave way, however, to more of the same plodding narrative that I had come to associate with this book. To add insult to injury, the book's final chapter basically spiraled into a paean that lasted for way too long and that made me wonder whether or not Lewis had decided that the book was just a few pages too short and that he needed filler.

One thing that I did love about this book was how refreshingly unique everything was. Like Malacandra, everything about Perelandra was so different from anything I ever could have imagined and yet Lewis excels at description so I had no trouble picturing it all in my head. The thing that I've come to like most about Lewis' works is how fully they transport me to the worlds depicted within them. Perelandra is the rule in this respect, rather than an exception. While it took me a few chapters to get into the setting of the book--mostly because of the way the narration was delivered by someone outside of the story, which was distracting from time to time--once I was in, I was in. Perelandra became as real to me as Malacandra did and it was every bit as hauntingly beautiful.

As much as I would like to rate this book as highly as I've rated other Lewis books, I just can't. I wanted more doing and less saying. I missed the hnau of the first book (Lewis' characters might say that I was a backward-looking person and that I didn't appreciate the new because I was too attached to the old), as well as the feeling of inclusion that I had reading Out of the Silent Planet. Whereas that novel didn't bash you over the head with religiosity, Perelandra not only did, but did it with a sledgehammer. Gone was the universality that I had associated with Maledil and with the themes of the previous book. This one makes no bones about being a decidedly Christian narrative, which wouldn't be an issue if it weren't that it is so markedly different from the first novel. There is, of course, a reason for this--Malacandra represents the old ways of the universe, whereas Perelandra represents the new. The new, for Lewis, is Christianity.

There was a lot to like about this book, but there was even more that I disliked. I'm looking forward to reading That Hideous Strength, the last book in the trilogy, but I know that, when I do read it, I'll be going into it with a much more guarded approach. With two vastly different narratives preceding it, who knows what I'll find within its pages.

I'm giving Perelandra 3 out of 5 Gabriels.

Favorite Quote:
Ransom: How far does it go? Would you still obey the Life-Force if you found it prompting you to murder me?
Weston: Yes.
Ransom: Or to sell England to the Germans?
Weston: Yes.
Ransom: Or to print lies as serious research in a scientific periodical?
Weston: Yes.
Ransom: God help you! (p. 96-97)

I just love how Ransom seems to have his priorities a little mixed up.

-Gabe

PS: The title of this review was taken from lyrics to a 2Pac song. I've never heard it before, but a quick thank you to Google to finding a pretty fitting set of lyrics from the query "songs about temptation."

A Devilishly Good Time: A Review of C.S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters

Title: The Screwtape Letters
Author: C.S. Lewis
Edition: Hardcover
Publisher: The Macmillan Company (1943)
Pages: 160 (but according to GoodReads it's 224 so I'm counting it as such for my 1,000,000 pages challenge)
How I Came By This Book: This was suggested to me by the always awesome Nonners so I picked it up at my library
Challenges: GoodReads 2011 Reading Challenge

Synopsis: The story takes the form of a series of letters from a senior demon, Screwtape, to his nephew, a junior "tempter" named Wormwood, so as to advise him on methods of securing the damnation of a British man, known only as "the Patient."

Screwtape holds an administrative post in the bureaucracy ("Lowerarchy") of Hell, and acts as a mentor to Wormwood, the inexperienced tempter. In the body of the thirty-one letters which make up the book, Screwtape gives Wormwood detailed advice on various methods of undermining faith and promoting sin in the Patient, interspersed with observations on human nature and Christian doctrine. Wormwood and Screwtape live in a peculiarly morally reversed world, where individual benefit and greed are seen as the greatest good, and neither demon is capable of comprehending or acknowledging true human virtue when he sees it. (from GoodReads)

Review: Best known to the world at large as the author of The Chronicles of Narnia and Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis' was a prosaic writer whose numerous fiction and non-fiction works espoused his beliefs and explored Christianity in a deep and meaningful way. The Screwtape Letters is a Christian text, yes, but its lessons stretch beyond the boundaries of Christianity, breaking down the barrier between theology and philosophy. It is a funny, thought-provoking book in which even the most godless of heathens can find enjoyment.

C. S. Lewis
(If I ever become a famous author, this is the kind of picture
I want on my book jackets--me in a huge chair with a huge book.)

Wormwood is in trouble; his "patient" has become a Christian. Even after spending all that time chipping away at his soul, Wormwood has been unable to fully secure him for the denizens of Hell. "Affectionate" Uncle Screwtape is determined to set his inexperienced nephew right and writes him a series of letters giving him advice as to how best to turn the patient from God and into the clutches of the Devil. This advice ranges from helping the patient find worldly friends who find God to be laughable to getting the patient to try different churches to making him too proud of his religion so that he commits the mortal sin of getting a swelled head. As the book progresses, the "Patient" turns closer to God and Wormwood gets closer to being food for his fellow demons.

I've made no secret of my views of religion and spirituality, but I've also made no secret of my interest in other viewpoints. When Nonners suggested I read this book, I took one look at the synopsis and went, "Oh, yeah, this book's going to be amazing." And I was right. Although short, this slim volume packed a big punch. Screwtape, although a demon, is strangely likable in a "wow, you're a crazy psychopath" kind of way. It's not that I want the demons to win out in the end (although, I do like it when villains succeed), it was that he was funny and was so set in his ways that he became a laughable character.

The strength of this isn't in Screwtape himself, though; it is, instead, in the way that Lewis gets you to think about things. Yes, the humor is a big plus, but the meaning of the book is far more important. As someone who has spent a decent amount of time studying Greek philosophy, I found that there were parallels between Lewis and Plato. The same questions that Lewis raises have been around in one form or another since the dawn of time. What is the nature of love? What does it mean to be pious? How does friendship influence belief? Lewis also explores man's predictability, the ways in which humans act and interact, and the deleterious effect of pride (known as hubris in Platonic dialogues). Although meant for a Christian audience, I argue that The Screwtape Letters can have implications for people of any (or no) faith.

Hey there, Plato!

At its heart is a story of betterment--you shouldn't want things in excess, you shouldn't allow yourself to be felled by pride, you shouldn't turn away from your beliefs because of the people around you, etc. Lewis's Screwtape talks about fear and courage, love and hate, good and evil; all are things which most people deal with on an almost daily basis. I'm in no way suggesting that Lewis intended the book for such a wide-reaching audience, but that's beside the point. Whether he intended it or not, The Screwtape Letters is readable regardless of your views on religion.

The only real issue I had with the book was Screwtape's (and, by extension, Lewis') dismissal of history. As I have a BA in history and intend to study the subject for the rest of my life, I am, of course, biased. Regardless, I believe that the assertion in this book that history is useless and that it only serves to confuse people as to the nature of Christ or, really, any historical figure is wrong. Scholarship of any sort can be incredibly useless and, while there are historians who try to rewrite history for their own ends, there is merit in the construction of a historical Christ and in the exploration of history in general.

Obviously, Lewis and I are of different minds, but the passages in which he bashes history were truly the only cringe-worthy ones that I found. Other than that, I found The Screwtape Letters to be an enjoyable book, one that I would probably read again. Even with my limited theological knowledge, I found that understanding the Biblical references wasn't difficult at all and, from an historical perspective, it was fascinating to read about World War II from the fictional perspective of a demon. It didn't hurt that my copy was published only a year after the book's initial publication.

I found myself engaged in Wormwood's struggle to net the "Patient's" soul and, if I can perfectly honest, the book was almost too short. Even though it came to a satisfying conclusion, I wanted more. Lewis' mind works in such a fascinating way and the mixture of religion and philosophy drew me in completely. I'm giving The Screwtape Letters 4 out of 5 Gabriels. 1/2 a star gets docked for the length, another 1/2 gets lopped off because I didn't like what Lewis said about history. I don't care if that sounds biased or childish or selfish. It's my blog. :)

Favorite Quotes:

It is funny how mortals always picture us as putting things into their minds: in reality our best work is done by keeping things out. (p. 25)

I gather they are even vaguely pacifist, not on moral grounds but from an ingrained habit of belittling anything that concerns the great mass of their fellow men and from a dash of purely fashionable and literary communism. (p. 53)

...hatred is best combined with Fear. Cowardice, alone of all the vices, is purely painful--horrible to anticipate, horrible to feel, horrible to remember; Hatred has its pleasures. It is therefore often the compensation by which a frightened man reimburses himself for the miseries of Fear. The more he Fears, the more he will hate. And Hatred is also a great anodyne for shame. To make a deep wound in his charity, you should therefore defeat his courage. (p. 147)

Most Hilarious Note Found in the Book:

As this is a library book, there was a little bit of writing in it. At the top of letter sixteen, someone had written the following:

 Shows the author, after all, subject to the disadvantages of being Anglican, not Catholic.

Lewis, who was a devout Anglican, probably had no such thought in his mind when he wrote that letter. What makes this note even funnier, however, is that, in a later letter, Screwtape advises his nephew to turn the "Patient's" religious feeling into pride, which is a great sin. My college is historically Catholic, although it hasn't been religiously affiliated for years, and my guess is the person who wrote that note all those decades ago was probably a Catholic...a very proud Catholic. Whoever it was hopefully learned their lesson after reading Screwtape's letter on pride.

-Gabe