EDITOR'S LETTER

How the "PDR" Displaced the PDA; or Welcome to Jesusland

hink back to middle school,
when you were somewhere
between 11 and 13 years old,
and your body was first urging
you to really reach out and touch
someone (beyond AT&T). Accom-
panying most of those touches
was an ever-present reminder
from teachers and administrators
to please"mind the PDAs."
Because newly minted teens
often have difficulty exercising
self-control, it is necessary for
adults to give gentle reminders that PDAs, public displays of
affection, are not appropriate.
I think it's high time to institute the "gentle reminder"
policy on another matter involving proper public conduct.
For the PDA has been usurped by a far more insidious
problem in adulthood that has completely infected political
discourse — as well as an entire political party — in this
country. I call it the"PDR" or public displays of religion.
The brandishing of religion as the ultimate qualifier for
elected office and policy construct is absurd. Yet, virtually all
of the 2012 GOP presidential candidates are thumping their
Bibles to curry favor with the 20 percent of Americans who
think religion and politics should run concurrent. It may be
hard to remember, but it wasn't always this way.
The Reagan revolution in 1980 was the proverbial shofar
blast for the Christian right to finally flex its political muscle.
While"The Shining City Upon a Hill" may not have intro-
duced religion into the body politic, it greatly facilitated the
ascent of religious zealotry cum public.
In his book, In God's Own Party: The Making of the Christian
Right, University of West Georgia historian Daniel Williams
argues the entree of Christian conservatives (the ones most
guilty of PDRs) into the Republican political soup was the
ultimate Faustian bargain. Grafting their social agenda onto
the party's anti-communist platform had lasting repercus-
sions; it has since co-opted the party of Lincoln almost
completely.
"The evangelicals were looking for a party that would
champion what they viewed as moral values and their in-
terests in the Cold War,"Williams said."The Republican Party
was also looking for potential voters."
As the Cold War began in earnest, the narrative of God-
fearing, freedom-loving capitalists versus godless, state-
controlled communists dovetailed nicely with conservative

T

Christian beliefs.
"Evangelicals had been speaking out against communism
even before it became a central cause for the American
government,"Williams said."But what happened during the
early years of the Cold War was that they became convinced
that the federal government was acting in the interests of
God by fighting against communism internationally, and by
rooting out communist subversives within the country."
The watershed moment seemed to occur during George
W. Bush's 2004 re-election campaign against Sen. John
Kerry. The president, employing the panoply of wedge is-
sues in his arsenal and publicly courting the religious right
with tales of being reborn, so polarized the nation that a
blog post capturing the mood of the day became one of the
first truly viral phenomena of social media's rise: The United
States of Jesusland.
The premise, for anyone lucky enough to have been in a
coma that year, goes that the coastal states and the Great
Lakes region — the blue states — are home to a liberal so-
cialist elite (a la Canada), and thus could be its own country,
duly known as The United States of Canada. The remainder
of the states — the red-leaning "fly-over" portion of the con-
tinent, home to God-fearing social conservatives — would
aptly be called Jesusland.
This month, Red Thread devoted a fair amount of real
estate to religion vis-a-vis secular law/politics. Our cover
feature, "God v. Man: Religious and Secular Courts in
America" (p. 20), written by Drew Cohen, a George Washing-
ton University Law School student, looks at how American
courts and Jewish religious courts, called belt din in Hebrew,
intersect and co-exist in our pluralistic democracy.
We also interviewed Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.),
whose book, The Gift of Rest: Rediscovering the Beauty of the
Sabbath, which was released over the summer, talks about
his love of this cornerstone tenet in an observant person's
world.
In the book, and in the interview, he espouses the bene-
fits our souls can derive by unplugging from man's world for
25 hours, whether or not you are of the Jewish persuasion.
Never once does he use the precepts of Shabbat, or religion
in general, as a platform to promote political ideology.
Interestingly, also last summer, his colleague across the
aisle, South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint, released a book with
a religious subtext called The Great American Awakening,
which is primarily focused on the insurgent conservative
movement known as the Tea Party. He said the book's title
is an homage to the Second Great Awakening, a period of

religious revival in the early 19th century.
"(The Tea Party) is as much a spiritual awakening as a
political awakening," DeMint said in an interview with the
Huffington Post. "The concern about our country ... has
awakened the faith of many people."
•
The senator, who took an oath to "support and defend
the Constitution of the United States against all enemies,
foreign and domestic," after being elected frequently cites
Christian theology and biblical passages to help make his
points.
"The spiritual assessment is just the lens I look through,"
he was quoted as saying in the interview. In his book,
DeMint argues that the separation of church and state"is
contrary to what our founders envisioned," attacking the
idea of big government on spiritual grounds.
"Big government is a religious issue," DeMint writes.
"History shows in nations where there is a big government,
there is a little God. When people are dependent on govern-
ment, they are less dependent on God, and their spiritual
fervor fades. Socialism and secularism go hand in hand, as
do faith and freedom!'
I am not an atheist, nor am I a socialist. My wife and I ob-
serve Shabbat and keep a kosher home. Our children attend
one of the area's local day schools. My favorite economist is
Adam Smith. I voted for George H.W. Bush in 1992.Idon't
thump my siddur in public.
As a member of a religious minority, I fully understand
why the founders wrote the establishment clause in the
Constitution. Why does it feel like I'm in the minority on
that, too?

erl

1;28A

GJ

Bryan S. Gottlieb
bgottlieb@redthreadmagazine.com

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