Anchorage Daily News

The cultural battle raging in Anchorage over inclusion of gay, lesbian, and transgender Alaskans into the municipal code's non-discrimination ordinance exposes a doctrinal ambiguity in a branch of the religious right that exposes its followers to manipulation.

First, let me explain who in the religious right I am talking about. I am not talking about fiscally or otherwise conservative Lutherans, Methodists, Episcopalians, or Catholics who have a well-thought-out stand on economic or social issues. For the same reason I am not talking about most Mormons, Jews, and probably no Unitarian Universalists. I am not talking about Pentecostals who have a window into the realm of the spirit. And I do not mean fundamentalist Christians in Atco trailer churches who seek a little grace to help get through a difficult life in hopes of better times in the next.

I am talking about fundamentalist mega-churches that have sprung up in the past decades from Dallas, to Orange County, to North Carolina, to Anchorage. Led by Armani-wearing, sports car driving, fifty-dollar haircut, celebrity pastors, their church services are one part entertainment, one part politics, and one part religion all blended together.

The key doctrine of these churches as expressed in Rick Warren's best-selling "The Purpose Driven Life" is that God has a purpose for you. Finding purpose, of course, has been fundamental to every human's life through time immemorial. Native Americans did it through various versions of a vision quest. College students take aptitude tests and agonize over a major, and everyone struggles, to one degree or another, to find passion and significance. And many embrace their god in the quest for meaning. But it is quite another thing to say that individuals have a purpose preordained by God and that your life, your year, indeed some even believe your day, is planned by God.

Such a belief certainly takes the worry out of living. But does God really care what color socks you wear or whether your football team wins?

And how do you find out what God's plan for you is? The answer is you pray. And when you pray, God, according to this belief, through that little voice inside you will tell you what to wear, what car to buy, who to vote for, and which ordinances to support.

The thing is: everyone who is sane has a little voice inside them -- Christian, Buddhist, or atheist -- it's our conscience. Moreover, everyone has a subconscious that also receives messages through the senses and communicates to the conscious self through dreams, intuition, hunches and sometimes "voices" that are suspiciously like answers to prayer.

So, the dilemma is: how does one distinguish between a message from God through prayer and a subliminally encoded message that came from the person you perceive to be closest to God -- the man with the Bible striding the stage with a message as much political as it is spiritual driven deep into your subconscious by backup synthesizer and guitars.

It is no surprise the leaders of mega-churches or corporate Christian organizations, people like Pat Dobson of Focus on the Family, Rick Warren of Saddleback Church, Franklin Graham of Samaritan's Purse, and Alaska's own Jerry Prevo of the Anchorage Baptist Temple, are politically connected to the Republican Party.

The doctrinal dilemma of "God has a plan for your life" is so ripe for manipulation you'd think Karl Rove planned it that way. Cultivate the messenger, script his story, and the message will appear as though it comes through prayer and therefore is unassailable, though it came from a high-level political operative. In fact, mega-churches are nothing more than political action committees for a particular brand of politics that diverts attention from matters of consequence to matters of irrelevance. And while the masses are arguing over whether gays can be discriminated against (of course they shouldn't be) or whether evolution should be taught in schools (of course it should), deals are being done, wars are being concocted, resources are being controlled and the rich are getting richer and more powerful.

Next time you pray about a social issue, ask yourself: will the answer be coming from God or from the self-assured magician in the Armani suit who can transform hate into truth and mask it as God's answer to prayer?

Alan Boraas is an anthropology professor at Kenai Peninsula College.

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