Why Are Some American Christians So Bloodthirsty?

[Lani]

October 23, 2004
Why Are Some American Christians So Bloodthirsty?
Understanding Pro-war Christians' Indifference to Civilian Deaths
by Dr. Teresa Whitehurst

It's been going on for years now. Almost daily we read that another child, another parent, another sister or brother, another grandpa or aunt, is killed in Afghanistan or Iraq by U.S. weaponry in Mr. Bush's "war on terror." Sometimes it's a wedding party, or a bunch of kids, or a family of six. Sometimes it's a journalist, or a whole group of journalists, who may even be killed on camera in real time for all the world to see and hear.

But no matter how bad it gets, nothing seems to change Americans' support for war, which for some reason is stiffest among Christian supporters of the Bush administration. "Stuff happens in a war zone." 'Don't worry because God is in control." With these and other slogans, I've been reassured by countless pro-war Christians that, as long as civilians aren't intentionally targeted, taking their lives is okay, maybe even predestined, God's will.

Recently a Christian from Australia wrote to ask, "Why are American Christians so bloodthirsty? Why do they support the war in Iraq, no matter how many innocent people are made to suffer? We just don't uderstand why they're willing to kill other people so that they can feel more safe ­ it's so selfish!"

She's right, and she's wrong. She's right about the fact that many Christians in America will blindly support whichever war their president promotes, with the assumption that his much-advertised praying guarantees us that God approves of all those bombs and missiles, and even the inevitable collateral damage.

This 'don't worry, be happy' stance of pro-war Christians can make those of us who suffer at the news of civilian deaths almost green with envy: How do they go blithely to church, pray and give an offering, then go eat some nice mashed potatoes and gravy at Cracker Barrel with nary a worry about the families being bombed or shot or crushed by their own military at that very moment?

But she's wrong in her assumption that all Christians in the U.S. find civilian deaths an acceptable price to (let someone else) pay for Mr. Bush's ultimate goals. Many, including those in the evangelical community, were raised to obey Jesus' teachings above any other, and suffer mightily whenever they learn that more innocent people have lost their lives to this terrorizing "war on terror."

She's also wrong about the seemingly bloodthirsty attitude of pro-war Christians; most of them are nice people on a personal basis. They love their kids and their fellow Americans, and would never have supported the bombing of, say, Oklahoma City's malls and suburbs in an effort to target a Timothy McVeigh. And they certainly don't go around saying they hope a lot more civilians are killed by U.S. bombs and guns. They've been trained to deny it's happening or downplay its importance, thinking instead about Iraq's future democracy, the next life, or the "big picture."

Failure to Care: How it Happens

The reasons for blindness or indifference toward civilian casualties are several. Many if not most pro-war Christians, particularly those in the southern and midwestern states:

1. rarely see news accounts of civilian casualties because our major TV news programs and newspapers either omit those stories altogether or mention them in passing (without photos, the crucial element in terms of public opinion) and, wanting to believe that Bush's war is working, do not seek out evidence of the maiming and killing of our troops or of Iraqi civilians,
2. have been immunized against thinking for themselves or doubting the Bush administration with certain Bible verses (particularly those verses in Romans telling us to obey and submit to governmental authority figures) ­ a passive stance that's strikingly different from the questioning that Jesus both urged and modeled toward greedy, power-seeking, and hypocritical authority figures (e.g., "false prophets" and "wolves in sheep's clothing"),
3. are told not to worry, when they do hear of civilian casualties, that life in the flesh is less important than life eternal (one European writer told me that a friend confided, "Yes it's sad, but if some Iraqi civilians are killed by U.S. bombs and it saves even one soul, it will have been worth it" ­ a sentiment that, sadly, is not unusual),
4. feel they dare not oppose this or any war because talking about peace, objecting to war's human cost, or even referring to the United Nations has become associated in their minds with the Antichrist and eternal d**nation, thanks to fictional works based on Thessalonians such as the Left Behind books and video (this video makes clear the fearful reasoning behind the knee-jerk reactions of many pro-war Christians against peace itself, peacemakers of any kind [poignant indeed in light of Jesus' teaching, "Blessed are the peacemakers"], the Middle East "road map," international dialogue and cooperation, and any form of human rights accountability), and
5. have been convinced by right-wing preachers, authors and radio hosts (people like Rush Limbaugh are the most influential, because their voices are heard for hours daily rather than written in a book or heard once a week in church) to shift their allegiance away from Jesus' teachings about merciful behavior toward and compassion for family and stranger alike ("the least of these") to the more pro-violence, pro-war values espoused by various non-Gospel biblical writers.

Each of these is a powerful influence, but when combined, they dramatically alter Christian values in fundamental ways. Whereas evangelical churches used to teach compassion (in liberal doses, not conservative soundbites) and warn against responding to threats or attacks with violence, today's conservative churches urge parishioners to support capital punishment, zero-tolerance policies of all kinds, and corporal punishment to "shape the will" of babies, toddlers, and children. Someone raised in this kind of environment grows up to become an adult who's afraid to step out of line, and who naturally resents or even hates those who feel free to do so.

White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card summed it up best: President Bush sees Americans as so many children who need a father to guide and protect them. Indeed, conservative Christians are raised for a dictatorship where the "leaders" make the calls and are not to be questioned, rather than a democracy, where dissent is a cherished right. As linguistics professor George Lakoff has concluded from his study of the conservative-liberal divide that's polarizing American society, conservatives (the popular but by no means accurate label) are accustomed to, hence gravitate toward, a strict father ­ and nothing can be more strict than "our father" Bush demanding that we accept without question all the "stuff" that happens in his war.

Moral Relativism: In War, Anything Goes

But most importantly, conservative Christianity in the U.S. has succumbed to that which it has, in decades past, most rigorously warned against: moral relativism. By restricting any discussion of morality to sexual behavior, right-wing politicians have obliterated the once-central Christian teaching that the way we teach others is of paramount importance to God. Cleverly "working the room," pro-war politicians have infiltrated churches to such a degree that killings and torture are no longer within the province of morality. When morality is only about sex, no aspect of war ­ even the killing of entire families ­ can arouse criticism, much less condemnation.

In short, everything that happens in the execution of war, even that which is flagrantly in violation of the moral values that Jesus taught regarding violence and revenge, prayer for enemies and peacemaking, becomes acceptable when Jesus' teachings are compartmentalized as relevant only in our personal lives. When Jesus is sidelined, those parts of the Bible that support authority, no matter what it does to innocent people, will take precedence. This is what has happened (often with the prodding, political influence and financial support of right-wing political organizations) in many of our churches today. Unless Christians begin to speak up publicly for the teachings of Christ ­ the cornerstone of our faith ­ we will continue to slide into the kind of moral relativism that causes others to wonder why we are so bloodthirsty.

www.antiwar.com/orig/whitehurst.php?articleid=3842

[POA]

I thought this was a good question, but my thoughts in terms of a response to it are going to be rather long so I'll post it a bit later.

[POA]

A caveat should be applied first: what I am writing about doesn't apply to all American Christians, as there are some that I have personally known that have been exceptional, and there are some groupings of American Christianity (such as the Quakers) that have managed to not buy into the mythos that I will describe later, and seem to be at little risk of becoming belligerent any time soon. At the same time, there is a dominant 'story', a mythos, to what I would consider to be American Christianity; this mythos is not something that I would consider to be exclusive to American Christianity as many people who otherwise would consider themselves to be atheists also believe in the mythos.

With all of that being said, I think that the main reason why so many American Christians are bloodthirsty is because they've learned that there is little negative consequence to their actions. Historically, there has always been that strain of viciousness in the religion. What has typically contained it is running into armed opposition that forced them to moderate their behavior somewhat, whether from their own people that they were oppressing, the people that they were stealing from, or from other Christians.

In comparison, in the United States, Christians have learned to see their religion as almost totally silent on issues of how they treat other people. Their religion fell almost completely silent on the theft of the entire continent from Native Americans; in the places where this strain of American Christianity was the strongest, it was also similarly silent on the centuries of slavery and abuse of African Americans. Nor was there any political pressure on them, up until very recently in American history, to actually change their behavior. In fact, the dominant trend in American history has been for the constitution as written and the government to actually protect them in their abuses. 2000 was not an aberration as much as it was the beginning of a large-scale return to the way the United States used to be-in 1890 or 1880.

When these same ideas play themselves out into foreign policy, they are expressed as an unending hostility towards any culture that could be considered indigenous, a preference for 'settler societies' that massively destroy/disenfranchise/displace their original populations and the poor (or alternately, a preference for societies that use political and legalistic formalisms to keep the struggle for equality unmentioned), and a hatred for any society that embraces even moderate reforms.

The other half of the problem is their opposition (namely us) hasn't been consistently effective against them.

By the time they faced armed opposition in terms of the Vietnamese, they responded by placing their defeat in the context of blaming the press that expressed some of the truth, and the people here in the USA who wanted a withdrawl. As a result, they can't be said to have learned anything from Vietnam except "don't invade Vietnam".

In terms of moral opposition, while the civil rights movement and mass nonviolence was successful once, at this point, it has created an expectation that people, when opposing oppression, will always be nonviolent. This is the kind of attitude that you've probably seen on SC where you have people who will make absolutely no demands of the oppressors at all, but are the first to scream at people defending themselves. It has also separated the idea of opposing oppression from being a necessity, and instead turned it into something so heroic that a lot of people see themselves as somewhat disconnected from it (which is precisely the opposite of what's needed now).

Political opposition has often been self-hobbling. A lot of people insist on a 'pragmatism' that plays right into the hands of the mythos that I've described by being willing either to placate it or consider it pointless overthinking to even consider it. Such placation, as we've all seen, reinforces their delusions of grandeur and special status from god. Others, instead, attack people who are willing to even use harsh language against the adherents of this mythos. Still another problem is an unrealistic idealization of America-the idea that if the country simply got back to 'normal' or enough people could share in it's benefits, this would be sufficient to kill this mythos permanently, when in fact, the norm as it has existed so far has empowered these people over and over again to destroy the rest of the world and us. The result is the bizarre, passive-aggressive, monstrosity that you see elsewhere-unwilling to put up a fight against the Republicans and their malign religion, but they'll scramble for the benefits that they recieve and cheerfully put down and verbally assassinate anyone telling the truth.

[Lani]

POA Thank you for your insightful comments about this issue. I find myself agreeing with you as well.

Another thing that seems to be feeding into all of this is the widely held belief by many Americans that America is really the very best county in the world when by any standard of measuring quality of life for the citizens of any country, overall the USA is rated 8th with Norway being 1st, and Canada has slipped to 4th. See the UN Human Development Index, 2004 at
www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0778562.html

Add to that the belief by many fundamentalist Christians that only their religion is The Truth and then add the belief by many Republicans that their political party is the only really 'loyal American' party and you have the same kind of mind set that was seen in Germany in the 30s. The "Master Race' card has been played again. This time with a triple whammy, Religion, Country, Political Party all wrapped up into an unholy trilogy.

It's pervasive and insidious and mostly unconscious. Recently, on tv, at the end of the broadcast of golf's Ryder Cup, which was won handily by the European team, one of the anchors for the broadcast did a little op-ed piece at the end of the show and he said: 'the Europeans had to learn to live shoulder to shoulder with other countries in Europe whereas here in North America there's just us'.

Just us
Just the USA in North America
Funny I thought Canada was in North America and so was Mexico.

I know this is a bit off topic but I think it also feeds into some of the attitudes that seem to be running rampant here now.

I also concede that this does not apply to all Americans nor to all Christian Americans nor to all Republican Christian Americans. Just to the fanatics, the one's I've seen referred to as the American Taliban.

[calabi-yau]

Insightful posts from both POA and Lani. Thank you.

As Lani points out, there can be no attempt at explaining American Christianity today without also mentioning patriotism, statism and politics. The conglomeration of mythos, to use POA's description, is being brought under a single religious fold. It would follow that American Christians would apply the same logic to their geographical situation and see it all as ONE big landscape.

Most people I have known are adverse to change. They can usually deal with it successfully when they have to, but a majority of them will not wish to rock their stability and known environment by provoking change unless it is absolutely necessary they do so. Trying to make sense of a world that's ever growing in complexity means developing greater adaptation skills and learning to get a better grip on reality. For all those who feel uncomfortable with change, it may turn out to be easier for them to just hand over that responsibility to others. I don't know. Just rambling here.

[Lani]

calabi-yau,
thank you and yes I agree with your points as well. Many people prefer to let someone else think for them, make decisions for them, that way they don't have to accept any responsibility for the consequences of those decisions even though, ultimately they do end up living with those consequences. They have the false comfort of being able to tell themselves 'it's not my fault'. Another aspect of this is the belief that 'others know more than I do and I'm not qualified to make those kinds of decisions'.

Another factor feeding into all this, is that our education system has failed miserably if it's really about education and not brain washing. The number of functionally illiterate in this country is scandalous and most seem to have learned only what to think rather than how to think for themselves. By the time most students get through school all of their natural curiousity about the world has been systematically dismantled. They've fallen, hook line and sinker, for the myth of this country and are blinded to the reality of it. A wonderful myth it is, too bad its reality is falling so far short of its potential.

Also something that most never seem to consider is that change is the one constant in the universe and what is the most painful is how much pain, suffering and abuse we'll put up with in order to resist changing. Eventually it becomes too painful to be endured any longer and changes are made but how much suffering is endured before that happens?

Democracy only works with an educated, involved, vocal active population where all points of view are given voice and respect. As that old radio broadcast, from back in the 40s that made its way around the net a while ago, said - and I'm paraphrasing here -

You can tell if your society is moving from democracy to despotism by the levels of respect between officials and others in positions of authority and the general population as well as between its citizens - in democracy there is high degree of respect - in despotism there is a lack of respect.

I'm just rambling here too and thanks for sharing your rambles too

[calabi-yau]

As usual Lani, your posts are spot on.

You wrote: You can tell if your society is moving from democracy to despotism by the levels of respect between officials and others in positions of authority and the general population as well as between its citizens - in democracy there is high degree of respect - in despotism there is a lack of respect.

Respect. Such a small word but such a broad sense of meaning.
I fear 'American Christians' will not respect the decision of the American electorate next Tuesday should the result not suit their vision of a Xian America. With Bush in, we can expect continuation and a complete lack of respect for international laws and institutions. If Kerry wins, the American Xian will have no respect for the electorate decision. The Clinton years and the continuing harassment he went through will be nothing compared to what Kerry will be exposed to. I thought the past 4 years were one hell of a roller coaster ride but it was just practice for the real thing ahead. I'm so sick of it.