America: The Balancing Act
  by Dr. Louis Guzman

For some time, the secular/atheist/scientific community, on principle, has eschewed joining the political battle against the fundamentalist Christian right. This is lamentable because we are absent on the front that counts. The preferred approach has been through education, treating secularism as an intellectual issue. This makes legal and educational sense, but it places secular institutions outside the arena in which the nation's fate is debated. Secularists either dislike an open political fight or they are oblivious to the fanatical Christian agenda.

Our dialogue has been a genteel internal debate. It is better, it seemed, to make an intellectual case for secular philosophy among ourselves, the choir, than to point fingers. It justified our non-belief as a valid alternative to religious dogma. Even in the face of a vast array of televangelists, religious radio talk shows, and a growing number of purportedly patriotic organizations lobbying for fundamentalist legislation, the principal freethought and atheist associations have literally remained politically silent.

Only Richard Dawkins, among the current atheist writers, repeatedly returns to the theme of confrontation. Dawkins is a biologist, and not even an American, but he sees far beyond the reaches of science and across the Atlantic. What he sees stirs trepidation in him for America in ways no other atheist writer manifests.

What I see is a land gripped in the tentacles of a vast subversive fundamentalist religious conspiracy, a conspiracy that has insidiously infiltrated the American system as would a lymphatic vessel convey cancer in the human body. The reader need not take the word of this alarmist, alone. The Fundamentals of Extremism: The Christian Right in America (New Boston Books), edited by Kimberly Blaker and soon to be in bookstores, details an endless list of fundamentalist Christian beliefs, antithetical to long standing national values. These include a fanatical belief in Biblical "end times," threatening attitudes toward secular values (the basis of American law), and tactics for insidiously infiltrating our centers of power -- including the Federal government. Dawkins' assertion that "The fundamentalist Christian Right is America's Taliban," may not be far from the truth.

For more than 200 years the American social and political body survived because countervailing forces within it nurtured a national equilibrium. This was assured by the simple sociological practice of integration. To be an American was to join the mainstream of life, and to apply historical reason to the choice of political sides. The effect was a stable, fair minded struggle between conservative and liberal contending forces.

Now a third force, the fundamentalist Christian right, is in the equation. Though it is in the minority, its ostensibly "patriotic" message, underlain by theocratic purposes, is being heard in legislatures across the country. Anti-abortion, school vouchers, and posting of the national motto, "In God We Trust," are but tactical tips of the fundamentalist strategy. Ominously, moderate Christian legislators, though not fundamentalists, are finding these issues palatable, principally because they combine Christian values with patriotic ends. This is a dangerous trend because it is luring the previously politically centrist religious voter into the fundamentalist dragnet.

As a consequence, our traditional equilibrium is in danger of tipping in the direction of the Christian right. It is a simple case of mathematics and geometry, all depending on the number and ideological tip of the moderate Christian churches.

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