New Yorker, C Street, and Happily Ever After in Uganda

Yesterday I posted 5 predictions of what the New Yorker's Peter Boyer would include in his article on C Street (the movement, not my book). All I'll say about the piece is that I'm 5 for 5. The rest is between Boyer and his God. Or maybe his fact checker.

But one point needs to be addressed: Boyer's extremely misleading and dangerous statement on Uganda. Dr. Warren Throckmorton, a conservative Christian psychologist at Grove City College who has emerged as perhaps the unlikeliest champion of LGBT rights in the world, handles it well in his post, "The New Yorker Almost Reports on Uganda." If you care about these issues, Throckmorton's blog is a must-read.

C Street

I'll be talking about my new book C Street, with NPR's Terry Gross on "Fresh Air" today, so now is as good a time as ever to blog the jacket copy. 

Democracy, desire, and the street address for fundamentalism in America 

Jeff Sharlet is the only writer to have reported from inside the C Street House, the Christian Fellowship residence known simply by its Washington DC address. The house has lately been the scene of notorious political scandal, but more crucially it’s home to fundamentalist efforts to transform the fabric of American democracy. And now, after laying bare its tenants’ past in The Family, Sharlet reports from deep within fundamentalism in today’s world, revealing that the past efforts of religious fundamentalists in America pale in comparison to their long-term ambitions.

When Obama entered the White House, headlines declared the age of culture war over—just like they did after the Democratic victories of 2006 and, ten years before, Bill Clinton’s re-election. It’s an American tradition, declaring conflict a thing of the past. In C Street, Sharlet tells the story of why these conflicts endure and why they matter now—from the sensationalism of Washington sex scandals to fundamentalism’s long shadow in Africa, where American culture warriors determined to eradicate homosexuality have set genocide on simmer.

We’ve reached a point where piety and corruption are not at odds but one and the same. Reporting with exclusive sources and explosive documents from C Street, the American-backed war on gays in Uganda, and the battle for the soul of America’s armed forces—waged by a 15,000-strong movement of officers intent on “reclaiming territory for Christ in the military”—Sharlet reveals not the last gasp of old-time religion but the new front lines of fundamentalism.

The Uganda chapter is excerpted in the September Harper's; and an excerpt of the excerpt is now online.

Lt. General Mike Gould, 2010; J.C. Hallman, In Utopia, 2010

What do you call an amplification -- not a correction -- issued in advance of the original statement? A preemptive post-publication addendum? Whatever it is, here's one. In my forthcoming book, C Street, I expanded on 2009 Harper's article of mine on Christian fundamentalism in the U.S. military, in which I briefly mentioned U.S. Air Force Academy superintendent Mike Gould:

Gould granted himself the nickname “Coach” after a brief stint in that capacity early in his career. Coach Gould enjoys public speaking, and he’s famous for his  3- F mantra: Faith, Family, Fitness. At the Pentagon, a former senior officer who served under Gould told me, the general was so impressed by a special presentation Pastor Rick Warren gave to senior officers that he e-mailed his 104 subordinates, advising them to read and live by Warren’s book The Purpose-Driven Life. 

“People thought it was weird,” recalls the former officer, a defense contractor, who requested anonymity for fear of losing government business. “But no one wants to show their ass to the general.” 

The "heroes" of the chapter are the activists of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), a nonprofit watchdog dedicated to defending first amendment freedom of (and from) religion for military personnel of all faiths and no faith. Tonight, MRFF founder Mikey Weinstein forwards an email he received from an Air Force Academy professor that shows Gould has turned a corner. 

Today, I heard the most astonishing words from an Air Force Academy Superintendent that I have ever heard in my entire 16 years as an Academy professor.  Quoting from a well-known 1997 United States Air Force report, Lt Gen Mike Gould, Superintendent of the US Air Force Academy, actually said in a Commander’s Call addressed to the entire permanent population of the base that “military officers shouldn’t push their religious views on subordinates”.  My jaw dropped in astonishment.  This man clearly “gets it”.  My elation was tempered only by the sad fact that it took multiple Superintendents and several years of painful turmoil for us to finally get a top guy in here who clearly sensed that the environment was right to say something so blatantly obvious and true to every single person here at the Air Force Academy. 

 Credit, he continues, belongs to Mikey Weinstein and MRFF.

I sadden only when I realize that two years from now, this Air Force Academy Superintendent will retire, we will have a different USAF Chief of Staff, and the process of training yet another chain of command must begin anew.  Who knows what we will get.  That means, Mikey, that you and the MRFF must be vigilant.  You must be vigilant, and you must have staying power.  The forces you so appropriately and aggressively oppose here at the Air Force Academy, and indeed all over the Department of Defense, think in terms of eternity, so four years between Academy Superintendents is nothing to them.  Please, Mikey and MRFF, be there for an eternity too. 

Meantime, I have to give Gould some credit for being better than anyone expected or even hoped.

***

Unrelated, and, really, a lot more interesting, is the arrival in my mail today of J.C. Hallman's newest book, In Utopia: Six Kinds of Eden and the Search for a Better Paradise, the official pub date of which is today. (Or, yesterday, when I started this post.) It deserves more attention and will get it, but for now I'll go with the jacket blurb I contributed: 

Hallman brilliantly explores the idea of utopia and its applications in the real world, from hippie communes to shooting ranges to a massive floating city. We could hardly ask for a better guide: Hallman is an erudite but humble writer, with the skepticism, wit, and compassion necessary for those close encounters with the distant possibility of a perfected world.

Here's an excerpt from Hallman's last book, The Devil is a Gentleman, we published on Killing the Buddha.

Becky Garrison, Jesus Died For This?, 2010

My friend Becky Garrison and I have been emailing about the various coalitions that have been forming or not forming around the question of evangelicalism and homophobia. Becky is a Christian satirist -- that is, a Christian who writes satire, not one who satirizes Christianity, though come to think of it she does that, too. But like most satirists she mocks because she loves, and because she loves her faith she's angry about the way it's so often abused. We have sort of an ongoing mild debate about what to do about it. Becky's keen on alliances, but I'm wary. Whenever one group or another tries to recruit me and my books for their cause I get uneasy. This morning I came up with an absurdly mixed metaphor of cliches to explain why:

To be honest I find the whole project of "common ground" to be a distraction. My first interest is the story. Second comes politics. Politically, I think there's a lot too much bridge building going on. Sometimes you need to tear shit down. Or, to put it another way, writers shouldn't be in the business of building big tents. We get on the stage and tell a story and leave it to others to decide whether they want to listen. And then those folks, if they're all standing around together, might want to build a big tent for themselves -- at which point, the writer had better skedaddle or risk getting stuck telling the same story over and over again, ever more polished, like an 80s one-hit wonder trapped in the matinee slot of a second rate Vegas casino forever.

So I tell my stories about C Street or the Anti-Homosexuality Bill in Uganda or some other problem of fundamentalism. People want to build coalitions with that information, great. People want to bust up coalitions with it, maybe even better. The myth of common ground is the lie of empire. It's also the bane of literature, since common ground can only be achieved by shaving off sharp edges and losing specificity.

Becky, fortunately, keeps the sharp edges; that's what satire is good for. Here's one of her sharpest, the fabulous cover of her new book, coming out next month: