She is plainly bright, painfully young, and very earnest about her first book Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism. The only problem with Michelle Goldberg is that she did her research on the fly, has not bothered to understand the language of the community she is studying, and wildly misunderstood it. Nobody would take someone seriously who did not understand the serious differences between Shia Islam and Sunni Islam. Goldberg makes mistakes nearly as serious. . . constantly conflating Pentecostals with Fundamentalists with extreme Reformed theologians as if the differences did not matter.
She has a thesis and she is sticking to it: American Protestant traditional Christians have created a vile sub-culture that threatens our very way of life. This despite the fact that the three issues she hits on hardest: abortion, forcing religion out of schools (including “creationism”), and gay rights were aggressive secularist changes to our nation in the last thirty years. The “religious right” agenda, outside the fringes, is mostly defensive.
In my father’s lifetime, abortion was illegal in most states, prayer was given in our schools and at football games (though nobody was forced to pray), and nobody considered that a vice could become a civil right. Was this a theocracy? Was the nation of John F. Kennedy in the grip of the Taliban?
Allow federalism to work and parents to control their own schools and much of this would vanish. Let Utah be Utah without imposing the morals of New York City on it. Let’s experiment and see who flourishes best in the long term.
Goldberg has little to say about children, other than protecting the right to not have them, and has not (it seems) noticed that her sub-culture is not having them. When she is done living off the cultural patrimony of Calvinist New England and her own roots, who will replenish it? She has, I suspect, made the mistake of many young people in forgetting that she will not be young forever.
She found a good publisher for her stuff, even though every chapter is riddled with howling errors. Since I made the book as a note, I will use her amusing misreading of my work as an example. Long time readers of this blog will get great joy in discovering that I am a post-modernist!
For the full effect of her breathless fact free prose let me give you the whole quote from the note on page 103:
On a very few occasions, the cultural right has even acknowledged its debt to postmodernism. A striking example is found in an essay from Three Views of Creation and Evolution, a 1999 book edited by Discovery Institute fellows John Mark Reynolds and J.P. Moreland. The essay is a defense of young earth creationism- a doctrine that the earth is only around six thousand years old- cowritten by Reynolds and Discovery fellow Paul Nelson. Like many fundamentalist arguments, it starts with the literal word of God and reasons backward. Reynolds and Nelson are honest enough to admit that the evidence from natural science is against them, but they don’t accept the primacy of natural science over Scripture. For them, an old earth has nothing except logic to recommend it. “In a postmodern world, we see no reason for traditional Christians to give up on an idea that intrigues them,” they write.
Let us leave aside her (illogical) misunderstanding of our argument that religion contains knowledge and our use of Quine-like arguments. On her reading (?) of our chapter anyone that believes philosophers (she ignores both Paul’s and my training in philosophy) should have something to say about philosophy of science is a fundamentalist.
She ignores my own religious background, since it appears that only Protestants in her worldview take the Bible seriously. All those misunderstandings can be put down to sloppy reading and rhetoric. After all, who doesn’t indulge in some good hard rhetorical jabs at times? Fair play to her and let’s move on.
However, using this one sentence from our chapter (out of context) as proof of “fundamentalist” appropriation of post-modernity is bizarre enough to give pause. As a quick check would show, my own training is in an analytic department of philosophy, I work for a school that embraces that tradition (to the published chagrin of James K. Smith and the Calvin College sort of post-modern folk) , and I have had little good to say about it. The lengthy introduction to the book, half of which was written by me, lays out a philosophy of science and religion that is more foundationalist or at the most Quine-like. It is not at all post-modern.
As a Platonist , I am no fan of post-modernism. (Of course as a believer in intelligent design inLaws X, Goldberg might think Plato a Christian nationalist!)
However Nelson and I (in the context of a broadly analytic, non-postmodern, chapter) are making the point the post-modern academy has little grounds for telling us we cannot pursue our intellectual interests.
It is a simple argument: I don’t agree with your post-modern views, but your views allow me to pursue my views. . . so leave me alone and stop calling names or risk being called inconsistent. I suspect Goldberg did not read the book, but just went looking for pull quotes. If you were tempted to trust her on anything else, this basic error (one of many of this sort), should put you off her analysis. Goldberg does not understand or sympathize with her subject matter and it leads her to abuse. (One of the most amusing things about secularist reviews of the book is praise for its tone. . . as if Goldberg’s calling most traditional Christians in the nation evil is better because she says it without, mostly, shouting.)
Why does Goldberg misuse us? I suspect because (as it is easy to discover) political conservatives amongst traditional Christians mostly dislike irrational post-modernity and are fond of analytic philosophy. Since she wants to accuse us of all evils, this is a problem. An even bigger problem (see the Emerging Church) is that it is mostly Goldberg’s allies on the Evangelical religious left that make use of post-modern arguments and argue against Moreland, Reynolds, and the conservative foundationalists. If post-modernism is bad, then she better look to her own allies for the problem.
But Goldberg is not arguing a case, just making a point.
Her basic strategy, guilt by association, is to take one more extreme point of view (Christian Reconstructionism), show some connection to a second person (such as Pat Robertson), and then show that a third person has been influenced in some ways by Robertson. By magic, this leads to ideological guilt by association. This sort of argument appears through the book.
A man who speaks hundreds of times a year speaks a few times at groups that turn out to have white supremacist ties. . . really vile folk. They like his talk, but he repudiates them and says he did not know their views on race. Whatever one thinks of this response, Goldberg makes anyone who then uses work by him or associates with this chap “soft” on racism.
Guilt by association was a bad idea when anti-communists sullied their noble cause with it. It is a bad idea now. It is hard to take Goldberg seriously when she asserts that there is someway people like your Grandma could be convinced to stop giving money to AWANA and give it to Christian militias.
On the other hand, Goldberg seems not to realize that ABeka Book Baptists (the worst textbooks ever?) are not going to share the exact same world view as Regent University charismatics! Just a brief look at the difference between Touchstone and Charisma magazines might have given her pause. If you know that Bob Jones and Dallas Willard are both traditional Christians, but have serious disagreements that limits any working together. . . and certainly could never form the basis for a theocracy. . .then you are miles ahead of Goldberg. . . assuming she knows Dallas Willard exists.
(”Ah, but Willard once went to a conference in which a speaker who worked for a school that used Bob Jones texts spoke!” Goldberg might mutter.)
At no point does Goldberg talk to religious conservative intellectuals. Heavens, Goldberg does not interview the Middlebrows such as me that she cites. She does not even talk much to the pop leaders she castigates. Instead she relies on anecdotes from chats with followers she can parody (usually with odd obsessions with their hair, age, and clothing).
Of course, Goldberg never really deals with the overwhelmingly Christian nature of the nation’s past. She skims over or ignores heavy Evangelical influence in both parties through most of our nations history.
Has she read Lincoln’s Second Inaugural? There has never been a more careful, public Evangelical, even Calvinist, theodicy. Has she read the new Lincoln political biography, by an Oxford don no less, that points to the heavy reliance of Lincoln on Evangelical votes and rhetoric?
Shouldn’t she read the new life of William Jennings Bryan, three time Democrat candidate for president, A Godly Hero? Was his interest in intelligent design a desire for an un-American theocracy? When Teddy Roosevelt’s followers left his Progressive convention singing “Onward Christian Soldiers” were they on their way to establish a theocracy?
Was the nation that made “Ben Hur” and “In His Steps” best sellers secular? Was Mckinley in prayer over the Spanish American War different in religious faith from George W. Bush?
Goldberg finds some silly things in the Evangelical sub-culture. . . such as the attempt by pop “historians” in the movement to airbrush the more deist of the Founders. However, even this is not new as the biographies of George Washington (Mason Weems anyone?) Evangelical Christians have always been such a dominant voting block that a politician ignored that at their peril.
No Christian leader I know or could support wants to suppress political speech, including Goldberg’s. No Christian leader I know wants to see America turned into a theocracy or believes the Republican party is always right or has a lock on virtue. Most Christians I now would be happy if they could have been left alone and the extreme secular left had not tried to force their moral values, which they were free to practice in the areas where they were a majority, on the rest of us.
Goldberg evidently does not believe this. but then she thinks anyone opposed to changing the definition of marriage is opposed to American values.
In fact, the only thing new about today’s politics is that we have a large enough secular class that one party (the Democrats) has decided to ignore the traditional Christian majority. Goldberg conflates all Christian traditionalists at times, but then to avoid looking like she is arguing against the majority tries to pare them down to the 7% or so of very conservative Protestants.
Of course, the eighty percent of Americans who are Christians are mostly traditional in their views (gay marriage is bad, abortion is man slaughter, Jesus is Lord). . . so she has to make this sort of move. She most divide the eighty percent to let her twenty percent find a right to govern. In fact, the African-American community, more fundamentalist than the Anglo community, should note that their votes are being used to drive a secularist agenda which could not survive without them.
Anyone traditionally religious should make note of this sad fact. The Republican party is not God’s party heaven knows, but the Democrat party seems to be falling into the control of those who hate traditional religion. (One can only hope the secularist purists do not take down Lieberman and begin to finish off the sensible wing of that proud party which includes so many of my friends.)
As Goldberg points out a vote for the pro-life, Catholic Casey is acceptable since he will help the mostly secular majority of the Democrat party and defeat the pro-life, Catholic Santorum (who someone is conflated into the 7% by Goldberg magic. She loathes traditional Catholics as much as Protestants, but she is smart enough to play politics.
It is worth noting that Goldberg is Jewish and keeps trying to tie the right to anti-Semite groups. . . without much success. At times she seems almost wistful for an economic or military crisis that will lead to such an evil result. (”They don’t listen to anti-Semites now, but they might if things really fall apart.” is a decent summary of the sub-text of her hopes.)
To be anti-Semite is to fail in Christian charity and it is wicked. My guess is that the worlds Jews, especially the religiously active, have much, much less to fear from traditional Christians (who repent in sorrow over any and all association without anti-Semite groups) than from the secular Europeans who are making fashionable anti-Jewish noises. She doesn’t seem likely to be much more tolerant of those who would keep the Law of Moses for religious reasons than for those who love the Jew from Nazareth as He has traditionally been worshipped.
Extreme secularists like Michelle Goldberg present Hilary (!) Clinton with a problem. The bizarre misunderstandings, condescension to people of traditional faith, and extreme political analysis presented in her book are not rare on the secular left as a quick reading of blogs will show. Will Hilary repudiate them? If not, she cannot win.