Selected Stories
By Michelle Goldberg
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The
Rapture Takes Manhattan
New Evangelical video game meticulously re-creates the city so
you can destroy it in a battle against the forces of darkness. - New York Magazine
Abortion
Under Seige in Mississippi
Preaching that abortion is as evil as Islam, Nazism and homosexuality,
dozens of activists have descended on Jackson, determined to shut
down the state's last abortion clinic.
- Salon
"Homosexuals
are hellbound!"
Churches in Ohio are rallying their massive flocks behind the
most strident anti-gay marriage amendment in the nation -- and
the Republican National Committee is in heaven.
- Salon
Banished
from the American dream
The Kesbehs were a hardworking immigrant family with a successful
business and deep roots in Houston. But after 9/11, the U.S. kicked
them, along with thousands of other Arab and Muslim families,
out of the country. Now, in a land the children barely know, they
wonder why their life has been shattered.
- Salon
The
prisoner-abuse scandal at home
The stories sound familiar: Muslim prisoners beaten and sexually
humiliated by American guards. But it happened in Brooklyn, not
Baghdad. - Salon
First reading from Kingdom Coming at the
Beyond the Pale anniversary show at the Center for Jewish
History. Right after the one-act playlet by Tony Kushner.
“Michelle Goldberg has done the impossible.
She's written a serious, scathing, eye-opening expose of the ongoing
takeover of our country by rightwing Christians– and somehow
managed to make it witty, funny, and humane. If it were satire,
Kingdom Coming would be hilarious. Unfortunately, it's
all true – things are even worse than you thought. Read
it while you can!”
–Katha
Pollitt, columnist, The Nation ; author, Virginity or Death!
: And Other Social and Political Issues of Our Time
“America’s theocrats have to be seen, heard, and read
to be believed. Not all of us have the acute senses, stamina,
guts and intelligence to uncover these forces of unreason and
tyranny directly, so we rely on scouts. Michelle Goldberg is one
of our indispensable scouts, and Kingdom Coming is a
brave and important book. If you cherish plurality and reason,
read it to get the bad news—and to restore your faith in
journalism.”
–Todd
Gitlin, Professor of Journalism, Columbia University, and
author of The Intellectuals and the Flag
“Michelle Goldberg ventured into the heartland of American
fundamentalist extremism -- and returned to warn us of the authoritarian
ambitions that lie behind the moralistic posturing of the religious
right. Every patriot who still cherishes the freedoms we
inherited from the nation’s founders should read her book.”
–
Joe Conason, author of The Hunting of the President, Big Lies,
and The Raw Deal
“Michelle Goldberg takes us on an
eye-opening journey through the Christian right grass- roots,
from the evolution battles in Dover, Pennsylvania to Roy’s
Rock in Alabama and beyond. Along the way, she makes a devastating
case that underlying this movement’s campaigns against abortion
or gay marriage is a tremendous will to power, an ambition to
achieve Christian domination of our public life and laws. Kingdom
Coming offers a stark warning that our democracy is under
attack from within.”
–Esther
Kaplan, author of With God on Their Side: George W. Bush and
the Christian Right
“Kingdom Coming reveals
just how thoroughly our national discourse has been corrupted
by the mad work of religious literalists. Goldberg demonstrates
— elegantly and persuasively— that tens of millions
of our neighbors are working each day to obliterate the separation
between church and state, to supplant scientific rationality with
Iron Age fantasies, and to achieve a Christian theocracy in the
21st century. This is a terrifying and necessary book.”
“A chilling and lucid investigation
into the rise of Christian extremism in America, as well as a
how-to guide for thinking Americans who wish to preserve their
civil liberties against the coming onslaught. An important book.”
“Tocqueville said in 1840, 'Various forms of religious madness
are quite common in the United States.' Michelle Goldberg
demonstrates that various forms of religious madness are still
quite common. Tocqueville thought that American democracy could
contain the danger. Can it still? Only with an effort. That is
Michelle Goldberg's well-illustrated and eloquently expressed
point, and she is right to make that point, and we had better
pay attention.”
– Paul
Berman, author of Terror and Liberalism and Power and the
Idealists
“Michelle Goldberg provides a critical
wake up call for all Americans about a coalition of right wing
Christian conservative groups determined to remake the United
States into a Christian nation ruled by their conception of
Jesus' will. Every American who cherishes religious freedom, civil
liberties and the separation of church and state must read Kingdom
Coming.”
–Abraham
H. Foxman, National Director, Anti-Defamation League; author,
Never Again? The Threat of the New Anti-Semitism
“Michelle Goldberg takes us on a superbly reported inside
tour of the far-out Christian Right, distinguished by its contempt
for democracy in this world in the hope of total victory over
nonbelievers in the world to come. This book should scare every
American who cherishes our secular Constitution and its separation
of church and state. ”
–Susan
Jacoby, author of Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism