Below is a full transcript of an episode of Talking Stick TV, where Reverend Rich Lang of University Temple United Methodist Church in Seattle gives a radio talk about the history of right-wing Christianity in 20th century America and the rise of Christian fascism.
He gave this talk in 2011, long before Donald Trump and the current iteration of white Christian nationalism came on the scene. It’s very eye-opening, with a handy timeline so as to help trace the foundations of this movement as it’s moved through time. (As this was broadcast in 2011, Lang is missing the phenomenon of QAnon, but it belongs in the understanding of this movement.)
(I’ve segmented the talk with headers and added descriptive links. Italics represent Lang’s emphasis, while bolding represents mine.)
Mike, host of Talking Stick TV: So last time we—it’s been a few years since you’ve been on the show. Last time, you were in—back in 2006—you were in [here] talking about an article that you wrote that got a lot of traction on the Internet and elsewhere entitled “George Bush and the Rise of Christian Fascism.” And I was hoping you could talk today about where we are since then, now that George Bush is out of power. Have things gotten any better?
Reverend Rich Lang: Things have not gotten better. So I’ll just kind of peel it back in history.
Setting the stage: George Bush (the Younger)
One of the things is that, when Bush came into power, I noticed right away his use of Christian rhetoric, and I noticed how his language was very symbolic. Like, on the surface, people would just listen to it and say, “Oh, here’s a religious man. He’s using religious imagery.” But it was almost like code language. It was almost like throwing some meat out there to hungry carnivores—that what he was saying on the surface also had deeper meaning. He was signaling to his base, the Christian right-wing base, that his administration was “godly” and “ordained” and “blessed of God.”
And I became very—you know, my antennae went up and my ears got bigger, because, you know, I think any move by Christianity (or religion in general), any move by our faith traditions towards power, towards the accumulation of power, personally I think that’s always what I would call a demonic force. I think that’s a perversion and a misuse of religion. Obviously, spiritualities and religious movements and institutions, obviously they have a role in society, and it’s a role of influence in society. But when religion crosses the line, when institutional religion also crosses the line, to actually wanting to seize the reins of power and want to control society, want to make society holy, so to speak—others would call it a theocracy—I think people should pay attention to that.
And so I got very, very animated and concerned with what was happening in the Bush administration. And, of course, when he left office and everybody breathed a sigh of relief—“Ah, okay, that’s passed, now we can go back to normal”— No. The Christian Right is back, I think more powerful than ever. You can see this certainly in the absolute takeover of the Republican Party by the troops of the Republican Party, the troops of the Tea Party. These are Christian right-wing folks.
So I wanted to scale this back and give folks a little bit of historical perspective of what’s been going on in the Church. And someone eelse might be able to track this of what’s going on in their kind of—you know, perhaps in Islam or in Judaism, or in any religion. I think the seedbed of fundamentalism, this notion of wanting to achieve power to win the world for God, is in all religious manifestations. So I’ll speak to the one I know, and that’s Christianity.
History at the turn of the 20th century
(~ 3:45)
End Times Church / Jewish settlement
And I’ll begin way back in—well, way back in my own childhood. You know, I came into Christianity in a fundamentalist, End Times church. And what an End Times church is, it’s a church that believes that life is scripted, that God has this plan for life, and that as life unfolds nothing happens really by accident—God is sovereign over everything—and that the end is already scripted. History is moving towards a final catastrophe. And in any time of crisis, like today, that has resonance in people’s souls, because you look around and your common sense looks around and says, “Man, things are falling apart! Institutions are falling apart, everyone’s corrupt. How can this go on? Something’s got to stop this insanity.” Within Christianity, the notion of an End Times catastrophe is just kind of wrapped into our DNA.
At the end of World War I, the Allied forces began to restructure the Middle East in such a way that, suddenly, Palestine got on people’s radar. Allowing Jews to begin to return to their homeland became an igniting factor in the Christian right wing, who kind of subscribed to this End Times thinking. Now, as that was beginning to ignite some thought, like, “The Jews are returning to their land! What does this mean? Isn’t this what prophecy foretold? Are we moving into the End Times?” And it created an awful lot of energy around that.
Scopes trial
And then we came—you know, I’m rifling through this rapidly—we came to the Scopes monkey trial, which was very important because the fundamentalists were humiliated—intellectually, emotionally—on a national stage. The movement went underground. But what’s most important to remember is that it went underground—that is, it dropped off the public radar—but what happened is they began to build an alternative and parallel society. They began to build their own institutions, their own schools, their own radio shows, their own media, their own cultural apparatus.
Now, flash forward a bit of time, and you have the phenomenon that many of us remember of the Jerry Falwells and the Pat Robertsons. Well, Jerry Falwell is a real interesting case study, because he’s one of those pastors that moved from being rather quiet about his politics, because what was most important in those End Times churches was simply saving souls. Society was a wrecked vessel. Society’s not going to get better, so why bother with society? The End Times are coming.
And—I’m sorry, I skipped a part. What really ignited people was in the late ‘40s, when Israel then became a nation. The right wing and the End Times thinking was completely animated at this, because what they would call the prophetic clock began. And they thought that within a generation—so by 1988—Hal Lindsey actually wrote a book and predicted by 1988 the Lord would return.
But in the ‘60s, Falwell, who was criticizing Martin Luther King—Falwell was against Christians involved in any kind of political witness, any kind of public witness—and his theology at that time was that the only thing of any importance was saving a person’s soul. And so the work of the church was really within the church, and it was winning converts to the church.
That shifted for him with, I think it’s partly with, the aftereffects of the Powell memo.
The Powell Memo
(~ 8:00)
For folks that are listening, I think one of the significant events of our culture happened when Lewis Powell, who eventually became a Supreme Court justice, wrote a memo—and you can Google it, you can look it up and just, it’s “Powell memo,” and it’s very readable, even though he was a lawyer, this is very readable.
And it was a memo to the business community, essentially the Chamber of Commerce, that business interests were losing access. They were losing their own power base. The elites were worried about the democracy movements that were coming up out of the ‘60s. And they were particularly worried about the consumer rights movement, the environmental rights movement, but there were others, obviously. The civil rights movement and the war were happening as well.
But what the business community was concerned about was that the reforms of FDR were advancing, and we were moving more towards an egalitarian society. And that was not in the best interests of that top 1%, that top 10% of our culture. Powell represented them.
And so he writes this memo basically to the business community, saying, “Look. Stop being so civil-minded—so civic-minded, rather—that you’re funding all of these outlets for many different opinions. We need to consolidate our forces and focus simply on what’s good for our business.”
And since that time—I believe that was around ‘72 or so. Since that time, there has been a radical shift in the politics of this country, and leading up to today where we’re now basically an oligarchy and we’re moving towards, in my opinion, a fascist state.
The Right Wing Morphs
(~ 9:48)
What happened in the religious realm is the religious realm, or at least the right wing of the Church, they kind of went hand-in-glove with this movement. A lot of it funded and, but, other than the funding itself, it was kind of the ideological background of the libertarian movement that justified the trashing of regulations—why do you need regulations on the environment? The world’s going to hell, it’s a wrecked vessel. As a matter of fact, the sooner it goes to hell, the better, because Jesus will return quicker.
Purity & the bride
And so this End Times thinking was what I personally grew up with, when I became a Christian. So as a Christian in those days, what I was concerned about was, I needed to save your soul, Mike, because I didn’t want you to burn in hell forever and ever and ever. And part of that soul-saving was to purify the Church, to make sure that all sexual dysfunction and all sexual impurity was driven out of the Church (I mean, Christians seem to be obsessed with people’s sexuality).
It was also character development. I’m being facetious, but I’m calling it the Boy Scout ethic—you know, they wanted to create a moral purity in the individual. Because we’re the bride of Christ and we have to ready ourselves for the husband, Christ, when he comes back to reclaim us before all hell breaks loose. And that was the focus of churches, a focus at least of End Time churches, fundamentalist churches, as I experienced them.
The shift
But something began to happen, and this comes back to where Falwell even began to shift himself, from being against any public involvement of churches towards being very politically involved in churches. Underneath the surfaces again, in the realm of ideas, in the realm of theology, a new movement began to emerge. Some names that people can look up and reference: one name in particular is Francis Schaeffer. His son, Frank Schaeffer, is writing a whole bunch of books these days; he’s basically doing repentance, saying this is not what his father really wanted.
But his father was one of the great architects of the shift in thinking of evangelicals and fundamentalists, and that shift being, “No, no, no, we really need to win the world for Christ. We need to win the culture. We need to reshape the culture and the institutions of society, shape them into Christ-like structures, so that what we’re doing in the Church in terms of moral purity and hierarchy and patriarchy—what we’re doing in the Church should also be reflected in how we live our lives. And it’s not simply patriotic: it is our God-given responsibility to do that.”
Another person to look up, if you want the influence on Schaeffer, was a guy named Rousas Rushdoony. He wrote a big tome, The Institutes of Biblical Law. And this gets a little complex—I’ll try to make it quick and clear.
What the theology began to talk about—and a name for it, again you can look it up, is called Christian reconstructionism: they wanted to reconstruct society. It’s also called Dominionism, taken from a text in Genesis where God creates human beings, a man in particular (Adam), and says, “Have dominion over the earth.” Somebody like me would look at that text and say what that’s talking about is stewardship—be a co-creator with God, be a co-governor with God. You know, care for the earth. But what the Christian right took it to mean is to seize the apparatus, to seize the means of control, and to dominate the earth, make it work for you.
And so this movement began to grow in the Christian right—on the fringe of the Christian right, which is no longer, it’s no longer on the fringe. But in those days, and I’m talking the ‘60s and the ‘70s and the ‘80s, this was still on the fringe, where, “No, we really need to look at this wrecked vessel of a dying Earth—no, no, we really need to reconstruct it, to prepare it for Jesus’s return as a morally pure bride.”
So the shift in theology was shifting from thinking that the world was going to hell and is a wrecked vessel towards “No, we need to purify the world, to hand it over to a victorious Jesus coming back—not to slaughter the world, but he’s coming back to receive the purity of his bride. And those who are unpure, well, they’ll get slaughtered.” You know. But the focus began to shift.
And this is the theology that most of us are now familiar with coming out of the Christian right. This is the theology that talks about making the Ten Commandments the law of the land, strengthening patriarchy as the order for families. Anyone in Seattle: Mars Hill is a church that’s pretty much known for this, as you strengthen the mannishness of man so that men will take over and be the head of their households; and there’s a hierarchy of authority within not only the church structures but the family structure; and they also have that political agenda of winning the city here in Seattle, and now I think he’s going a little more global. But, you know, winning the country for a Christian morality.
Homeschool, slavery & slaughter
The whole notion of closing public schools, or more to the point, more positively, I guess, to the point of their notion of homeschooling, taking children, taking their children out of the schools where it’s morally impure and putting them within a morally pure household. And so, again, politically, “Why should our taxes go to fund any of this stuff? Because the political world is anti-Christ, and so we are pro-Christ, and so let’s pull our taxes. Let’s pull the money that we’re giving to the anti-Christ, let’s pull it back into our Christian cultures and our Christian institutions.
It’s the notion of wanting to reduce government to simply the role of defending property rights. That’s the agenda of the Christian right, is that the government has two roles: to defend property rights, and the corollary—I mean, you know, that takes a police and judicial apparatus, and I guess a governing apparatus—but the corollary is military, and that is to defend property rights by having a dominant military that is a Christian-based military that will win the world for Christ.
The craziest part—and I just bring this up because it sounds so crazy, but it is very serious and is growing in acceptance on the Christian right—is to reform and close the prisons. So what do you do with the impure? You reinstitute slavery, and capital punishment; and you’re reinstituting capital punishment for all the crimes that are right there in Bible, in the Torah of Israel. And that is, if somebody is guilty of apostasy or blasphemy, or if your child is simply incorrigible, or if you murder someone or rape someone, or break the Sabbath, or sodomy or witchcraft or homosexuality—in the Old Testament, in the Hebrew scriptures, and in much of Christian tradition, those were anathema. And, in the Torah, those were all capital offenses, where a person could be killed for that.
There’s a movement on the right wing of the Christian church to reinstitute capital punishment for those offenses. And what the listener needs to understand is, this makes perfect logical sense in their world, because moral purity leads to peace. Moral purity leads to prosperity. Moral purity leads to the just and equal society, or I should say the just, hierarchical society of law and order.
When a group of people believe this and they don’t have political power over others, it’s just, you know, “Okay, those people are kind of weird.” But when that idea begins to take manifest and take shape in the organizing of political power, which is what’s happening in the Republican Party and the Tea Party, that’s something that people should pay attention to.
And liberals, by and large—and the liberal church is where I get my energy—we are simply asleep at the wheel. We are not engaging in this theological, ideological battle for the Bible, if you will, battle for the tradition and, really, what spirituality is going to govern the life of those of us who have found peace and centeredness in the risen Christ. And the Church is very, very asleep about what is happening theologically on the right wing of the Christian faith, even though it is manifesting in politics all over the place.
A new fusion
(~ 20:12)
Something lately has shifted, and when I say lately, I’m literally talking about the last twenty years. Folks can—and I know this is hard to follow. But in the old End Times theology, you had the notion that the society was a wrecked vessel. But in this new kind of—you know, that’s old Jerry Falwell: society’s a wrecked vessel; don’t pay attention to it. But the new Jerry Falwell, and the rise of the Christian right today, is, “No, no, no, we’re supposed to rule and reign for Christ.” We’re supposed to reconstitute society and to make it a morally pure bride for the returning, triumphant Jesus who comes back for his bride. Well, that’s a—there’s a little contradiction there. Is the world coming to an end, or is the world being perfected?
What’s happened in the last twenty years—and, again, for any listener that wants to see this at play, simply go to your cable TV and watch some of the Christian TV, some of those worship services that are on Christian TV—and what you’re going to see is a theocratic movement at work.
There’s a website that I would call listeners’ attention to, I think it’s very useful—anyone who’s interested in this, I would encourage to go and check out—the website is triple-dot talk2action dot org. Talk, the number two. So talk2action dot org. The folks who run that website have been following this better than anyone else, and one of their authors there has labeled this new movement “charismatic dominionism.”
What that means is what’s happened, and what is happening before our eyes as we speak in Christianity, is the fusion of this Dominionist theology—that we are to rule and reign in the political world for Jesus, we’re supposed to create a morally pure society for the returning Christ—that is now being fused with the good, old-fashioned Pentecostal signs and wonders theology.
So, what’s happening to Christian believers is they are going to church on Sunday and some other days of the week, and they are experiencing the ecstatic power of God. And if you want to take this back in your mind, just think of how trance-like you can become around a campfire, and people banging on drums and beating drums, and that rhythmic stuff that starts in your toes and works their way all up in your body and, before you know it, you’re moving and you’re achieving an ecstatic state, and you’re feeling the power of the divine in you.
That’s what’s happening in Pentecostal religions, is you’re going to church and you are experiencing the Spirit, and the Spirit is lifting you up out of your seats. And they’re not pews anymore in these churches—these are chairs. And they’re dancing in the aisles. And sometimes they’re falling on the ground in ecstatic states, sometimes they’re barking like dogs and throwing their hands up in the air and speaking in tongues.
The signs and wonders church: what the word means is that—the literal belief that God is giving and pouring supernatural power into the life of the believer. And so you’re—and that believer is then being able to be healed of any bodily afflictions, or some are able to heal others. There [are] stories that circulate in those, stories that the dead are being raised in places. Now, to my knowledge, no one’s actually produced a dead guy talking. But the stories are out there, and they take on this legend, and people believe that these things are possible. And here’s where it gets interesting.
World of Satan and shadows
(~ 24:15)
But the theology of the Pentecostal church and the charismatic movement is that the real world is spiritual. And so when something is not pure, when something goes wrong, it is because there’s a demonic attack. There’s God, the good power—Glinda, the good witch—and there’s the wicked witch, and there’s the devil. And whenever anything goes wrong, it’s the devil and that demonic power. And charismatic energy knows how to cast out the devils.
Politically, what happens is that, when there is disruption in society, it’s not just political agendas at work: it’s a deep, spiritual move; and that the person who opposes you politically, that person is demonic and full of demons.
And so what I ask, when I see this, what I ask is: what happens in human nature when we think that the person who disagrees with us is not just disagreeable but is a source of evil and contagion and has to be eradicated or removed in order for the common good to rise?
So, what’s happening today is a fusion between this believer going to church, being filled with ecstatic power, which kind of justifies the notion that Jesus is really with us now, and he’s pouring this power now, and he’s giving us this energy now, and the kingdom of God has come upon us now— and it’s being fused with this theology that what we’re supposed to do with this energy is to rule and reign in the whole world and turn the structures of society, to make them morally pure.
To take the—there’s a word for it, called “reclaiming the seven mountains of culture,” to transform society, to transform the arts and entertainment world, the business world, the education world, the family world, the government world, media, religion, military—all of these must come under the authority of Jesus.
And to cut to the chase, they must come under the authority again of a clerical reign. But it won’t be clergy like me. It’s charismatic figures who call themselves apostles, and they have their prophets. And that’s another show—I can see on the time. But, for the listener, where this all comes down, where the rubber meets the road, is in the Republican Party: Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum and Sarah Palin, who’s no longer a political factor. But all of these people are being anointed, being promoted by this fusion of charismatic and dominionist power.
And this is not a small movement. There are hundreds of millions of Christians globally who are being impacted by this fusion of charismatic signs-and-wonders theology with the rule-and-reign theology of Dominionism. Once again, what that means is that the Christian church, the right-wing Christian church, its agenda is to move towards political power, and what that means if you are not one of them is there’s probably demons in you, and you need to be disciplined and/or removed.