Ranting to /dev/null

Politics of despair

Chris Hedges, a Harvard Divinity grad who writes widely on political/religious issues, has a piece in Pop Matters about his book American Facists: The Christian Right and the War on America.

The basic thesis is that the Christian Right, which I assume he defines with some specificity in the book though not in the article, is essentially fascist in its character, a description I find hard to dispute these days. He also advances the thesis that the personal motivation behind those who belong to the Christian Right is despair, particularly a middle-class suburban despair.

I won't go into excruciating detail about the descriptions; you can read them for yourself. I'm rather suspicious of the idea of suburban despair as such though: this seems like a self-serving countercultural argument which does far more to set its proponants apart from the madding crowd than actually describe real phenomena.

I do have two observations to make though. First, from what I can tell from the article, he's describing a largely Protestant movement. Again, this may be better specified in the book, but I think this distinction worth making, even in light of previous discussions on this site. Catholics, from my limited experience, may exhibit despair about the next life, but seem to be significantly more optimistic about this one. Catholics tend to be more Thomistic, less Augustianian, whereas Protestants are the opposite.

Second, the idea that there is some degree of despair is not entirely inaccurate, though the characterization leaves something to be desired. We come to Christ because we have despaired about any salvation apart from him. I think his description of "suburban despair" misses the theological nature of what's going on. What is sought isn't capable of being provided by politics, at least not for the Protestants about whom he seems to be talking, and any political activism tends not to have this world in mind as a final goal.

He obviously doesn't like the Christian Right and clearly has an axe to grind, but it's still worth a read.