The tip of the iceberg and “spiritual” strategy

Nona Willis Aronowitz, posting on truthout.org, makes some good points about this interview with Texas governor and Republican presidential contender. In part, her commentary states:

There’s something that frustrates me even more than Perry’s skewed logic, though: the reporter’s missed opportunity. He fails to point out that teaching safer sex and abstinence are not mutually exclusive. He doesn’t remind Perry that while, yes, abstinence itself works, abstinence-only education does not. And he doesn’t even really explain why teen pregnancy rates would be affected by keeping information away from students; he just cites the two facts side-by-side.

Exchanges like these, where the two sides do nothing but talk past each other, spotlight a serious disconnect in the way we talk about teen sexuality.

It’s just the tip of the iceberg, but an especially chilly one, if you consider a story that aired on NPR yesterday about the rapturist right-wing movement that is gaining momentum in claiming political power. Eric called this one out the Aug. 12 subscriber issue, writing:

[…] a slate of Republican candidates are vying for the presidential nomination, each one more driven by apocalyptic religious values than the next.

The probable Republican nominee, Rick Perry of Texas, held a revival meeting at Reliant Stadium in Houston last weekend wherein he prayed for guidance about things like fixing the federal deficit. This might be meaningful — prayer often is — but it’s worth noting how many of his guests that day were rapture Christians (properly called dispensationalists) obsessed not with the God of love but rather with the end of the world. This segment from The Rachel Maddow Show [link expired/broken – Amanda] explains that they are all part of one religious movement, which has vowed to take over the United States government for the purposes of hastening the end of the world. I know this sounds like science fiction, but it is neither scientific nor fictional.

The NPR story fills in a few more details, including just how pervasive this movement is. Rachel Tabachnick, who researches the political impact of the religious right, told Fresh Air host Terri Gross that a group called the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) is campaigning to take back what it calls the “seven mountains of culture” from “demonic influence.” Apparently the “mountains” are arts and entertainment; business; family; government; media; religion; and education.

They teach quite literally that these ‘mountains’ have fallen under the control of demonic influences in society. And therefore, they must reclaim them for God in order to bring about the kingdom of God on Earth. … The apostles teach what’s called ‘strategic level spiritual warfare’ [because they believe that the] reason why there is sin and corruption and poverty on the Earth is because the Earth is controlled by a hierarchy of demons under the authority of Satan. So they teach not just evangelizing souls one by one, as we’re accustomed to hearing about. They teach that they will go into a geographic region or a people group and conduct spiritual-warfare activities in order to remove the demons from the entire population. This is what they’re doing that’s quite fundamentally different than other evangelical groups.

“Strategic level spiritual warfare.” It has a rather awful ring to it, and I am not in favor of using martial metaphors when it comes to spiritual work, healing, education and awareness. But the “strategic” part may be something lightworkers of the world need to pay attention to. There is a lot of strategy on one side of this cultural divide in humanity right now, and the ground that side seems to be gaining is unnerving at best; more like terrifying.

If you listened to yesterday’s podcast, wherein Eric interviewed a remarkable young friend of mine named Porter, you have a sense of the amazing potential for growth and evolution carried by many twenty-somethings and teens right now. There are a lot of distractions — not to mention actual, intentional threats — to the development of their consciousness right now. And if we don’t start at the ground level in lending a hand to young people who sense there’s more out there than Facebook games, we’re doing them a disservice.

I haven’t figured out the strategy myself, and I’m sure there are many working on this question. But if sex education — as in, programs that are comprehensive about the emotional, spiritual and social intricacies of sex and sexuality, in addition to pregnancy and STI prevention — isn’t a critical starting point, I’m not sure what is.