Evangelicals on the offensive, right?

Evangelical radicalization in the United States fits nicely into the pattern of the development of religious fundamentalism elsewhere in the world.

It is, as Muslim fundamentalism is, an anxious response to modernization and secularization.

It has, as Muslim fundamentalism has it, a desire to conquer state power.

It also has, even as Muslim fundamentalism does, a great program for the training and deployment of religious "jihadists" who will infiltrate society and lead the country in the "right path."

And, like other fundamentalisms, it is quite unsuccessful after all.

In the late 80s, into the 90s and right up to George W. Bush, Protestant fundamentalism, also known as the Christian Right, was a discredited movement. Liberal and secular humanists exhaled and thought they could blow their father over.

But beneath the surface, fundamentalists are still building their counterculture in the United States.

Reason or mysticism

In recent weeks, we have been told that the American evangelicals are more or less taking over the entire United States. Fortunately, it's not that bad. The impression has also been that this is a relatively new phenomenon. But that's not it either.

The United States has lived with its peculiar and Protestant form of fundamentalism since the 1500th century, when the American colonies copied the violent witches in Europe, though on a far more modest scale. In the 1600s, religion retreated to the inner comforts of society as it struggled violently with the same dilemma that religious backdrops had on the ancient continent: how should religion relate to the rise of modern society with its knowledge of the world, space and man?

Some tried to demystify and rationalize their beliefs; modernize it simply. Others rejected reason and sought refuge in the absolute spiritual truth. In the United States as elsewhere, the religious community was split in two. The movements that hard-handedly modernized and centralized their dogmas did best, such as the Quakers, Baptists and Presbyterians. In the 1700th century, the Anglican Church sailed across the Atlantic. It established itself in Maryland, with a watchful eye on the possibility of the establishment of a kind of parish church.

The first religious revival in the United States came as early as 1734. It spread like wildfire in populated areas, starting in Massachusetts, Connecticut and Long Island. People cried, prayed and cheered in an ecstatic release of religious energy. It ended in depression, mental illness and mass suicide – if one is to believe the story. It was the first mass movement at all in the new country. But unlike later revivals, it was not political, nor did it include the rich and powerful. On the other hand, it created a new schism within the Protestant (Calvinist) society. The ancient theologians in Old Lights believed that Christianity should be enlightened and rational, and had nothing but contempt for mass hysteria and ecstasy. It was a religion for the upper class, while the masses went to the theologians New Lights with its emphasis on emotion-based religion and love for the anti-intellectual. These so-called neologists were separatists, and it was to be of decisive importance for the development of Protestant fundamentalism towards the end of the 1880s.

A messianic project

The hallmark of true fundamentalism, as we interpret it today, is that it carries with it a political goal. In practice, this means that religion does not content itself with being religion. It will shape society and create the rules that people should live by.

In the United States, Protestant fundamentalism was for a long time a pure revival movement that ebbed and flooded – well into the 1900th century. But there is an interesting exception. During the formation of the state in 1776, religious and secular interests merged in the successful attempt to break with tradition and the British Empire. For the majority of Americans, Calvinists as they were, state-building was a messianic project — an introduction to the kingdom of God on this earth. The founders of the American Republic, on the other hand, were an aristocratic elite who saw the state as a rational and secular project. In the constitution drafted by the Philadelphia Convention in 1787, God was not mentioned in a word. And in Bill of Rights, which came two years later, the religion was formally separated from the state.

It was the first time Protestantism was thrown out of the state. But it should not be the last. The emergence of two nations was already underway. Both the religious and the secular part of the United States have proven to be incredibly tough and viable. And the struggle for the state has remained a constant factor throughout the history of the American continent.

The attempt to wrest the liberal and secular, and especially hated, East Coast elite ownership of the state is thus a feature of religious fundamentalism. Another feature is the ideology of hatred that has ridden large parts of the Protestant movement throughout the years – although it too has ebbed and flooded.

In 1774, images of British government members were carried along with images of Satan in religious and political rallies. That same year, King George III was proclaimed the Antichrist when he gave the Catholics in Canada religious freedom. The pope was subjected to the same anger. Over the years, the pope has been the Antichrist and Satan, and Satan and the Antichrist alternately. Later, hatred has been directed at Congress, the government and the president, immigrants and experts, the World Bank and the Monetary Fund, the blacks, women, homosexuals, abortionists, liberals of all kinds, the shah of Iran…

It was this pathology of hatred that gave rise to the raving mad Timothy McVeigh when he blasted the federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995. But then we have shifted the story.

A third important element of religious fundamentalism is the religious one. It sounds obvious, but is easy to forget. For secular people in our time, it is almost impossible to take seriously the fact that there are people who want to establish a totalitarian world caliphate. It is just as difficult to relate to the idea that the United States must be saved into religion so that Americans can be saved on the last day.

American Protestant theology has been strongly influenced by premillennialism. In short, Protestants are looking forward to the coming, all-encompassing and utterly devastating war between God and Satan that will plunge today's wicked society into destruction. Before the promised Millennium, Jesus will return to earth to save a few elect.

At the bottom of this worldview lies a deep pessimism and a downfall vision. There is nothing good in the modern world. The people of this world do not improve morally, as the philosophy of the Enlightenment presupposes. On the contrary, they are increasingly depraved and decay into unrestrained materialistic and sexual orgies. Eventually it gets so bad that God has to intervene. People will be afflicted with unbelievable calamities, but from this purgatory, believers will emerge victorious and live with Jesus in the eternal kingdom.

It is a philosophy of revenge that disrupts religion and its original humanistic dimension. It is also nihilistic and destructive. It was this destructiveness that Protestantism in the United States had to shed before it could become political. Because if society cannot be saved and everyone is just waiting for the Millennium, it will be reasonably futile to try to save the world or lead the country in the right path.

It is in the continuation of this downfall vision that one finds the Christian right's support for the Zionist project. Namely, the final millennium cannot come into being until all the Jews are back in the Promised Land. In the radical Christian tradition, the Antichrist will eventually convince many Jews that he is the Messiah. But 144.000 Jews will reject Antichrist, repent of Christianity and die as martyrs. The Antichrist will then stage horrific Jewish persecutions that end with an eerie number of death victims. Only a few Jews should escape.

For the truly militant Protestants, the support for the establishment of the Jewish state is not a project of solidarity, but a vision of a genocide – and thus entirely in the spirit of modernity.

Growing up in the north

After the revolution, the United States was a divided country. The secular and liberal upper class remained on the East Coast, while Protestants attempted a new Messianic project: they headed west. And it was here, in the endless plains, that they were picked up by ministers who started the second great revival wave towards the end of the 1700th century.

It was more radical than the first; should not only save people but also shape society and the state. It led many Americans away from classical republicanism and into vulgar democracy where all individuals must fight their own. It is a tradition that has remained. And it is precisely this tradition, represented by George W. Bush, that Europeans have such a hard time understanding.

In other words, the second revival wave created a character trait in the young nation that we recognize today. But it was also more anti-modernist in that it was a response to a rather painful modernization. Like other fundamentalist movements, the American Protestants are abandoning the rationality inherent in today's modern states. They seek a religious identity where ancient values ​​derived from the Bible underlie the development of state and society.

American Protestant fundamentalism did not emerge in the southern states, as one might think. It grew in the northern states. This is where modernization came first. And that is where the liberal tradition stood strongest. The need for a counterculture was therefore greater in the north. In the south, fundamentalism emerged as late as the 1960s, when it was the turn of the south to modernize.

With increasing influence from the north, conservative southern states throughout the 1960s were confronted with liberal and secular values. And here too the result was a bitter, religious reaction. But in the late 1700th century, the southern states did not even agree to the second religious revival. And one had to wait until the third revival in the mid-1800s before the religious uprising reached the affluent middle class.

It is typical of fundamentalist, or just religious, revivals that they often occur in the wake of major disasters and sudden changes. The revolution was the first initiating factor. The Civil War was the second. And in the series of causal connections, one can well see the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001 as a nth initiating factor for the emergence of religious radicalism.

But it is also typical of fundamentalist movements in our time to suffer defeat. And so did the religion in the United States in 1925. The thing that discredited the religion was the controversy surrounding Darwin and the theory of development. When the fundamentalists sued the young teacher John Scopes for teaching Darwin's theories, it was done. It was too crazy for the vast majority.

The fundamentalists changed strategy. They began to build a counterculture in order to take over state power.

Insulation and counter-offensive

Two things happened after the trial against Scopes. One was that the fundamentalists withdrew and began to build a counter-offensive to the modernity that had caused them so many defeats. The second was a significant turn to the political right.

By 1930, there were already fifty fundamentalist Bible schools in the United States. During the Depression years, 26 more were established. At this time, Wheaton College in Illinois was the fastest growing college in the entire United States. Newspaper and radio empires saw the light of day. When television came in the 50's, Billy Graham, Rex Humbard and Oral Roberts became young and brilliant televangelists. They were to be joined by Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Jimmy Swaggart and James Robison, to name a few.

It was a purposeful building of power at the local level. College and Bible schools became a "bastion of faith" whose purpose was to educate militant Protestants who would eventually enter society and defend the authority of the Bible. It had a content of separatism, and a form of segregation – also because some of these schools denied blacks access. Protestant fundamentalism was and remained a white Anglo-Saxon phenomenon. This is in contrast to the Pentecostal movement which arose as much in the black society as in the white. But the Pentecostal movement never really became part of religious fundamentalism.

Throughout the 1960s and 70s, the Christian Right became aware that they had enormous power potential. They had cut off the liberal wing of Christianity, but entered into an alliance with conservative non-religious, or non-fundamentalists, who saw Christian-right emphasis on morality and family as more in line with their own values.

It was a formidable network. 1300 evangelical radio and television stations had over 130 million listeners and viewers. One in three adult Americans said they had experienced a religious conversion. This led to Pat Robertson's famous statement in 1980: "We now have enough votes to govern this country."

It was a violent offensive, and it had three causes. The first was the development in the southern states, as already mentioned. The second was the formidable growth of the (hated) federal state, followed by a series of mandatory Supreme Court rulings: the ban on prayer at school and the introduction of free abortion, among other things. The third was that the fundamentalists decided to scrap premillarism and work to save the United States anyway.

It was a counter-offensive that was reactionary and in some of its facets even fascist and totalitarian. It was the fight against equality, the fight against free abortion, the fight against the rights of gays, the fight against feminism in all its ramifications; in short, fight against all liberal values. For the fundamentalists, there was one thing that mattered: either the liberal and secular state took their toll on them, or they had to take their toll on the liberal state. The enemy was and still is secular humanism.

And then… Bush!

The foremost player in this counter-offensive was Jerry Falwell and his Moral Majority, formed in 1979. The purpose was to build a new conservative majority. In order to achieve this, both Jews and Catholics were saved. It was a break with a long tradition of separation, and a break with the pope's hatred.

It cost them some votes. And the broadest support still came from white Protestants, not least from Baptists. But Catholics and other conservatives could support the Moral Majority in issues related to abortion, gays and tax breaks for free schools. It was a declaration of war against the liberal East Coast establishment.

But the Moral Majority failed to do the job. The challenge was too difficult. The entire movement was more or less down due to sex scandals, corruption and the lawsuit against Bill Clinton following the Monica Lewinsky affair. And Pat Robertson in no way won the 1988 presidential election.

In 1987 Jerry Falwell resigned as head of the Moral Majority. Those who took over were extreme fanatics who went much, much further than Moral Majority had done. They talked about God's sovereignty, campaigned against abortion clinics, and blasted Oklahoma City. It was a radicalization that was precisely due to the spectacular defeat.

But as earlier in history, it turned out that fundamentalism was not completely dead. It was set for a new era under Bush junior – or was it?