Spiritual-Warfare-Spiritual-Warfare-Spiritual-Warfare
Warfare! Warfare!


Ummm ... If you don't understand my headline, just trust me that if you were familiar with the Dead Kennedys, it would be hilarious to you.

Anyway, I found on the free table a copy of Michelle Goldberg's "Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism" and it made me remember Sara Diamond, a journalist and sociologist who studied the rise of the Christian Right in America, and wrote about it in such books as "Spiritual Warfare." She did some sort of fellowship at UC Santa Cruz when I was there in the late '80s and early '90s, and talked to those of us who were studying journalism about her research. In the years since then I've often thought about what she said.

Diamond began studying the weird world of fundamentalist Christian politics when it was considered a pretty obscure topic. Recent events have proven how ahead of the curve she was. Goldberg, in the introduction to "Kingdom Coming," cites Diamond as an invaluable source.

What I remember most about Diamond was that she was extremely sharp, but a bit brusque. Her book was the same way. I remember a friend said to her, "I can't believe that the people you're writing about could be that completely evil." (Or something like that.) And Diamond snapped back, "Well, what do you want me to say? That they're kind to animals?"

It was an interesting thing to say because part of the reason Diamond's research was so strong was that she treated her subjects seriously and respectfully at a time when few journalists paid attention to them. I think the example she gave was that she could discuss with them the difference between a pre-tribulationist and a post-tribulationist (some evangelicals think the Rapture will sweep away believers before a time of great difficulty -- the "Left Behind" scenario -- and some think they will be swept away after), and they appreciated the fact that she had done her homework on them.

I haven't got very far in "Kingdom Coming" yet. The subject matter is too depressing for me to read at night on my way home, which is when I do most of my reading, so it may take me a while to get through it. It looks pretty good so far. My hope is that Goldberg takes the subject as seriously as Diamond, but maybe shows us these Christian Taliban types being kind to animals once in a while, just so I remember that they are human beings.