Do religious right groups do anything other than push their repressive political agenda and organize revival meetings? Every few weeks there’s a new event announced, with names like 40 Days to Save America or America for Jesus. Here’s a new one, Cry Out America, planned for — when else? — 9/11. It’s the same list of groups that are always involved in such events, like the Family Research Council, the Christian Broadcasting Network, The Call, Intercessors for America and other similar groups. And of course, they have a promotional video with appropriately triumphant must declaring that “darkness has engulfed our nation.”
And they say:
On September 11, 2001, America was shaken to its foundation by a series of surprise terrorist attacks. All of us were awakened to the new reality of global terrorism. 10 years later our nation needs to be awakened again, not just to the threats of terrorism, but to our critical spiritual condition.
Americans are now in desperate need of a fresh Christ Awakening. Our economy has been deeply shaken. Overall church attendance continues to decline across the nation, America is now the third largest mission field in the world and an entire generation is growing up with little understanding of absolute truth. Yet, in what appears to be a very trying time for the Church in this nation, we believe that America is on the verge of a sweeping move of God’s Spirit that will touch every state, every county and every heart. Americans are now in desperate need of a fresh Christ Awakening.
It seems that America is forever on the verge of a great Christian revival. All you have to do to make it happen is send money to these groups and show up to pray to no one at the appointed time. And then do it again in 3 months when the next one takes place. And the next one. And the next one. Of course, the real purpose of these events is to A) raise money and B) expand the mailing lists of these organizations so they can (see A) raise more money.
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eric
August 9, 2012 at 10:49 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Yup. To be more specific, this week darkness will engulf our nation between (approximately) 8:00pm and 8:10pm local time.
John Pieret
August 9, 2012 at 10:58 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
10 years later …
I suppose they learned their math from the Bible, as when it said that Pi=3.
KG
August 9, 2012 at 11:00 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
So, there is some good news, at least!
Larry
August 9, 2012 at 11:00 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
And on September 12, nothing will have changed except we all be a day older.
Onamission5
August 9, 2012 at 11:02 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
This is what has been all over my tv lately, and is adverstised on at least half the church sign boards around town, including the church behind which I live.
http://harvestamerica.com/
They’re ramping up for the election. I remember a similar frothiness back in the 80′s when the dominionist movement first started to get political teeth.
blf
August 9, 2012 at 11:03 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Don’t they also have a tendency to set up spectacularly inefficient charities? The type where a huge percentage of the incoming donations is supposedly spent on administration and whatnot, leaving only a tiny amount for whatever good-sounding cause the charity is collecting for?
I freely admit I cannot pin down a specific example at the moment. Apologies for being rather vague.
brucecoppola
August 9, 2012 at 11:05 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Well, we have been going to Hell in a handbasket since 9/11, though not in the way they think.
raven
August 9, 2012 at 11:10 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Of course they do.
Once they collect the money, they count it. And then spend it.
The more ruthless and greedy can collect tens of millions of dollars. Pat Robertson is rumored to be a billionaire.
It’s really not all that easy. There are large numbers of mansions, fine wines and drugs, fast cars, small jets, jewelry, and whatever else that money can buy. It’s a full time job just trying to choose the best of the best.
dantelevel9
August 9, 2012 at 11:28 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Ichthyic
August 9, 2012 at 11:29 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Hey, if “darkness has engulfed the nation”, it happened on THEIR WATCH.
can’t we sue them for negligence?
Ichthyic
August 9, 2012 at 11:32 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Americans are now in desperate need of a fresh Christ Awakening.
as I often say in the morning while attempting to rouse myself fully:
“JESUS H CHRIST, that’s damn good coffee.”
hey, I grind the beans myself.
Ichthyic
August 9, 2012 at 11:34 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
http://harvestamerica.com/
yup, it’s time to lead the lambs in for the harvest.
motivate the authoritarian base.
Michael Heath
August 9, 2012 at 11:41 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I’m surprised it’s taken this long for a commenter to state the obvious when it comes to this particular dog whistle. Yeah for conservatives, that darkness started the day the current president took his oath of office.
John Hinkle
August 9, 2012 at 11:41 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I’ve also heard on Moody Bible radio that they’re collecting contact information at these Revivals de la Megawoo so as to register Xian voters. Money, theocracy, perpetuation of privilege, punishing the Other… all part of the Big Plan.
oranje
August 9, 2012 at 11:50 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I’m thinking they’ve learned from the professional wrestling financial model: have a whole bunch of free media they dangle out there, but you have to show up and pay for the really big shows. And the whole time, nothing really changes, though there are some new faces and the masses getting up and yelling and cheering sometimes.
busterggi
August 9, 2012 at 11:53 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
All the inbreeding of these groups since Reagan took office is really beginning to show.
tacitus
August 9, 2012 at 12:12 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Has there ever been a “revival” in a modern democratic nation (i.e. in the last 50 years) that’s had ever caused more than a momentary blip in the religious belief of a population? After all, they failed spectacularly to capitalize on the temporary rise in religious observance after 9/11.
The dirty secret is that it will take another 9/11, or more likely a disaster far in excess of 9/11, to move America away from its steady course of creeping secularization that’s finally beginning to gain momentum as youngsters turn away from religion in ever greater numbers.
Ichthyic
August 9, 2012 at 12:27 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
the Big Plan.
It’s no secret.
Realizing there was a huge authoritarian base that could be manipulated as a power block was part of the Nixon strategy and has snowballed ever since.
Leo Strauss hinted at it in his writings even, and the necons embraced it whole hog with spectacular results.
unfortunately, this strategy always has a hook when overused, as it has been.
Even McCain was smart enough to sound the warning Klaxon back in 2000.
they punished him for it.
bmiller
August 9, 2012 at 12:31 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Tacitus::
That is exactly my fear. If the economy does not “recover” and things get worse for the vast majority of people (and given global climate change, resource wars, and the decline of a true middle class I doubt that it really ever will) will people instead turn back more and more to superstition and religious obscurantism. The demon Haunted World has never really disappeared.
raven
August 9, 2012 at 12:42 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Well, sure, things are slowly getting worse, not better. Poverty levels are the highest since 1960′s, and so on, economy stuck in neutral.
But what does religion, particularly the fundie perversion have to offer anyone.
Hate, lies, and hypocrisy. Plus they siphon as much of your money as they can, and mostly spend it on fast cars, jets, and high living.
At best, a lot of religion is just neutral. The fundies are part of the problem, the cause, not the solution.
Michael Heath
August 9, 2012 at 1:02 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
raven responds to bmiller:
Actually, there is a correlation between financial security and religiosity. So bmiller’s point is accurate in spite of the fact you’re right that religion doesn’t offer the necessary antidote to economic decline. In the U.S. the most politically active religionists are one of the two predominant voting bases opposing effective growth-centric policy prescriptions (the other being liberal populist policies which don’t really play much at the federal level anymore but still do at the state and local level).
typecaster
August 9, 2012 at 1:31 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I’ve met a number of the people in these groups, and I’m sure that the inbreeding started long before Reagan took office.
fifthdentist
August 9, 2012 at 1:32 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I actually saw a FB meme that addressed this very well.
The gist of it was that why would Bible-monster destroy America now for abortion and gay marriage when he supposedly blessed the country during hundreds of years genocide of Native peoples and the enslavement, murder and rape of Africans.
Of course, we know that home school curriculum teaches that thousands of Cherokees were converted during their merry cross-country jaunt, and that the vast majority of slave masters were loving and caring for their human property — like they almost were one of the family (because many times they WERE one of the family).
d cwilson
August 9, 2012 at 1:35 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Sounds suspiciously like “God damn America!” Why do these preachers hate America so much?
Oh wait, they’re white. That makes it okay.
raven
August 9, 2012 at 1:43 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Shh, don’t say that too loud.
Some of Thomas Jefferson’s slaves by SH, were his own kids. He did free them in his will though.
mucklededun
August 9, 2012 at 2:24 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Maybe it’s time to consider the possibility that
the enlightenment was just a very brief fad or
fashion among some upper class 18th-century
Frenchmen. It famously influenced the writing
of the U.S. constitution, & it is of historical
interest for other reasons, but maybe it’s just that
–a historical curiosity, a path not taken.
I, for one, welcome our new Jesus-besotted overlords.
jnorris
August 9, 2012 at 8:35 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I’m waiting for the Christian revival with a gun show/sale sideshow.
lpetrich
August 9, 2012 at 11:25 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Look at what Obama got when Rev. Jeremiah Wright stated that many Americans have committed terrible sins and that the US is getting payback from them (Jeremiah Wright controversy). The right-wingers howled with rage about how supposedly “anti-American” he was.
I guess those sins were not what right-wingers consider sins.
Also, “mission field” seems rather condescending, suggesting that would-be converts are like crop plants to be harvested.
dan4
August 10, 2012 at 2:51 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“…darkness has engulfed our nation.”
Aren’t these the same people who proclaim that “America is an overwhelmingly Christian nation?” Pick an argument and stick to it, you inconsistent nincompoops.
dingojack
August 10, 2012 at 7:14 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I’m assuming this revival will be off-off-off Broadway, right?
Dingo
democommie
August 10, 2012 at 8:33 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“Don’t they also have a tendency to set up spectacularly inefficient charities?”
Tannedgenitalsly:
IF, as the supplysiders trumpeted (and have been echoed since at least 1980 by the reiKKKwing of the GOP*) cutting taxes and eliminating welfare would INCREASE charitable donations by newly wealthy middle class murKKKins then why do the KKKristians have to go, hat in hand, to the gummint to get money for their “faith based” programs? Why, one might think that all of that empy political rhetoric in aid of the rich was empty political rhetoric in aid of the rich.
* Near 100% overlap of the two groups, at present.