Megachurch Madness

(The American Prospect)  This column was written by Rob Garver.

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History warns us that when large religious groups start imagining themselves to be oppressed by a pernicious and cunning minority, bad things can happen. So it was with a growing sourness in my stomach that I watched the luminaries of the Christian right take the stage at a Tennessee "megachurch" Sunday evening for "Justice Sunday II."

The ostensible purpose of the gathering (which I watched via webcast) was to muster support for the Bush administration's judicial appointees — especially, but not exclusively, Supreme Court nominee John Roberts. But as speaker after speaker hammered on the theme of oppression of Christians by a shadowy liberal establishment, it became clear that, like many of the sermons, books, and articles written by leaders of the Christian right, the real purpose of "Justice Sunday II" was to reinforce a sense of victimhood among the broadest possible swath of American Christians.

In the imaginary world painted by the leaders of "Justice Sunday II," conservative Christian Republicans may control the White House, the Congress, and several seats on the Supreme Court, but they remain oppressed and victimized. Speakers invoked Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., and Susan B. Anthony, all in service of the meme that Christians in America are being silenced, persecuted, and prevented from practicing their religion.

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, who emceed the event, whipped up the crowd with bizarre and patently false claims like, "They've said that our children don't have a right to pray."

And he introduced speakers who generally paid less attention to questions of judicial appointments than to messages designed to convince listeners that Christians are being repressed by powerful forces in society (read: liberals) against which they must begin to take action.

Taking the prize for the most shameless appropriation of imagery from past civil-rights struggles was Catholic League President Bill Donohue, who raged against "the left" that had forced Christians to "sit in the back of the bus" when it has come to governing the country.

"It's time we moved to the front of the bus and that we took command of the wheel!" he thundered. "That's what I want to see."

One segment of Donohue's Coughlin-esque rant is worth quoting at length, because it captures the paranoiac anger at a group of vaguely defined "others" that infected many of the evening's speakers.

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