Black Mass: How Religion Led the World into Crisis (19 page)

… there has been throughout American history, with only the briefest exceptions, a single style of diplomacy, once the United States has turned its attention from the problem of the defence of the Republic and its territorial expansion to distant problems, to the problems of the larger world. That style has been a compound of the American experience of isolation and a moral fervour that is explicitly theological in origin.
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Beliefs of this kind have informed America’s foreign relations as much in times of isolation as in periods when it was engaged in large-scale intervention abroad. It is wrong to see these two modes as opposites, for in America even isolationism has an evangelical quality. Isolation and global intervention are phases in an American engagement with the world that has always been in some degree faith-based. This faith has altered its shape, at times becoming militant and proselytizing, at others being expressed in an inward-looking nationalism that fears being entangled in the corrupt machinations of the Old World. For much of American history it has been the latter that prevailed. For many Americans the sense of national mission has not translated easily or automatically into active support for overseas military intervention – they had to be persuaded to enter the two world wars, for example – but the belief in a special mission that inspired the Puritan colonists has persisted. As the scholar of American religion Conrad Cherry has commented:

The belief that America has been elected by God for a special destiny in the world has been the focus of American sacred ceremonies, the inaugural
addresses of our presidents, the sacred scriptures of the civil religion. It has been so pervasive a motif in the national life that the word ‘belief’ does not really capture the dynamic role that it has played for the American people.
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In according itself an exceptional role in history, America is in no way unusual. Many countries have given themselves a world-redeeming role. There are obvious parallels with the idea of global mission that inspired revolutionary France, and America’s revolutionary war was linked in the minds of many of the country’s founders with the overthrow of the
ancien régime.
If the American sense of secular mission is not exceptional, neither is the conviction of being a nation chosen by God. The Dutch Afrikaners in South Africa, Protestant communities in Ulster in Northern Ireland and some Zionists have had similar beliefs.
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So have many Russians. A belief in a God-given national mission was central in the reactionary mes-sianism espoused in the nineteenth century by Slavophils, which I considered in
Chapter 2
. Where America differs from other nations is in the persistent vitality of messianic belief and the extent to which it continues to shape the public culture.

There have been long periods when the apocalyptic tradition was quiescent. During the interwar era it failed to stir even against the backdrop of a catastrophic Depression. It was not revived when in one of its noblest acts America entered the Second World War – a decision that was eventually taken in stoical recognition of a grim job that had to be done rather than any expectation of a much better world. Nor – despite the paranoia rampant at the time – were such beliefs strong during the early part of the Cold War. Here again the American mood was one of resisting a manifest danger rather than remaking the world. Apocalyptic thinking returned in the later part of the Cold War, but it was not a powerful force. Though he described the Soviet Union as an ‘evil empire’ and reaffirmed Winthrop’s view of America as a ‘city on a hill’ in his farewell address, Ronald Reagan was not much influenced during his time in office by the Christian Right. Even when the Berlin Wall fell, George Bush Snr responded by speaking of the difficulties that lay ahead. It was only when his son became president that religion began to move into the centre of American politics, and only after 9/11 that it informed policies on a broad front.

George W. Bush’s references to some countries as forming an ‘axis of evil’ may not be as overtly apocalyptic as his under-secretary of defence, Lieutenant-General William Boykin, who declared, ‘… the enemy is a spiritual enemy, he’s called the principality of darkness. The enemy is a guy called Satan.’
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Boykin’s speech provoked controversy, but he continued to work on intelligence matters in the Pentagon – despite the fact that he had been centrally involved in extending ‘stress and distress’ interrogation methods from Guantanamo to Abu Ghraib. There can be little doubt that he represents a view of the world Bush shares. There are many examples of apocalyptic imagery in Bush’s speeches. In his October 2001 speech in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks Bush made numerous biblical references, using phrases from the Revelation of St John and Isaiah. Later speeches on abortion and gay marriage also contained biblical allusions.
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In 2003, some months after the US invasion of Iraq, Bush told the Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, ‘God told me to strike al-Qaeda and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did.’
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The formative influence of fundamentalist thinking on Bush is not confined to foreign policy. A number of the Christian leaders with whom Bush associates belong to the movement known as Christian Reconstructionism, or Dominion Theology. A post-millennial fundamentalist movement holding that a Christian form of government can be achieved in the present age in which every aspect of life will be subject to divine law, the movement has defined its aim as ‘world dominion under Christ’s lordship, a “world takeover” if you will … We are the shapers of world history.’
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The Dominion movement also believes that following the divine command humankind must ‘subdue’ the Earth – a task that includes exploiting the world’s natural resources and controlling the weather. Bush’s opposition to environmentalism has been explained by the fact that much environmental legislation is unpopular in America. But the hostility to environmentalism of American voters is often exaggerated, and a larger reason may be that environmental policies conflict with Bush’s religious beliefs. There is no good reason to be concerned with global warming if you believe Armageddon is around the corner.

There were powerful political reasons for Bush to align himself
with the forces of fundamentalism. As a number of insider accounts have revealed, there has been an element of cynical manipulation in the Bush administration’s relations with the Christian Right.
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Evangelical votes were crucial in the struggle for control of Congress, and there can be no doubt that for the administration the Christian Right was, until the mid-term elections of 2006, an instrument of political control. But it would be wrong to think Bush has viewed the fundamentalists simply as an ally. There is a true affinity of world-view. By his own account Bush is himself a born-again Christian whose conversion saved him from alcoholism and who begins each day with prayer and bible study, and like other fundamentalists he has suggested that theories of ‘intelligent design’ should be taught alongside Darwin’s theory of natural selection.
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There is no reason to question the sincerity of Bush’s religious convictions, which belong in the American tradition of post-millennialism, or to doubt that they have shaped his view of America and its place in the world. In a talk to conservative journalists in September 2006 Bush told them that he senses that what he called a ‘Third Awakening’ of religious devotion is underway in America. The ‘First Great Awakening’ is the term commonly used to describe the intense religiosity that gripped the colonies around 1730–60, while the ‘Second Great Awakening’ is usually said to have occurred in the period between 1800 and 1830. He went on to say that like ‘a lot of people in America’ he viewed the ‘war on terror’ as a ‘confrontation between good and evil’.
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Bush’s view of American opinion should not be accepted at face value. According to a
Newsweek
poll in 2002, 45 per cent of Americans viewed the United States as ‘a secular nation’, 29 per cent as ‘a Christian nation’ and only 16 per cent as a ‘biblical nation, defined by the Judaeo-Christian tradition’.
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None the less, America is unique among advanced countries in having a Christian majority and a large fundamentalist minority, and no other western leader could have spoken in such terms. In Britain, Blair’s statement that his decision to go to war in Iraq will be judged by God deepened his unpopularity, and any claim that a policy has divine backing exacts a penalty from voters. With the partial exception of Poland, the same is true throughout Europe and all other English-speaking countries: any confession of strong religious belief, especially the claim to have a
direct line to divine intentions, is dangerous and damaging to politicians. This is not so in the United States, where changes in society have enhanced the power of religion. The declining role of the old East Coast elites and the increasing ascendancy of the South in American politics; the mass mobilization of evangelical Christians, who were in the past often politically inactive, in support of a militant politics of ‘traditional values’; and the increasing role of the Christian Right as a core constituency of the Republican party – without these shifts, which have gathered pace over the past thirty years, the Christian Right could not have achieved the political power it has exercised during the Bush administration. Bush embodies a type of religious belief that goes back to the first Puritan settlers, but without the changes in society of the last few decades he could not have used it to promote a faith-based politics.

Equally it is difficult to see how Bush could have mobilized American opinion behind the war in Iraq without the traumatic events of 9/11. Before the terrorist attacks, Bush’s foreign policy reflected a number of influences. The US was already beginning its withdrawal from foreign treaties that were seen as limiting its capacity for unilateral action, but Bush’s tone was not stridently assertive. Though they occupied important positions in government, neo-conservatives were not calling the shots. After 9/11 this changed. Apocalyptic myths that had been dormant re-emerged, and it was not difficult for neo-conservatives in the administration to link the ‘war on terror’ with their geo-political objectives. By 2004 a Homeland Security Planning Scenario Document was describing the terrorist threat facing the United States as being perpetrated by the Universal Adversary. National security was understood in terms of concepts derived from demonology.
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This demonological perception of the terrorist threat was a byproduct of the alliance between neo-conservatives and the Christian Right. The origins of this alliance are in the end of the Cold War, which left America without a defining enemy. Though neo-conservatives overrated it, Soviet power posed a real threat, and one might think its collapse might permit a less adversarial American stance towards the world. But an enemy was indispensable, and one soon appeared in the shape of Saddam Hussein. In strategic terms the Gulf War of
1990–91 was a success – Saddam was pushed back into Iraq where he could no longer threaten his neighbours or global oil supplies. For neo-conservatives the war was a failure because it left Saddam in power. Throughout the Clinton era they were vociferous in their view that American forces should have marched on Baghdad. When they joined the administration of George W. Bush it was with Iraq on their minds. As Richard A. Clarke, who served as a senior advisor on terrorism under four US presidents, has commented:

The administration of the second George Bush did begin with Iraq on its agenda. So many of those who had made the decisions in the first Iraq war were back: Cheney, Powell, Wolfowitz. Some of them had made clear in writings and speeches that the United States should unseat Saddam, finish what they had failed to do the first time. In the new administration’s discussions of terrorism, Paul Wolfowitz had urged a focus on Iraqi-sponsored terrorism against the US even though there was no such thing.
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By allying with the Christian Right, neo-conservatives were able to mobilize millions of Americans in support of renewed military action against Iraq. Many Christian fundamentalists are influenced by the theory of dispensationalism that was developed by John Nelson Darby (1800–1882), a minister in the Church of Ireland who resigned to join a sect called the Brethren, and ended up leader of a group that split off in the 1840s to form the Plymouth Brethren. Believing that God revealed his will in a succession of events, or dispensations, Darby introduced two of the most important ideas of American pre-millennialism – the idea of the Rapture, when believers will ascend into the heavens to meet Christ, and the idea that the final battle between Christ and the hosts of Antichrist will occur on the plain of Armageddon in modern Israel. The latter is a belief held by many of those who are now called Christian Zionists – ardent supporters of Israel who believe its destruction is to be welcomed as a sign of the millennium. Fundamentalists who accepted Darby’s prophecies were far from being a marginal group. As Michael Lind has written, ‘To dismiss these Americans as members of the lunatic fringe was mistaken. They were the political base of the Bush administration and the contemporary, Southernized Republican party.’
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The alliance with the Christian Right has had many advantages for
neo-conservatives. It leveraged their influence in the Republican party – for which the Christian Right was increasingly important as a source of funding and votes – and enabled them to transmit their ideas to very large numbers of people. Along with Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News it gave neo-conservatives a voice in national politics that could not be ignored. In the 1980s neo-conservatives were a few dozen ideologues, mostly in Washington think tanks. They had some impact in the area of national defence and several joined the Reagan administration, but they were nothing like a dominant force. By allying themselves with Southern fundamentalism they linked themselves with the single most important constituency in American politics. Only around a quarter of American voters are born-again Christians, but over three quarters of them voted for Bush in 2004. Though Bush won only by a hair’s breadth, it was the Christian Right that ensured his victory.