America, Fascism, and God

Book excerpt: Religion and politics have always been a potent mix. History is littered with times when that combination caused sweeping death and destruction, when it fueled aggression and oppression—and when it gave fascism a religious and diplomatic face. Reverend Davidson Loehr is afraid that we may be living in such a time in America today. On the Sunday following the election on November 2, 2004, Loehr, a liberal minister in Texas, delivered a sermon titled “Living Under Fascism”—a sermon that spread like wildfire through the Internet. “I mean to persuade you that the style of governing into which America has slid is most accurately described as fascism, and that the necessary implications of this fact are rightly regarded as terrifying,” the preacher told his congregation. “. . . and even if I don’t persuade you, I hope to raise the level of your thinking about who and where we are now.” In this series of incisive and inspired sermons, Loehr takes aim at the unholy alliance of corporate money, political power, and religious fundamentalism that is threatening both our political and our economic democracy. But Loehr’s words provide little comfort to liberals and progressives who have stubbornly clung to a radical individualism and an amoral secularism. America, Fascism, and Godis a call—first to understand that religion has been hijacked and debased. And then to take it back.