Know your enemy

In 1976 a group of clergy, members of various religious orders and other Christians, formed an organisation known as “Concerned Christians” to support oppressed minorities in Queensland and in particular Aborigines. Subsequently, some clergy were described in the parliament as “corrupt clergy” and “communists”. Even the Queensland Moderator of the Uniting Church at the time, the late Reverend Roly Busch, was accused of being a “communist” because of his support for the Aboriginal communities at Aurukun and Mornington Island.

During the months leading up to the 1989 election campaign, a religious organisation based in Toowoomba began to issue professionally produced literature and paid for advertisements in major newspapers. The Logos Foundation on its own admission spent thousands of dollars trying to convince the electorate that the findings of the Fitzgerald Inquiry were not the real issue of the election but that there was another enemy to be feared.

The Foundation’s efforts were a thinly disguised attempt to gain support for the Coalition government. Through newspaper advertisements and sophisticated direct mailing the Logos Foundation tried to redefine the agenda for the election by raising the spectre of what they said was the “real enemy”:

Homosexual lobbies, prostitution, pornography, gambling, organised crime and other vested interests are making a power play for the government of this State.

Other examples of the creation of an enemy in order to engage in religious-political “warfare” are the activities of pressure groups within the churches in Australia. The Logos Foundation has been mentioned, but long before they came on the scene, there was the League of Rights and its various affiliates. In recent years the work begun by the Logos Foundation has been taken over by the Australian Christian Lobby, also known as the Christian Coalition.

So, there are a number of classic strategies which are employed to create an enemy: these include focusing on little-known, small minority groups. When people come to know personally those identified as the enemy, this reduces significantly the potency of the strategy. It is important that the enemy does not have a human face. It is also important that the enemy is encountered only rarely by those one wants to convince there is a threat “out there”.

If an enemy is encountered regularly it is counter-productive, not only because the enemy becomes more “human”, but because the enemy may be seen to be present in overwhelming numbers and so incapable of defeat.

The enemy is always described as an outsider who has invaded “our territory”. One does not allow co-existence with an enemy because, to do so, would run the risk of infecting “our people”. There is a war to be engaged in which the only acceptable result is the elimination of the enemy. It is possible and necessary to accuse the enemy all kinds of evil and perverse practices and as a scourge of all that is good in “our society”.

Today, the “war on terror” creates such a climate of paranoia that it is possible to link all sorts of perceived threats to minority groups within society. In such a climate, the danger of distortion and misinformation makes it much more likely for great injustice to be perpetrated against minorities.

The most insidious conspiracy theory I have encountered in recent times is based on aberrant Christian theological teaching about the return of Jesus Christ to the earth. It is known as Christian Zionism, and it is particularly wide-spread in the USA. This is a formerly marginal theology of the second coming of Jesus and the end of the world, which has become mainstream within many of the churches in the USA, and has influenced the political agenda of President Bush’s administration.

Christian Zionism supports the continued existence of Israel as the Jewish homeland within Palestine, not for the sake of the Jews, but as one of the preconditions for the return of Jesus Christ to the earth. It also supports the rebuilding of a Jewish temple on its original site; the restitution of the sacrificial system of ancient Judaism; the expansion of Israel’s borders; and continued conflict in the Middle East as a precursor to the final battle of Armageddon and the end of the world.

Of course, there is a convenient escape clause in the theology of these Christians, which they call the Rapture. According to this teaching “true” Christians will escape the terrible suffering of Armageddon by being transferred from earth into heaven before the worst suffering takes place.

This theology is prominent in the agenda of the American Religious Right and at the last election their support was critical to Bush’s re-election. They saw Bush as the one candidate whose political agenda most closely paralleled their own theological-political position.

Of course, in order to continue the conflict in the Middle East, the identification of an enemy is critical. For the Christian Zionists, Islam fulfils this role perfectly, but human rights abuses by Israel are denied and the existence and suffering of Palestinian Christians ignored.

While the teaching of Christian Zionism is much more influential in the USA than in Australia, the friendship of John Howard with George Bush means that this teaching has affected the political agenda of our nation and involved us in the appalling wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.