Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy

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Summary: A Rousing Appeal for Freedom of Conscience
Review: Eternal Hostility is a rousing appeal for freedom of conscience in an age of capitulation to fundamentalism. If you are going to read only one book about the Christian right, this is the one.

This book like no other clearly identifies the theocratic ideologies and institutions that drive the modern Christian right, and describes the threat to democratic pluralism, reproductive freedom and constitutional democracy itself.

Frederick Clarkson is a veteran journalist and a skillful writer who places a corrective lens on the lazy eye of the conventional wisdom -- which periodically declares the religious right dead, even as it quietly gains strength. Here you will fine he has distilled and updated his well known work on the likes of Pat Robertson, the Unification Church of Sun Myung Moon, the Christian Reconstructionist movement, and the Promise Keepers. Although Eternal Hostility has been out for a few years it remains both a refreshing read and a standard reference. Students and faculty will appreciate the careful documentation and indexing that distinguishes this book from so many on all sides.

In a field filled with hyperbole and propaganda, this book stands out as a clear voice of reason.

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Summary: Eye Opening
Review: Everyone should read this amazing book: those who report the news, those who listen to and read the news, commentators, talking heads, everyone.

Rating:
Summary: An eye opener
Review: For those who have not paid attention to the creeping desctruction of the American way of life by the religious right, this book will be an eye opener. Mr. Clarkson presents a compelling analysis of this insidious movement that, under the pretense of Christianity, is attempting to turn the USA into a theocratic despotic state, or a despotic theocracy, whichever way you wish to look at it.

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Summary: How can someone so smart be so ignorant? Hatred.
Review: Poor Freddy Clarkson has let his hatred get in the way of scholarship and honest intellectual argument. Here, he constructs a paper tiger (Christianity), equates it with Radical Islam, and then proceeds to tear the whole thing down. Sure, it's preposterous, but books like this are a dime a dozen these days as hysterical Christ-phobes trot out shopworn pat answers to their dwindling pods of followers. It should be noted that the style of this book is cold and arid...reading it is sort of like crawling through the desert, if the desert was located in Siberia in February. Unlike some of the other books that are searing in their intensity, this one is cold as ice, and any open-minded, fair-minded person will find Clarkson's premise quite chilling indeed. An America under Clarkson and his ilk would be reminiscent of another great society that blundered down the pathway of hatred and intolerance...say, Germany 60 years ago. The freedom that we enjoy in America today...the freedom that Clarkson has to print his blathering...comes from Founders who embraced a Judeo-Christian ethos and paid for their ideas with their own blood. If one wants to examine the "freedoms" in an athiestic society, one could look to China, the USSR, Albania, Cuba, and other places to see what happens. As far as equating Christianity with Radical Islam, again, one only needs to look at a map to see which religions dominate which cultures and which cultures respect diversity of opinion. What a shame that Clarkson would rather slander sincere people of faith (who practice true tolerance) than to take a deep breath and step slowly back from the word processor and look at the real world.

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Summary: Best book I've read about the religious right
Review: This easy-to-read book makes the case clearly and well as to why the religous right is a threat to the religious freedom of other Americans, including most Chrisitians. Since the earliest days of our country, there have been those who have sought to gain and sustain power by invoking thier own idea of God. Clarkson demonstrates that the framers of the Constitution overthrew 150 years of Colonial theocracies to found the first nation in the history of the world based on religious equality and freedom. No small thing that the dissident is equal to the self-proclaimed orthodox, and that the believer is equal to the non-believer. The framers of the Constitution sought religious equality in order to innoculate their new nation against the horrors of religious war that had divided Europe for a thousand years. Clarkson observes that those who would impose theocracy did not give up when the Constitution was ratified. They are alive and well and invoking the "Judeo-Christian tradition" as a cover for anti-democratic politics. Everyone who cares about democratic culture and constitutional government owes it to themselves to consider Clarkson's excellent work.

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Summary: Eternal Credulity
Review: This is a pathetic example of propaganda produced by the left to help foster fear and hostility of any sort of religion that is not their own. With that being said let me explain why this book is so poor.

Fredrick Clarkson tries to makes the case that virtually anyone who is conservative and also a Christian (religious right) is involved in a sinister plot of planning and systematically imposing theocracy on the United States of America by covertly taking control of the Republican Party.

To back up his conspiracy-theory-style charge he uses the first 75 pages of the book to insinuate that everybody on right who is a Christian basically believes the same thing, even though if you read carefully he does mention that the likes of Dobson, the LaHayes, Robertson, Reed, Falwell, etc, have expressly and repeatedly fought against theocracy. But the damage is done, for the first 40% of the book Clarkson has disingenuously slung mud to every person on the Christian right so that the uniformed and ignorant feel that they are all one giant organization working in concert to destroy America.

It isn't until page 76 that we learn that it is a very small minority called the reconstructionist that actually want to impose a theocracy. But it gets better during the next 40 pages that we learn that reconstructionist believe in an eschatological theory of post-millennialism and NOT all of the reconstructionist believe it is their job to impose a theocracy. But wait truth is stranger than fiction folks, because fiction has to make sense. To prove his point Clarkson rolls out the theocrats all 4, well actually there are 3 because the fourth doesn't believe that man should enact the laws unless there is a call for them. So this whole book is about 3 minor authors who are crackpots and FREDERICK CLARKSON's goal to smear these crackpots' thoughts onto a vast non-homogenous movement. This is insane but it gets better

With a little further study the reader will find out that all of the major players mentioned before page 76, that have had mud-slung on to them by this guilt by association ploy, actually believe in PRE-millennialism which is assumes that the world will get worse as men turn away from god, these people are expecting the world and its laws to turn their back on Christianity so that Jesus Christ can some as their savior (rapture). This is the exact polar opposite of it getting better by imposing gods will on the people of reconstructionism. But lets give the author a break, he never said his thoughts would be coherent or logical.

To be blunt the reconstructionist movement has about as much chance of imposing a theocracy as the Flat-Earth Society has of re-writing our science textbooks.

Unless you have some hatred of Christians you will feel cheated after reading this book, your money will have been wasted, but worst of all you time is gone. The one thing that any thinking person will get after reading this book is that the religious right does not pose a threat on anyone. It is true that there are a FEW crazy's in any group but they simply do not speak the majority.

Give this book a pass!

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Summary: A good road map to conservative thinking
Review: This is an excellent book for understanding the connections between religious beliefs, political action, church and state issues, and associated activites. Clarkson explains in honest, plain English what is what - and includes the why, without sound bites or weird rhetoric. Very interesting to those with prior knowledge as well as to the novice, an interesting read for all levels of knowledge.

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Summary: I Wish The Talking Heads on TV Would Read This
Review: This is one of those books where you find yourself talking back to the page. Clarkson presents a well-researched, well-documented history of American theocracy and its threat to the democracy -- and personal freedom -- we cherish so dearly in the US. He makes a strong argument for the history and preservation of the second amendment as it pertains to the separation of church and state. Our "founding fathers" were not the born-again christians Pat Robertson & Co. claim they were: Jefferson, Madison, Paine, Franklin, Adams et als were all deists. Making claims for Jesus in the constitution was specifically overruled at the Constitutional Convention. Clarkson points out the dangers inherent in eroding the wall of separation, all the more frightening in this day and age of "faith-based" social programs. The scariest point he makes over and over again is that when politicians and religious activists talk about prayer in schools and the role of religion in government, they mean christianity: not islam, not judaism, not earth religions, christianity only. That alone is reason enough to uphold the wall of separation.

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Summary: Interesting to Read and Very Informative
Review: This is perhaps the best (and only) political book that I find interesting to read. It contained some brilliant anaylization of the hostility that exists for others from extreme Right-wing Christians who are NO different than the extreme Right-wing Islamic terrorists that rammed airplanes into the World Trade Center. However, due President Bush's religious allusions in his speeches, it almost becomes a sort of encourgement for the ways of the Right-wing extreme Christians who will do anything just to archieve their wantings (in which they use the veil of religion to defend). In this process, they commit extreme violence, often killings (very much against the Commandments, which seems VERY ironic to me) and in turn uses the Scirpture to defend them. These ironic actions only reflect on the foolishness of the extremsts in their rebellion (in this case killing)-without-a-cause. Indeed the extreme right-wing Christians remind me of facism (they want to rid the people whom they seem does not fit) and Hitlerism.

Overall, this book should be read by anyone interested in governments and politics and the relationship between religion, extreme nationlism, facism and the right-wing Christians.