From about 2004-2008, it seemed like the political battle lines were being drawn around Christian fundamentalism and the (professed) moral standards of straight, white, suburban, and Republican attendees of America’s mega-churches. Obviously this was largely because GW Bush was a born-again Christian, and he gave religion an even stronger national platform than usual. He even claimed to talk with God, folks. The Iraq War was his “crusade,” Congress threw the brakes on everything to intervene in the Terry Schiavo case, and there was a widespread aversion to stem-cell research. Meanwhile, the anti-Bush libs fought on the culture-war terrain against religion, producing for example the book and documentary With God On Their Side (2004), the 2005 book American Theocracy, the 2006 documentary Jesus Camp, the 2008 Bill Maher movie Religiulous, etc. I remember concern at the time over Congresspeople’s apocalyptic beliefs that Israel must be protected for prophetic Biblical reasons. (This has re-emerged a little bit recently because of the genocide in Gaza).
After Bush left office, it seemed like this entire terrain of the culture war evaporated. No crazy fundamentalist in office, no concern over religiosity in America. So, I was wondering what this means in hindsight. Christian religious fundamentalism had its moment, but does that mean it only rose to prominence because annoying libs, media elites, and the chattering classes talked about it with respect to Bush? As in, they were snide about it, because haha, Bush is legitimately a dumb-ass? If so, where did the 2004-2008 left enter into this debate? Clearly they’re not supporting Bush, so they must’ve linked arms with libs to say that the Moral Majority-flavor of Christianity was bad.
But: what characterizes the left’s interpretation of religion now? Have Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Bill Maher, Cenk Uygur, and Reddit Atheists made the criticism of religion irredeemably cringe? Does the left not care about religion anymore as one of the fronts in the “war of position” against the bourgeoisie? If so, is that because things like Occupy and Sanders’ democratic socialism, which were nascent and unthinkable in 2004, steered lefty concerns towards a more material direction? Or, has the left viewed religion as incidental and co-optable in the struggle towards a classless society?
That’s a lot of stray questions, but I had been thinking about this for awhile and wanted to get the random thoughts down.
I think a lot of the fundamentalist folks were old and died and the rest just moved on to the next reactionary political battle. There’s only so much you can squeeze out of a fight against teaching evolution in school. It was led by grifters and the money dried up. After Bush was Obama, so forced to play the “opposition” game (they can’t just outright support his continuation of the warmongering and islamophobia) they latched onto things like Birtherism and the Tea Party.
I don’t think the US left is coherent enough to have a position on religion. I’ve never even heard an irl left critique of it aside from the regurgitation of some old Marx quotes. Probably better that we deemphasize it as an issue overall and instead focus on why certain religious movements are powerful and in opposition to liberation.