1. TALIBAN DREAMIN'
THE BAD NEWS IS THERE'S NO
GOOD NEWS

You may have noticed that under the Bush regime the line between church and state has gotten a bit blurry. Maybe you've heard about a Ten Commandment controversy here or an attorney general anointing himself with cooking oil there. Perhaps you know that over the past five years your government has given more than a billion dollars of your tax money to tax-exempt churches for "faith-based initiatives" ( aka "pay-Yahweh-ola"). Perhaps you've been following the brouhaha over trying to change the Constitution so that gay people can't get married. But hey, no biggie, they're doing their thing, I'm doing mine.

The problem is that your thing is their thing. The Republican Party isn't the charming, noblesse-oblige, country-club avuncular-drunk Grand Old Party of yesteryear. There's a new sheriff in GOP town. One who believes we're living in end times. This one is lighter on the charm andheavier on the apocalypse. He's a Rapture Republican, a Big Government Theocrat, a Radical Cleric—an American Taliban.

If you're reading this book, chances are you're a thoughtful, curious person. In our new future under Rapture Republican rule, you may want to think about dialing that kind of thing down a bit. When in public, stick to simple declarative sentences, like, "Hey, that's tall!" or "According to Jim was awesome last night!" If the world looks flat from where you are, it's flat.

As far as reading in particular, scale back quickly (after, of course, you finish reading this book). If you feel like you absolutely must continue reading, pick up a People or Us Weekly (Time and Newsweek work just as well). Nothing will make you more docile than having your head filled with the details of Nick and Jessica's divorce or whether it's Hilary or Lindsay who's being the jerk about the whole thing.

Sure the Rapture Right has always been around, but the new reality is that Washington—and statehouses and school boards and newsrooms around the country—are flooded with them. What was once funny is no longer so funny. Ever wonder why you don't hear much about the Christian Coalition or the Moral Majority anymore? Well, they've changed their names—now they're just called Republicans. Here's Hanna Rosin writing in the Washington Post in March 2005:

This year evangelicals in public office have finally become so numerous that they've blended in to the permanent Washington backdrop, a new establishment that has absorbed the local habits and mores…

And a lot of them have already absorbed the local habits and mores of Capitol Hill:

…Nearly every third congressional office stocks an ambitious Christian leader who calls himself "evangelical," according to Jim Guth, a political science professor at Furman University.

Coral Ridge Ministries boasts a weekly television show and a daily radio show broadcast to millions. The following was written by its former executive director George Grant. It's basically the mission statement of the Rapture Right:

Christians have an obligation, a mandate, a commission, a holy responsibility to reclaim the land for Jesus Christ—to have dominion in the civil structures, just as in every other aspect of life and godliness. But it is dominion that we are after. Not just a voice. It is dominion we are after. Not just influence. It is dominion we are after. Not just equal time. It is dominion we are after.

World conquest. That's what Christ has commissioned us to accomplish. We must win the world with the power of the Gospel. And we must never settle for anything less. If Jesus Christ is indeed Lord, as the Bible says, and if our commission is to bring the land into subjection to His Lordship, as the Bible says, then all our activities, all our witnessing, all our preaching, all our craftsmanship, all our stewardship, and all our political action will aim at nothing short of that sacred purpose. Thus, Christian politics has as its primary intent the conquest of the land—of men, families, institutions, bureaucracies, courts, and governments for the Kingdom of Christ. It is to reinstitute theauthority of God's Word as supreme over all judgments, over all legislation, over all declarations, constitutions, and confederations.

Why should they have dominion over all the creatures of the Earth? Because that's what it says in the Bible: "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth" (Genesis 1:26). There thou hath it: if thou creepeth, lo, do they hath dominion over thee!

They want it all. And it's not just geographic dominion. While the press has reasonably been distracted with the right's attempt at dominion over the Middle East, they've set about locking up dominion over the homefront—over sex, religion, your finances (which is to say, your future), and over science. Those are what we're going to focus on, and not just because we don't want to go to Iraq.

It's the last of those—science—that we'll start with. Because it's really a battle over truth itself, and they realize that if they can win that, then their "domino theory" may work after all.

"In a child's ability to master the multiplication table, there is more holiness than all your shouted hosannas and holy holies. An idea is more important than a monument, and the advancement of Man's knowledge more miraculous than all the sticks turned to snakes and the parting of the waters."—Inherit the Wind

Turns out, an idea is not just more important than a monument, it's more important than a fact.

Intelligent design is the new smart bomb of the religious right. It may not be science, but it's still brilliant. For a long time, religion and science coexisted pretty well. There was that dustup with Galileo, and the Scopes glitch, but, for the most part, science was science, religion was religion.

The genius of the intelligent-design concept, though, is how it uses the principles of enlightenment and progressivism to destroy…enlightenment and progressivism.

And that's because with the new version, Intelligent Design 2.0, all its proponents are asking for is "open-mindedness," to "have a debate," to "consider all sides." Science is hard stuff—that's why you usually need a Ph.D. to be a scientist. But the intelligent-design crowd has been able to turn that into a plus, by conflating complexity with "contradiction." And all they're asking is for schools to "present both sides."

Copyright © 2006 by Sam Seder and Stephen Sherrill.