The God Virus: How Religion Infects Our Lives and Culture (10 page)

The fifties were the height of the McCarthy era and the rise of an active civil religion where political witch hunts were used to persecute many who refused to toe the religious line. The United States saw a huge rise in interest in the civil religion and religion in general, while the largely non-religious European NATO countries saw continued decline in religious activity.
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Today’s rise in fundamentalism and active civil religion can be traced back to the perceived communist threat. With the disappearance of communism, the focus has shifted from godless communism to godless
secular humanism. Sermons against secular humanism have replaced those against communism.

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“The chaplain of the Family Research Council says yesterday’s historic Hindu prayer to open the U.S. Senate is ‘just one more step away’ from America’s Christian heritage. The founders of the United States,” says Pierre Bynum, “would never have wanted a pantheistic prayer to open that legislative body.” See also Counterbias,
Dogmatists Seethe, Spirituality Betrayed
[article on-line] (23 August 2007, accessed 20 November 2008); available from
http://www.counterbias.com/917.html
; Internet.

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See “Catholic Church withers in Europe,”
Boston Globe,
2 May 2005. General religious attendance in Europe fell from well over 50% after WW II to 20% or as little as 11% in some European countries.

With the rise of sexual freedom, a dramatic increase in divorce, legalization of abortion and growing use of birth control, many of the more fundamentalist viruses in the United States felt threatened. The reproductive rights movement of the 1960s and 70s was a direct threat to god viruses of all kinds, including Baptist, Nazarene, Catholic and Mormon.

The Moral Majority was a mutation that allowed many disparate viruses to find common ground and create a strategy for infecting the political central nervous system. It was created in 1979 by Jerry Falwell, who recognized that if no single religious group could infect and dominate the political system, perhaps a coalition could. An important part of this strategy was to use the already developed civil religion to achieve the goals. Just as the lancet fluke infects the brain of an ant and drives the ant up the grass blade to be eaten by a cow, the Moral Majority infected the civil religion and drove it up the blade to feed politicians. Infected politicians now work to achieve the ends of the Moral Majority and other similar groups like the Christian Coalition. The civil religion is no longer a benign national religious expression, but a full–blown new civil religion that has strong fundamentalist tendencies.

Falwell and others advocated the need for religion to bind to the culture and take control of the political system. Using the tactics of McCarthy and the language of the new civil religion, they were able to intimidate politicians and guide their candidates into office. As a result, today religion is a virtual test for high public office in many states. Candidates who do not meet the religious test face the prospect of being labeled anti-religious or worse.

As a sign of just how broad and diverse this coalition is, it is worth noting that Mormonism has been welcomed as a full partner. How is it that Mormonism has been able to join this coalition? In times past, Christian sects reviled Mormonism. Indeed, a brief read of the Book of Mormon shows
that Mormonism is anything but Christian in nature, from sacred underwear to becoming gods of their own planets, to Native Americans as the Jewish Diaspora and to Joseph Smith as the last prophet – not Jesus.

The answer can be found in Jerry Falwell’s umbrella strategy. Simply subscribing to the fundamentalist principles of the new civil religion is enough to gain entrance. Some of the principles include ideas like prayer in schools, Christianity as the official religion of the U.S., conservative judges in the courts, opposition to stem cell research, anti-gay marriage, placing evangelical chaplains in the military, anti-abortion and anti-sex education.

The strategy has been somewhat successful. The result of the Moral Majority’s infecting the federal system can be seen in small but effective acts:

• placing specific religious types of individuals on the Supreme Court,

• forcing all candidates for national office to display their religious credentials,

• placing fundamentalist chaplains in the Armed Forces,

• resisting non-Judeo-Christian military chaplains,

• promoting the more religious officers in the Armed Forces,

• restricting stem cell research,

• delaying approval of the Plan B drug for birth control,

• opening an embassy to the Vatican
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,

• restricting condom use and other birth control and prohibiting aid to organizations who might support abortion.

All these and more are recent developments that can be tied directly to the activity of this new civil religion.

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United States politicians have always resisted the idea of recognizing the Vatican as a state and placing an embassy in the Vatican. It was an important concern when John Kennedy was elected. With the ascendancy of the new civil virus, Ronald Reagan saw an opportunity to gain advantage by doing something no American president had even thought appropriate, placing an embassy in the Vatican. Today, the United States recognizes the Vatican as a state with its own U.S. embassy. Had John Kennedy done this, he might have been impeached, certainly vilified, especially by the Republicans. This enormous change in attitude is an indicator of how much the civil virus has infected the United States political system.

This new civil religion is also active in opposing Islamic religious expression as well as creating an unfriendly or unwelcoming environment for other religions such as Hindu, Sikh, Pagan and Wicca. When Keith Ellison, Democratic representative from Minnesota, was elected as the first Islamic congressman, the new civil religion attacked him. Here is an example of its expression on CNN.

On the November 14, 2006, edition of his CNN Headline News program, Glenn Beck interviewed Rep.-elect Keith Ellison (D-MN), who became the first Muslim ever elected to Congress on November 7, asking Ellison if he could “have five minutes here where we’re just politically incorrect and I play the cards up on the table.” After Ellison agreed, Beck said:

I have been nervous about this interview with you, because what I feel like saying is, ‘Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies.’” Beck added: “I’m not accusing you of being an enemy, but that’s the way I feel, and I think a lot of Americans will feel that way.

Many others expressed similar sentiments about Ellison.
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The new civil religion’s purpose seems to be to ensure that the native religions remain dominant.

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Media Matters for America,
CNN's Beck to first-ever Muslim congressman: “[W]hat I feel like saying is, ‘Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies’”
[article on-line] (15 November 2006, accessed 21 November 2008); available from
http://mediamatters.org/items/200611150004
; Internet.

Dennis Prager, a conservative, Jewish radio host, stated that Ellison should not be allowed to take his oath on the Koran since it “undermines American civilization.” He didn’t bother to note that there is no requirement in the Constitution to use any book – Bible or Book of Mormon, etc., – to take the oath of office.
Townhall.com
,
America, Not Keith Ellison, decides what book a congressman takes his oath on
[article on-line] (28 November 2006, accessed 21 November 2008); available from
http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/DennisPrager/2006/11/28/america,_not_keith_elli-son,_decides_what_book_a_congressman_takes_his_oath_on
; Internet.

Rep. Bill Sali (R-ID) an Evangelical Christian, in an August 8, 2007, interview with the conservative Christian-based American Family News Network denounced the Senate leadership for allowing a Hindu to lead the opening prayer. He held that invoking a non-Christian god in the Senate threatened to endanger America by removing “the protective hand of God.” He then went on to say, “We have not only a Hindu prayer being offered in the Senate, we have a Muslim member of the House of Representatives now, Keith Ellison from Minnesota. Those are changes and they are not what was envisioned by the Founding Fathers. The principles that this country was built on, that have made it great over these centuries, were Christian principles derived from Scripture.”

While the new civil religion is not official policy of the United States, it functions in that way. Can you imagine a president today espousing the deistic beliefs of Jefferson or Lincoln? Can you imagine a president who would refuse to declare a day of Thanksgiving as Jefferson did? Can you imagine a president ignoring Billy Graham or his successor as the high priest of the civil religion? Can you imagine a president appointing an Atheist or even a Hindu, Muslim, Pagan or deist as attorney general?

Since the 1980s this mutation of the civil religion has become very influential in the political world in this country. It has infected the highest levels of government. It has succeeded in putting a fully infected person in the White House with George W. Bush. Five infected justices now sit on the Supreme Court, all conservative Catholic. Many officers and officials of both federal and state government are now firmly in place and able to exercise the power of the virus over everything from stem cell research to sex education in the schools and the teaching of geology and evolutionary biology.

The civil religion virus does not care about creeds; it cares about growing and propagating. That is why it can bring some formerly despised groups together. For example, by drawing on Mormon power, it increases its ability to grow and infect the political central nervous system. Mormons are experts at this. They are the most successful of all American god viruses at infecting a political system. In Utah, it is almost impossible to achieve elected office or a position of any influence if you are not a Mormon (except in Salt Lake City). Mormonism is so strong that Mitt Romney was considered a serious candidate for president in 2007-2008 despite the Religious Right’s traditional view that Mormonism is not a Christian religion.

In the Joseph McCarthy era, the most successful tactic was to label anyone who disagreed with him as a communist. This effectively froze
the opposition. Even people as prominent as President Eisenhower were afraid of McCarthy.
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McCarthy was an early vector of the new civil virus. He was skillful in attacking his opponents in such a way that they were immobilized for fear of being labeled communists and dragged before the Senate or investigated by J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI. An objective look at McCarthy quickly reveals that he was a poor example of the Christian values he espoused, but the virus is not concerned about such matters as long as the vector delivers.
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By the time McCarthy died from acute hepatitis brought on by alcoholism in 1957, his usefulness to the civil virus was long past.

McCarthy’s tactics are similar to a combination of tactics seen in chickenpox, herpes, rabies or HIV. Some of these viruses infect the nervous system of the organism where they can stay largely hidden from the immune system – a stealth virus. The nervous system itself becomes a reservoir for the virus to launch attacks as in the case of the chickenpox virus causing shingles in adulthood. Others, like HIV, attack the immune system itself. By disabling key components of the immune system, the virus can propagate unnoticed and unimpeded.

The Taliban used these two tactics in Afghanistan. Lenin and Stalin used them in Russia. Hitler used them as well. The key is to freeze the opposition in such a way that any rational response can be labeled as the “enemy.” Hitler labeled anyone who opposed him as communist; Stalin labeled opposition as capitalist or fascist and the Taliban labels opponents as ungodly, as does the new civil religion. The approach precludes rational discussion or logical examination of the facts. Because infected people cannot see the folly of their religious
beliefs, a simple call to that part of their brain leaves them susceptible to non-rational arguments.

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To see the degree to which Eisenhower was connected to McCarthy, we can note that despite warnings and his own suspicions about McCarthy, he still greeted him at the Wisconsin border and invited him to ride with him through the state on his 1952 whistle stop campaign tour. Eisenhower significantly changed a major speech he gave in Green Bay so as not to offend McCarthy or his supporters. Tom Wicker,
Dwight D. Eisenhower: The American Presidents Series.
(Times Books, 2002), 15.