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The Christian Right Goes Back to Bible Boot Camp
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| Parent(s) |
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| Contributor | RP |
| Last Edited | RP Dec 04, 2006 07:59pm |
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| Category | Review |
| News Date | Tuesday, December 5, 2006 01:00:00 AM UTC0:0 |
| Description | After a study revealed that less than 10% of evangelicals were bible literate, James Dobson's Focus on the Family is desperately taking a two-day multi-media Bible boot camp on the road, selling "truth" for $179 a seat.
Focus on the Family has developed what is essentially a two-day multi-media Bible boot camp, with more than a whiff of a Holiday Inn get-rich-quick seminar. Held in churches instead of hotels, the seminars explain how to attain "Truth", not financial independence. This Truth comes in the form of a neatly packaged immutable Christian worldview to be taken home and shared with your neighbors. Attendees also receive a 12-DVD set of the lectures; meals are not provided.
"If we capture and embrace more of God's worldview and trust it with unwavering faith," says Dobson, "then we begin to...form the appropriate responses to questions on abortion, same-sex marriage, cloning, stem-cell research and even media choices." But the real prize is bigger than any one issue. By fully embracing Truth, religious conservatives can "recapture Western Civilization", which they "invented but have lost."
Over the course of his 12 lectures, Del Tackett explains that we know the answers to be yes. We know because the Bible tells us so. In fact, the Bible tells us everything we could ever want to know -- if we only we read it correctly. Most of The Truth Project thus involves parsing Scripture and teasing out its life lessons for 21st-century Christians. This text analysis is often ridiculous, with Tackett probing the possible double meanings of Biblical diction, as if the King James Bible was transcribed directly from the mouth of God, and was not an artistic creation of a team of 17th-century scholars in Oxford and Cambridge.
The Bible also contains a few policy recommendations. Tackett points to a mention of a 10 percent tax in the Old Testament, seeing in this a divine recommendation for a flat tax. Apparently Steve Forbes had a direct line in to God, after all. Tackett also locates Biblical grounds for opposing the welfare state and the rise of supranational institutions. It goes without saying that all "freakish sexual behavior," including homosexuality, is to be resisted with the utmost strenuousness.
After explaining the Biblical injunction to work and enjoy it, he imagines two businessmen having lunch. One says to the other: "I wish I could hire a Christian! They are so joyful, creative, excited and trustworthy! When I leave the office, they work even harder!" |
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