Calling Out Heresy

CHRIS HEDGES is among my heroes, or role models. He is a sixty eight year old Presbyterian minister (I am 69, progressive,and attend a Presbyterian church), a progressive political activist, journalist, and well respected widely read author. He spent years reporting from various of the most dangerous war zones in the world, including Central America, Bosnia, and the middle east. He spent three years at the Harvard school of divinity, and received a doctorate in religious studies, before establishing his ministry and other careers. His many books include: "Death of the Liberal Class", "Emmpire of Illusion", and "American Fascists". The first is highly critical of America's progressive movement, seeing it as hollow, shallow, hypocritical, ineffective. The second is highly critical of American foreign policy, and the third is a reference to American evangelicals. Their movement he describes as "fascist". Hedges has described himself as a "socialist" and an "anarhist" at various times. So persuasive is his writing that even the most conservative, deeeply politically entrenched political or religious votary with the courage to read his work, emerges from the experience as either deeply troubled, converted to progressive thought, or barricade defensive. The conservative mind, of course, tends towards the latter. Hedges says that he is willing to do what the mainstrream Christian church is not; to condemn the right wing evangelical Christian community as heretical. The push back and controversy he thus engenders is of not the slighest significance to him, for he is long accustomed to it. He does not shrink from addressing his detractors, in print, or open debate. Regarding the conservative religious right, the evangelical community which elected and reelected Donald Trump, Hedge's critique is centered around the fact that the ministry of Jesus does not proclaim the gosple of wealth, nor instruct the ministers of mega churches to become super wealthy. By attaching itself to conservative politics, the evangelical community, asserts Hedges, has embraced and enculturated the worst, most destructive aspects of American capitalism, imperialism, violence, social division, hatred, and racism. Hedges is the very embodiment of Goeth's aphorism: "The world advances only because of those who oppose it." Like many far left intellectuals, Hedges' complaint about America's progressive community and the Democratic party is simply that it is not sufficiently progressive, does not fully embrace socialism, is too watered down, too fearful of veering too far from the safe, comfortable political center. He describes the recent election as a contest between corporate America (the Democrats), and oligarchical America, (Trump and the Republicans). Truly, to him, a choice between the lesser of two evils. I have never read nor heard what Hedges has to say about Bernie Sanders. My best guess is that Sanders represents to Dr. Hedges the best American politics has to offer, and his complaint might be that there simply is not enough Sanders to go around. The fact that sanders has made a powerful showing in every campaign for political office that he has entered, and has won election to both the House of Representatives and the United States Senate, where he currently serves, one might think, is an indication that for Hedges all is not lost in contemporary American political life. However, that is mere speculation on my part. With Chris Hedges, one can never be too sure of anything, and that is what makes his work so interesting, entertaining, thought provoking, and troubling.