Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism
Michelle Goldberg New York: W. W. Norton (2006)
224 pages

Michelle Goldberg, is a bright and engaging young senior political reporter for www.Salon.com. She ardently believes there is an influential Christian fundamentalism in America that is increasingly bellicose, overtly political, and aggressively theocratic. Her opinion about this movement is not new. There has been a veritable field day for similar books, some written by noteworthy Christians on the political Left, since the re-election of George W. Bush in 2004. Though I believe Michelle Goldberg has vastly overstated the problem she addresses, she has in the process surfaced some profoundly troubling issues that orthodox Christians ought to be thinking about, especially if they align themselves with the conservative majority in the Republican Party. The reasons we ought to be concerned, however, are not actually the reasons that Goldberg gives us in her hard-hitting and breezy critique.

Goldberg, who lives in Brooklyn, admits in a disarming and friendly way that she is "a secular Jew and ardent urbanite." She also states that her reason for writing this book was that she "was terrified by America's increasing hostility to . . . cosmopolitan values." Read the last two words very broadly to mean "secular values" and you get her drift. This reader, for one, was grateful that she was honest enough to admit her bias at the outset. I do believe her expression is sincerely authentic, and thus I believe she must be genuinely fearful of conservative Christians and their role in the public arena. But far too few secular critics admit so candidly that they have a dog in these "culture wars." Goldberg is to be commended for her honesty. This alone made me want to read the book to the end. My response was quite mixed, but I found the process fruitful. Let me explain.

Goldberg's thesis is rather simple: There is a growing expression of Christian nationalism in this country that threatens our social identity and, more importantly, our personal freedoms under the law. The Enlightenment has clearly ended, rational free inquiry is seriously threatened, and radical Christian beliefs in the public square may end the very republic, at least as we now know it. Goldberg is not alone in this thesis. Similar views are shared by the popular Jewish writer James Rudin in The Baptizing of America: The Religious Right's Plans for the Rest of Us (Thunder's Mouth, 2006), and in the New York Times best-seller by Kevin Phillips, American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century (Viking, 2006). Even Randall Balmer, himself a self-proclaimed evangelical, makes the same point in Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America: An Evangelical's Lament (Basic, 2006). Running through each of these author's arguments, as in Goldberg's, is a conspiracy of some sort, a conspiracy to take over the nation for religion.

Goldberg's primary attack is aimed at "dominion theology," which she sees as the evangelical belief that Christians have "a responsibility to take over every aspect of society." Her basic thesis is developed rather simplistically, to say the least. Since 9/11, Christians have influenced the heartland of America to embrace a religious radicalism that threatens the future of treasured freedoms that are what America is all about. The growing influence of dominion theology, in her view, threatens real democracy and has now led multitudes of Christians to believe that they have the right to actually rule nonbelievers by instituting a Godly dominion determined by the Ten Commandments.

Goldberg's father figure in all of these nefarious developments on the Christian Right is the late conservative and Reformed writer R. J. Rushdoony. An example of how she uses Rushdoony's influence can be seen in a reference she makes to a Baptist lawyer, and Liberty University graduate, named David Gibbs. (Gibbs addressed a rally following the death of Terri Schiavo and is cited by Goldberg in this context, 154–55.) Goldberg calls Gibbs a Reconstructionist, a label he would surely reject. There is no evidence offered for this claim, but, as throughout the entire book, Goldberg wants you to see how Rushdoony's thought lies behind all of the various strands of the modern religious conservative movement. She then adds, quite incredulously, "But whether he knew it or not, Reconstructionism shaped his thinking, just as it shaped the thinking of the Christian nationalist movement as a whole" (159). If this is an argument, and for her it truly is her major argument, then her thesis is completely discredited.

But what about Rushdoony's views on government, since he is sometimes cited by a few Reformed thinkers as a credible source for serious cultural thought? Unfortunately, Goldberg has something to work with in making her case. Rushdoony plainly viewed democracy with hostility and regularly said so for decades. Rushdoony argued, in several places, that the second commandment opposed democracy. One example will suffice, taken from a book that he wrote in 1983. "Democary is one such popular idol. . . . The highest religion is thus the religion of man, humanism, whose political form is the ‘City of Man,' or democracy. Clearly this is idolatry!" (Salvation and Godly Rule, Rousas John Rushdoony [Vallecito, California: Ross House Books, 1983], 161–62).

What has made this threat possible is the growing influence of fundamentalism and its linkage with Republican Party political patronage. Goldberg names many names, draws many stark conclusions, and tries desperately to show how the agenda of these folks is to seize the nation for Christ. These folks, in her worldview, are the neo-confederates and the open advocates of theocracy. And now they have taken control of many federally-funded programs, such as faith-based charities, that officially offer Jesus as the solution to our country's moral and social problems. What we have here is a real "Jesus Land" scenario.

But what is really going on here is important for people on both sides to see more clearly. Goldberg wants the secular values of the Enlightenment to trump any religious impact Christians have upon the culture, especially that of conservative Christianity. Goldberg sees good guys in the present context, and they are those people who want to retain reason and secular culture against the bad guys, those irrational and mystical sorts who want to promote their brand of conservative religion.

Chapters include reports taken from Goldberg's travels across "Red State" America. Through interviews and personal anecdotal research she discovered a host of inflammatory political tactics that troubled her on a number of social wedge issues like gay-rights, evolution, and sex-education. She particularly despises the Bush administration's efforts to create "faith-based" social services that have governmental approval. (She seems to have selectively forgotten that a good number of Democrats went along with the development of much of this agenda.)

Goldberg does what similar writers have done in their recent attacks upon the Christian Right—she links America's Christian Right to the ideas and practices of Nazi German leaders in the 1930s. This "Christofacist" connection is a real stretch, but I am convinced Goldberg really believes it exists. If it did, she should be afraid, and I would be the first to support her fears openly. But the question comes down to this: Has Goldberg made her point beyond reasonable doubt? I do not think so.

Goldberg is praised by the usual liberal voices from within the world of religion and politics. Sam Harris, the author of The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, writes that Goldberg's book "reveals how thoroughly our national discourse has been corrupted by the mad work of religious literalists." Harris adds, this is "a terrifying, necessary book." Julia Scheeres, the author of Jesus Land, adds that this is "a chilling and lucid investigation into the rise of Christian extremism in America." And the well-known writer Todd Gitlin says, "If you cherish plurality and reason, read Kingdom Coming to get the bad news—and to restore your faith in journalism." That's quite a lineup of fearful liberals to all be praising the same book with such great fervor.

I said at the outset that there are reasons to listen carefully to Goldberg's concerns, but these reasons are not the ones she actually provides for us. My concern is not that there is a vast Right-wing conspiracy developing in the land, a conspiracy that will lead to a full-blown, or even partially arranged, Christian theocracy. Goldberg, like all similar writers who have taken up this theme since 2004 and the re-election of George W. Bush, believes that the "morality" vote for Bush demonstrates her central point. But it does nothing of the kind. Even the early discussion about those thousands of morality voters, especially in Ohio, was eventually trumped by a discussion about the much larger "national security" vote in that election. This issue, national security, seems to have driven the Bush re-election effort far more powerfully than anything remotely religious. And the agenda of the theo-cons has plainly failed at many crucial places over the course of the past two years. Only in the area of same-sex marriage has it profoundly succeeded, and this issue is clearly not one which is the sole domain of the religious Right. There is a wide-ranging opposition to same-sex marriage that still connects deeply with most Americans. Furthermore, America is way too secular, and way too religiously diverse, for Goldberg to fear that Christians could change the political and legal landscape so profoundly.

So what do we take away from this book that is actually valuable to us as Christians? After the failed attempt to link Rushdoony and his tiny, marginalized movement to the mainstream of the Christian Right, I believe Goldberg actually helps us by showing how a multi-denominational movement has become linked too closely with one political party and a very narrow set of partisan views. In the same way that the Democrats have used Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton to woo liberal voters, the GOP is now using Christian conservatives in a similar way. This is not a serious danger to the nation's form of government, but it is a deadly danger to the witness and spiritual vitality of the church itself. As Russ Douthat recently concluded: "When Tom DeLay cloaks himself in the ‘perfect redeeming love of Jesus Christ' to brush off charges of corruption, it's not the separation of church and state that's in danger but DeLay's own Christian faith" (First Things, August–September, 2006). Precisely true. And Goldberg's fears thus make me ask, Are we now more openly identified with the political Right than with the love of Jesus Christ for the world? If I could sit down with Michele Goldberg, I would love to explain several things to her that she does not understand about conservative Christians in America. First, she has nothing to fear from 99.9 per cent of these people. Second, she really has nothing to fear from Jesus Christ, except that he would radically transform her life in ways that she would thank God for if she actually met him in his grace. Third, I would assure her that the present political form of the modern Christian Right is not the whole story of how Christians can and should engage culture and politics. An entirely better, and far more prophetic, way has been almost totally ignored by most of those who exercise influence on the Christian Right.