DEMOCRACY IS A FUNNY THING

Praise the Lord, pass the votes: The Republicans' pact with the religious Right reflects a growing divide between the US and other nations (Will Hutton, May 18, 2003, The Observer)

America has always been a nation of churchgoers, with invocations to God part of the national conversation. But over the past 20 years the longstanding American churches - Catholic, Presbyterian, Episcopalian and Methodist - have been haemorrhaging members to the fast growing Pentecostal movement which takes scripture literally as the word of God and believes in salvation earned by individualistic virtue rather than via the mediation of the church. The Republicans have struck a Faustian pact with the Pentecostal movement; they will concede its arguments that abortion and even stem cell research are against biblical text in return for the church mobilising its members to vote Republican. Christianity is no longer above politics.

For the Republican high command this is not just a cynical exercise in coalition building. It believes that America is mired in moral decay, and that the character of the nation must be rebuilt, which begins with improving the virtues of individual Americans by celebrating patriotism and religion. Thus there are prayers before Bush cabinet meetings. Thus routine meeting by interest groups with the administration are punctuated by calls to praise God and the Bible. And thus one of the great benefits of the war with Iraq; it has made patriotism even more pervasive - helping to remoralise the nation around individualism and self-reliance, banishing to the sidelines the role of the social and the commonwealth in supporting good character. Gerrymander and alliance with Pentecostals alike serve the great cause.

American liberals feel their country is being taken from them - and rage in impotent fury. It is impossible to underestimate, they say, how 9/11 has changed the rules of the political game. Security has become the Republicans trump card, and under its cloak the country is being driven unassailably to the Right. This generation of Republicans respect neither the letter of the constitution nor its custom or practice. What they want is an entrenchment of their power and their own idiosyncratic world view - whether prioritising tax cuts to enrich the 'investor class' and so boost Wall Street, or insisting that pre-emptive unilateralism must rule in the name of homeland security. The troika deemed to be in their way - the United Nations, France and the New York Times - are mocked and savaged.

It is such a seismic change in America's political geography, yoking ancient visceral feelings about American exceptionalism with contemporary conservatism, that a growing group of liberal intellectuals believe that not even a Democrat President in 2004 could move the country back to any multilateralist international framework. Professor Charles Kupchan, a member of the Council of Foreign Relations and part of the task force set up to examine how transatlantic relations could be improved is pessimistic. In a well-regarded book, The End of the American Era, he argues that America is set on a path of economic, political and military isolationism. Over the next decade the paths of the European Unions and US will diverge - whoever runs the US. The trends are too deep-seated to overturn.

We'll set aside for the nonce Mr. Hutton's confusion of Pentacostalism with Evangelism, and merely note that it's not the Religious Right if it's an overwhelming governing majority--it's the Middle. That's why you have to doubt that there's a long term basis for such a politics of moral restoration. We'll get back to catching up to Europe on its long downward slide soon enough. Posted by Orrin Judd at May 20, 2003 1:38 PM