The rise of the centrists holds a great deal of promise

BrooklynRaider's diary :: :: An example of the latter phenomenon was last year's documentary Jesus Camp, which focused on an extremist Pentecostal summer camp in North Dakota. As an anecdotal record, the film was fascinating, but it blundered badly in its misconceived attempt to use the camp as a stand-in or leading indicator for American evangelicals generally. Framing the camp scenes with commentary from liberal radio host Mike Papantonio, the filmmakers moved directly from disturbing scenes of children being emotionally manipulated to dark warnings about how such radicalism is on the verge of taking over America. The film failed entirely to provide any useful context, to challenge its viewers to understand why fundamentalists see the world as they do, what differences there might be among fundamentalists and evangelicals generally, and whether the grandiose claims made by a Becky Fischer should in fact be taken at face value.

A much better starting point for understanding the political dynamics of American evangelicalism is Frances FitzGerald's excellent article in the current New York Review of Books, which examines how, over the past two or three years, moderate and progressive evangelical leaders have begun to take a more assertive role in public discourse. While not downplaying the pernicious influence of right-wing fundamentalism, FitzGerald observes that evangelicals as a whole are not nearly as conservative as many liberals fear, or as the right-wingers would like to believe. And in this context, the rise of the centrists holds a great deal of promise.

FitzGerald's article is worth reading just for its brief history of political evangelicalism in America, which demystifies the process by which groups like the Moral Majority, the Christian Coalition, and Focus on the Family have successively risen to positions of influence in US politics. But her critical point is that only a portion of American evangelicals can be described as genuinely right-wing fundamentalists. by BrooklynRaider Wed Apr 11, 2007 at 09:42:14 AM PDT

Read the dailykos diary here and the New York Review of Books here. These things are of interest if for no other reason than that they give a tremendous amount of insight into how political movements are formed. I’ll take tips from an American evangelical on how to organize and leverage pressure on the state any day over an academic marxist. There’s a lot to be learned from here. Why has it worked? How does it work? What does it offer that is lacking in other leftist movements? What strategies of rhetoric does it employ? What material modes of communication does it use? And so on and so on. ~ by larvalsubjects on April 11, 2007.