American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century

• Author: Major Bruce D. Page, Jr.
• Pages: 08

2006/2007] BOOK REVIEWS 175

AMERICAN THEOCRACY: THE PERIL AND POLITICS OF RADICAL RELIGION, OIL, AND BORROWED MONEY IN THE 21ST CENTURY1

REVIEWED BY MAJOR BRUCE D. PAGE, JR.2

If recent polls are to be believed, most Americans think the United States is headed in the wrong direction.3 Kevin Phillips numbers himself among that majority and in his latest book, American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century, tells his readers why. Phillips believes that America's superpower status is jeopardized by: national oil policy that is steeped in deceit, coupled with an unsustainable national oil consumption rate; excessive influence of conservative Christianity on governmental affairs; and unprecedented levels of private and public borrowing. He argues from history, contending that the world's greatest empires have fallen due in large measure to some variant of one or more of these national sins. Over the course of 394 pages, Phillips provides readers an enormous amount of statistical and anecdotal evidence in support of his thesis. Unfortunately, he invests almost as much energy in unnecessarily charged rhetoric and anti-Christian invective. This open bias costs him credibility, such that his book, while still highly thought provoking, comes across more as political diatribe than reasoned scholarship.

The book opens with an analysis of how problematic America's oil consumption habits have become. Phillips provides considerable evidence that with global oil production likely to peak within thirty

years, possibly sooner,4 American oil consumption is quickly outstripping worldwide supply.5 The outlook is, in Phillips's estimation, bleak: long-established individual patterns of behavior are unlikely to change,6 and the government is too beholden to entrenched oil interests ("'Big Oil' executives"7) to take any meaningful action. Like Britain a century ago and, to a lesser extent, eighteenth-century Holland, America is at a pivotal crossroads: though oil consumption is foundational to modern American culture and wealth, and though the nation's oil infrastructure represents an enormous capital investment not easily or cheaply replaced, our oil culture may soon become an albatross around our necks, dragging down the economy of a nation that refuses to modernize.8

Phillips adeptly brings statistics to bear in arguing that America is too oil-thirsty,9 and his analysis of the psychological phenomenon of national nostalgia regarding the oil industry10 is quite interesting. But he overlooks the critical fact that America has already successfully shifted from pre-oil fuel sources to oil, without significant economic disruption. Phillips offers no reason why America's transition from oil dependence to renewable energy sources will be unsuccessful, particularly given the level of national attention the issue is receiving.11 Thus, while

overconsumption is unquestionably an important environmental, social, and even moral concern, Phillips's worries regarding dramatic oil shortages seem somewhat overwrought. This observation becomes important in judging Phillips's larger claim that access to foreign oil, increasingly a concern of presidents over the last half century,12 is now the driving purpose for much of American foreign policy, including George W. Bush's decision to go to war in Iraq in 2003.

Here, Phillips pulls no rhetorical punches. Having accused Bush's "White House [of] misrepresentations . . . and incompetence,"13 he asserts that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was "deceit cloaked"14 and that official denials of the war's having been oil-motivated were "all but lies."15 Instead, Phillips insists that Operation Iraqi Freedom was but "one hundred years of petro-imperialism in the Persian Gulf . . . come to a head."16

This contention detracts from the book's better argued points. Phillips imputes guilt by association17 and strains to find external support18 for his belief that the 2003 Iraq war was "at bottom about access to oil and U.S. global supremacy."19 Notwithstanding negative findings by independent investigators,20 denials by high-ranking government spokespersons,21 and current efforts to free the United States from dependence on oil, particularly foreign oil,22 American oil imperialism becomes a thread Phillips weaves throughout the remainder of the book.

This imperialism, though, is not only economically motivated. In Part II of the book, Phillips argues that America's "powerful religiosity" and "biblical worldview" have led to a "crusader mentality ill fitt[ing] a great power decreasingly able to bear the rising economic costs of strategic and energy supply failure."23

The "religiosity" Phillips decries is found amongst "conservative fundamentalists"24 generally, but is most embodied in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC).25 Phillips traces how the SBC, formerly a small sect but now the largest Protestant denomination in America, has benefited from a national increase in religious conservatism to become the "unofficial state church in Dixie"26 and a major force in Republican politics. His sociological argument, which he supports with numerous statistical references, graphs, and diagrams, is provocative: according to Phillips, the setback to Southern culture the Civil War caused has been more than overcome by a "Second Reconstruction"27 whereby "'Southern' no longer refer[s] to a region but to a culture and an evangelical mode."28 This "Southernization of America"29 has manifested itself in a "theological correctness" (TC)-the imposition of fundamentalist religious and moral views on America by force of law.30

Phillips warns that if history does repeat itself, America's future is in jeopardy, as religious zeal in general and the influence of religion on the law in particular have often shortly predated the falls of other world empires.31

Phillips contends TC's insistence that other disciplines such as law, politics, and science be studied in light of biblical theology is relegating America to second-class status in the world in terms of education, technology, and even agriculture.32 Most critical, though, is the United States' Middle East policy. Phillips sees the second Gulf War as but the latest in a series of religiously motivated campaigns ("Christendom's familiar mass excitements"33) that are ideologically indistinguishable from the crusades. He cites Rome, Holland, and even pre-World War I Britain as examples of nations who went to war not to secure liberty or defend the homeland, but instead because of theology run amuck.34

Ostensibly, Phillips's concern is not with religion itself.35 His argument is framed in historical terms, without explicit reference to the moral rightness or wrongness of religious influence in the public sphere.36 But the virulence with which he attacks the conservative position...