Dr. Beau D. Bagg has been assaulted with increasingly shrill emails from the armies of the Christian Underground. Evidently, they feel that George W. Bush's narrow victory in the general election should have afforded them a lot more pull. They lost the Schiavo incident, and it looks like they'll lose the 'activist judges'/'nuclear option' power grab in D.C. Their scare tactics on the gay marriage issue are more effective due to the general public's discomfort with sexuality in any form. Or maybe all those exclamation points they've been using are finally paying off!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What's clear is that this frothy slice of American Christianity has no plans to go away quietly. From an article entitled "It Is Time To Face Goliath and Win the Culture War":

"The Culture War is going full strength. The Church is losing the battle. And like Goliath taunting the Israelites, Hollywood is daring the Church to send out it's best to fight.
[...]
"If you join those right-wing conservatives, you'll look stupid." Well maybe it's time we did look a little different than the rest of the world.

"If you step out and take a stand, you'll lose a lot of your constituents." If we lose our followers and the income they might provide for our work, so be it. God promised that we would get back – in this life – 100-times whatever we give up for His Kingdom (Mark 10:29-30).

"If you fight, your sins will be exposed and everyone will know you're just a hypocrite." Well, confess your sins and forget your past."

While the CU would prefer to compare itself to a victorious David, it's clear they're more akin to the proverbial one-legged man in a butt kicking contest. It's hard to take too seriously any group that encourages its troops to look stupid and have the courage to stand up for intolerance, bigotry, narrow-mindedness, and willful ignorance. Not too threatening... unless they somehow defy all conventional wisdom and become trendy. In efforts to widen their appeal, the field commanders are calling on the faithful to spread the word:

"Please help us get the word out about the Christian Underground. For the CU to be more effective, we need to have a broader reach.

We are asking all existing members, like yourself, to invite three friends today. Every few weeks we will ask you to invite another three friends.

Our fellow Christians need to be informed about the trials we as Christians are facing in the culture war that is raging."

Raging? The war is raging? It looks to me like the war is a euphemism and that the Christian Underground is raging/enraged. Here are some samples from CU's latest emailing:

"Stalin Would Be Proud of Them - "What do most members of the Democratic National Committee, the American Bar Association and the American Civil Liberties Union have in common? They hate the Constitution of the United States of America."

"Creationist: Montana T-Rex Bone Supports Biblical Story, Not Darwins - "The president of the creationist Christian apologetics ministry called Answers in Genesis (AiG) says evolutionists are trying to spin the latest archeological discovery to line up with their erroneous theories of the Earth's history."

"Senate Judiciary Committee Approves Bushs Pro-Life Court Nominees - "The Senate Judiciary Committee approved two pro-life nominees selected by President George W. Bush for federal appeals courts. The votes move the nominees to the Senate floor, where pro-abortion Democrats are expected to filibuster them."

"Why the World Hates Christians - "Jesus said that if any church is moving in the power of the Holy Ghost and fulfilling its mission as he commanded, that the church is going to be hated and persecuted by the world. The church will be hated by ungodly politicians and ungodly leaders of society. It will also be despised by homosexuals, pornographers and, most of all, by backslidden, religious leaders who are spiritually dead."

The core features of Christian Underground's anti-science theopolitical world view are anger, righteous indignation, paranoia, power hunger, and piety. None of these except piety are particularly attractive features, and even the piety is splashed with so much judgmental hogwash that it wouldn't be suitable to wear to church on Sunday. Why the Republican party is tying its future to a segment of the population that flaunts hypocrisy, ignorance, and intolerance is beyond this novice political strategist's ken. Sure, I can understand that G.W. BushCo. would want to woo these folks, but to continue down their road of perpetual culture war is to invite political disaster.

Were the Generals in the army of the Christian Underground to declare victory, what sort of world would have supplanted this one? Zero abortions. Zero homosexuality. Zero pre-marital sexual activity. Subjugation of women. Zero tolerance of non-Christian religious beliefs. Fundamentalist Christians on every judicial bench. Widened use of the death penalty. Fundamentalist Christians in every seat in Congress. A Fundamentalist Christian in the Oval Office. Bible-centered government.

They elect a President who tells everybody he's born-again, and they figure the rest of the vision is on its way to becoming reality. Like the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Christian Underground takes its spiritual warrior status seriously. Like the Taliban, they would have all citizens bow down to a narrow interpretation of a book.

It's not going to happen. When I read the plaintive cries of the oppressed soldiers in the army of the Christian Underground, I take comfort in their self-defeating principles and poignant ineptitude.