Carolyn Baker, Ph.D. was an adjunct professor of history and psychology for more than 10 years and manages her website at www.carolynbaker.net. She was a psychotherapist in private practice for 17 years and is a student of ritual and mythology and has continued her personal mediation practice for more than 30 years. Carolyn offers life coaching both locally and internationally. She is the co-author with Andrew Harvey of Return To Joy(2017) and author of Dark Gold: The Human Shadow and The Global Crisis (2016); Love In The Age Of Ecological Apocalypse: Cultivating The Relationships We Need To Thrive (2015). In 2015 she also co-authored Extinction Dialogs: How To Live With Death In Mind with Guy McPherson; and in 2013 she published Collapsing Consciously: Transformative Truths For Turbulent Times which is preceded by Navigating The Coming Chaos: A Handbook For Inner Transition (2011) and Sacred Demise: Walking The Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization's Collapse (2009). She lives in Boulder, Colorado. Her other books include: U.S. History Uncensored: What Your High School Textbook Didn't Tell You (2006); Coming Out Of Fundamentalist Christianity: An Autobiography Affirming Sensuality, Social Justice, and the Sacred (2007); The Journey of Forgiveness: Fulfilling The Healing Process (2000); Reclaiming The Dark Feminine: The Price of Desire (1996).
Many of those who are connected and follow me on various platforms, mostly for book reviews, know that I have had much personal turmoil as a result of the merge of Evangelical Christianity with the Republic Party. In fact, it has led to internal family conflicts that have been both worrisome and... frightening for me... How did all of this happen, I wondered... Was it only because of the infamous video where we heard that our immediate past president thought nothing about grabbing the genitalia of women, and claiming that he could get away with it because he was a star!?
Yeah, that did it for me! I had been involved with concern for women's rights for many years during my working career at a land-grant university. We were required to follow federal laws regarding Affirmative Action, Equal Employment Opportunities...and more... On a semi-work, personal level, I had been voted in as one of the first Staff Council representatives for campus-wide secretarial and clerical employees...and served the maximum terms. I then was appointed to the Council for Women's Concerns, a university group established to study and work to improve the concerns of women, and how the work environment could be improved while they worked at the university. I also served as sexual harassment representative for my department. I had also served in various offices, including president for the, then, National Secretaries Association, and then joined professional organizations related to my upward movement into technical and management activities. For at least 30 years of my career, I actively worked to improve my own skills, as well as respond to the needs and personal development of women in their careers as well...
I share that now, because, from those 30 years of involvement, I became immediately attuned to what Trump was all about...and it was not good! I knew it... so why didn't everybody else know it? Especially, my family...
Realizing it was because I was not a republican really caught me off guard! Especially when I was told that all Christians are Republican... at least in my family, I had to assume...
I was immediately seen as an outsider by a number of the family...and still am! You know, Jesus was also denied by those who were of His religion... I had to think long and hard...do I follow what my family said...or did I follow what I felt the Holy Spirit was telling and guiding me in? Either way, I realized that I was caught in something that I didn't create. I had not changed... So was it the Republican party and Evangelical Christians that had changed?
One of the online speakers I started to follow was Frank Schaeffer, the son of an evangelist who was popular during the years that Billy Graham was active. I didn't remember hearing his name, but I knew his family history and his work now were relevant... It was Frank Schaeffer's video posting which explained how, as he participated, Evangelical Christians made a deal with Trump... There were a couple of requirements that they asked for...and then he could do anything he wanted, no holds barred! The following is just one of the many videos and books available by this author...check him out if you, too, are looking for answers...
It was the above video which introduced me to the latest book that I am now reading. Within the first 30 pages, I had learned so much historically and politically, that I decided to go ahead and talk about it with others! I highly recommend the book! Given the credentials of Dr. Carolyn Baker, I believe we can trust what she has to say...and report...albeit, no matter how scary the cover of her latest book is for many of us!
I had already seen it on television, but Dr. Baker quickly points out in the video and in her book that the use of political terms are used so loosely and pejoratively, that we are all caught in a chaos of not being able to talk--to understand the meaning of what others are saying!
Bottom Line:
Fascism + Religion = Christofascism = The Republican Party
Schaeffer writes in his Foreword:As Baker writes in this brilliant book, “I have come to believe that evangelicals do not comprehend what they are reading when they read: ‘I turned my heart to know and to search out and to seek wisdom and the scheme of things’ (Ecclesiastes 7:25). Because fundamentalist Christianity is so thoroughly obsessed with ‘knowing,’ there is little room for appreciating or savoring wisdom. Wisdom is not acquired through knowledge or intellect but through the soul. The soul is the crux of our humanity, and all fundamentalists acknowledge that fact, but they view the soul as something that must be ‘saved,’ rather than the mirror image of the divine within us that we did not acquire and that we cannot ‘lose.’” Concentrating on belief rather than on inner character leads some people—whether atheist or religious—to get stuck on the rules. That is exactly what all fundamentalism is: people mistaking rules, and myths, to enforce a false manmade spiritual goal. And because the mistake is a massive one, all sorts of cruelties and fictions are used to reinforce this and endless training for a salvation… that never comes.
Enter post-9/11 “Christians” stalking the grieving families of soldiers killed in our wars, desecrating the solemnity of their funerals with screams of “God hates fags!” and “God hates America!” and enter Trump’s followers. Enter those willing to even turn wearing masks and getting a lifesaving vaccine into culture-war fodder to “own the libs” at the cost of life itself. There is only one defense against the rising worldwide fear-filled fundamentalist tide seeping into religions everywhere: the embrace of paradox and uncertainty as the virtuoso expression of life-giving humility. Our egos must be curtailed by what we do not know, which is far more than we do know. This humility is rooted in a fact: we are at the beginning of creation and don’t have any clue as to how things will grow and change...
Baker Starts immediately in the Introduction to lay out the issue:
At this moment American constitutional democracy is sitting on a knife’s edge between maintaining a democratic republic or succumbing to the tidal wave of authoritarianism that appears to be engulfing numerous nations globally. Enabling this terrifying trend is the Religious Right in America whose members identify as evangelical or fundamentalist Christians. This movement not only threatens the American republic but has served to traumatize countless numbers of its followers who have joined its ranks in order to make sense of the dizzying changes and daunting challenges of our time. A path to healing and sanity for individuals and the culture is offered in this book. As investigative reporter Sarah Posner wrote in Unholy: Why White Evangelicals Worship At The Altar of Donald Trump, “in Trump, the Christian right sees more than a politician who delivers on promises; they see a savior from the excesses of liberalism.”
Many of you may have heard that the number of those who identified as evangelical has moved from about 30% to 70%... It is important to note that the majority of the 70% do not attend church, but considered themselves Far Right in their Political and Religious Fundamentalism. For me, that was a critical point of knowledge. Having been involved with the church for the majority of my life, I could not understand how the church had changed... Well, it really hasn't, perhaps? I don't know. My health, including Covid restrictions, has prevented me from attending church routinely.
Then I remember the man with the horns, and no shirt, that was a leader in the January, Insurrection, lifting his hands and leading his peers in prayer while they stood in violation of the constitution in trying to stop certification of the nation's election of Joe Biden... Seeing the willingness for violence in support of what they believed?? Or what the cult of Trump had mandated??
Baker speaks of the January 6th Insurrection:
In fact, some leaders of the Republican Party have launched a massive campaign to suppress voting in numerous states and to conduct new election “audits” of votes in the 2020 Presidential election. These efforts constitute an ongoing insurgency movement to undermine the democratic process and the 2024 Presidential election. What is more, the Republican Party has rejected a Congressional vote to investigate the January 6 insurrection, forcing the Speaker of the House to ultimately create a select committee of investigators with subpoena power. Now, in mid-2021, 53% of Republicans do not believe that Joe Biden is the legitimate President of The United States. Of those, three out of five white evangelicals contest the reality of Biden’s victory. Alongside their doubt of Biden as President, many evangelicals are embracing the conspiracy cult of QAnon...
Whatever QAnon is... Don't you wonder how supposed Christians are now conspiracy theorists following a group with no known leader or purpose???
If the alliance between these zealots
and the government succeeds,
it will snuff out the last vestiges
of American democracy.
—Chris Hedges
Post-Truth is Pre-Fascism.
—Timothy Snyder
What Specifically is Fascism?
There is much more to consider, but I wanted to include a list of what can be identified as a part of Fascism... Interestingly, Baker then chooses to include specific actions by former president Trump to clarify those points, although not included here (I can certify that everything she used was known to me as being factual accounts of Trump's actions during his presidency, and after...)
- 1. Conjuring a “mythic past” that has supposedly been destroyed (“by liberals, feminists, and immigrants”). These myths rely on an “overwhelming sense of nostalgia for a past that is racially pure, traditional, and patriarchal.” Fascist leaders “position themselves as father figures and strongmen” who alone can restore lost greatness. And yes, the fascist leader is “always a ‘he.’”
- 2. Fascist leaders sow division; they succeed by “turning groups against each other,” inflaming historical antagonisms and ancient hatreds for their own advantage. Social divisions in themselves—between classes, religions, ethnic groups and so on—are what we might call pre-existing conditions. Fascists may not invent the hate, but they cynically instrumentalize it: demonizing outgroups, normalizing and naturalizing bigotry, stoking violence to justify repressive “law and order” policies, the curtailing of civil rights and due process, and the mass imprisonment and killing of manufactured enemies.
- 3. Fascists “attack the truth” with propaganda, in particular “a kind of anti-intellectualism” that “creates a petri dish for conspiracy theories.” Hannah Arendt, who was a German political theorist living in exile during Hitler’s reign, wrote that fascism relies on “a consistent and total substitution of lies for factual truth.” She described the phenomenon as destroying “the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world…. [T]he category of truth verses falsehood [being] among the mental means to this end.” In such an atmosphere, anything is possible, no matter how previously unthinkable.
If you don't yet want to apply these attributes to Trump, then consider his "bro," Putin, as he is using violence of all kinds to kill primarily women, children and those who cannot fight for their democracy... He has bombed children's hospitals and more to kill and try to demoralize those in the country. Then, stop and really think what Trump is now doing...applauding Putin for his genius... "Nuf Said..."
I am so very thankful that our President is Joe Biden, who has led us back into a NATO relationship of working together to solve the world-wide problems that have been created by another fascist authoritarian...
Like with most nonfiction books, I'll be reading this book along with others I have started... When I finish I'll tell you more...but, like I said, I can already attest to its being well researched, providing a historical perspective with comparative analysis to today's America... Get this book if you need any more evidence that we must work, just as the Ukrainians are doing... to fight for our democracy!
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