Product Description

The bestselling author of Stranger at the Gate provides an inside exposŽ of the Christian Right's agenda-and a playbook in how to resist it.

This Fall's midterm elections will see much discussion about the enhanced power of the Christian fundamentalist Right, leaving many people to wonder: just who are these people and what exactly do they want? What are their ultimate goals? The Reverend Mel White, a deeply religious man who sees fundamentalism as "evangelical Christian orthodoxy gone cultic," believes that it is not a stretch to say that the true goal of today's fundamentalists is to break down the wall that separates church and state, superimpose their "moral values" on the U.S. Constitution, replace democracy with theocratic rule, and ultimately create a new "Christian America" in their image. White's new book, Religion Gone Bad, is a wake-up call to all of us to take heed.

White is singularly qualified to write this exposŽ of the Christian Right because he himself was a true believer who served the evangelical movement as pastor, professor, filmmaker, television producer, author, and ghostwriter for such fundamentalist leaders as Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and Billy Graham, all of whom he got to know well. As he writes, "These are not just Neocons dressed in religious drag. These men see themselves as gurus called by God to rescue America from unrighteousness. They believe this is a Christian nation that must be returned forcibly to its Christian roots."

He is also a gay man, who made news when he came out more than twelve years ago. White has gained a unique understanding of the fundamentalist agenda because, since the fall of "godless Communism," homosexuality and abortion have become the primary targets through which fundamentalists have created fear, raised money, and mobilized recruits. Religion Gone Bad documents the thirty-year war that fundamentalist Christians have waged against homosexuality and gays and lesbians and offers dramatic, heartbreaking evidence that fundamentalist leaders-Protestant and Catholic alike-are waging nothing less than a "holy war" (jihad) against sexual minorities. By focusing on the current plight of gay people in this country, White addresses the wider issue that fundamentalist Christianity-like fundamentalist Islam-has become a threat not just to gays, but to all Americans who disagree with fundamentalist Christian "values."

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #615337 in Books
• Published on: 2006-09-07
• Format: Bargain Price
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 384 pages

About the Author
Mel White leads the charge against Christian fundamentalism in America. A former ghostwriter, consultant, and confidant to figures such as Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and Oliver North, White famously broke with the Christian Right in the 1990s, coming out as a gay man and writing his popular memoir, Stranger at the Gate. White lives with his partner in Lynchburg, Virginia-across the street from Jerry Falwell's church.

Customer Reviews

An Insider Takes Us Deeper Into the Danger of the Christian Right-wing
Mel White's brand new book, Religion Gone Bad is his latest intimate analysis of the intentions of the extreme religious right-wing of Christianity that's been setting the national agenda for over a decade.

Most well-known for his "coming out" story, Stranger at the Gate (1998), White has the deep insider knowledge of the Christian right-wing that makes his own stories insightful, even crucial, reads for the rest of us. As a former ghostwriter for some of the biggest names in Christian bigotry today, and as someone who remains in touch with the thinking and feeling of the usual culprits behind Republican Party Christianity, his warnings and analyses provide a sobering look into the totalitarian goals of the radical right-wing.

Close followers of the right-wing won't be surprised by his sense of alarm. They'll find new evidence to back up their concern here.

Those who still think that these authoritarians should be valued for their sincerity, made objects of laughter on Comedy Central, pitied for how persecuted they feel, or enabled by the usual liberal attempts to "understand" them better, will need this wake-up slap. The only danger is that these people won't want to face Mel White's sobering analysis head on.

Though the book has broader implications for all progressive Americans, White intends to persuade his readers that "the struggle for `gay rights' is the next stage in the broader struggle for civil rights" as well as other progressive struggles in this country.

"Consciously or unconsciously, fundamentalist Christians are using their anti-homosexual campaign," he writes, "to test how much intolerance the American people will tolerate. . . . It is a struggle against fundamentalist Christianity (to use their words) `for the heart and soul of the nation.' It is a struggle we dare not lose."

White sees the struggle as a war. He documents, again with much inside information since he knew most of the protagonists personally, their call to war, its warriors (Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson), its enforcer (Focus on the Family's James Dobson) and its extremist (Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church's D. James Kennedy).

Part Two discusses how fundamentalists fight and win their battles beginning with an analysis of the May 1994 summit of 55 fundamentalist leaders at the Glen Eyrie conference center outside of Colorado Springs. His chapters on the meeting that set the tone and agenda for the right-wing takeover document the setting of the "fascist" strategies and authoritarian goals we've since seen put in place.

In the final section, White fights back with his recommendations for resisting the looming fundamentalist take-over of the country. Taking back progressive constitutional political values and reclaiming the progressive moral values of Jesus and the Bible are central to his argument.

At this point some may be tempted to leave White, but this may be the most important time to continue reading. White still sees himself as an "evangelical" but one in no sense like those who claim the term. He really believes that the "good news" is really good news for everyone, inclusive of all religious and non-religious people.

In my mind, the last few pages of Religion Gone Bad are worth the price of the book in themselves, though they end too soon. As White tells how Gandhi's and Martin Luther King, Jr's method of "Soul Force" grabbed him, and how he has evolved after discovering and practicing for over ten years this life-style of "out-loving" the enemy, we find the activist-tested wisdom he has for us today.

Though he learned from King how morally important it was not to write off the fundamentalists or give up on them, his activist "Soul Force" experience and principles have brought him to the point today where he sees that the time to negotiate with them is over.

"For decades we've tried to negotiate with fundamentalists to end their antihomosexual campaign. They've refused. It's time to take the next step," this front-line fighter against the Christian right-wing advises. "Agape love demands it."

What follows are exciting paragraphs advising what "love demands" we do or, as I would put it, how to step out of the victim role toward the Christian right-wing, in order to stop enabling their addiction.

"Love demands we take it to the street," he writes. It also demands that LGBT people stop agreeing to participate in church debates and studies of issues that discuss LGBT people as if they're lab rats and specimens. Out of the dysfunctional emotional need to be accepted by the religious institutions in order to feel better about themselves, LGBT have agreed to have their humanity analyzed -- "the ultimate act of self-denigration."

Such actions, White argues, not only contribute to the postponing of justice but actually further prop up the very structures that promote religion-based bigotry. Continuing to support institutions that oppress one after already expressing concerns and demonstrating ones case is what Gandhi would call "cooperating with evil."

How many continue to give money to and continue as active members of institutions that respond only by abusing them? How many continue to believe that more cooperation will change their hearts even while the leaders harden their hearts further?

There will be people who will respond that White is too much of an activist for them, no matter how extensive now White's experience of the Christian right-wing's real threat is. They might settle instead for check-book activism or something much safer. They might prefer to hide in their relationships far away from the world out there.

It's fear that keeps us from doing what will fully change things. So, the ultimate beneficiary of stepping out of the victim role is always the person who does it.

In White's terms it's not just about changing the world out there. "The person who benefits most from demanding justice is the person who demands it....Win or lose, we take it to the streets because just being there enriches and empowers our lives."

the previous reviewer beat me to it
It's a mistake to start reading this book because it's hard to do anything else. It's a banal statement to say one is impressed with a book for, say, it's style of writing or it's content or because he/she may say something with which you wholeheartedly agree, but I wholeheartedly agree with the Reverend White's words and I confess, it has put fear in my heart. His incredible objectivity--and it cannot have been easy--make it clear that there's a lot of vigilance one is going to need in the days ahead on any number of issues. It was especially helpful to me since I am not a protestant, to know the difference between evangelicalism and fundamentalism. I have a divinity school degree from Berkeley but cannot remember any time the meaning of these two words/concept became an issue.
Thank you, Reverend White for what you've done.

Twin to Reverend Lynn's "Piety & Politics"
I like to read in twos or threes, and in this case the two books I read on the religious right were Reverend Barry Lynn's "Piety & Politics: The Right-Wing Assault on Religious Freeedom," and this one. Lynn's comes in first by a nose, but they are both excellent primers on everything going wrong both within the extreme right, and between the church and the state.

The author is a gay Christian minister who was uniquely privileged as a ghost writer for the heavy hitters on the extreme right from Jerry Falwell to Pat Robertson, work done prior to his realizing he was gay.

The author provides a useful distinction, one I often forget, between fundamentalists who are driven by fear and focused on imposing their strict version of faith on others, and evangelicals who are more reasonable and tolerant.

This book is richer in historical content than Lynns, and for that reason alone should be considered a "must read" along with Lynns' book. In addition to history the author describes a broad concern over two Americas emergent, one fundamentalist and one normal. The author takes care to discuss how Bible-based fear and loathing come from the fundamentalists, themselves, not from the Bible.

The author ends the book compassionately and intelligently. I am beginning to see a convergence between the literature on Collective Intelligence, and the literature on non-violent resistance as well as secession from the Union. I see a real possibility of the USA breaking up into at least four pieces (see my review of Joel Garreau's The Nine Nations of North America; Tom Atlee's The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All; and Thomas Naylor's The Vermont Manifesto.

See also (with reviews):
American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America
Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction
The Left Hand of God: Taking Back Our Country from the Religious Right
God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It (Plus)
Piety & Politics: The Right-Wing Assault on Religious Freedom
Thank God for Evolution!: How the Marriage of Science and Religion Will Transform Your Life and Our World
American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21stCentury