Electronic Clergy
Siegelman, Flo Conway and Jim
Electronic Clergy HOLY TERROR: THE FUNDAMENTALIST WAR ON AMERICA'S FREEDOMS IN RELIGION, POLITICS, AND OUR PRIVATE LIVES by Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman Dell. 496 pp. $ 17.50 hardcover. $ 10.95...
...As in other cults, the Far Right is led by mortal figures shouting orders from the top...
...But today's new conservative leaders are a breed apart from those who, for all their differences with liberals, respected a pluralistic, secular society...
...Backing them up is a vast array of hightech communications and sophisticated mailing campaigns that have systematically drummed up tens of millions of dollars and millions of dedicated followers...
...Quite simply, they will not be...
...It is a book that brings the reader face to face with a frightening political force...
...When everyone is forced to subscribe to a small minority's concept of a "just" society, how will the liberties of all citizens (believer and nonbeliever alike) be respected and protected...
...Careful selection of political targets and an alliance with key conservative figures has p roduced a movement the impact of which ex ceeds the size of its membership...
...We are no longer working to preserve the status quo...
...A preoccupation with national security issues and budget cuts (except for the Pentagon, of course) may give the impression that such Rightists as Senator Jesse Helms and the Reverend Jerry Falwell are merely the inheritors of Barry Goldwater's conservative movement...
...Holy Terror is more than a good introduction to the politics and personalities of the electronic church and the Fundamentalist Right...
...The Republican Party and several state organizations have already felt the movement's pressures, and will undoubtedly not be the last groups to do so...
...Ne ither uhe religious fundamentalism nor the clergy's involvement in political issues is new...
...What is new is that the Fundamentalist Right has tossed reasoned debate aside, substituted Biblical quotations, and determined that everyone must adhere to the most narrow interpretation of what constitutes a "Christian" society...
...Tragically, the victims often did not recognize the nature of the threat that faced them until it was too late...
...10.95 paperback...
...Who could have foreseen that we would witness the rise to political power of individuals for whom the policies of Ronald Reagan are too liberal...
...The electronic church provided much of the Fundamentalist Right's ammunition in defeating former Senators George McGovern and Frank Church...
...According to Paul Weyrich, one of the Right's most influential leaders, "We are different from previous generations of conservatives...
...David Wemple (David Wemple is a free-lance writer based in Albany, New York...
...These men and women of the Far Right have come into their own, and as demonstrated at the 1984 Republican National Convention, they constitute the most influential and fastest-growing wing of their party...
...In this case, the orders come from the leading lights of the so-called electronic church, with the Christian Broadcasting Network, the nation's largest noncommercial network, and its vast communications empire at center stage...
...As Holy Terror makes clear, however, the power of the Fundamentalist Right is not due to fundamentalist preachers alone...
...As Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman see it in Holy Terror, the merger of the older conservative political philosophy with an inflexible religious fundamentalism has produced something uncomfortably close to a cult...
...History is replete with examples of self-appointed missionaries who managed to make good on many of their promises and threats...
...Pluralism has become an evil...
...Perhaps they were not electoral defeats so much as blitzkriegs: short, mean-spirited, and ruthless...
...In fact, the sights of the Far Right are set higher than the state level...
...We are radicals, working to overthrow the present power structure of the country...
...Not since the days of Joe McCarthy have basic civil liberties been threatened so much by reactionary and intolerant political currents...
...By contrast, Falwell and his allies claim not only to have received the word of God, but fully expiect that they will be the ones to enact it into law...
Vol. 48 • October 1984 • No. 12
