Earlier this month, I wrote about Octavia Butler’s novel Parable of the Sower. Recently, I’ve been re-reading the sequel, Parable of the Talents (1998). Like Sower, Talents takes ecological and economic breakdown as givens. There are only a few mentions of climate, but, well, water costs more than gas, wildfires are rampant in the northern-California setting, and fresh produce is worth risking your life to steal. As a result . . . let’s just say the unemployment and crime rates are both pretty high.
Onto the scene steps Andrew Steele Jarrett, the Texas senator-minister who leads the “Christian America Church” (and movement), who wins the presidential election. He vows to restore order to this chaotic American carnage that people are living through and make them get right with God, in the process. Ecological/biological crisis → social crisis → authoritarianism. That seems to be the trajectory. A shadowy group, calling themselves “Jarrett’s Crusaders” (whom the official CA Church disavows but privately supports) are the storm troopers of the movement, targeting any people or communities they regard as “heathen.” That includes Acorn, the tiny commune established by the protagonist, Lauren Olamina, and a few dozen followers of her “Earthseed” movement. (I’ll let you read it, to find out what happens next.) I also read the book American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America, by Chris Hedges (2007). Hedges documents the flourishing of the movement that Butler witnessed in its infancy and adolescence. The strength of the book is that it is largely composed of lengthy quotes and descriptions of sermons, speeches, and TV programs by leaders of “Christian Dominionism,” an avowedly theocratic movement. Pat Robertson and James Dobson are among the better-known chieftains of the Dominionists, but Hedges also confronts us with some characters who, though famous among their millions of followers, are less well-known to the rest of the world. These figures are all but calling for the overthrow of the government and violence against LGBTQ+ people, “secular humanists,” liberals, Muslims, and basically everybody else who isn’t them. Hedges likewise makes no bones about his position: you can’t tolerate the intolerant. He calls this a paradox; some might see it as a contradiction, or at best circular reasoning. Nevertheless, it’s refreshing when a writer refuses to pull punches, esp. against this lot. Jarrett’s Crusaders are a fictional version of what the so-called “evangelicals” (who seldom actually quote the evangelists) might be capable of: paramilitary, extra-legal violence, repression, and surveillance. Again and again, the Dominionists imply that it will only take one 9/11-type crisis for them to mobilize and Make America Christian Again. What we’re seeing now aren’t signs and wonders — they’re the result of capitalists screwing up everything: drilling deeper into the forests, building farther into the brush, & altering the composition of the atmosphere (which of course the Dominionists claim only God could do). Nevertheless, they're whipping up plague, whirlwind, and seas of fire, as a result. This is an opportunity for them, a danger for everybody else. A good time to put down the book, shut off the computer, and go vote. Early, if not often.
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June 2021
Kristin Prevallet Author/Editor
I'm a writer & teacher in Lawrence, Kansas who actually believes the scientists. I wrote a book of poems called Of Some Sky that seems to have something to do with all this. |