Fundamentalists. The
word raises spectres of all kinds – ignorance, homophobia, chauvinism, dedication
to ideas and ideals that are rage-driven, politically affiliated, exclusive of the
rights of majority of humanity and narrow in their definition but wildly
permissive in execution. Take your pick. Since 9/11 the West, led by a media
consumed with lust for big headlines, has mostly attributed fundamentalism to
Muslims who are blatantly political and less noticeably religious.
By comparison Christian fundamentalism seems pretty benign and
when it started it was, but it has become something pernicious now. It started
out in the late 1800s, amongst British and American evangelicals who didn’t
want to embrace change and rebelled against the new theological ideas that
broke away from traditional interpretations of God, the Bible and the origin of
life as industrialization took hold. They had a narrow interpretation of the
Bible, and they stuck with it. God was talking directly to the world through a
group of men and every word was His word. There were no human errors in it and
it was taken literally.
So, amongst other things, there really was an Ark and Mary
was a virgin when Jesus Christ was born. He really did turn water into wine and
rise miraculously and very physically from the cross after he was dead.
Fast-forward to America today. Christian fundamentalism is
no more open to new ideas than it ever was before. Now it’s characterised by homophobia,
xenophobia and a belief that people are poor because they’re lazy and therefore
undeserving of any kind of assistance. Passages in the Bible that seem to
support any of these ideas are quoted and those that contradict it are
conveniently ignored.
This peculiar brand of Christianity has become firmly
entrenched in politics and in particular the Republican Party, with politicians
quoting selectively from the Bible to justify their policies. For example, in
May 2013 the House Agriculture Committee convened to discuss cutting $4.1
billion from SNAP – the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program – by slashing
the budget for the Farm Bill which funds SNAP. GOP
Congressman Stephen Fincher cited 2 Thessalonians 3:10 to justify his
support of slashing the budget:
“For even when we were with you, we gave you this command: Anyone
unwilling to work should not eat.”
These were the words of Paul, a self-confessed blasphemer,
persecutor and insolent opponent of Jesus Christ who shifted with the wind and then
became a persecutor and insolent opponent of anybody who didn’t agree with
Jesus Christ. Bit of a runaway ego there.
Apart from that and the fact that Fincher chooses a
homophobe to guide him, Fincher’s assumption – shared by many Republicans - is
that people who are poor are unwilling to work. So let the bastards starve. Let
their children go homeless and above all never give them access to decent
medical care. No doubt if these Bible thumpers had been alive during the Great
Depression they would have also attributed it to just general laziness of the
American public.
Interesting that after voting to cut SNAP by more than $20
billion, Fincher supported a proposal to expand crop insurance subsidies by $9
billion over the next 10 years. Even more interesting, Fincher himself is the
second largest recipient of farm subsidies in the US. Between 1999 and 2012 he
has collected $4.8 million - $70,000 last year alone. The average SNAP ‘handout’
is $1586.40 a year and goes to families whose income is below a certain level. Crop
insurance subsidies don’t have income limitations. Payments are direct and
according to EWG
(Environmental Working Group) “go predominantly to the largest, most profitable
farm operations in the country.”
In December 1.3 million people spent Christmas with an axe
over their head as they stood to lose their unemployment benefits by December
28. The House refused to extend the deadline for the benefits ending. A quote
from Deuteronomy is appropriate here:
11 For there will never cease
to be poor in the land. Therefore I command you, ‘You shall open wide your hand
to your brother, to the needy and to the poor, in your land.’
Not all Republican politicians are heartless bastards,
though. Nevada’s Republican Senator Dean Heller has
co-sponsored a bill with US Senator Jack Reed to extend the benefits for
another 3 months until a compromise can be reached. Whether the House will pass
it or not is another matter, but Heller, who is very conservative in many other
regards, had this to say: “Providing a safety net for those in need is one of
the most important functions of the federal government.” But what chance does
he have against fundamentalist Christianity – an oxymoron if ever there was one
– that is tearing apart the Republican Party?
Ralph Reed, founder and chairman of the Faith and Freedom
Coalition, said
in May 2012 "Conservative people of faith are playing a larger role in
shaping the contours and affecting the trajectory of the Republican presidential
nomination contest than at any time since they began pouring out of the pews
and into the precincts in the late 1970's." Never a truer word was said. They
lost that election in 2012 and since then the Tea Party has crucified the
Republican job approval rating.
South Africa's Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a man of giant
stature, wrote a book "God
is not a Christian: And Other Provocations". Amen to that. God is
definitely not an ignorant, self-serving fundamentalist politician, that’s for
sure. Christianity is supposed to be about the best of humanity but the fundamentalists
of today have turned it into a very different sort of animal - fundamentally
anti-social, heartless, ill-informed and politically divisive. They’re doing
the GOP no favors as they turn it into a party that's astonishingly low on good
sense and hell-bent on self-destruction. I seriously doubt that up in heaven
God, Jesus Christ and even Paul are giving them a standing ovation.
