Because we, as a nation, have made the wrong political choices, the Christian Right believes God is now punishing us, says Lynn Beisner.
There were two things I knew for sure when I read the forecasts for Hurricane Sandy: First, my elderly dog would insist on being let outside to pee even if the winds were strong enough to carry her away. Second, someone in the Christian Right would be declaring it the fault of gay people or slutty women before it had even made land. I was right on both counts.
One radio host pronounced that the hurricane was caused by gay people, abortion, and porn. However, the most unusual and grossest pronouncement came from a pastor who called it “a huge bucket of vomit in America’s face” and claimed that God was not only trying to get our attention over gay people and abortion, but also because we no longer blush at the mention of non-marital sex.
Last week I wrote an article explaining the religious logic behind some conservatives’ belief that rape is God’s will. I wanted my readers to understand that these were not isolated misogynistic bloopers, but rather the logical outcome of a core belief in the Christian Right.
By the same token, blaming gay people for Hurricane Sandy is not the ramblings of an isolated crazy person in the Christian Right. It is an example of how the most important doctrine in the Christian Right shapes the world view of millions of Americans.
The driving force behind the Christian Right’s political action is something that I call the “Divine Vending Machine” philosophy of government. Vending machines are a three-step process: inserting a token, pushing a selection button, and then dispensing a product. The Divine Vending Machine requires the deposit of a token: a national that is predominantly Christian. This is why the Right is terribly opposed to secularism and is frightened by immigration, particularly by people of non-Christian faith.
The Divine Vending Machine also requires that as a nation we select the right thing—push the right button. We must adopt conservative Christian values as our moral standards, and vote for leaders and laws that enforce those standards.
Then, and only then, will the Great Vending Machine in the Sky dispense national prosperity, security, expansion, and health. But the Divine Vending Machine does not just dispense good things. If we deposit the tokens of immorality, deviations from conservative family values, indifference toward religion and religious pluralism, and then we push the wrong button in the voting booth, the Divine Vending Machine will dispense some form of national suffering or destruction.
Using the formula of “token, button, product,” it is easy to see how Conservative Christians believe that gay marriage caused Hurricane Sandy. In the case of gay marriage, the token is the immoral activity of homosexuals, which our society now allows to flourish unchecked by sodomy laws. When we pushed the button allowing homosexuals to marry in some parts of the United States, we declared our intention to defy God’s laws. We should, therefore, not be surprised when the Divine Vending Machine dispenses a “frankenstorm” that shuts down the very heart of liberal immorality: New York City.
The Divine Vending Machine makes compassion and tolerance no longer virtues but liabilities. If we truly believe that “evil” causes national disasters and financial crises, it behooves us to criminalize homosexuality and abortion. In fact, it is in our national best interest to quietly support the bullying of homosexual teenagers, since bullying is likely to create conformity or to lower our nation’s proportion of homosexuals by creating an epidemic of gay suicides. Compassion in the form of aid to dependent children encourages promiscuity and places our nation at increased risk of natural disasters or foreign invasion.
The interaction between token, selection, and dispensing, is important because it says that the sin of individuals becomes disastrous if it is ratified on a governmental level. “Righteous” leaders at every level of government can serve as a buffer between people’s natural lapses in morality and the judgment of the Almighty. Because they believe that “righteous” leaders are a prophylactic against disaster, many in the Christian Right believe that conservative Christian affiliation and adherence should be a requirement for holding public office. In other words, they will vote for the person who says “I am a Conservative Christian who opposes gays and abortion” even if that person is a racist, proven corrupt, and has absolutely no qualifications to hold public office.
Divine Vending Machine theology also explains the rage that has fueled the right, especially the Tea Party. Here is the thinking behind the overwhelming anger at liberals:
“We are suffering economic hardship right now as a nation, and I am scared and hurting. But I have deposited the token of years in which I have attended church and lived morally. I did everything right, and I even pushed the right button in the voting booth. So it is not my fault, and I know that the Divine Vending Machine cannot be broken. Therefore, I am suffering because of the tokens deposited by all of those immoral people and because those stupid liberals who pushed the wrong button in 2008.”
The reason that the Christian Right is so desperate to elect Romney is that they believe a nation with leaders who follow God’s law will be free of famine, disease, and defensive wars; it will prosper and have either peace or it will use offensive wars to expand. They see our recent economic woes, and now Hurricane Sandy, as evidence that our nation has incurred God’s wrath. We have been warned and given an opportunity to repent in the form of a ballot. If we re-elect Obama, they truly believe that we will be destroyed by God.
Lynn Beisner is the pseudonym for a mother, a writer, a feminist, and an academic living somewhere East of the Mississippi. You can find her on Facebook and Twitter.
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