New Book Examines Christian Nationalism

DATE May 11, 2006 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Michelle Goldberg discusses her book "Kingdom Coming"
and Christian nationalism

TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

My guest, Michelle Goldberg, is the author of a new book about the rise of
"Christian nationalism." Christian nationalism is her term for the movement
that has tied together a fundamentalist Christian point of view with a
right-wing political ideology conflating scripture and politics. Her book
"Kingdom Coming" examines how this movement has consolidated so much power.
Goldberg is a senior writer at the online magazine Salon, where she reports on
the culture wars.

Michelle Goldberg, welcome to FRESH AIR. In your new book, you've describe
the religious right as a "parallel culture." What do you mean?

Ms. MICHELLE GOLDBERG: I mean that it's not just a religious movement
anymore. It has not only its own kind of political institutions, also its own
law firms, its own revisionist history of America, its own scientific or, you
know, quasi-scientific research organs, its own journals. And what we're
seeing, especially in the Bush administration, is the slow replacement of what
we think of as reality with this parallel version, so that you have basically,
you know, scientists or doctors or lawyers who adhere to an entirely different
world view with an entirely different set of facts slowly being infiltrated, I
guess, into the workings of our government.

GROSS: Give me an example of what you mean by an expert who has a different
set of facts who's now being infiltrated into the government.

Ms. GOLDBERG: Well, one of the best examples, I think, is what's going on
right now with the CDC. As you probably know...

GROSS: The Center for Disease Control.

Ms. GOLDBERG: The Center for Disease Control, right. As you probably know,
there was recently supposed to be a panel about the failure of abstinence
education, which is something that almost all mainstream scientists who
studied abstinence education has been able to document. Now a congressman
from Indiana found out about this panel and decided it wasn't balanced because
he said that the fact that all of the scientists have come to a specific
conclusion means that they are, by definition, biased, and that this
conclusion needs to be balanced with a pro-abstinence conclusion. And so he
was able to go to a woman named Patricia Sulak, who is the author of an
abstinence curriculum called "Worth the Wait." She's affiliated with a group
called the Medical Institute for Sexual Health, which sounds scientific, but
it is essentially a kind of parallel institution that exists to buttress
abstinence education and that exists to attack the use of condoms and to
attack the teaching of safe sex and comprehensive sex education. And so every
mainstream scientist and mainstream researcher has discredited most of their
claims, but in that parallel reality those claims are as valid, if not more
valid, than what scientists are coming up with.

GROSS: The subtitle of your book "Kingdom Coming" is "The Rise of Christian
Nationalism." What do you mean by "Christian nationalism"?

Ms. GOLDBERG: The ideology of the movement that I'm describing believes that
America was founded as a Christian nation, that the founders never intended a
separation of church and state, and that America must be restored to its
Christian origins. What that means is not that they want Christianity to be
forced on all of Americans, as much as they want Christianity to be kind of
honored as the inspiration for the republic and also the kind of overriding
ideology of the country. You know, Jews and other religious minorities would
be able to practice their religion, but it would be within the context of a
Christian country where Christianity is dominant and privileged.

GROSS: What leads you to that conclusion that that's the type of country that
Christian nationalists want?

Ms. GOLDBERG: A few years ago, Congress invited a Hindu priest to give the
invocation, and it was the first time that a Hindu priest had been invited.
And the Family Research Council, which is a very powerful, Christian right
lobbying group in Washington, DC, issued this furious statement that said:
`While it is true that the United States of America was founded on the sacred
principle of religious freedom for all, that liberty was never intended to
exalt other religions to the level that Christianity holds in our country's
heritage. Our founders expected that Christianity, and no other religion,
would receive support from the government as long as that support did not
violate people's consciences and their right to worship. They would have
found utterly incredibly the idea that all religions, including paganism, be
treated with equal deference.'

And so you hear this rhetoric a lot, that this is a Christian nation. And one
of the chief purveyors of this kind of revisionist history is a man named
David Barton, who is the vice chairman of the Texas Republican Party and who,
you know, travels the country incessantly, giving lectures about how America
was founded as a Christian nation and needs to be restored, and that this kind
of true heritage of America has been perverted and corrupted by leftists and
secularists.

GROSS: You devote a chapter in your book to home schooling. What's the
connection between home schooling and the religious right?

Ms. GOLDBERG: Well, we're seeing an increasing attack and rejection of the
public schools by the Christian right. There is the idea that the public
schools are basically incubators of secularism, that they are, you know,
teaching kids this doctrine that rejects Jesus, I mean, which is true, the
public schools don't--unlike the Christian right--don't see the Bible as the
fount of all knowledge and understanding of the world. So increasingly you
see Christian conservatives taking their kids out of the public schools and
teaching them at home. I think the numbers are somewhere between 1.1 and 2.1
million students who are now being home schooled. And when I spoke before
about a parallel reality, in home schooling curricula, that reality is the
only reality presented, so that what they're learning is essentially an
entirely different set of facts. You know, they're learning in many cases the
revisionist history of David Barton, about America's Christian founding.
They're learning creationism, in many cases, quite advanced forms of
creationism. You know, you can buy college textbooks about creationist
astronomy or creationist chemistry or physics. And increasingly through the
efforts of a man named Michael Farris, as well as others--Michael Farris is
the founder of the Home School Legal Defense Fund. Increasingly you're seeing
these home schooled kids being organized into political cadres and dispatched
for weeks out of the year to work on various right-wing campaigns with their
expenses paid by Farris organization.

GROSS: Well, Farris founded something called Generation Joshua. What is the
goal of this group?

Ms. GOLDBERG: Generation Joshua, I mean, it takes its name from the Joshua
of the Bible, who--Moses led the Israelites out of their exile, but he never
got to the Promised Land. It was Joshua who finally, you know, made war on
the Canaanites and reconquered Israel. And the goal of Generation Joshua is
to train home schooled kids, who've been led out of the godless public schools
by their parents, to reconquer American culture and exercise dominion over,
not only all aspects of politics but all aspects of American life.

GROSS: How politically connected is Michael Farris?

Ms. GOLDBERG: Although I haven't seen George W. Bush publicly embrace
Michael Farris, he is clearly, deeply intertwined with the modern Republican
Party. The head of Generation Joshua is a guy named Ned Ryun, who was a
former speech writer for George W. Bush, and is the son of Congressman Jim
Ryun. And Michael Farris runs a college called Patrick Henry College, which
is devoted to basically turning home-schooled students into leaders in the
government. And it's a very small school, and given its size--you know,
something less than 200 students total--he's been incredibly effective in
placing these kids in really coveted internships. In 2004, 7 percent of the
White House interns came from Patrick Henry College. I mean, the only other
school that had numbers even close to that, I believe, was Georgetown.

GROSS: Are there particular campaigns you can point to that you think
students from Generation Joshua have been particularly influential in? This
is a pretty new project. It was only founded in 2004 so it was...

Ms. GOLDBERG: Right, in was founded in 2004, and in 2004 Generation Joshua
paid all the travel and all the living expenses for hundreds of kids to work
both on Bush's campaign in swing states, and also on the senatorial campaign
of very far right senators like: Tom Coburn in Oklahoma, who's a man who has
called for the death penalty for abortionists; and Jim DeMint in South
Carolina, who's a man who's said that unmarried mothers shouldn't be teaching
in public schools. Both Coburn and DeMint were victorious. And while you
can't attribute that solely to Generation Joshua, obviously, the fact that you
have these kind of subsidized groups of very zealous volunteers who are
basically working on these campaigns full-time is obviously very valuable.

GROSS: You describe Michael Farris as a protege of Tim LeHaye. Tim LeHaye
co-authored the "Left Behind" series, the apocalyptic series about what
happens just before the second coming of Christ. Do you know if Farris
believes, as LeHaye does, that the second coming and the end of days is
imminent?

Ms. GOLDBERG: I can't speak to what Farris believes. I would say that the
belief that you're talking about is called premillenial dispensationalism.
You know, the belief that there's shortly going to be a rapture where all the
believers are gathered up to heaven, followed by a third world war in the
Middle East and Armageddon and a final battle between Jesus and the
anti-Christ, fall, and after which there'll be 1,000 years of peace on earth.

That is the dominant belief among American evangelicals.

GROSS: Do you think that has an influence on the political movement of the
Christian right, that belief that the second coming is imminent?

Ms. GOLDBERG: Well, it's actually interesting, because if it has an
influence, it's actually been, in the past, a negative influence. Because if
you believe that the Second Coming is imminent, that inspires a certain kind
of passivity. I mean, there's no reason to try to save a world that's on its
last legs. And so something that Tim LeHaye was able to do that was very,
very important was to kind of politicize premillenial dispensationalism and to
kind of create a theological justification for this very intense political
involvement, despite the fact that the world is, you know, kind of lurching
towards Armageddon.

GROSS: My guest is Michelle Goldberg. Her new book is called "Kingdom
Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism." We'll talk more after a break.
This is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Michelle Goldberg and her new
book is called "Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism." And she
reports on the religious right and other issues for the online magazine Salon.

You write about a Christian movement called reconstructionism. What is this
movement about and how big is it?

Ms. GOLDBERG: Christian reconstructionism is tiny but very influential. It
was founded by a guy named R. J. Rushdoony. And, essentially, while most
American evangelicals are premillenial dispensationalists, so while most
American evangelicals believe that the second coming is imminent and that
after this kind of final battle there will be 1,000-year reign of peace on
earth, Christian reconstructionists are post-millenialists. That means that
they believe that they first have to establish the 1,000-year reign of
Christianity before Jesus will return. So that makes them much more proactive
because there's just much more of a role for kind of human agency in bringing
about the second coming.

And Christian reconstructionism is probably the most extreme form of Christian
fundamentalism. It prescribes something very much like a Christian Taliban.
It calls for the imposition of Leviticus, the execution of homosexuals, the
execution of adulterers, the execution of women who are unchaste before
marriage. This is not a vision that is very attractive even among most
fundamentalists. But Christian reconstructionism, because it has a vision of
the necessity of people transforming society and taking over society, has
developed a political philosophy called "dominionism," which holds that
Christians have both the right and the duty to kind of take over all aspects
of society, that there's a Christian right to rule. And this philosophy has
kind of filtered down; it's become very influential partly through Tim LeHaye.
There's been a number of organizations, notably the Coalition on Revival,
where reconstructionists and premillenialists like Tim LeHaye have joined
forces to, you know, have kind of put aside their eschatological disputes to
try to combine forces to basically Christianize American society.

GROSS: Through what movements or efforts or legislation? Through what?

Ms. GOLDBERG: Gary North, who is the son-in-law of Rushdoony and one of the
most important reconstructionist thinkers, has talked about the importance of
infiltrating the existing political order to "smooth the transition to
Christian political leadership," as he put it. And this idea of this kind of
stealth strategy to organize within current politics is something that was
really popularized by Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition, so the idea is
essentially that you take over, first, the party apparatus at the local level,
the precinct level, the school board level. You know, once you've done that,
you can kind of replace slowly what I would call, you know, reality with this
parallel version in all kinds of ways. You know, everything from trying to
put creationism into the public schools to efforts to replace the teaching of
American history with this kind of revisionist history about America's
Christian roots. There's a big movement now to have Bible classes
reintroduced to public schools. You're seeing it all over the country,
especially in Georgia.

And usually, I mean, the argument--and it's a legitimate argument--is that
Christians have the same right to participate in politics as anyone else. And
of course they do, but if you look at some of the writings of leaders of this
movement, they're pretty clear that the goal is not participation in a
pluralistic society but that it's dominion. And so if I could just read,
George Grant, who used to be the executive director of D. James Kennedy's
Coral Ridge Ministries, which is, you know, a huge televangelist empire based
in Fort Lauderdale, one that--less well known than people like James Dobson or
Falwell or Robertson, but very, very big. And he wrote: "Christians have an
obligation, a mandate, a commission, a holy responsibility to reclaim the land
for Jesus Christ, to have dominion in civil structures, just as in every other
aspect of life in godliness. But it is dominion we are after, not just a
voice. It is dominion we are after, not just influence. It is dominion we
are after, not just equal time. It is dominion we are after. World conquest.
That's what Christ has commissioned us to accomplish."

And so the goal is not necessarily a violent overthrow although, I mean, there
have been people who have advocated that. But it's essentially a kind of
fundamental transformation of the country using the institutions of democracy
but in a way that is fundamentally opposed, not just to the founders' vision
of America, but also to the kind of pluralism that most of us have grown up
taking for granted.

GROSS: Is there any legislation proposed or passed that you think reflects
the reconstructionist point of view, a point of view that you described as
very small in its number of followers but very influential in the larger
movement of the Christian right?

Ms. GOLDBERG: There haven't been laws passed that have been specifically
derived from Christian reconstructionism, although there have been
reconstructionist ideas kind of migrating increasingly into the public debate.
I mean, it was really Christian reconstructionists, along with members of the
John Birth Society, you know, many decades ago, who first floated and
developed the idea of impeaching judges whose rule contradicts the Bible,
which is seen as the supreme source of law. And so if you see the Bible as
the inspiration for the Constitution, any law that contradicts the Bible is
kind of de facto unconstitutional. And so you've seen these legal arguments
picked up increasingly by Republicans who are denouncing activist judges and
things like that.

There have been laws that have been proposed and that have found significant
sponsorship in Congress that come from Christian reconstructionism, and one of

the most important is the Constitution Restoration Act. The Constitution
Restoration Act would essentially strip courts of the ability to hear most
establishment clause issues. So it would strip courts of the ability to rule
on prayer in public schools, to rule on creationism in public schools, to rule
on ten commandments monuments. Because the federal courts would, you know,
kind of lose so much of their jurisdiction, it would actually be possible for,
say, a state to declare itself a Christian state. The understanding behind it
is that the First Amendment applies to Congress. Congress shall make no law.
And so they kind of reject the idea that this is binding at the local level.

GROSS: Now this Constitution Restoration Act was introduced in both houses of
Congress. I don' think it got very far, but who were the legislators behind
it?

Ms. GOLDBERG: OK. The Constitution Restoration Act, you know, you're right.
It's not going to pass any time soon although it did pass the House and it
found significant support among many of the leaders in the Senate, including
Sam Brownback, Lindsey Graham from South Carolina, Trent Lott, who used to be
the majority leader. It was, you know--it failed. It was reintroduced in
2005, and the GOP platform explicitly endorses the idea behind it. So
although it's not going to become law anytime soon, it's also not a kind of
marginal idea. It's something--the ideas behind it are really embraced by the
people running the country, and it's the kind of thing that if they're able to
solidify their control or if there's another conservative president in 2008,
it's certainly not beyond the realm of possibility.

GROSS: Michelle Goldberg is the author of the new book "Kingdom Coming: The
Rise of Christian Nationalism." She'll be back in the second half the show.
I'm Terry Gross and this is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

GROSS: Coming up, how homosexuality became a target of the religious right.
We continue our conversation with Michelle Goldberg. And music critic Milo
Miles reviews the new album "St. Elsewhere" by Gnarls Barkley, the combined
fictional persona of a deejay and a rapper.

(Announcements)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross back with Michelle Goldberg,
author of the new book "Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism."
She describes Christian nationalism as a movement that claims the Bible is
literally true and has extrapolated a total political program from that truth,
yoking that program to a political party.

How did gay rights get to be such a big issue within the Republican Party?
And it was a very big issue for the Bush-Cheney platform when they ran their
re-election campaign.

Ms. GOLDBERG: Well, I think there's a couple of different reasons. First of
all is that the Christian right has made alliances with so many of its former
enemies. I mean, a lot of, you know, the Protestant right used to spend a lot
of its time fighting Catholics, and nativists would write these tracts about
all the kind of perversities and decadence of the convents. You know, now
there's been, especially over abortion, there's increasingly a very close
alliance between the Protestant right and the Catholic right.

Anti-Semiticism is taboo, I mean, it exists but it is taboo mostly among the
Protestant right. They tend to be very pro-Israel, to see Jews as the kind of
the agents of the Second Coming. Racism has become very taboo among the
Christian right. There's been a lot of efforts to reach out to Black
evangelicals.

But a movement needs an enemy and the so-called "homosexual agenda" has become
this kind of all-encompassing evil that is a very potent force to mobilize
against. And so there's all of these books about how they ascribe a power to
a homosexual lobby that really recalls books like "The Protocols of the Elders
of Zion" in their all-encompassing conspiracy theorizing. You know, there's
books called the "Pink Swastika" and, you know, "The Homosexual Agenda," and
they usually talk about how the homosexual agenda doesn't want just rights for
homosexuals. It wants to destroy the institution of marriage, recruit
children into the cause and ban Christianity.

And so this has been a very, very powerful force in uniting all of these
formerly disparate groups. And it was incredibly important to George Bush's
election in 2004 because IRS rules prohibit churches from campaigning on
behalf of specific candidates, but they are allowed to campaign on behalf of
ostensibly non-partisan issues, like anti-gay ballot initiatives. Ballot
initiatives to ban gay marriage, or to strip gay couples of, you know,
partnership benefits, joint health insurance, things like that.

And so, especially in Ohio, which is where I was in the months before the 2004
election, the churches were able to use the issue one campaign, which was the
campaign for an anti-gay marriage state constitutional amendment, to move a
lot of the electoral apparatus into the churches, so that the churches became,
you know, centers for phone banking and voter registration. And when I went
to the churches, you know, when I went to services before the 2004 election, I
consistently heard entire sermons about, `the homosexuals and the plan--what
they're trying to do to our state, and you need to form a mighty army and
march on the voting booth to save the family and save Christianity and fight
for the pulpit.'

And, I think, there's no doubt that not only was this incredibly potent, but
it was very, very important in swaying Black evangelicals to Bush. There was
a lot of effort to kind of recruit Black pastors into the kind of anti-gay
cause. A lot of the times, anti-gay marriage rallies would double as what
they call "racial reconciliation rallies," so that people can kind of, you
know, join hands, brought together by the unifying force of homophobia.

And as a result, Bush's share of the black vote in Ohio doubled in 2004. I
think that there's a pretty good argument to be made that Bush would not have
won Ohio if it weren't for issue one.

GROSS: The way you describe it, it's almost like a conscious campaign with
organizers of the religious--of the Christian right saying, 'Well, now that we
really want to be inclusive of African Americans, we certainly don't want to,
you know, demonize Jews. Let's demonize homosexuals because we need an
enemy.' Do we have any evidence that it was as kind of a conscious decision as
that?

Ms. GOLDBERG: Oh, I actually don't know if it's conscious. I mean, I
certainly believe that their antipathy towards gay people is real. I do think
that it's been--you've seen it kind of mushroom as other enemies have become,
you know, as it has become politically more difficult to attack other enemies.
And it's absolute--I think that there's no doubt that it's been consciously
manipulated to bring African Americans into the Christian right and into the
Republican Party.

There's a really fascinating video called "Gay Rights/Special Rights," which
is about how homosexuals have usurped the apparently noble civil rights
movements. And one of the talking heads on that is Trent Lott, who has never
before been a great champion of Martin Luther King. You know, as everyone
knows, he was forced to step down from his role as Senate majority leader
after praising the "Dixiecrat" presidential campaign of Strom Thurmond. So
when people like that start talking about how gay people pose a threat to the
noble legacy of the civil rights movement, I think it's pretty clear that
there's something cynical going on.

GROSS: You've gone to a lot of conferences organized by leaders of the
Christian right. One of them that you recently wrote about in Salon magazine
online was The War on Christians.

Ms. GOLDBERG: Mm-hm.

GROSS: And this was a conference that was held at the end of March. What was
the premise of the conference?

Ms. GOLDBERG: One of the ideas that has really taken over the movement is
that Christianity is under siege, that thanks to the efforts of the
homosexuality lobby, it's on the verge of being outlawed and that, you know,
basically secularists are waging this war on Christianity in every aspect of
the culture.

And so Rick Scarborough, who put this conference together, someone who's very
close to Tom DeLay, has been, you know, kind of major mover behind this idea.
Last year he organized a conference where there was a lot of talk about, you
know, the war on Christmas. So now the war on Christmas has become the war on
Christians. And the examples of this, you know, ostensible war, usually
involve either attempts to maintain separation of church and state, you know,
attempts to not have, you know, government sponsored manger scenes in city
hall, or attempts to create expanded tolerance for gay couples. They
essentially say that since their reading of the Bible, you know, treats
homosexuality as an abomination, to force them to tolerate gay unions, to
force them to not discriminate against gay people is, you know, a kind of
fundamental assault on their religion.

GROSS: The organization of the conference, Rick Scarborough, introduced Tom
DeLay, who was one of the speakers at the conference, and in introducing him,
Scarborough said, `I believe the most damaging thing Tom DeLay has done in his
life is to take his faith seriously in the public office, which made him a
target of all of those who despise the goals of Christ.' Tell us about Rick
Scarborough, who is the organizer of this conference, The War on Christians.

Ms. GOLDBERG: Well, Rick Scarborough used to be--or, he was a pastor in
Purdon, Texas. He's been very close to Tom DeLay, and he now runs a group
called Vision America. The idea behind it is to organize what he calls,
quote, "patriot pastors for political action." And the kind of, you know, the
thing that he uses to rile people up is this idea that Christianity is under
siege, and he's been really skillful at interpreting Tom DeLay's legal
troubles, among other things, as, you know, not evidence of the kind of
bankruptcy of some of their leaders, but as evidence of the war on Christians,
so that anytime their leaders are defeated or unmasked or shown to be corrupt,
it just kind of further strengthens their, you know, their belief in this idea
that there's this kind of giant conspiracy working against them. And he, I
think, Jerry Falwell identified Scarborough as one of the kind of new leaders
of the Christian right. He's part of a new generation of Christian right
organizers who tend to work on the state level, organizing church by church,
pastor by pastor, and trying to basically turn conservative and evangelical
pastors into political operatives.

GROSS: How politically connected is Scarborough?

Ms. GOLDBERG: Well, he's obviously very close to Tom DeLay, as I said, and
you see at his conferences--he had a conference last year and now this
one--you see, you know, a lot of high-level Republicans coming and speaking,
often with really quite--sharing stages with people who are really quite
extreme. So you had at this conference Senator John Cornyn, you know, gave a
speech along with Tom DeLay and two other Republican congressmen as well. At
one of his events last year, you had, you know, I think, Tom Coburn's chief of
staff. You had the guy who used to advice Bill Frist on judicial nominations,
you know, along with other congressmen and Tom DeLay giving a video greeting
from--because he couldn't be there because of the pope's funeral.

And what's fascinating to me is that some of the other people who tend to
appear at these conferences are people who are kind of unabashed theocrats,
people who are Christian reconstructionists who adhere to an ideology that
proposes replacing civil law with biblical law, you know, that would executive
people for, you know, the vast numbers of moral crimes. That is openly
theocratic. You know, people like Howard Phillips, Herb Titus, obscure
figures but figures that, I think, it used to be Republicans wouldn't want to
be openly associated with. I mean, these people used to be considered beyond
the pale. They are still considered beyond the pale, but I think it's very
telling that Republicans feel less compunction about sharing the stage with
them, or sharing a banquet table with them.

GROSS: With Tom DeLay on his way out, who are some of the leaders in Congress
who are connected to the religious right?

Ms. GOLDBERG: Well, there's Hostettler from Indiana, who was very
influential in trying to make sure that the Air Force Academy didn't impose
any antidiscrimination guidelines when they were accused of allowing
proselytizing to cadets. There is Souder who recently intervened to have
abstinence proponents added to this CDC panel. In the Senate, there's Rick
Santorum who's probably going to lose in 2006, but you also have people like
Tom Coburn, Sam Brownback, Jim DeMint. I think it's important to realize that
this is a movement that has a lot of different centers of power, so the fall
of Tom DeLay, while a blow to the movement, is definitely not going to
decapitate it.

GROSS: My guest is Michelle Goldberg. Her new book is called "Kingdom
Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism." We'll talk more after a break.
This is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Michelle Goldberg. She's the
author of the new book "Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism,"
and she covers the Christian right and other subjects for the online magazine
Salon.

One of the architects of the Christian right, Pat Robertson, who founded the
Christian coalition, has become something of an embarrassment for people
because, you know, he's called for the assassination of a head of state. He
said that Sharon's stroke was punishment for his own policies. How are people
in the Christian right now dealing with Pat Robertson now that Pat Robertson
is largely regarded as a real loose cannon?

Ms. GOLDBERG: He is regarded as a loose cannon, and he is somebody who they
try to marginalize, especially in public. At the same time, I think that the
extent to which Pat Robertson has been kind of sidelined is a little bit
overstated. I mean, people feel the need to denounce him. They feel the need
to distance themselves from him. He's still a very important figure.

Just a couple of months ago there was a big conference at his university,
Regent University, about Reagan's Legacy and the Future of Conservatism. And
you saw people like Marvin Olasky, the editor of World Magazine, which is a
very influential evangelical magazine. Olasky is also a former Bush advise.
You know he went to the conference. People like Bill Kristol, from the Weekly
Standard, went to the conference. So although people need to kind of distance
themselves from Robertson in public, he's certainly not somebody who's now
completely out of the loop.

And another thing I would point out is that, his charity has received millions
of dollars in government contracts, partly under Bush's faith-based
initiative. It's called Operation Blessing. And he received something like
$1.5 million under contract to essentially distribute the money to other
smaller religious groups to kind of teach them how to get government contracts
and how to do social service work that the Bush administration is increasingly
turning over to the religious right.

And he's also received something like $14 million in powered milk donations
for his overseas operations. So although this is somebody who's something of
an embarrassment, he's definitely still a player.

GROSS: What's your approach to covering the religious right?

Ms. GOLDBERG: Usually I just show up. I'm, you know, kind of somewhat
nonobtrusive person. I kind of blend in a little bit. So, you know, I go. I
go to church. I go to these conferences, and I talk to the people around me.
You know, I'll offer--I'll approach the leaders and interview them. And when
people--I don't quite go undercover. I mean I might blend in a little but I
don't lie about why I'm there. If people ask me, I'll tell them I'm a
reporter. I'm working on a book about the culture wars. You know, if people
press me further, I usually tell them where I'm coming from. And so, you
know, part of the time I just kind of blend in and hear what people are
saying, and then part of the time I try to engage people in conversation. I
find that most people, myself included, want to say what they really think.
It's really hard to keep your real opinions to yourself. So even if people
feel like my agenda might be suspicious, you know, most people want to talk
about their beliefs.

GROSS: You've described, you know, the Christian right as an almost parallel
world with, in many cases, with its own schools and its own music and its own
sense of American history.

Ms. GOLDBERG: Mm-hm.

GROSS: Do you think, if you see the Christian right world as a parallel
world, do you see it as a parallel world that a lot of people aren't aware
exists?

Ms. GOLDBERG: Well, I think people on the coasts aren't aware that it
exists. You know, I often feel like people in New York, where I live, or San
Francisco, or any of the big cities, feel like it's just this tiny fringe
subculture, when in many cases it's more mainstream than we are. You know,
the "Left Behind" books are the best-selling books of fiction in America, and
yet, secular people on the coasts, unless they're kind of connected to the
publishing industry, have usually not heard of them and have almost certainly
never read them. I don't know anyone, except for people who grew up in that
subculture and then left, who's ever been inside of a megachurch, you know,
and yet these are an increasingly important part of the American landscape. I
mean part of it is because the cultural division in this country has become so
profound and because there is such a separation in terms of the media that we
consume, that we can be kind of completely oblivious to what is the reality
for so many other Americans.

GROSS: The Christian right was very helpful to the Bush-Cheny ticket in
getting them elected and re-elected, and I'm wondering now that the
president's popularity has decreased in the polls, has that affected the
relationship between the president and the Christian right?

Ms. GOLDBERG: I think there's no doubt that there's disillusionment and
dejection at the the War on Christians Conference in March. I mean, the kind
of lack of energy was, you know, really noticeable, especially compared to the
conference last year. At the same time, I think that Bush's decreasing
approval ratings is going to make him more dependent than ever on getting out
his base, and so there's going to be, I believe, increasing kind of SOPs and
increasing attempts to get people riled up in time for November. You know,
one of the most important things they're doing is re-introducing an attempt to
pass a federal constitutional amendment banning gay marriage in June, and so
there's going to be efforts like that to get people excited and to get people
to turn out, because I think they realize it's the only way they're going to
hang on to either house in 2006.

GROSS: Well, Michelle Goldberg, thank you very much for talking with us.

Ms. GOLDBERG: Oh, thank you so much for having me.

GROSS: Michelle Goldberg is the author of the new book "Kingdom Coming: The
Rise of Christian Nationalism."

Coming up, an influential rapper and producer have teamed up to create a new
combined fictional persona, and Milo Miles has a review of their new CD. This
is Fresh Air.

(Announcements)

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Review: Milo Miles reviews "St. Elsewhere" and Gnarls Barkley

TERRY GROSS, host:

When it was released in the United Kingdom this spring, the single "Crazy" by
Gnarls Barkley became the first single to top the pop charts in Britain based
on download sales alone. "Crazy" is from the album "St. Elsewhere." The
album was released May 1st in the UK and on Tuesday in the US. Gnarls Barkley
is not a person, but the fictional combined persona of two Americans, producer
and deejay "Danger Mouse" and rapper and songwriter "Cee-lo."

A decade ago, as the key rapper with Atlanta's Goodie Mob, Cee-lo helped
develop the down-to-earth style known as "Dirty South." Danger Mouse became
notorious for the "Grey" album, a mash-up which combined the music of the
Beatles "White" album with raps from Jay-Z's "The Black Album." Critic Milo
Miles has a review of their Gnarls Barkley collaboration.

(Soundbite of movie projector starting up)

(Soundbite of Gnarls Barkley song)

Mr. GNARLS BARKLEY: (Singing) Well, I hear you. See you. If you're
wandering in the moonlight, look at me. Hey!

(End of soundbite)

Mr. MILO MILES: Gnarls Barkley's "St. Elsewhere" album begins and ends with
the sound of film running through a projector. So it's meant to be a movie
for the ears. And if so, it's an old-fashioned higgledy-piggledy Saturday
matinee, with some cheapo horror and sci-fi mixed with outrageous slapstick
and cartoons, and a load of sly fun.

Three years ago, Cee-lo and Danger Mouse began to informally exchange tapes
and build songs in an attempt to surprise and outdo each other. The result
has now come out as Gnarls Barkley's "St. Elsewhere." Cee-lo and Danger Mouse
have put out Web site stories trying to make Gnarls Barkley into some sort of
crazy recluse. Don't even think of the NVA, but this is a case of artistic
collaboration, intended to break molds and to feed expectations. It works
because this is an inspired meeting of a mouth and a mind.

Cee-lo and Danger Mouse are a pair who have always been captivated by rock
guitar, blues licks and the anything-goes punk soul calvacades associated with
Prince and before that Parliament Funkadelic and before that Sly Stone.
Cee-lo also reminds me of another R&B eccentric called Swamp Dog, who made
looking into his own head as lively and thrilling as prowling the streets.
Typical is the breakout single "Crazy."

(Soundbite of "Crazy")

Mr. BARKLEY: (Singing) I remember when, I remember, I remember when I lost
my mind. There was something so pleasant about that place. Even your
emotions had an echo in so much space.

And when you're out there, without care, Yeah, I was out of touch. But it
wasn't because I didn't know enough. I just knew too much.

Does that make me crazy? Does that make me crazy? Does that make me crazy?
Possibly.

And I...

(End of soundbite)

Mr. MILES: Elsewhere Cee-lo touches on suicidal depression in "Just a
Thought" and fragmentary personality in "Transformer" and "Who Cares?" He also
gets into, well, sex after death in "Necromancer," but that's a pretty
ridiculous track. It's also one of the few where he almost raps, chants the
lyrics is more like it. Mostly he delivers regular vocals. Cee-lo has
described himself not as a singer, but a "sanger" with an "a," which means
that he makes up for his lack of range with personality and good humor. It's
good that Cee-lo takes pride in his common touch. Not so good that all of his
albums have "duff moments," like here the undanceable dance anthem "The Last
Time."

Much smarter is his cover of the violent themed "Gone Daddy Gone," where he
can make his chants hit home and quote Muddy Waters in the same song.

(Soundbite of "Gone Daddy Gone")

Mr. BARKLEY: (Singing) An I can tell by the way that ya switch your walk

An I can see by the way that you baby talk.

An I can know by the way that ya treat your man.

I can love ya baby 'til it's a crying.

Unidentified Singers: (Singing) Cause it's gone daddy gone.

Mr. BARKLEY: (Singing) The love is gone.

Singers: (Singing) Yeah it's gone daddy gone. The love is gone. Yeah, it's
gone daddy gone.

Mr. BARKLEY: (Singing) The love is gone

Singers: (Singing) It's gone daddy gone.

Mr. BARKLEY: (Singing) The love is gone.

Singers: (Singing) Yeah it's gone daddy gone.

Mr. BARKLEY: (Singing) The love is gone away.

Singers: (Singing) Gone daddy gone.

Mr. BARKLEY: (Singing) Beautiful girl love ya dress.

Singers: (Singing) Gone daddy gone.

Mr. BARKLEY: (Singing) Fifteen smiles, oh, yes.

Singers: (Singing) Gone daddy gone.

Mr. BARKLEY: (Singing) Beautiful girl love ya dress.

Singers: (Singing) Gone daddy gone.

Mr. BARKLEY: (Singing) Where she is no I can only guess.

Singers: (Singing) Cause it's gone daddy gone...

Mr. MILES: "Gone Daddy Gone" was Danger Mouse's idea since he came up with
all the music. He said he was trying to create a partly sampled and partly
live modern psychedelic melange. Whatever he calls the music on "St.
Elsewhere," it's inventive, restless, headlong, expressive, and often droll.
On the throwaway tracks of Cee-lo's solo album, the music marked time until he
returned to something more substantial. On "St. Elsewhere," the Danger Mouse
background can carry the scene while Cee-lo goofs around, as on "Feng Shui."

(Soundbite of "Feng Shui")

Mr. BARKLEY: (Singing) In this house the decor is the obvious obscure. See
clearly the theory of less is more. A plant, a pet, books on a shelf, and a
frame on the wall where you can picture yourself.

And you're welcome to stay, but even your company must complement the Feng
Shui.

Even down to what I have on, they do wonder to what extents I have gone.

Tailored and tapered couture to the curb, demanding the attention that it does
deserve. Fabrics for the forecast of the day.

I admit it, everything is fitted to fall in Feng Shui.

More importantly the way that I move...

(End of soundbite)

Mr. MILES: Does Gnarls Barkley have a second act? Cee-lo and Danger Mouse
are playing live dates this summer. But exactly how well they come across on
stage doesn't matter as much in this age of phantom superstars. And Danger
Mouse is an expert with unreality. Last year he helped tweak the return of
Gorillaz, a band who only exists as cartoons, and they've been on the
billboard charts for nearly a year and sold two million copies. So Gnarls
Barkley may yet end up in the virtual hall of fame.

GROSS: Milo Miles lives in Cambridge. He reviewed "St. Elsewhere" by Gnarls
Barkley.

(Credits)

GROSS: I'm Terry Gross.
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