The dying right: Why Christian fundamentalists are in panic mode

[sheshe2]

The religious right knows that time is running out — and that makes them even more dangerous
CJ WERLEMAN, ALTERNET

Like a cornered animal, which turns instinctively to confront pursuing predators, the Christian Right, knowing it represents the views of an ever shrinking number of Americans, is engaged in an existential fight to the death. Veto or no veto, Arizona’s anti-gay bill is just another of its many efforts to transform America’s secular democracy into a tyrannical theocracy.

The Christian Right’s dirty little secret is they are acutely aware that changing demographics are running against them. While they may believe the earth is a mere few thousand years old, they’re not complete idiots. They can read polls, and the data tells them this: millennials are abandoning religious belief. According to a recent Pew survey, one in four Americans born after 1981 hold no religious belief, which is nearly double the national rate of atheism. Other studies confirm this trend, including a recent study by the Public Religion Research Institute showing more than half of non-religious Millennials have abandoned their childhood faith.

With this in mind, the nation’s radical religious fundamentalists see an ever-shrinking window to impose their Bronze Age worldview on the gay, atheist, liberal, immigrant, heathen, and science book-reading masses. The American Taliban is as deeply troubled by the thoughts of a gay man “sneaking a peak” of a heterosexual man in an NFL locker room as much as they’re freaked out over seeing Cam and Mitchell, the gay couple on “Modern Family,” adopt an Asian child. For the intellectual infants of the American species, progressive culture is nothing more than a 24/7 infomercial for gay sex and abortion. That frightens our unfriendly theocrats because biblical fundamentalists are more concerned with the goings on in the bedrooms of others than they are within the guilt-ridden, sexless confines of their own.

Brian Beutler writes that measures like Arizona’s SB1062 bill have emerged in a number of states out of “a wellspring of conservative panic about the country’s abrupt legal and cultural evolution into a society that’s broadly tolerant of gay people.” He adds, “Rather than deny the shift, or stop at trying to reverse it in legislatures, the courts and at ballot boxes, conservatives are instead attempting to erect a legal architecture that will wall them off from the growing portion of American society that supports equal rights for gay people.”

snip

Chris Hedges says the Christian Right’s ideology calls for the “eradication of social ‘deviants,’ beginning with gay men and lesbians, whose sexual orientation, those in the movement say, is a curse and an illness, contaminating the American family and the country. Once these ‘deviants’ are removed, other ‘deviants,’ including Muslims, liberals, feminists, intellectuals, left-wing activists, undocumented workers, poor African-Americans and those dismissed as ‘nominal Christians’—meaning Christians who do not embrace this peculiar interpretation of the Bible—will also be ruthlessly repressed. The ‘deviant’ government bureaucrats, the ‘deviant’ media, the ‘deviant’ schools and the ‘deviant’ churches, all agents of Satan, will be crushed or radically reformed. The rights of these ‘deviants’ will be annulled. ‘Christian values’ and ‘family values’ will, in the new state, be propagated by all institutions. Education and social welfare will be handed over to the church. Facts and self-criticism will be replaced with relentless indoctrination.”

Read More: http://www.salon.com/2014/02/28/the_dying_right_why_christian_fundamentalists_are_in_panic_mode_partner/

[Warpy]

1. So do the 1%, in no small part because the religious right has finally realized

they were manipulated into voting for crooks who trashed the economy because of fast talk on social issues like abortion, issues the crooks had no interest in actually doing anything about. They had all 3 branches of government 2001-2007 and abortion is still legal, although being attacked at the state level.

I expect both groups to start acting even more like junkyard dogs as time goes on. They'll be too busy to fight each other to bother with us and I think fielding a candidate who will please both sides in 2016 is going to be a very tall order.

[Mike Nelson]

2. Good article, but the sentence...

"While they may believe the earth is a mere few thousand years old, they’re not complete idiots," made be giggle.

[seabeyond]

3. because they went to hate. we are not hate. christianity is not hate. hate loses. nt

[sheshe2]

6. Yes it does, sea. Hate loses. nt

[mindwalker_i]

4. "biblical fundamentalists ... sexless confines of their own"

From my limited experience, the hyper-religious seem to be nymphomaniacs more often than most. Hell, just look at the crop of TV evangelists from the days of yore, like Swaggart and Baker. What I think is happening is that the hyper-religious need other people to badger about their sinning, so as to offset guilt at their own sinning.

Please God, just rapture the fukers already!

[BillZBubb]

5. It is almost Biblical

how the ground just fell away beneath the fundamentalists on the gay rights issue. Give credit to the gay activists and their supporters who correctly framed the issue as one of equal rights, not special rights, and kept hammering that home.

[Tikki]

7. Two of the young other mothers I hung around with in the 1970's have doubled down on the RW...

Two others have moved more to the center and one left religion all together about 10 years ago.

It seems so strange to think that a fun mom I used to go shopping with now lists the 700 Klans as her
favorite TV show.


Tikki

[Cha]

8. the Faux "christians"..

another Kick for now, she.

Thanks, I'm interested in these "religious" deviants being in panic mode. They're an ugly ugly section of America.. and I truly hope their "time is running out".

[sheshe2]

9. Thanks Cha.

It's past time for their hateful message to die.

[William769]

10. They are in panic mode because we are coming after their Kids!