I saw a bumper sticker the other day. “Caution: Christian On Board”

I thought, yeah, I’ll be careful. These days christians can be dangerous.

What follows may be a bit on the intolerant side, but I’m sometimes convinced our condemnation of intolerance makes us too unwilling to be simply impatient.  We “tolerate” a lot of nonsense because we don’t want to be accused of intolerance. 

Rumsfeld is gone now, and I’ve been thinking about unanswered questions, assumptions made on our behalf which led to a holy mess.  I remember when Abu Ghraib broke.  I’m thinking about the obscenities from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. People expressed shock, outrage. The president, Rumsfeld, the generals, they were all duly unhinged. They did not approve this. They did not order it or condone it. Congress has them answering questions now as to how such things could happen.

Frankly, the wrong questions were and are being asked. Senators wanted to know who to blame for either condoning it or for “allowing it to happen”–a phrase I find ludicrous in practical terms. It’s like the phrase you hear lawyers and legislators use, you know the one “You failed to do such and such.” Every time I hear that phrase I think “No he didn’t. He didn’t fail. To fail implies that at some point an attempt was made to do something. The attempt failed. He didn’t fail to tell the truth–he simply didn’t do it. He succeeded in not doing it. Failure was entirely part of getting caught. He failed to keep it secret.” Same goes for “allowing it to happen.” It implies a conscious choice. There was none. At least, most of the time–and if there was a conscious choice, then “allow” is the wrong word–“cause” would be the right word.

I was not surprised at Abu Ghraib. Shocked, sure, but that was a visceral reaction to ugliness. I’d been waiting for something like that to happen. And maybe in that respect, “allow” becomes more relevant. Maybe if Senator Kennedy et al asked Rumsfeld and the others “Didn’t you expect something like this given the culture of this administration?” then they would have been on the right track.

What has been “allowed” to happen, though, is something a bit deeper, a bit more insidious, and has profound historical roots.

In his superb history of Catholicism and anti-semitism, James Carroll writes in Constantine’s Sword: the Church and the Jews: “…Since the end of World War II, there have been the theological revolution of Vatican II, with its rejection of the deicide charge and its affirmation of God’s ongoing covenant with the Jewish people; the remarkable grass-roots flourishing of Jewish-Catholic dialogue; and the serious effort of the Polish pope to confront the legacy of Catholic anti-semitism, But there remain rigid lines drawn around beliefs that may not be changed and around questions that may not be asked. Already we have seen the deeply problematic legacy of Jew hatred in foundational Christian texts, in the implicitly anti-Jewish Christian idea of revelation as prophecy fulfillment, and most damaging of all, in the dominant Christian theology of Jesus, not only as the enemy of the Jewish people but as the son of God who obliterates the integrity of all other ways to God.”

The story Carroll tells is how the church hierarchy defined the status of Jews throughout the Middle Ages, starting from Augustine, as a people deserving of disrespect.  I wrote about some of this in When In Rome. To the church elders and prelates, what was intended was an intellectual stance, akin to turning one’s back on the Jews. The Jews were not to be respected–but they were not to be harmed, either. Carroll shows how this incongruity of postures failed to translate into the common world of peasants and shopkeepers, who did not “get” the nuance. In explosive times, disrespect turned to violence.

There are stories of local priests putting themselves physically between groups of Jews and the mob bent on killing them. Yet they failed to understand how the violence was inevitable given their moral and intellectual stance regarding the Jews. The Blood Libel was not mere theory to the average Christian of 1100 A.D. It was justification for abuse.

What we’re seeing now is exactly the same thing. We have an administration more overtly religious than any in recent memory. Bush’s power base is rooted in the Christian Fundamentalist community, who do see this war in terms of revelation and prophecy. It is the culture of this administration that has “allowed” this to happen.

I believe Rumsfeld when he says this was never intended. I do. He’s the equivalent of a high church prelate who has an abstract intellectual posture toward Islam. How does this translate to the field, though? We have sent strong, homegrown, christian soldiers to a foreign land populated with Unbelievers. The president said this is not about Christian versus Muslim, but the fundamentalist preachers have been stoking that furnace for years now and the air being breathed by this administration is pure Isaiah. Look at the pattern of appointments (www.commondreams.org/headlines01/0113-02.htm) . This is a Christian nation. The enemy has been identified. (www.religioustolerance.org/reac_ter18c.htm)

Do I believe most of the soldiers in Iraq are predisposed toward this view? No, not at all. Most are decent, honest young people trying to do an impossible job within a context not of their choosing–and, I believe, partially not of their understanding. But how many does it take to foul up the whole thing? Seven, so far.

As far as theology…

Not one dime of federal money earmarked for Bush’s faith-based initiatives has gone to non-christian groups.  (And, as it turns out, a lot of christian groups are getting short-shrifted.) This only surprises people who were fooled by Bush’s campaign based on compassionate conservatism. (Www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15801)

He fooled a lot of us into thinking he was a moderate, slightly right-of-center mainstream politician. Many Americans thought “how bad can this be?” and went home–miffed if you voted for Gore, slightly annoyed at the sleazy way the election turned out if you voted for Bush, assuming you were a so-called mainstream American–thinking that the rhetoric would become slightly more Reaganesque, but by and large most of our lives would be unaffected.

My problem with Mr. Bush is not the lies. All presidents lie and depending on your political bent, you either decry them or justify them. It’s not what Bush has hidden–and he is hiding a lot, but security is a dicey point to judge an administration on (internal security, having to do with leaks and public access). No. What bothers me is right on the surface for anyone to see if they care to look.

He tried to remake my country along theocratic lines. It’s not hidden, it’s not hard to see, it’s not a policy they have kept from anyone.

A lot of people approved. I mean, consider–these soldier at Abu Ghraib took pictures of what they did. You don’t do that unless on some level you think it’s all right, that what you’re doing is within acceptable bounds. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that these soldiers are a bit baffled at all the fuss. As I say, a lot of people approved.

I don’t. To my way of thinking, the problem of theology is that it does not lend itself to compromise or logical analysis. You can’t put God on the witness stand or swear Jesus in before the Senate Committee hearings. You can’t cross-examine the Holy Ghost. And Mary–well, according to St. Paul, women have no business speaking in public. Theology has no place in government, at any level. Government is entirely a human enterprise and must be subject to all the powers and abilities of human oversight and discretion and accountability that can be brought to bear. When a politician professes to follow God’s word, he or she is letting us know that our system of accountability does not apply to them. They should be fired, voted out of office, impeached, or otherwise censured.

Because the unquestioned following of religious principles in a time of crisis at the national level–like now–leads to Abu Ghraib.

See, Bush et al Inc. can tell us that we should respect Muslims till his lips freeze. But out of the other side of their mouths, they have characterized this war in religious terms, and the average Joe or Jane who just might happen to be a fundamentalist christian is going to take that part as permission to look down on the enemy–culturally. The abuses in those prisons are the result of a decay of secular ethical restraint. They are the tip of the ice-berg of religious absolutism.

As I said, I was not surprised. I’ve known fundamentalists. They lack a certain sophistication for the most part–there are exceptions–and they see everything starkly, without nuance. As Bush proclaimed quite proudly “I don’t do nuance.” Obviously.

Prophecy, in the hands of the true believer, is always self-fulfilling. So now if indeed we are headed for a kind of Armageddon, we need not look to supernatural forces, but to ourselves, for “allowing” an administration to make us into something we don’t want to be. Most of us anyway. There are, unfortunately, a lot of Americans who really want this. They hunger for the End Times, for the Second Coming, for the conflagration. Maybe it’s easier than the hard work of actual problem-solving. Certainly it’s sexier.

So just to make the point sharp and obvious, you might wonder what James Carroll’s ruminations about Catholic antisemitism has to do with our incursion into Iraq. Simple. It’s all part of the same sad human story. Intolerance of those who do not believe as we do, driving us to convert by the sword. Pick your religious group, pick your antagonism. Al-Qaeda knocked down our twin towers because they see us a Shaitan, the Enemy. We were  going to go kick some Muslim ass because they aren’t christians.

What’s the difference between the two?

The difference here is that America is a democracy and we are not simply led by those in power to do things we may later regret. We choose our leaders, we “allow” them to give us direction. If we “fail” to stop ourselves before we embrace the whirlwind and trigger the catastrophe, just who do we have to blame other than ourselves?

But now Rummy is gone.  The new guy, Gates, looks to be the sort of thinker who should have been in that job all along.  Someone not guided by prophecy, but by reality.  However, we should not be lulled by Rumsfeld’s departure or the last election.  It will take more than one election to take the power away from the prophet-driven supporters of the neocon movement.  We may think it’s settled, and that’s because, I think, for most of us we just can’t quite believe that people really think that way.  We don’t get how someone can be more dedicated to bozo-theology than to the democratic processes that have given us the freedom to be–among other things–religious according to our wishes.  They don’t seem to get that if they win their program, that freedom disappears.

Caution: Christian On Board. Well. Let’s just hope in future the christian isn’t doing the driving.