Crediting God: Sovereignty and Religion in the Age of Global Capitalism

8. The Evangelical-Capitalist Resonance Machine

c h a p t e r 8 The Evangelical-Capitalist Resonance Machine William E. Connolly Resonance: to resound; a vibration of large amplitude caused by a small periodic stimulus of the same or near the same period as the natural vibration of the system; the intensification and enriching of a musical tone by supplementary vibration; the enhancement of an atomic, nuclear or particle reaction by excitation of internal motion in the system. Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary I What is the connection today between evangelical Christianity, cowboy capitalism, the electronic news media, and the Republican Party?1 Can these connections be understood through the terms of efficient causality, in which you first separate factors and then show how one is the basic cause, or how they cause each other, or how they together reflect a more basic cause? Does, say, a corporate-Republican elite manipulate the evangelical wing of this assemblage, leading the latter to subordinate its economic interests to spurious appeals to faith? Or are the leading parties to this coalition linked first and foremost by economic interests, in which evangelical and corporate leaders together manipulate their followers? Or, alternatively, do they share a general doctrine or creed that defines their common interests and allegiances ? My sense is that none of these explanations, or others like them, quite fills the bill. If this is correct no political economy or religious practice is self-contained. Rather, in politics, diverse elements infiltrate into the others , metabolizing into a moving complex—causation as resonance between elements that become fused together to a considerable degree. Here causality , as relations of dependence between separate factors, morphs into energized complexities of mutual imbrication and interinvolvement, in which 160 161 The Evangelical-Capitalist Resonance Machine heretofore unconnected or loosely associated elements fold, bend, blend, emulsify, and dissolve into each other, forging a qualitative assemblage resistant to classical models of explanation.2 II It is impossible to approach the resonance machine to be interrogated in a mood of political neutrality. Any attempt to do so would defeat itself through the terms of description it deployed. So let me enunciate a few critical axioms, asserted from a perspective that is egalitarian in outlook, pluralist in aspiration, and democratic in ambition. They provide the perspective from which this resonance machine is appraised and assessed. It is not cowboy capitalism alone, but it in conjunction with the theocratic ambition of the most militant section of American Christianity , that generates the greatest threat to democracy. The electronic news media now serve as the echo chamber of this capitalist -evangelical complex, doubling and tripling the obstacles democratic movements face in promoting economic security, reducing inequality, and fostering multidimensional pluralism. Movements to reduce economic inequality and to extend cultural diversity are more congruent than opposed to one another. To make progress on either front today, it is necessary to make some progress on the other. Democratic action on behalf of these objectives must occur at several sites, including local political involvement, countrywide social movements , direct pressure on corporate structures, participation in national party politics, and cross-state citizen networks to challenge the American state from inside and outside at the same time. It is when actions at several sites resonate together that the prospects for positive democratic achievement improve. The capitalist-evangelical assemblage is aligned against such objectives and aspirations. It finds expression in the market apologism and scandalmongering of the electronic news media, mobilization drives by the Republican Party and Fox News, administrative edicts to overturn environmentalism and weaken labor, attacks on Social Security, curtailments of minority rights in the name of religious morality, pressure for rightwing appointments to the Supreme Court, support for preemptive wars, 162 William E. Connolly tolerance or worse of state practices of torture that flout the Geneva Conventions , and propagation of a climate of fear and loathing against the Islamic world and large parts of Europe. This resonance machine both infiltrates perception and inflects economic interest, even as it subordinates the latter on occasion. So it is important to come to terms with the affinities of identity that energize the assemblage, affinities that translate some economic interests into corporate greed and infuse others with religious intensity, affinities that convert some articles of religious faith into vindictive campaigns against the economic interests of those outside the faith and imbue others with a drive to...