1,422 words
Cal Thomas & Ed Dobson
Blinded by Might: Can the Religious Right Save America?
Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1999
The late Jerry Falwell (1933–2007) [1] was a politically-involved preacher. He was not much different from the abolitionist ministers in New England active a century before his birth. In 1979, Falwell founded an organization called the Moral Majority. It would serve as the “far-right” in the mainstream American political ecosystem until Falwell disbanded it to mostly focus on other matters in 1989. Blinded by Might is a book by Moral Majority founder Jerry Falwell’s two top lieutenants, Cal Thomas and the late Ed Dobson (1949–2015). In this book, the two men take a look at their political work and dissect it for posterity with wise introspection.
The political careers of evangelizing Christian ministers contain many lessons for white nationalists. First, I believe, but of course cannot prove, that the rise of the so-called Religious Right was a warped reaction by whites to the many problems of the racial power grab that was the “civil rights movement.” The evidence for this exists in a circumstantial, between-the-lines sort of way. All Religious Rights advocates specifically disavow “racism” and any opposition to “civil rights.” Second, the structure of the careers of Christian, especially Protestant, ministers matches the structure of the career paths of many prominent White Nationalists.
You can buy Greg Johnson’s The White Nationalist Manifesto here
We’re Not So Different
To enumerate the first point made above: The Religious Right was built upon an Anglo-European ethnic core. Those of other races in the movement were mainly tokens. Many of the Religious Right’s leaders argued during the early 1950s against black preachers doing “civil rights,” but got involved in politics after “civil rights” rioting and other problems. In line with that idea, Cal Thomas criticizes Jessie Jackson, a black minister and black racial advocate, in a number of ways throughout the book. Finally, Religious Rightist ministers argued that the Bible supported Northern European folkways (divorce, monogamous marriage, anti-slavery, etc.), when in fact, the Bible often endorses more Middle Eastern ways. Old Testament kings and prophets, for example, were polygamists, Jesus frowned upon divorce, and slavery is specifically endorsed in both the Old and New Testaments.
To enumerate the second point: The environments in which Protestant ministers and White Nationalists work both have remarkably similar structures. Sexual indiscretions can eat up the careers of both types of activists. Engaging in such reckless action makes an empire a phone call away from collapse. Additionally, those engaged in both types of activism are living in a warlord culture. Each minister must carve out a following, grow the following, and then successfully navigate through the storms that come. There are no guarantees or promotion schedules. It’s a dog eat dog world. Each minister/white advocate has mortal enemies among those who are closest to him ideologically. Christians who leave a church don’t become Satanists, they find a different church saying the same thing but with a better youth group, basketball court, choir, or something.
Often both types of activists’ views change over time as they grow in wisdom and maturity, but the various activists are trapped by earlier public statements. Apostasy is an easy out, too. There are a great many sons of ministers that make a living out of disavowing the work of their fathers, and white advocates do get a second shot at publicity when they “convert over” to desegregationalism or whatever. The examples of Derek Black and Matthew Heimbach are not unprecedented.
The Fundamentalists
The Moral Majority was founded, organized, and led by Christian Fundamentalists. Fundamentalism was a reaction to the ever-increasing influence of science and humanist philosophy within Christianity. [2] The Fundamentalist Movement came to the fore in 1909 with a series of booklets with different authors called The Fundamentals: A Testimony of Truth. Most of the ideas are a reaffirmation of the traditionalist view of Christianity (i.e. the Virgin Birth and Resurrection of Jesus). The new concept introduced was the inerrancy of the Bible. In other words, according to the Fundamentalists, statements in the Bible that might be taken figuratively should be taken as literal truth. Fundamentalism is different from, but still has a great deal of overlap with, the more upscale Evangelical Protestant movement and the more emotionalist and downscale Holiness Movement.
The Moral Majority had a set of ten principles:
- Separation of church and state.
- Pro-life (i.e. against the practice of legal abortion.)
- Pro-traditional family. So one man should marry one woman and they both raise their children.
- Opposition to the illegal drug trade.
- Opposition to pornography.
- Support for the State of Israel and the Jewish People everywhere.
- Strong national defense.
- Equal rights for women.
- Opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment, as it might put women in combat among other things.
- Encouragement for decentralization among Moral Majority chapters.
During the 1980 election, the Moral Majority had two goals: electing Ronald Reagan and removing six senators. They removed five that year; George McGovern (South Dakota), Frank Church (Idaho), John Culver (Iowa), Birch Bayh (Indiana), and Gaylord Nelson (Wisconsin). All of these senators were Democrats who were heavily involved in the leftist, technocratic affairs that became “civil rights” and the Vietnam War led by President Lyndon Baines Johnson.
Both Cal Thomas and Ed Dobson eventually come to realize that while they supported the Republican Party, the Republican Party did very little to support their agenda. When Bill Clinton was elected to office in 1992, he did away with the few Moral Majority victories with the stroke of a pen. Both men eventually came to decide that their brush with temporal power detracted from their work as Christians, and they decided their lives were better focused on metapolitics (they don’t use that word) and Christian living and preaching. Even Jerry Falwell eventually distanced himself a bit from politics and focused on building up Liberty University.
Was the Religious Right Unsuccessful?
This book raises the question of whether the Religious Right was successful or not. America’s steep and accelerating moral decline argues for failure. But the Religious Right was not a total failure.
In the election of 1980, the Religious Right was able to remove the architects of “civil rights” and mitigate some of the damage. Had Senator Gaylord Nelson continued in office, Milwaukee’s African problem could have also spread to Green Bay. After reading the works of many non-white pro-“civil rights” writers, all say that the white reaction to “civil rights” in the 1970s greatly stifled “civil rights” work. Since the 1960s, a Republican winning the White House can break months of black rioting.
The Religious Right’s focus on domestic morality issues also gave the Reagan administration both a steady base of support and a free hand to deal with the Cold War. This should not be discounted. In examining the causes of the Great War of 1914–1918, many historians point out that politicians in Europe were saddled with a base of support that was something of an insane asylum. The irredentism and dreadnought lobbies infecting European governments narrowed the acceptable range of public policy across the continent. With supporters more concerned about drugs and sexual vices, Reagan had the flexibility to do one thing in Central America and another in Europe. Nobody batted an eye when he sent Stinger missiles to Islamic fanatics in Afghanistan. In 1979, many felt the Soviets were on the cusp of global victory. By 1989, the Evil Empire was a hollow shell. The Communist force that killed 100 million people was vanquished by Reagan, and the Moral Majority had a part in that victory.
To invoke the Apostle Paul, Cal Thomas and Ed Dobson have fought the good fight, run the race, and remained faithful. Although sin still exists, their actions in the Moral Majority were not in vain. It is for us to learn from the Moral Majority and improve upon their work. White advocates need to be involved in politics as best they can, but remember that metapolitics is more important. White advocates should steer clear of the abortion debate. White advocates should embrace the differences in the roles of the two sexes. Furthermore, white advocates need to be good citizens of their own nations while at the same time strengthening the bonds of the wider white world.
We must also remember the chief difference we have from the Religious Right: Christ’s kingdom is not of this world, but we must work in the here and now.
Notes
[1] https://counter-currents.com/tag/jerry-falwell/
[2] I’ll also add that Protestantism suffered a figurative internal hemorrhage during the Boer War (1899 – 1902) making Nordic societies like America, England, and Prussia post-Protestant.
13 comments
The religious right is one of the problems with this country.
Cal Thomas and his permanent scowl is symptomatic of what put off so many people from wanting to associate with the GOP. Nobody likes a humorless scold.
‘Blinded by Might’ is a good corrective to politically-obsessed evangelical Christians who would openly talk about “reforming America through the political process.” The assumption was that a massive population of materialists, low-information voters, hedonists, and porn and sports addicted consumers could have their entire lives radicalized for “traditional values” by electing a Christian president and getting Christians more involved in politics.
I know because I’ve encountered these types of Christians in various churches I attended since 1980. It didn’t occur to most of them that moral and spiritual reformation almost always occurs from grassroots movements (i.e., God-given revivals), from the bottom up rather than from the top down. And it’s usually after much suffering and extreme poverty, when they’ve got nothing left to lose, that people begin to cry out to God and recognize the factors that led to their current condition. But it will not occur in the midst of affluence, while there is still an abundance of wealth and resources to take their minds away from their own personal culpability and depravity.
These same evangelicals also missed an important lesson in church history – namely, that Christianity grows and flourishes amidst persecution and suffering, during dark times rather than ‘happy times.’ Those ‘happy times’ are often brief and tend to lead to spiritual apathy and sometimes apostasy (as in the case of most prosperous European nations, including America).
Also, the work that Christian pastors like Chuck Baldwin and others are doing in teaching their parishioners about the nature of Jews, historic Jewish subversion of the West, and the real lessons that God want us to know about Israel in the Old Testament, are vitally important. Evangelicals seem to have little sense that Israel as portrayed in the Hebrew Bible are intended as object lessons of what NOT to do. In other words, such “stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart” people as the Jews are intended to teach us how we should NOT live our lives. In fact, the apostle Paul in 1 Thessalonians tells us that the Jews are the enemies of the world! This is the complete opposite of the sort of Israel-worship that we witness among evangelicals in our day.
Few evangelicals seem to realize that Christians are deeply despised and frequently persecuted in Israel by Torah-practicing Jews. These are not secular Jews, but very religious Jews who profess to follow the Torah. Yet they are the very ones who will openly mock Christians, throw rocks at them, and do all in their power to drive out their ‘mission’ among the Jewish citizenry.
Moreover, the vast majority of Jews are deeply suspicious and hateful toward Christians and Christianity. These has been ingrained in them from birth. In their minds, they view Christians and most Goyim as possessing some kind of inner-Nazi ready at a moment’s notice to throw them all in the ovens. And the more ‘observant’ Jews become, the more they distrust non-Jews since it’s a core doctrine of their religion (though they work to downplay this aspect and try to prevent others from knowing about it).
While Christ’s commission to proclaim the Gospel to all nations still stands, evangelical Christians must at the same time become Jew-aware. This means they must realize that while it does little good to hate Jewish people (it’s wrong and it takes up too much personal energy), they must become conscious of the subversive nature of these incredibly divisive people. They must inform themselves of history and how Jews have managed to get themselves kicked out over 100 countries and this not because they merely claimed to be ‘God’s Chosen People,’ but because of their parasitical and morally ruinous ways among their host countries.
When evangelical believers encounter typical hostile Jewish rejection of the Gospel, they must learn to “kick the dust from their feet” and to “leave them alone” (as Jesus did toward the Pharisees). There is a point when evangelicals have got to learn that they are just “tossing their pearls before swine.”
Evangelicals who gush and slobber over Israel and the Jews such as pastor John Hagee and his ilk, manage only to disgrace themselves. This sort of extreme obeisance is not worthy of the Gospel, and the Jews are most definitely not worthy of it. At every point, these people have proven to be a curse and not a blessing.
Heimbach didn’t leave the far right, he was thrown out of it as a scapegoat for the optics debate following Charlottesville, and the viscous way he was mocked over the irrelevant incident in the trailer park was enough to make an enemy of anybody.
He was mocked for not practicing the traditionalism that he preached.
“White advocates should steer clear of the abortion debate.”
There is a way that seems good to a man, but it leads to death. Instead of answering the fierce challenge of the enemy, instead of fighting for territory, for reproductive resources, and for one’s posterity, one can turn one’s wrath at the least frightening target, one’s own future children. One can get rid of them by infant exposure, by abortion, by the pill, or by any convenient means, and then one can consume the resources they should have consumed, and live a soft life, the kind of life that maintains the individual in enfeebling decadence while the tribe dies.
Judeo-Christianity is anti-white, and it has practically made its peace with the pill and so on. But traditional Christianity said, go ahead and have those babies, and damn the inconvenience. This is the correct choice, the one Charles Darwin and Kevin MacDonald would approve of. That one great choice outweighed all Christianity’s monkish faults.
Anti-whites and non-whites won’t heed us, whatever we say, so we need not bother to talk to them about abortion or a lot of things.
But speaking to potentially loyal whites, or to whites who might potentially have loyal white children, we should advocate pro-natal values, and damn the inconvenience. Speaking to each other, and to ourselves in our hearts, we should advocate pro-natal values, and damn the inconvenience.
We should not fall silent and tacitly concede that the comfortable, the convenient, and therefor the correct life is THE CHILDFREE LIFE, “when having it all means not having children.”
It’s baffling to see someone pose as concerned for our race who doesn’t seem concerned that abortion has resulted in below replacement rate reproduction for whites. I cannot conceive of fighting for a new nation that doesn’t protect the unborn. I can’t conceive of making common cause with those who claim to want to protect our race who don’t care for the unborn.
In answer to the abortion question brought up in this post — most abortions that occur in the U.S., I believe, statistically, are within the minority groups, even though welfare types continue to have as many kids as possible to continue the checks. The Whites who have abortions are mainly good-time bimbos and party girls, who would not be good marriage material nor decent mothers. We can do our best to ‘save’ and ‘reform’ them, but they’ll probably continue on their merry way, laughing, singing, dancing, drinking, and drugging through life. They occur in every race and will continue to end every pregnancy they have.
The biggest problem we need to address for marginal White women is support for their out-of-wedlock babies when they do choose to bear the child. These women often end up as single moms who must leave their kids with child-care practically from infancy in order to hold down a minimum wage job. If we’re really serious about ending abortion within our White community, we must end their economic deprivation so they can raise their children properly. It’s not ‘comfort’ they desire, but just a bit less daily stress and worry. Those of us with good jobs and reasonable incomes — and all of us should be striving for that — can contribute money to a fund or a foundation that WE legally create for our own people, to help the women who did ‘Choose Life’ , but who can barely afford to continue supporting it.
We must help our own, because it is part of saving our community, our culture and the ideals that I see written upon these pages daily. We cannot preach ‘anti-abortion’ to our poorer women who are anxiously wondering how they are going to feed their babies and themselves daily. Creating a Charitable Foundation espousing our own ideals should be one of our main goals.
“White advocates should steer clear of the abortion debate. White advocates should embrace the differences in the roles of the two sexes.”
Glaring contradiction. There is also nothing in the article arguing beforehand why W.Advc. should avoid being anti-abortion.
You cannot say women should be wives and mommies and then also say W.A’s should steer clear of abortion and let the wamen see as many Jewish abortionists as they please. If you look at who is performing the abortions, it’s basically ritual murder of one ethnic group by another.
Don’t want a baby? Don’t get pregnant. Sad to see CC writers throwing their lot in with the “sex is for fun, not babies” pussy hat crowd.
The irony of opposition to pornography coming directly before defence of the Jewish people everywhere.
To Alexandra who writes, we need to address the situation of marginal White women who need support for their out-of-wedlock babies when they do choose to bear the child.
The organisation to help and support White un-married mothers is/was called: Lebensborn.
No, it isn’t. It was just always irrelevant to the real issues (and even to the long term victory of its own issues, which depends on winning OUR issues first, at least wrt ending the alien demographic invasion). Sam Francis discussed this in Chronicles in Dec 1994 (cf. “Religious Wrong” – man, I still recall reading that article at the time of its original publication; time doth fly …).
Is something wrong with the comments feature, or my computer or internet connection? I hit “reply” to comment #12 below, and somehow my comment appeared as a wholly new stand-alone one. This happened the other day, too. Just now I also kept hitting “reply” under my own comment below, and nothing happened. Note: this hasn’t happened to me at any other site.
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