Biblical Promise and Threat in U.S. Imperialist Rhetoric Before and After September 11, 2001

Much of the analysis of the apocalyptic nature of the rhetoric discussed here was initially worked out in the preparation of an arrested piece of street theatre called “the burning bush” conceived with Michael Casey, Daniel Lang/Levitsky, and Meredith Slopen. My development of these ideas has been greatly assisted through conversations with Elizabeth Castelli and Jennifer Glancy, and through the critical eyes, cast upon earlier drafts, of Michael Casey, Tanya Erzen, and Scott Kline.

Overview

Given that conservative Protestantism is all-too-apparently alive and well in the United States, it may be prudent to consider how common interpretations of the Bible become part of the political calculus. Many people on the left bemoan the Christian Right without paying attention to precisely how biblical interpretations get incorporated into right-wing discourse, and what recognizing biblical influence on U.S. politics might mean for engaging bellicose, imperialist rhetoric, such as that used by the younger President Bush and his administration. I am urging consideration of the way in which the primacy of the Bible – particularly, belief in the absolute, inerrant truth and authority of the Bible, and adherence to “fundamentals” of the faith therein – affects the government’s policy and military decisions, and the American public’s acceptance of those decisions. The public’s response to the U.S. wars since September 11, 2001, may be affected by the overlap between long-standing, biblically inflected, national discourses on the one hand, and personalized understandings of the Bible popular in conservative Protestant circles, on the other.

My point is to think about how the Bush administration’s language cleverly accesses congealed past discourses in its sacred posturing,¹ bringing the national past and the individual present together in securing support for war. The convergence of national and personal religious language prompts people to understand themselves and their nation through scriptural images – such as Israel entering the promised land – so that expansionist positions appear divinely ordained and, therefore, incontestable. In my view, the emotional and political force of such religious identifications should not be underestimated, even when the connections to contemporary politics are not always conscious or made explicit. These kinds of identifications form the framework in which events are understood, and they give spiritual pitch (and therefore emotional weight) to people’s political convictions. Further, as I will discuss here, the power of biblical language in the United States increases exponentially when it intersects with prevalent understandings of gender and of the role of the United States in the world. In this essay I will examine how biblical tropes of the covenant (the promise of the land and blessing) and the apocalypse (the internal and external threat of evil against that promise) are mobilized in support of aggressive foreign policy, and how the gendering of these tropes may subtly affect the public’s response to military aggression.

1. To read a line or two with Guy Debord, the “sacred contemplation,” with which the Bush administration shrouds itself, promotes no less than “spectacular consumption which preserves congealed past culture.” Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle, trans. Black and Red (Detroit: Black and Red, 1983 [1967]), 25, 192. One of the most disturbing “missions” of the present administration – as proposed by the Project for the New American Century, a think tank whose statement of purpose is signed by Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Jeb Bush, and Paul Wolfowitz, among others – is framed in the language of spectacle: “to fight and decisively win multiple simultaneous major theatre wars.” See Thomas Donnelly, Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century (Washington, DC: Project for the New American Century, 2000), iv: http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf.  [↩]