The journalist and historian Frances FitzGerald writes about sprawling, nation-changing topics with intimacy and agility. Between 1972 and 2010, FitzGerald contributed more than twenty-five pieces to The New Yorker, on subjects ranging from Harvey Milk and the gay-rights movement to the knotty background of a megachurch in northern Connecticut. The New Yorker excerpted her first book, "Fire in the Lake," about the Vietnam War, in a five-part series in 1972; the book received a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award and became a best-seller. In 1981, FitzGerald published "A Disciplined, Charging Army," about the rise of fundamentalism in America and the deterioration of the wall separating church and state. The piece focusses on Jerry Falwell's powerful Moral Majority, exploring the organization's growing influence on evangelicals and its potency in the political sphere, particularly during Ronald Reagan's successful 1980 Presidential campaign. Along the way, FitzGerald considers the seemingly paradoxical allure of fire-and-brimstone evangelicalism delivered via TV. "Why a mass television audience should be attracted to a specifically fundamentalist theology is—in the abstract—less understandable," she writes. "From a doctrinal point of view, fundamentalism is, after all, a gloomy and demanding enterprise that goes against much of what has long been assumed to be the American grain: faith in science, faith in human nature, and faith that man can improve the conditions of life on earth." FitzGerald evinces an ease and comfort with the complexities of fundamentalist theology, skillfully elucidating one of its key tenets—the notion that, on any given issue, there is only one "right answer." Information that challenges evangelical teachings (whether derived from science, politics, or secular education) becomes, she writes, a challenge to a believer's relationship with God. Where there's only certainty, she seems to ask, is there any meaningful distinction between faith and zealotry? As we witness a surge in Christian nationalism and the likely end of Roe v. Wade, FitzGerald's piece offers an evocative reminder of how a once marginal movement came to transform the anatomy of faith and politics in America. —Erin Overbey, archive editor |
No comments:
Post a Comment