Spiritual Warfare: The Politics of the Christian Right

Ashley Thomson is a full librarian at Laurentian University and co-editor or co-author of nine books, most recently Margaret Atwood: A Reference Guide, 1988-2005.

Even before reading Spiritual Warfare, I knew from the publisher’s
left-wing reputation that I could expect a snide, highly biased diatribe
on the Christian Right, based on innuendo and guilt-by-association, and
cloaked in a pseudoacademic style to deceive the unwary. I was not
disappointed. A typical paragraph (describing the activities of World
Vision, a large evangelical relief and developmental agency) reads as
follows: “World Vision . . . admitted [that] its credibility problem
in Central America began when it allowed its staff to come under the
control of an anticommunist Cuban exile, a Nicaraguan exile evangelist
and a group of Salvadoran military veterans. One person in the World
Vision staff was a member of the Honduran military. Aside from these
‘bad apples’, World Vision—as a policy—maintained records on all
Salvadoran aid recipients and filed daily reports by telephone and telex
with the World Vision office in Costa Rica. World Vision’s extensive
information-gathering procedures bolstered charges that the group was
collaborating with the cia.”

Now, it may well be that the Christian Right, which the author claims
includes an untold number of “born again” Christians, is attempting
to gain “dominion over political parties, school boards, media outlets
and military infrastructures” and “in the process forging alliances
with some of the most unsavory elements of the U.S. national security
establishment.” It may well be. But this is not the book to prove such
a thesis.