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A rare DNF for me: the politics book group selected Andrew Seidel’s The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American for its November read. I only got about a third of the way through it when book club happened, and then I struggled through another few chapters before realizing I was only two-thirds of the way through it and it was deeply and viscerally obnoxious and not getting any better, and the nuggets of interesting or useful information that it did have were not worth how much I hated the framing, tone, and quality of actual argumentation (which I could generously describe as limited but am honestly more likely to just call bad).
It’s not just the shopworn angry-internet-atheist style of militant anti-theism that I took issue with, although I did take some issue with it–I don’t even really disagree with it so much as find it tiresome, and I think it’s ineffective audience-building. The book is nominally about the separation of church and state, so officially Seidel’s stance is something like “You can have whatever religious beliefs you want as long as they don’t include trying to meddle in the state,” but he simply cannot help himself–he just can’t pass up a single opportunity to also point out that all religious beliefs are also bad and stupid and even if a particular belief isn’t necessarily bad on its face it’s still bad and stupid because it’s a religious belief, and if you’re religious and a good person it’s only because you’re bad at being religious, and especially that liberal Christians who have kind and loving religious beliefs only have them because they’re delusional dumbasses who don’t know anything about Christianity and haven’t read the Bible, etc. This seems to me like it’s unnecessarily limiting the audience for the book to exclude mildly or moderately religious liberals who believe upholding the separation between church and state is important, because they’re probably not going to want to sit through a book that can’t go two pages without personally insulting them no matter how badly Seidel has to misunderstand religious concepts to do so.
No, my real issue was this militant kind of anti-theism coming from someone who keeps using “un-American” to mean “bad” and “American” to mean “good.” When it comes to America and her many sins, Seidel can look at the good and the bad and decide that the result is a mixed bag, where the bad stuff is bad but the good stuff is good, so we should keep the general idea around and try to build on the good stuff but eliminate the bad stuff. This is an idea I do not necessarily share, but I am willing to put up with from people that are trying to make stuff better… usually. However, I am ultimately much more anti-American than anti-theist, and I could rewrite all of Seidel’s arguments about how everything even minimally associated with religion is bad, and if it’s not bad than it’s not actually religion, to be about America without breaking a sweat, and possibly in my sleep. The juxtaposition here is irritating enough before we even get into the degree to which many of Seidel’s arguments betray some deeply weird misunderstandings of not only religious doctrine, but also just how religion functions in normal non-Christian-nationalist people’s lives.
For an exhibit here we will take the case of Gouverneur Morris. Early in the book Seidel is discussing the Founding Fathers’ religious beliefs toward an end of disproving the right wing’s claims that they were all devout Christians. He goes through some really interesting stuff, like the total lack of any kind of discussion of personal religious belief in any of George Washington’s papers, his habit of going to church very rarely and always ducking out before Communion, and the history of the completely-made-up fable about his praying in the woods at Valley Forge. This was all really interesting. Seidel discusses a few other Founding Fathers’ religious beliefs based on stuff like “what they said about their religious beliefs during their lifetimes.” Then, for some absolutely inexplicable reason, he decides to talk about Gouverneur Morris, claiming him for the atheist side… because he had a sexual relationship out of wedlock.
That’s it. Nothing about whether he went to church or anything he said or did not say about God or Jesus or the afterlife or, you know, religion stuff. Seidel’s argument is that Christianity frowns upon being a slut, but Morris was a slut, therefore Morris was not a Christian, checkmate right-wingers. I’m sorry, but that is embarrassing. That argument was so bad it made me Catholic again. Just off the top of my head, here’s a few possible other explanations:
- Progressive Christianity: Someone could belong to a sect of Christianity that believes that Jesus Christ is the Son of God Our Lord and Savior but doesn’t believe the anti-slut stuff
- Cafeteria Christianity: Someone could belong to a sect of Christianity that believes that Jesus Christ is the Son of God Our Lord and Savior and that being a slut is bad, but be slightly heretical about it, and personally believe the Jesus stuff but not the slut stuff
- Half-assed Christianity: Someone could belong to a traditional sect of Christianity and nominally believe both the Jesus stuff and the slut stuff but think only the Jesus stuff is really that important, the rest is ideal but secondary
- Bad at Christianity: Someone could belong to a traditional sect and believe it etc. but just consistently not be very good at adhering to all its behavioral proscriptions. This is extremely common. I would be interested to hear if Seidel thinks that Ireland was able to spend decades exporting large numbers of newborn babies because its populace wasn’t full of dedicated Catholics, somehow.
- Just being a giant hypocrite: A weird option to apparently just wholly forget about in a book about Christian nationalism, IMO.
If we want to fling around “can’ts” I could say you can’t just be like “And we know this guy was a Deist because of all the stuff in his letters where he talks about Deism, and we know this other guy was a Deist because he kept a mistress” but lo and behold… somebody has! And it went to print with a real publisher and you can check it out at your local library and look at those words on the page yourself, if you wish to subject yourself to them. Many things you “can’t” do it turns out that you can absolutely do if you are shameless enough, and the fact that it requires shamelessness isn’t proof that nobody did it, because people are shameless all the friggin’ time. You could of course say that anyone who has sex outside of wedlock isn’t a real Christian, but at that point you are just doing the right wing’s work for them.
Anyway, I hate giving up on books, but I am putting this one down before it gives me an aneurysm; it feels too much like being on Twitter–just little isolated nuggets of interest swimming in a sea of absolute brainworms. I recommend also not reading it and, in addition, logging off, touching grass, and doing something materially useful for somebody.
It’s not just the shopworn angry-internet-atheist style of militant anti-theism that I took issue with, although I did take some issue with it–I don’t even really disagree with it so much as find it tiresome, and I think it’s ineffective audience-building. The book is nominally about the separation of church and state, so officially Seidel’s stance is something like “You can have whatever religious beliefs you want as long as they don’t include trying to meddle in the state,” but he simply cannot help himself–he just can’t pass up a single opportunity to also point out that all religious beliefs are also bad and stupid and even if a particular belief isn’t necessarily bad on its face it’s still bad and stupid because it’s a religious belief, and if you’re religious and a good person it’s only because you’re bad at being religious, and especially that liberal Christians who have kind and loving religious beliefs only have them because they’re delusional dumbasses who don’t know anything about Christianity and haven’t read the Bible, etc. This seems to me like it’s unnecessarily limiting the audience for the book to exclude mildly or moderately religious liberals who believe upholding the separation between church and state is important, because they’re probably not going to want to sit through a book that can’t go two pages without personally insulting them no matter how badly Seidel has to misunderstand religious concepts to do so.
No, my real issue was this militant kind of anti-theism coming from someone who keeps using “un-American” to mean “bad” and “American” to mean “good.” When it comes to America and her many sins, Seidel can look at the good and the bad and decide that the result is a mixed bag, where the bad stuff is bad but the good stuff is good, so we should keep the general idea around and try to build on the good stuff but eliminate the bad stuff. This is an idea I do not necessarily share, but I am willing to put up with from people that are trying to make stuff better… usually. However, I am ultimately much more anti-American than anti-theist, and I could rewrite all of Seidel’s arguments about how everything even minimally associated with religion is bad, and if it’s not bad than it’s not actually religion, to be about America without breaking a sweat, and possibly in my sleep. The juxtaposition here is irritating enough before we even get into the degree to which many of Seidel’s arguments betray some deeply weird misunderstandings of not only religious doctrine, but also just how religion functions in normal non-Christian-nationalist people’s lives.
For an exhibit here we will take the case of Gouverneur Morris. Early in the book Seidel is discussing the Founding Fathers’ religious beliefs toward an end of disproving the right wing’s claims that they were all devout Christians. He goes through some really interesting stuff, like the total lack of any kind of discussion of personal religious belief in any of George Washington’s papers, his habit of going to church very rarely and always ducking out before Communion, and the history of the completely-made-up fable about his praying in the woods at Valley Forge. This was all really interesting. Seidel discusses a few other Founding Fathers’ religious beliefs based on stuff like “what they said about their religious beliefs during their lifetimes.” Then, for some absolutely inexplicable reason, he decides to talk about Gouverneur Morris, claiming him for the atheist side… because he had a sexual relationship out of wedlock.
That’s it. Nothing about whether he went to church or anything he said or did not say about God or Jesus or the afterlife or, you know, religion stuff. Seidel’s argument is that Christianity frowns upon being a slut, but Morris was a slut, therefore Morris was not a Christian, checkmate right-wingers. I’m sorry, but that is embarrassing. That argument was so bad it made me Catholic again. Just off the top of my head, here’s a few possible other explanations:
- Progressive Christianity: Someone could belong to a sect of Christianity that believes that Jesus Christ is the Son of God Our Lord and Savior but doesn’t believe the anti-slut stuff
- Cafeteria Christianity: Someone could belong to a sect of Christianity that believes that Jesus Christ is the Son of God Our Lord and Savior and that being a slut is bad, but be slightly heretical about it, and personally believe the Jesus stuff but not the slut stuff
- Half-assed Christianity: Someone could belong to a traditional sect of Christianity and nominally believe both the Jesus stuff and the slut stuff but think only the Jesus stuff is really that important, the rest is ideal but secondary
- Bad at Christianity: Someone could belong to a traditional sect and believe it etc. but just consistently not be very good at adhering to all its behavioral proscriptions. This is extremely common. I would be interested to hear if Seidel thinks that Ireland was able to spend decades exporting large numbers of newborn babies because its populace wasn’t full of dedicated Catholics, somehow.
- Just being a giant hypocrite: A weird option to apparently just wholly forget about in a book about Christian nationalism, IMO.
If we want to fling around “can’ts” I could say you can’t just be like “And we know this guy was a Deist because of all the stuff in his letters where he talks about Deism, and we know this other guy was a Deist because he kept a mistress” but lo and behold… somebody has! And it went to print with a real publisher and you can check it out at your local library and look at those words on the page yourself, if you wish to subject yourself to them. Many things you “can’t” do it turns out that you can absolutely do if you are shameless enough, and the fact that it requires shamelessness isn’t proof that nobody did it, because people are shameless all the friggin’ time. You could of course say that anyone who has sex outside of wedlock isn’t a real Christian, but at that point you are just doing the right wing’s work for them.
Anyway, I hate giving up on books, but I am putting this one down before it gives me an aneurysm; it feels too much like being on Twitter–just little isolated nuggets of interest swimming in a sea of absolute brainworms. I recommend also not reading it and, in addition, logging off, touching grass, and doing something materially useful for somebody.