In the past month or so, we've had some white Republican men who have, once threatened with being exposed in public, confessed their sins. In both cases, the men committed adultery. And in both cases, the men sought counseling from others in a group called "The Family", a secretive organization that has been covered last week and tonight by Rachel Maddow in her MSNBC show. I'd gotten the idea for and started this diary, interestingly enough, before the coverage on "The Family" started with Rachel, though apparently their story has been written by Jeff Sharlett. Suddenly his book is a hot commodity at last among people of our ilk.
But that's not what I'm going to write about here. My meta diary on what it is that motivates fundamentalist politicians to behave this way and yet insist on clinging to their power, in spite of claiming that all others who behave this way must do the honorable thing and relinquish their power, continues below.
Redemption
From what I understand, fundamentalist christianity (note the small c) seems to have as its basis two notions. One is the idea of redemption, but it's a special kind of redemption, and very powerful. Redemption: a guaranteed one-way ticket to heaven once you leave this mortal coil. I call this concept, which I think is fundamentally non-Christian (note the capital C), "Jesus as enabler", something I don't believe he ever intended to be, but definitely a position that humans are all too able to put him in. "You'll get into heaven ONLY if you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior", even if it's in the very last breath you take at the end of a very immoral, wicked life.
What. a. deal! There are of course, variations on this theme. Calvinism seems to be a particularly cruel version of this idea; God chooses who will be saved, and it doesn't matter how you conduct your life. How your life goes, however, in terms of material goods and such, is indicative of whether or not you are one of "God's elect". It sounds as though our friends in the C Street House were pretty much convinced that they were God's elect, from what was said in Rachel Maddow's interview with Jeff Sharlett last night. Their election to office apparently was God's idea, and an indication of their status in the eyes of the holy one.
Irredeemably Fallen, Intrinsically Evil
The necessary predicate to redemption is the other important notion of fundamentalism: the imperfection, nay the irredeemable, intrinsic evil of man (sic). Where does that come in here? If you're not a member of "God's elect", well, you will be anything from ignored (Katrina?) at best, to actively being destroyed (the poor, teh gays, the blacks and Latinos) at worst. One statement last night in Rachel's show by Mr. Sharlett struck me as particularly frightening with respect to the C-Street House membership, considering their positions of power in our government. Rachel asks a question regarding "the professed [moral] attitude of the group toward adultery", and Mr. Sharlett gives a more general response regarding the C-Street House attitude toward morality in general You can hear it for yourself below, at about 7:09 into the 9+ minute clip:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/...
... in the core, they actually reject the concept of morality for their members. They see morality as a secular construct ... something that's made by man for little people like us ... For God's chosen, morality, ethics, these thing just don't apply to you ...
The last part of the clip talks about the misogyny of the group, with one member apparently being counseled that because his wife didn't feel sexually satisfied by him, that she must be "demonically possessed" and that the demon needed to be exorcised.
Let's generalize that a little; if we the (little) people don't feel satisfied with the work of these C Street House politicians, I suppose that means we are also possessed? And these men don't have to answer to us in any case.
They are the Elect, the Chosen. God's already chosen them; no matter what they do, they have nothing to fear. No graft, no corruption, no crime or other hurtful act is sufficient to keep them from being God's elect. All they have to do is hold each other up, in secret; the "little people's morality" does not apply to them, but keeping things on the down low will keep the skids greased a little bit better.
I know this notion has been around for a very long time in American religion and culture (and before than, in its origins in the European Reformation). And I can't think of a better reason to keep church and state separate.