From Bill Moyers:

Alas, these "great moral issues" do not include building a moral economy. The U.S. Census Bureau reported that last year 1 million Americans were added to 36 million already living in poverty. And since l999 the income of the poorest one-fifth of Americans has dropped almost 9 percent....Let's go back to 9/11 four years ago. The ruins were still smoldering when the Revs. Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell went on television to proclaim that the terrorist attacks were God's punishment of a corrupted America. They said the government had adopted the agenda "of the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians," not to mention the ACLU and People for the American Way. … Just as God had sent the Great Flood to wipe out a corrupted world, now disgusted with a decadent America, "God almighty is lifting his protection from us."

Critics said such comments were deranged. But millions of Christian fundamentalists and conservatives didn't think so. They thought Robertson and Falwell were being perfectly consistent with the logic of the Bible as they read it: God withdraws favor from sinful nations, and the terrorists were meant to be God's wake-up call: Better get right with God. Not many people at the time seemed to notice that Osama bin Laden had also been reading his sacred book closely and literally, and had called on Muslims to resist what he described as a "fierce Judeo-Christian campaign" against Islam, praying to Allah for guidance "to exalt the people who obey him and humiliate those who disobey him."

Suddenly we were immersed in the pathology of a "holy war" as defined by fundamentalists on both sides. You could see this pathology play out in Gen. William Boykin. A professional soldier, Gen. Boykin had taken up with a small group called the Faith Force Multiplier whose members apply military principles to evangelism with a manifesto summoning warriors "to the spiritual warfare for souls." After Boykin had led Americans in a battle against a Somali warlord, he announced: "I know my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his God was an idol." Now Boykin was going about at evangelical revivals preaching that America was in a holy war as "a Christian nation" battling Satan and that America's Muslim adversaries will be defeated "only if we come against them in the name of Jesus." For such an hour, America surely needed a godly leader. So Gen. Boykin explained how it was that the candidate who had lost the election in 2000 nonetheless wound up in the White House. President Bush, he said, "was not elected by a majority of the voters -- he was appointed by God." Not surprisingly, instead of being reprimanded for evangelizing while in uniform, Gen. Boykin is now the deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence. …

We can't wiggle out of this, people. … We're talking about a powerful religious constituency that claims the right to tell us what's on God's mind and to decide the laws of the land according to their interpretation of biblical revelation and to enforce those laws on the nation as a whole. For the Bible is not just the foundational text of their faith; it has become the foundational text for a political movement.

True, people of faith have always tried to bring their interpretation of the Bible to bear on American laws and morals …; it's the American way, encouraged and protected by the First Amendment. But what is unique today is that the radical religious right has succeeded in taking over one of America's great political parties -- the country is not yet a theocracy, but the Republican Party is -- and they are driving American politics, using God as a battering ram on almost every issue: crime and punishment, foreign policy, healthcare, taxation, energy, regulation, social services and so on.

What's also unique is the intensity, organization and anger they have brought to the public square. Listen to their preachers, evangelists and homegrown ayatollahs: Their viral intolerance -- their loathing of other people's beliefs, of America's secular and liberal values, of an independent press, of the courts, of reason, science and the search for objective knowledge -- has become an unprecedented sectarian crusade for state power. They use the language of faith to demonize political opponents, mislead and misinform voters, censor writers and artists, ostracize dissenters, and marginalize the poor. These are the foot soldiers in a political holy war financed by wealthy economic interests and guided by savvy partisan operatives who know that couching political ambition in religious rhetoric can ignite the passion of followers. …

Let's take a brief detour to Ohio, and I'll show you what I am talking about. In recent weeks a movement called the Ohio Restoration Project has been launched to identify and train thousands of "patriot pastors" to get out the conservative religious vote next year. According to press reports, the leader of the movement -- the senior pastor of a large church in suburban Columbus -- casts the 2006 elections as an apocalyptic clash between "the forces of righteousness and the hordes of hell." The fear and loathing in his message are palpable: He denounces public schools that won't teach creationism, require teachers to read the Bible in class or allow children to pray. He rails against the "secular jihadists" who have "hijacked" America and prevent school kids from learning that Hitler was "an avid evolutionist." He links abortion to children who murder their parents. He blasts the "pagan left" for trying to redefine marriage. He declares that "homosexual rights" will bring "a flood of demonic oppression." …

One of the prominent allies of the Ohio Restoration Project is a popular televangelist in Columbus who heads a $40 million-a-year ministry that is accessible worldwide via 1,400 TV stations and cable affiliates. Although he describes himself as neither Republican nor Democrat but a "Christocrat" -- a gladiator for God marching against "the very hordes of hell in our society" -- he nonetheless has been spotted with so many Republican politicians in Washington and elsewhere that he has been publicly described as a "spiritual advisor" to the party. …

He sees the Christian Church as a sleeping giant that has the ability and the anointing from God to transform America. The giant is stirring. At a rally in July he proclaimed to a packed house: "Let the revolution begin!" And the congregation roared back: "Let the revolution begin!" … Now he is crisscrossing Ohio, meeting with patriot pastors and their congregations and proclaiming that "America is at its best when God is at its center."… The Ohio Restoration Project is spreading. In one month alone last year in the president's home state of Texas, a single Baptist preacher added 2,000 "patriot pastors" to the rolls. On his Web site he encourages pastors to "speak out on the great moral issues of our day ... to restore and reclaim America for Christ."

Alas, these "great moral issues" do not include building a moral economy. The Christian right trumpets charity (as in faith-based initiatives) but is silent on social and economic justice. Inequality in America has reached scandalous proportions: A few weeks ago the government acknowledged that while incomes are growing smartly for the first time in years, the primary winners are the top earners -- people who receive stocks, bonuses and other income in addition to wages. The nearly 80 percent of Americans who rely mostly on hourly wages barely maintained their purchasing power. Even as Hurricane Katrina was hitting the Gulf Coast, giving us a stark reminder of how poverty can shove poor people into the abyss, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that last year 1 million people were added to 36 million already living in poverty. And since l999 the income of the poorest one-fifth of Americans has dropped almost 9 percent.

None of these harsh realities of ordinary life seem to bother the radical religious right. To the contrary, in the pursuit of political power they have cut a deal with America's richest class and their partisan allies in a law-of-the-jungle strategy to "starve" the government of resources needed for vital social services that benefit everyone while championing more and more spending that benefits rich corporations and larger tax cuts for the rich.

How else to explain the vacuum in their "great moral issues" of the plight of millions of Americans without adequate healthcare? Of the gross corruption of politics by campaign contributions that skew government policies toward the wealthy at the expense of ordinary taxpayers? (On the very day that oil and gas prices reached a record high, the president signed off on huge taxpayer subsidies for energy conglomerates already bloated with windfall profits plucked from the pockets of average Americans filling up at gas tanks across the country; yet the next Sunday you could pass a hundred church signboards with no mention of a sermon on crony capitalism.)

This silence on economic and political morality is deafening but revealing. The radicals on the Christian right are now the dominant force in America's governing party. Without them the government would not be in the hands of people who don't believe in government. They are culpable in upholding a system of class and race in which, as we saw last week [in the wake of Hurricane Katrina,] the rich escape and the poor are left behind. …

This is the crux of the matter: To these fundamentalist radicals there is only one legitimate religion and only one particular brand of that religion that is right; all others who call on God are immoral or wrong. They believe the Bible to be literally true and that they alone know what it means. Behind their malicious attacks on the courts ("vermin in black robes," as one of their talk show allies recently put it) is a fierce longing to hold judges accountable for interpreting the Constitution according to standards of biblical revelation as fundamentalists define it. To get those judges they need a party beholden to them. So the Grand Old Party -- the GOP -- has become God's Own Party, its ranks made up of God's Own People "marching as to war."

Go to the Web site of an organization called America 21. There, on a red, white and blue home page is praise for President Bush's agenda -- including his effort to phase out Social Security and protect corporations from lawsuits by aggrieved citizens. On the same home page is a call to "Enlist now," with a reminder that "there are [X] hours until our next National Election." There's also a summons to Christian pastors "to lead God's people in the turning that can save America from our enemies." Under the headline "Remember -- Repent -- Return" is language reminiscent of Robertson and Falwell: "One of the unmistakable lessons [of 9/11] is that America has lost the full measure of God's hedge of protection. When we ask ourselves why, the scriptures remind us that ancient Israel was invaded by its foreign enemy, Babylon, in 586 B.C. ... [and] Jerusalem was destroyed by another invading foreign power in 70 A.D. ... Psalm 106:37 says that these judgments of God ... were because of Israel's idolatry. Israel, the apple of God's eye, was destroyed ... because the people failed ... to repent." If America is to avoid a similar fate, the warning continues, we must "remember the legacy of our heritage under God and our covenant with Him and, in the words of II Chronicles 7:14: 'Turn from our wicked ways.'"

Just what does this have to do with the president's political agenda praised on the home page? Well, squint and look at the fine print at the bottom of the site. It reads: "America21 is a 501(c)(4) not-for-profit organization whose Mission is to educate, engage, and mobilize Christians to influence national policy at every level. Founded in 1989 by a multi-denominational group of Pastors and Businessmen, it is dedicated to being a catalyst for revival and reform of the culture and the government."

The corporate, political and religious right converge here, led by a president who, in his own disdain for science, reason and knowledge, is the most powerful fundamentalist in American history...