FDL Book Salon Welcomes Dan Gilgoff and “The Jesus Machine”

(We are pleased to welcome Dan Gilgoff, author of The Jesus Machine: How James Dobson, Focus on the Family, and Evangelical America are Winning the Culture War. Dan Gilgoff is a contributing editor at US News and World Report, where he writes often about the intersection of religion and politics, and is also the political editor at BeliefNet.com. — JH)

Around our house, two kinds of media stories often provoke howls of outrage. Mrs. Peterr, the scientist in our house, goes nuts over the poor coverage of science stories by reporters who couldn’t tell a hypothesis from a hypodermic, and I similarly melt down when I see religiously-clueless reporters stumbling through a piece involving religion. In both cases, all too often the stories are filled with sweeping generalizations, mis-statements of facts, and just plain nonsense.

When it comes to covering religion and politics, the press could use more reporters like Dan Gilgoff. A lot more.

In The Jesus Machine, Gilgoff takes us on a tour of national politics in the last 30 years, looking at the construction, operation, and evolution of the political apparatus of the religious right. At the center of Gilgoff’s story is James Dobson and his Focus on the Family empire of radio broadcasting, his staff of counselors that take calls from listeners, his in-house publishing, his Colorado Springs headquarters, and much more. Without a doubt, Dobson’s blessing is the most widely sought-after endorsement in GOP circles. He has an audience of radio listeners in the millions, and in contrast to people like Falwell and Reed, Dobson is viewed not as a political animal by the evangelical community that adores him, but a wise counselor who is above the mess of politics.

For some of Gilgoff’s readers, a lot of this story will be new. Sure, you may know the names — Jerry Falwell, Gary Bauer, Ralph Reed, Tony Perkins, the Christian Coalition, the Moral Majority, the Family Research Council, just to name a few — but the way in which they interact (both cooperatively and competitively) will be eye-opening. For others who already follow the actions of the Religious Right, Gilgoff gives new insights on the work of Dobson and his colleagues, connecting the dots and opening up the behind-the-scenes stories in ways that have not been well examined until now.

What captured me in reading The Jesus Machine were the struggles within the evangelical community over the use of three different models for political action. As Gilgoff summarizes two of these midway through the book (speaking of pre-2000 activism by the religious right),

Falwell’s Moral Majority had succeeded in attracting the attention of the White House and the news media, but failed to build a true army of in-the-pews evangelical activists or get legislative results. Ralph Reed, meanwhile, had built such an army, only to subvert much of the Christian Right’s core agenda to practical politics and to his mission of expanding the movement.

The third approach — championed by Dobson and the people and organizations that follow him — emphasizes (1) bottom-up, grassroots style activism, (2) led by leaders who would not sell out their beliefs for political access and power, which (3) worked to elect like-minded evangelicals and (4) exerted pressure from both the inside and outside of the corridors of power. When push comes to show for Dobson, purity trumps practicality and compromise. Sure, carrots should be offered to GOP leaders to push the TheoCon agenda, but sticks need to be wielded against them (not just against the godless Democrats) to hold their feet to the fire.

The creation of “Values Action Teams” in Congress, led by such evangelicals as Tom DeLay, Tom Coburn, and Denny Hastert, plays a pivotal role in this story. After years of shouting from the outside, rightwing evangelical leaders finally began to learn the ins and outs of the political process, which made their efforts much more effective. When should leaders of the religious right speak out, and when should they hold their tongues? Who should be pressured, and who should be stroked? How should the message get delivered, and who should do it? It’s not that the religious right learned to compromise, but rather how to pick their battles better, how to coordinate their efforts, and even (at times) how to be a bit more patient.

Gilgoff takes his readers through supreme court nominations, proposed constitutional amendments, the Terri Schaivo mess, the fights over same-sex marriage, battles between the big business end of the GOP and the religious right, and all kinds of other political fights. It’s a story not just about DC and Colorado Springs, but also Ken Blackwell’s Ohio and other locations around the country. Gilgoff also spends a chapter giving a contrasting (and depressing) look at the Democratic party’s outreach to religious voters. One little statistic illustrates the difference quite well: “The Bush [2004] campaign had signed up three hundred thousand conservative religious volunteers by Election Day. [The Kerry team] worked with a national list of seven hundred.”

That’s a ratio of 428:1 — and any political organizer will tell you that’s not good, if you’re the 1.

By the end of the book, I found myself wondering about the relationship of Dobson and his crowd to mainstream religious figures, both inside and outside the GOP. In 2005, for instance, ordained Episcopal priest and former GOP senator Jack Danforth wrote an NYT op-ed which critiqued both his party and the Religious Right:

I do not fault religious people for political action. Since Moses confronted the pharaoh, faithful people have heard God’s call to political involvement. Nor has political action been unique to conservative Christians. Religious liberals have been politically active in support of gay rights and against nuclear weapons and the death penalty. In America, everyone has the right to try to influence political issues, regardless of his religious motivations.

The problem is not with people or churches that are politically active. It is with a party that has gone so far in adopting a sectarian agenda that it has become the political extension of a religious movement.

In 2006, Danforth expanded on this and wrote Faith and Politics: How the ‘Moral Values’ Debate Divides America and How to Move Forward Together. In a Washington Post story on the book’s debut, conservative Southern Baptist Convention leader Richard Land (a player in the Jesus Machine story) described Danforth as “what was wrong with the Republican Party and why they were a minority party.”

I’m not faulting The Jesus Machine for not looking at this aspect of the story of the evangelical right — every author has to draw the line somewhere about what goes into a given book. And who knows: perhaps there is half-written sequel to The Jesus Machine waiting to be finished . . .

All in all, The Jesus Machine is a fascinating book, no matter what your religious or political persuasion is. If you haven’t read it yet, you can check out some excerpts at thejesusmachine.com. There’s lots to dig into, and I’m glad to have author Dan Gilgoff join us here today at Firedoglake to do just that.

Welcome, Dan!

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