As valuable as reading and participating in this blog can be, having some books in common would enhance our individual and collective capacity to make a difference.  On the flip I will suggest five -- and that anyone who seeks to understand the religious right and wants to do something about it, should read at least three of them.  There are many other fine boooks out there, and I do not mean to slight any of them and encourage everyone to read widely.  Indeed, Talk to Action has a recommended reading list of about 30 books, and if you click from this site to Powells, Talk to Action will get a percentage of the sale of everything you buy during your visit!  But reading widely, is not necessarily the same as reading effectively.

These five books cover many of the most significant aspects of the religious right.  They also cover some of the same territory, with overlapping and sometimes differing analyses, information, and emphases. These are good to see and to consider.  But taken together, these books form a rough, basic body of knowledge, concepts and terms that can, over the next several years, help to fundamentally reframe the way that these subjects are understood and discussed; and help to guide the development of appropriate and effective political strategies.

There is an additional good reason to begin with these books: Four of the five authors are front pagers here at Talk to Action.

Rightwing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort, by Chip Berlet and Matthew Lyons, Guilford, 2000.

This book is used as a text in college courses around the country. It is a history of rightwing populism in the U.S. in its religious, secular and racist dimensions. It is a highly recommended background for understanding the roots of contemporary conservative movements. The official book summary states:

Right-wing militias and other anti-government organizations have received heightened public attention since the Oklahoma City bombing. While such groups are often portrayed as marginal extremists, the values they espouse have influenced mainstream politics and culture far more than most Americans realize. This important volume offers an in-depth look at the historical roots and current landscape of right-wing populism in the United States. Illuminated is the potent combination of anti-elitist rhetoric, conspiracy theories, and ethnic scapegoating that has fueled many political movements from the colonial period to the present day. The book examines the Jacksonians, the Ku Klux Klan, and a host of Cold War nationalist cliques, and relates them to the evolution of contemporary electoral campaigns of Patrick Buchanan, the militancy of the Posse Comitatus and the Christian Identity movement, and an array of millennial sects. Combining vivid description and incisive analysis, Berlet and Lyons show how large numbers of disaffected Americans have embraced right-wing populism in a misguided attempt to challenge power relationships in U.S. society. Highlighted are the dangers these groups pose for the future of our political system and the hope of progressive social change.

Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy, by Frederick Clarkson, Common Courage Press, 1997.  

This book was talking about the theocratic elements of the Christian Right years before it was cool, and I am pleased to report that it has stood up quite well over time, and remains surprisingly current. It discusses some major points in the development of the Christian Right political movement that brought us to where we are today. It also discusses the significance of the theocratic Christian Reconstrucionist movement in the context of the broader Christian Right, especially the antiabortion movement, and how it is foundational to many religiously motivated homeschoolers. I take the view that unless you understand the role of Christian Reconstuctionist movement, and seminal thinker R.J. Rushdoony, you can't understand the rise of the Christian Right or what animates its "Biblical worldview." One of the founders of Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority stated that without Rushdoony's books "none of us would be here." I think that statement is exactly right. This is not to say that everyone in the Christian Right is a reconstructionist; far from it. Rather, the ideas of Christian Reconstructionism have had everything to do with powering this contemporary political movement to the pinnacle of power in less than a generation.

Among other central tenets of the Christian Right, this book explores and debunks the myth that America was founded as a Christian nation, and suggests specific ways that the Christian Right can be countered. Another feature of the book is a chapter exposing the bogus theories to two prominent academics that unfortunately became popular in Democratic and liberal circles in the 1990s. One of the authors was a barely closeted Christian Rightist posing as a neutral scholar. It is important to read books that are reliable sources of information and analysis -- that is, if you want to win. That is one reason why the books mentioned here are important.  

Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism by Michelle Goldberg, just out from W.W. Norton, is a logical follow-up to Eternal Hostility.  Goldberg deftly integrates her understanding of Christian Reconstructionism and Christian nationalism into the broader narrative of recent events -- notably an entire chapter on the Dover, Pennsylvania federal court case over intelligent design, which alone is worth the price of the book. There are also lucid and well documented discussions of the war on the federal judiciary and of course, the meaning of Christian nationalism as it permeates Christian Right political culture. Kingdom Coming is engagingly written and makes strange and complex material remarkably accessible to readers who may, as so many do, find this material hard to digest.

It was an ordinary spring school board meeting in the small bedroom community of Dover, Pennsylvania. The high school needed new biology textbooks, and the science department had recommended Kenneth Miller and Joseph Levine's widely used Biology. But Bill Buckingham, a new board member who'd recently become chair of the curriculum committee, had an objection. Biology, he said, was "laced with Darwinism." He wanted a textbook that balanced theories of evolution with Christian creationism, and he was willing to turn to his town into a cultural battlefield to get it.

"This country wasn't founded on Muslim beliefs or evolution," said Buckingham, a stocky, gray-haired man who wears a red, white and blue crucifix pin on his lapel. "This country was founded on Christianity and our students should be taught as such."

(Note that the first words out of his mouth were rooted in the rhetoric of Christian nationalism.)

Goldberg shows how it is not possible to understand the Christian right political movement in any of its aspect, without understanding how Christian nationalism figures into it. This is a significant and lasting contribution to our national discourse.

With God on Their Side:  How Christian Fundamentalists Trampled Science, Policy, and Democracy in George W. Bush's White House, by Esther Kaplan, New Press, 2004. Now out in paperback.

This is the definitive book on what happens when religion trumps science in politics and public policy as exemplified by the outrageous policies of the Bush administration. While the books previously metnioned tell us how we got to where we are today, and many important aspects of the political and public policy implications this book focuses on the consequences of their policy ideas in hair-raising detail, particularly in the areas of federal AIDS policy and reproductive health of women.

Here is an excerpt of an excerpt from The Nation:

Fifteen of the country's most prominent AIDS organizations, meanwhile, had their finances investigated by the federal government after they joined in a protest of Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson at an international AIDS conference. And two HIV-prevention groups serving the gay community, San Francisco's Stop AIDS and Washington's Us Helping Us, were hit with audits and obscenity investigations that lasted for more than a year. Though Stop AIDS was exonerated by federal investigators, who found that even its most explicit HIV-prevention programs conformed with "currently acceptable behavioral theories," the group learned in June that it would no longer receive federal funds. Nor would some two-thirds of the AIDS agencies the federal government had previously funded to do community prevention work--many of them outspoken critics of Bush.

Head Start program directors received a harsh warning letter--and a federal financial inquiry--after they raised their voices against Administration plans to restructure the preschool program, changes that would open the door for church groups to administer local Head Starts. "We agree that they have the right to audit us, since we receive government funds," says James Wagoner, president of Advocates for Youth. "But what does it mean when the audit mechanism can be used selectively and politically?"

According to Kay Guinane, author of an OMB Watch report that documents several of these incidents, it's extremely unusual for federal audit powers to be used in such a targeted way, or to be triggered by policy disagreements. Guinane notes that organizations in sync with Administration policy have not faced financial audits, even when they appeared to be in open breach of the law. A board member of the Black Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO), which received $600,000 to educate parents about school choices available to them, publicly announced that he'd use the funds to lobby the Pennsylvania legislature to subsidize home-schooling parents. While any nonprofit may use private funds to lobby, it's illegal to use public funds in this way, Guinane says, but, she notes, "that hasn't triggered an audit" of BAEO.

Family planning groups have borne the brunt of this defunding effort. International Planned Parenthood, long a target of the Christian right (the Family Research Council describes it as a "leftist organization" engaged in an "assault on religion" and the promotion of "rampant sexual promiscuity"), lost $12 million a year when Bush reinstituted the Mexico City Policy, which denies funding to any organization that even takes a pro-choice position in public policy debates. Though Congress had approved the funding in a bipartisan vote, Bush withheld $34 million in 2002 from the UN Population Fund after Christian right groups inaccurately claimed that it supported coerced abortions in China. The following year Bush defunded a consortium that provides HIV prevention and reproductive health to refugees in conflict-torn nations, justifying his decision with the same false claim.

When I asked Janice Crouse, a senior staffer at Concerned Women for America, what she saw as the biggest family-values victories under George W. Bush, she listed two items: his stepped-up activity against sex trafficking and his effort to "follow the money." "One of the things that have been a problem for us is that the radical nongovernmental organizations are so well funded," she said. "They know how to get grant money, they know the political structures and they are unified in their purpose to achieve reproductive services worldwide. We have been able to say, 'Where is this money going?' and we have been able to follow the trail. Tracing the money and insisting that money go to groups that support the Administration's values and policy positions is vitally important. And we've made a lot of progress."

American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century, by Kevin Phillips, Viking, 2006.

This book is also a must read in this political season. It is emblematic of the growing chasm between more conservative writers like Phillips, and the rabid alliance between neoconservatives and the religious right that has defined the Bush administration and the general trend in the GOP for a generation.  Phillips shows that there is a strong historical correlation between the rise of religious zealotry and the decline of great nations and empires. He sees the rise of the American Christian Right in this context and relates the problems posed in connection with other major political and economic trends. (The book draws in part on work by me and by Esther Kaplan in making his argument.) While it is not without flaws, (that I will discuss in a formal review), these are outweighed by the strength of his general argument. That Phillips' books is getting so much national attention across the political spectrum also means that it is a must read as it will contribute significantly to the contemporary conversation on these subjects.

The frequent by-products of religious fervor in the later stages of the previous powers-- zealotry, exaltation of faith over reason, too much church-state collaboration, or a contagion of crusader mentality-- shed light on another contemporary U.S. predicament. Controversies that run the gamut from interference with science to biblically inhibited climatology and petroleum geology and demands for the partial reunion of church and state have accompanied the political rise of Christian conservatism. Such trends are rarely auspicious.

The essential political preconditions fell into place in the late 1980s and 1990s with the emergence of the Republican party as a powerful vehicle for religiosity and church influence, while state Republican parties,most conspicuously in the South and Southwest, endorsed so-called Christian nation party platforms. These unusual platforms, as yet nationally uncatalogued, set out in varying degrees the radical political theology of the Christian Reconstructionist movement, the tenets of which range from using the Bible as a basis for domestic law to emphasizing religious schools and women's subordination to men. the 2004 platform of the Texas Republican party is a case in point. It reaffirms the status of the United States as "a Christian nation," regrets the myth of the separation of church and state," calls for abstinence instead of sex education, and broadly mirrors the reconstructionist demand for the abolition of a large group of federal agencies and departments, including the Energy Department and the Environmental Protection Agency.