Just Finished Reading: The Last Crusade – Religion and the Politics of Misdirection by Barbara Victor (FP: 2005) [287pp] 

This, I think, is going to be a difficult book to review. At base it is about the rise of political evangelism in the US from Ronald Regan onwards up to George W Bush (featured on the cover). That's pretty straight forward. Although evangelism has been around in America for quite some time apparently, they only started throwing their potential voting weight around from the late 70's onwards. No doubt, thinking about it, brought on by social changes not only in the States but throughout the western world – the invention of The Pill, the rise of no-fault divorce, the legalisation of abortion, same sex marriage and no doubt, Feminism. If they could influence or, in the best case, control the politicians that made these decisions then they could get their way and create a country, a society, more in line with their beliefs and desires. But this is where I start to struggle... 

Throughout most of my life America has portrayed itself as THE land of the Free where all things are possible and the place where you can make of yourself whatever you want to be. The watchword is FREEDOM without interference from the Government or from anyone else. Yet here we have a significant group (the figure was 80 million in the book though no doubt this has increased in the subsequent 20 years since publication) who will use their political power to RESRICT the freedoms of others to be who they are, marry who they love and worship who they wish (or not). Personally, I've long been an advocate of personal freedoms (although I'm a Socialist, I do have significant Anarchist sympathies) which allows individuals to do – or believe – whatever they want to unless it conflicts with others freedom or harms those around them. If you want to get married, then have at it but if you don't and still want to live with someone else in a consensual sexual relationship then have at that too. It's not harming me (or anyone else) and frankly I don't care. Its zero business of mine. If I found such things objectionable (and I know some people do – my mother for example) then they're just going to have to 'deal' with reality. Essentially what I'm saying is that you should happily live your OWN life and not expect others to follow YOUR rules or hold YOUR beliefs. I certainly don't! 

Anyway... I think the biggest problem I had with the underlying 'philosophy' of those portrayed in the book was the rather bizarre (at least in MY mind) relationship of evangelicals and Israel. Now I'm at least aware of the whole thing about the 2nd Coming of the Messiah and all that but having that as THE justification of supporting Israel is more than a little incomprehensible to me. I suppose that it's because since I didn't grow up in a religious household and have never had a great deal of 'education' in Christianity (or any other religion) outside of academia I just couldn't connect the dots and that's BEFORE we get to the bit where the End of the World is supposedly a GOOD thing (although that does explain why so many Americans don't seem to care very much about the planet they inhabit or the future of our species). 

Finally, the other thing I had a hard time swallowing was just how religious many American politicians are. I certainly knew that SOME were but didn't really appreciate quite how many. Here (in the UK) if the electorate suspected that a politician's decisions were being influenced by religious/faith considerations it would call their political future into question. Politicians can certainly HAVE a personal faith in their own flavour of religious belief but public displays or public pronouncements of such raise questions of suitability for office. Across Europe we are more than familiar with how toxic, and how dangerous, it is when religion and politics mix. We've learnt that particular lesson the HARD way in our various histories and with luck America won't have to learn that lesson for itself. Being a 'Christian nation' might sound like a good idea to some, but when you get down to the details, I doubt if many (and not just the non-Christian/non-religious) would like the results. Whilst this was an interesting read in some ways, I think it was far too outside my 'wheelhouse' to appreciate it enough to fully understand the narrative. I've been feeling a while now that I need to at least start to look at adding to my knowledge of Religion (if not anywhere approaching full understanding), so I'll be sprinkling a few religion/Christianity books into my schedule over the next few years. Wish me luck!