Radio host Peter B. Collins receives in this podcast Frank Schaeffer, ex-Evangelical leader for many years in the U.S.. Son of Reconstructionist preacher Francis Schaeffer, Frank has a lot to say about the links that exist between the Republican Party and the Evangelical movement. According to him, that movement has literally taken over the Party. It dictates its policies to the political establishment. Among the many representatives of this trend, Schaeffer mentions Michelle Bachmann who, apparently, is under the spell of the Evangelicals. He goes at length to explain how her politics are the expression of the Evangelical background that she has. Schaeffer also takes the opportunity to present certain parts of the material of his new book Sex, Mom and God,  and to talk about his father in relation with the Evangelical movement. Globally, I found this interview rather relevant. Having a master degree in Religious Studies, I am always curious about personal religious backgrounds, narratives and stories. Although I have got away from the religious scene for the most part, out of boringness and sometimes disgust and distrust, it is always interesting to see elements like that surging where you expect them the least.

I share a good part of the explanations presented by Frank Schaeffer here on this subject, but not totally. First of all, I am not sure that the Evangelical movement has taken over the Republican Party. I rather have the impression that it is the Republican Party that uses the Evangelical movement as a cloak to better hide its machinations. People with cash and power don’t have religious beliefs; if they really had, they probably wouldn’t be rich and powerful. The world is not run by religion; it is run by money and money gives power. I totally respect the opinion of somebody like Frank Schaeffer who survived the mind-control and brainwash environment of such a movement, but I think it is more accurate to think that the Evangelical movement is used as yet another tool, garment, cloak, etc, to engineer the American society and the whole world into a pre-determined totalitarian reactionary agenda. In numerous articles in the past, I have said, along with heroic researcher Dave Emory, that the Republican Party is fascist in nature, having among other things links to the Third Reich that go back to WWII. Continuer la lecture →