NOW. Transcript. June 10, 2005 | PBS
CHRISTOPHER HEDGES: The far Christian right has been very astute in building communications networks that enwrap millions of people essentially within their embrace.
So they’ve created a kind of parallel information network that has essentially closed minds. And has become a form of indoctrination. Coupled with far right Christian schools and everything else.
I mean the– you know, the teaching of creationism for those of us who read the book of Genesis is ridiculous. I mean the writers of the book of Genesis thought the world was flat. You know, God according to Genesis created light on the first day and sun on the fourth.
The writers of Genesis, like the rest of the Bible, were not trying to teach us about the process of evolution or creation. They were trying to teach us about the purpose. That is the power and wisdom of the Bible, that it’s about values. Facts are left up to science. They’ve tried to turn the Bible into a kind of scientific textbook. And it doesn’t work of course unless you ignore whole sections of it. And you don’t allow outside thought, outside opinion, honest intellectual inquiry to intrude upon you.
BRANCACCIO: And as you looked around, as you talked to people you saw things that added up to quite a big word. I mean the headline to your piece in Harper’s had the word hate–
CHRISTOPHER HEDGES: Yeah.
BRANCACCIO: –in it.
CHRISTOPHER HEDGES: Because that’s what the ideology is about.
The final aesthetic of this movement is violence. This obsession with the apocalyptic end of the world with the rapture, which of course is not in the Bible, with you know, the torment that will befall unbelievers. The nothion, cult of masculinity, the notion of Christ the avenger. All of this bares far more in common with despotic ideologies, even sort of fascist ideologies, than it does with I think with the message of love, which I think is essentially certainly within the four Gospels the message that Jesus tries to bring. …
BRANCACCIO: Help me understand something though. I mean who are you talking about? You’re not talking about Christians, evangelical Christians. Who specifically are the people that are worrying you?
CHRISTOPHER HEDGES: Yeah. I mean David that’s a really good point. I’m not talking about evangelical Christians. I’m talking about people we would classify as Dominionists.
BRANCACCIO: Dominionists.
CHRISTOPHER HEDGES: Yeah, it’s a term that they perhaps would not embrace themselves. I think they would call themselves Bible-believing Christians as a way to separate themselves?
BRANCACCIO: God’s dominion over our civic life, over our government?
CHRISTOPHER HEDGES: Yes, very much so. And this comes out of a sort of theological or ideological movement begun roughly 30 years ago by J. Rousas Rushdoony with the Institutes of Biblical Law. And I think what a lot of people don’t understand is that we’re– when we talk about evangelicals in America we’re no longer talking about the Billy Grahams or the Luis Palaus people who are concerned primarily with person salvation.
You know, Billy Graham didn’t talk a lot about hell and apocalypse and violence. He talked about the joys of salvation. It’s not a theology I embraced but it’s a theology I could understand.
We’ve had Christian revivals throughout this nation since our inception. But all of these revivals have called on followers to remove themselves from the contaminants of secular society to live a more Godly life. This movement is different. What it’s calling on is for its followers to essentially take control of secular society and create a Christian, what they define as a Christian nation.
BRANCACCIO: And how would that live alongside people who may have different religious views in our republic?
CHRISTOPHER HEDGES: Well, what they would like to do is impose their– what they call as their moral agenda on the rest of us. You know, there’s a real hostility to federal programs. Headstart, public education. I mean, you know, James Dobson, the head of Focus on the Family has called for Christian followers to remove their children from public schools. And put them in schools that teach creationism. Put them in schools that teach them that they have been anointed as Christians to have dominion ? dominion over the United States and dominion over the rest of the world.
There are very specific plans. I mean there’s a book they use in the Christian schools as well as the home schooling movement called AMERICA’S PROVIDENTIAL HISTORY, and there’s a chapter on Christian economics. And when you read through the book it’s clear that what they want– the federal government essentially will be reduced to carrying out national defense and protecting property rights, and not much else.
=====
NOW. Transcript. June 17, 2005 | PBS
JUJU CHANG: What would be wrong if a judge started putting their own personal faith above the law?
JUDGE ALVAREZ: What would be wrong? You would be in a state of utter chaos. A Catholic judge could never be assigned to the domestic division, because the Catholic Church doesn’t believe in divorce. We do divorces all the time. You can never be assigned to the Criminal Division, because we have to impose the death sentence, and the Catholic Church doesn’t believe in the death sentence.
Once you start mixing religion and the law, you’re no longer going to make decisions based upon the law. We’re being critical of Iran that they’re permitting their law to be interpreted according to the Koran. I think that’s what we’re asking the judges in this country to do.
=====
NOW. Transcript. June 10, 2005 | PBS
ROY MOORE: The center of the message is judges need to answer to the Constitution. They need to answer to the law. And our law recognizes God. And today, we’ve divorced God from many things. So, it’s not answering directly to God. It’s answering to our Constitution, which recognizes the sovereignty of God.
That’s the whole purpose of the First Amendment. And the first thing that our forefathers did when they wrote the First Amendment was to acknowledge God. It was all about God. So, when you say that God’s not in the Constitution, it is because people don’t understand what the Constitution is about.
BRANCACCIO: So, not only about God, but God of the Bible?
ROY MOORE: God of the Bible. That’s right. Not God of the Muslim faith. Not God of, you see there was a particular God that gave freedom of conscience.
That’s the freedom to believe what you want. I often say that without the first commandment, there would be no First Amendment. Without a recognition of the Judeo-Christian God, the God that gave freedom of conscience, there would be no need to keep the state out the affairs of the person, with regard to the duties you owe to God. …
ROY MOORE: If you’re uncomfortable with the recognition of the Judeo-Christian God, then you’re uncomfortable with America. Because without a recognition of that God, America would not exist. America would have never been started.
BRANCACCIO: So you wouldn’t have put a cross in the middle of your court rotunda?
ROY MOORE: Well, when you’re talking about what I would do, of course, that’s … what I did. …
ROY MOORE: We’ve got to recognize what morality is. It’s the definition of right and wrong. For example, there’s a big debate, right now, in our country, about same-sex marriage. Where did the definition of marriage come from? Did it come from the Constitution? No. The Declaration? No. It comes from no official document.
It comes from the fact that our morality comes from God and from the Bible. That’s why we have laws against bestiality, we had laws against sodomy until it was struck down by the United States Supreme Court. Laws against incest. Without a recognition of the God of the Bible, we lose our national morality, and that’s happening, today, right under our noses. Nobody seems to understand it.
BRANCACCIO: You’re saying we can’t live in a society– cause I’m just trying to understand this, judge, where there– it’s a moral free-for-all. That there–
ROY MOORE: That’s right.
BRANCACCIO: –has to be some basic values that we agree on.
ROY MOORE: There’s– this country was established on the moral basis of God. When you depart from that, what is the moral basis? Whatever nine men and women on a court say it is. There is no end to it. There is no standard. They can say anything. They can say you can marry a cow, if you want. You say, “Well, that’s ridiculous.”
Fifteen years ago, it was ridiculous to think a man could marry a man, until one Massachusetts judge and her court decided to tell the legislature to redefine the word marriage and started this whole debate. Well, who makes the law in Massachusetts? When you start redefining the word, it looks like the court’s making the law.
BRANCACCIO: Is that your greatest fear?
ROY MOORE: I have no fears. I know that God’s still sovereign. I know God’s still in control of our country. And this country was meant for very particular purpose. It was for freedom and liberty.
And that’s represented by what we’re established upon. The Declaration of Independence where God gives us rights. And government is to secure them, not to presume to give them to us. And that is the basis of freedom. It– logically, when we don’t acknowledge there’s a God, then government must be the one that gives us our freedoms. And if they give it, why can’t they take it away? But if God gives it, no man can take it away.
Roy Moore may be insane. Certainly, his circular illogic makes you wonder about his judicial rulings.
Just one thing before some liberal judge requires you to marry a donkey. Not too long ago it more than ridiculous that a black person and white person might marry. Or go to school together or eat together at a lunch counter. Judges had a lot to do with fixing that.
Ever notice how easily so many Southern Democrats became Republicans (like Zell From Hell Miller). Lincoln was awful; queers and atheists must be worse. mjh