Christian Nation (27 page)

Every American alive today knows The Blessing by heart. But not knowing for whom this memoir is intended, I asked Adam whether I should include it in the book. His answer was interesting, and I could not fall asleep last night pondering his words.

“We dream,” Adam said, “that your book will be read not only by those alive today—many of whom know very little about how they came to live as they do now—but also those who live in a future America where the Christian Nation is a distant nightmare. Assume nothing. Tell the whole story.”

Last night was the first time I ever allowed myself to consider a future different from the present. Can I conceive of a “future America where the Christian Nation is a distant nightmare”? It has been wrenching enough to relive the past. Do I have the strength yet to think about the future?

We were all quite amazed when, within an hour of the president completing his Independence Day speech to the nation, each of us received an e-mail from the federal government with the text of The Blessing. It was, I believe, the first time the federal government had sent a mass e-mail to the entire citizenry. The e-mail each American received read as follows. Each of the fifty specific rules, called Blessings, was organized under ten general assertions, which were called Covenants:

The Blessing

I. There is no power but God, and the powers that are ordained by God.

1. As the fate of the nation depends entirely on unbending obedience to the will of God, it shall be treasonous to deny the existence of God, to question the Word of God, or to advocate disobedience to the will of God.

II. The Lord created America that His will may reign on earth.

2. The sovereignty of the United States of America is absolute. Accordingly, the United States shall not join or support any international organization.

3. The United Nations is hereby expelled from the territory of the United States. Its operations shall be relocated within one year.

4. Any treaty that abrogates the absolute sovereignty of the United States is hereby repudiated and declared null and void.

5. No US citizen shall be extradited to face criminal or civil proceedings in another country.

III. This nation devoutly recognizes the authority and law of our Lord Jesus Christ.

6. The most important task of man is to accept, embrace, and obey God’s law.

7. God’s law, as set forth in the Bible, shall be the supreme law of the land, prevailing over any imperfect human law.

8. The American Constitution is a divine gift and shall be strictly construed. The Constitution shall be interpreted in accordance with the higher law of the Bible.

9. The purpose of the federal and state court systems shall be to do God’s will and to faithfully interpret and enforce the law of the land in accordance with the Word of God.

10. No judge shall interpret the law or render any judgment that is contrary to the will of God as evidenced by the Bible.

11. Only persons who have accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as their savior shall serve as federal judges.

12. The Constitution wisely limits the role of government, and such limitations shall be deemed to prohibit involvement by the federal government in education and social welfare, which shall remain the exclusive domain of the people, their churches, and, if permitted by state constitutions and state law, the states.

13. No state or local government may enact any law prohibiting so-called “hate crimes,” which can too easily be used to persecute or abuse those faithful to the Word and laws of God.

IV. The Lord gave America the biblical capitalist system for our material comfort; He reigns over our economy and demands obedience to His will in return for our prosperity.

14. Only one economic system, the free enterprise system, is consistent with God’s will and God’s law.

15. No economic system other than the free enterprise system shall be taught or practiced within the United States.

16. The advocacy of socialism in any form is treasonous.

17. Poverty is due to disobedience to God’s will.

18. In a Christian Nation, where obedience to God is the measure of equity, “labor unions” are unnecessary and illegal.

V. The Lord gave us marriage for our pleasure and for procreation.

19. Marriage shall be the sole form of civil union or partnership recognized for any purpose within the United States.

20. Marriage means marriage between one man and one woman.

21. No other form of “marriage” consummated in or recognized by any other jurisdiction shall be recognized or valid for any purpose whatsoever within the United States.

22. Adulterous behavior by either husband or wife is a crime.

23. Homosexual behavior of any kind is a crime.

24. Sexual relations outside of marriage are a crime.

25. Sexual perversion, even between husband and wife, is a crime (provided that a wife may pleasure her husband in any way her husband desires and to which she consents).

26. No person shall participate in the creation, distribution, or use of pornography, all of which shall be crimes.

27. Abstinence from all sex (including masturbation) outside of marriage shall be the only form of sex education permitted.

28. No foreign national who is homosexual shall be eligible for immigration to, or resident alien status in, the United States.

VI. The Lord created the male, who shall reign in headship over the family.

29. Upon marriage, a wife shall be obligated to obey her husband.

30. A child shall obey his or her father.

31. The primary responsibility of a husband and father shall be to align the family with the will and Word of Jesus Christ.

VII. The family is the basis of American life and the fundamental unit of American society.

32. The discipline of children is in the sole discretion of parents. No unit of government shall outlaw or regulate the discipline of children, or prosecute any parent or teacher for the disciplining of a child.

33. It shall be unlawful for a child to strike a parent.

34. Incorrigible juvenile delinquency shall be a crime.

VIII. Only the Lord may determine when life shall begin and end.

35. For all purposes of the law, life begins at conception.

36. Abortion, meaning any act that terminates life following conception, shall be illegal.

37. Killing an unborn child through abortion shall be a capital offense.

38. A woman who permits her child to be aborted shall be guilty of a felony.

39. Euthanasia, meaning any act that terminates life prior to its natural end, shall be illegal.

IX. The Lord loves our children, and gave His Word and His will as the basis for educating our children.

40. Children shall be instructed that God’s Word is the only reliable path to the truth.

41. Reason unguided by God’s Word is an illusion, often perverted by Satan to divert us from obedience to God’s will. It shall be a crime to teach that philosophical investigation or the so-called “scientific method” are the sole or primary paths to knowledge.

42. There shall be no tolerance of lies, falsehoods, and illusions. The primary task of all teachers is to protect children from falsehood.

43. A principal task of public education shall be to teach obedience to God’s will.

44. A principal task of public education shall be to teach sexual purity.

45. No atheist, homosexual, or single woman shall be permitted to teach or play any role in a public or private school, at any level. For this purpose, (i) any person over the age of thirty who has never been married shall be presumed to be a homosexual, and (ii) any person not registered with and certified in good standing by a recognized church shall be presumed to be an atheist.

46. Each classroom in America, public or private, shall, at the commencement of each school day, recite the Pledge of Allegiance, and join in a prayer of thanks to God for America. The prayer may, but is not required to, mention our Lord Jesus Christ (but shall not mention any other purported deity, prophet, saint, or other figure from a specific religious tradition other than Christianity).

X. Although a Christian Nation and its Christian citizens have a duty to open the eyes of all its citizens to the Word and light of Christ, the right of non-Christian citizens to believe and practice, in the private sphere of their families and places of worship, religions other than Christianity shall be protected.

47. Religions other than Christianity are permitted. Witchcraft, Wicca, astrology, the worship of Satan, any violent sect of Islam, and other cults are not recognized as religions.

48. All places of worship and other property, real and personal, present and future, of superstitions and cults that are not recognized as religions shall be forfeit to the state in which they are located.

49. Non-Christian religions shall be entitled to maintain places of worship but shall not be permitted to make public displays of the symbols of their religions in any place other than the premises of such places of worship.

50. The promotion of non-Christian religion through advertisement or missionary or proselytizing activity shall be prohibited within the territory of the United States of America.

The next two weeks were among the most extraordinary in American history. Many of the 70 million or so Americans who called themselves evangelical or born again stopped work, school, and every aspect of their daily routine and devoted each waking hour to persuading their friends, neighbors, and congressional representatives to accept the ten “covenants” and the individual Blessings associated with each of them. The owners of many professional sports teams cancelled games and instead hosted huge choreographed rallies at their stadiums. Stadium rallies had been part of the fundamentalist subculture for decades, but in these circumstances the echoes of Nuremberg were hard to ignore. I remember watching on television, with a combination of awe and horror, an event at Reliant Stadium in Houston. The rally unfolded in the manner of an Olympics opening ceremony. At the beginning, all lights were extinguished to create complete darkness representing the “dark age of sin and disobedience” from which we were about to emerge. Then a single white spotlight followed a young boy who walked alone onto the enormous field clutching a copy of The Blessing. When he reached the center he knelt and raised his face to heaven. The silence was broken by his voice saying only “Thank you, Lord.” At that moment, the whole stadium was brilliantly illuminated, revealing the combined choirs of fifty Texas churches (one for each Blessing) arrayed across the field in the form of a giant cross. The massed choirs began singing a gospel version of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” complemented by fifty trumpeters. From all around the stadium, long gold banners unfurled, one by one, revealing fifty crosses, each a hundred feet high. The production continued in this fashion for an hour and left the seventy thousand faithful in attendance exhilarated and exhausted.

The members of the Farris Commission worked the media nonstop, telling gripping stories of how their prayers had been answered miraculously by direct and detailed revelations from God. They argued that there was a broad and long-standing consensus from all Christian denominations in support of the ten Covenants. They detailed the specific and indisputable biblical bases for each of the Blessings. The so-called “constitutional scholars” argued that The Blessing was not only consistent with the Constitution as properly construed but was based on the laws, traditions, and values of the country from the time of its founding until the moment it lost its way around the time of the New Deal. To that part of the population already attuned to the alternative Christian narrative of American history—and bereft of the perspective, historical facts, or the skills needed to consider the document critically—the case for The Blessing seemed strong.

What was not seen on F3 but was covered by the independent media was the chaotic reaction from the moderate and liberal corners of the country. It was as if the entire non-evangelical community awoke at a single moment from a long slumber. Upon their awakening they professed complete shock that the nation stood on the brink of a theocratic revolution. To hear the sputtering outrage, you would have thought that Bush and his born-again allies had not ruled for eight years and revolutionized federal policy on everything from stem cell research to abstinence education to faith-based social services. You would have thought that the Christian Nation resolution and first-term legislation sponsored by Sarah Palin had not occurred, that martial law had not been declared, and that the Constitution Restoration and Defense of Freedom Acts had not already fundamentally undermined their civil liberties. You would have thought that Justice Stevens had not been killed, that the Supreme Court had not been neutered, and that the most extreme fundamentalists, serving as cabinet secretaries, had not begun implementing their theocratic program department by executive department. You would have thought that the heartland was not already overrun by armed Christian militias sanctioned by the states, that books had not been burned, and that gays and abortion doctors had not already been run out of countless towns. To hear their shock and outrage, you would have thought that for the last twenty years the proponents of the Christian Nation had not said exactly what they would do and now were simply doing it.

Most opposition rhetoric was an undirected brew of blame and confusion as to how the situation had come to pass. Despite our best efforts, the public and political campaign during the two weeks allowed by Jordan was, for the most part, ineffective. In those weeks TW received nearly $600 million of donations and pledges. Dozens of business and Wall Street leaders called TW and promised unlimited funding—“whatever it takes,” they said, “just don’t let it happen.” Despite an enormous public education campaign and media spend, TW could not spend all the money that had come its way. Jordan had the votes, and however shrill or well funded the opposition, we knew that The Blessing would become the law of the land at the end of two weeks.