The Voice Falls Silent

The Voice of America was one of those things that rose from the height of America's greatness as a nation.

Most Americans are unaware of it, by design.  Unlike the BBC or Deutsche Welle, America's publicly funded news service was never permitted to broadcast here in the United States.  To prevent state-funded media from becoming a tool of a would-be despot, it couldn't operate here.  Overseas, though, it served a significant function.  That function was not propaganda or boosterism, but reliable information.  The idea, from the height of American power, was that being a trustworthy source was the best way to spread the message of American values.

Established by an Act of Congress in the era of shortwave radio, it was always meant to stand apart from the aspirations of any given Administration or party.  

I know this, personally and deeply, from dinner table conversations growing up.  

Mom and Dad met at the Voice.  Like pretty much every DC resident, they weren't from here.  Mom was a Georgia girl, raised in Athens.  Dad was a preacher's kid from Queens.   He noticed her, invited her to a party, and, well.  Without the Voice of America, I wouldn't exist. 

After serving at the Africa desk as an editor, Dad got an assignment to East Africa, which is why my very first memories are of Nairobi.  After that, it was back stateside for a few years, then to London, where he was bureau chief.  From that, back to the US, where he eventually became the head of the Africa division.

Dad fiercely internalized the core mission of the Voice, as a patriotic Kennedy-era Republican.   Not that he voted for Kennedy, of course.  Dad was a Nixon man, and Lord help me, would he tell you about it.

Republican though he was, Dad literally put his life on the line for that mission.  He disappeared for a long while into a Ugandan prison, seized by the regime of dictator Idi Amin.  He spent time on the streets of Belfast during the Troubles.  During the Iranian Revolution, he was called in to replace a correspondent who had been injured fleeing a mob.  While there, he lay flat on his belly in the International hotel in Tehran, filing a report while Khomeni's Revolutionary Guards sprayed it with small arms fire.

This is a little more dramatic than my small church pastoring.

There were always pressures from the executive, particularly when coverage wasn't Pollyannaish about the actions of any given president.  There was strong pressure during the Reagan years to "be more positive" about America, which meant constant pushback against efforts to water down journalistic neutrality.  Those efforts soured Dad on the Republican party.   Dad would dish at the dinner table about United States Information Agency director Gene Pell, or about efforts to get his successor Dick Carlson on board with the mission.  

The Voice, like all state-funded news services, had to adapt to the realities of the internet age.  Shortwave radio wasn't the future, eh?  But it rolled with the times, and stuck with the mission, showing the world the face of America...which looked a whole bunch like the face of the world.  Its journalistic ranks were often filled by those who had come to this country drawn by the promise that things here were different.

But the mission of the Voice is not the mission of Trumpism.  

For the Trumpist, media exists to praise Dear Leader and to attack those who oppose him.  Any media that does not do this will be attacked and slandered.  Because the Voice was publicly funded, Trump has ordered it closed.  Even though it's funded by Congress, and its closure isn't constitutional, that means nothing now.  Trump installed a sycophant as head of the agency, and she's obedient to him above all else.  Why close it?  It's "corrupt."  It's a "hubris-filled rogue operation filled with leftist bias."  

"Leftist?"  Oh, c'mon.  Actual leftists were always attacking the VOA as capitalist propaganda.  These were and are lies, of course, but the folks who are in thrall to Trump wouldn't know this, if they even noticed.  They live within the false and fawning information ecosystem of Fox News, which is precisely the sort of party-line support-the-regime media that the Voice was created to oppose.  They believe what they read on their X and Facebook feeds, even if much of that comes from Russian and Chinese troll farms.

And so, today, the broadcasts are silenced.  The beacon goes dark.  The America that the world once knew no longer speaks.

In its place, something else has arisen.  Something ignoble and self-serving.  Something crass and brutal and cynical.

The Voice that spoke out against the world's despots and authoritarians is no longer ours.

What's the Frequency, Kenneth?

I have developed, over time, a mental frame-set for understanding the fabric of American Christianity, and the place of most Christian public figures in that frame-set.  There are progressives and conservatives, public theologians and writers, activists and mystics, fundamentalists and liberals.  There are a wild array of denominations and theological perspectives.  On top of that, there's a healthy dollop of send-me-your-money charlatans, name-it-and-claim-it hucksters who live lavish lives fleecing their flocks.

That latter group is well known to me, particularly the leadership of the "Word of Faith" movement.  These are the pastors with the Gulfstreams and the Bentleys, the massive sprawling mansions and...in some cases...their own international airports, built on the dime of their church, tax-free, of course.  Those folk have gotten called out in my sermons on the regular, because their warped version of Christian faith is...well, it's an abomination.

I know these pastors.  And I know the most influential leader of that movement.  

Which is why it was a little odd reading an article about the rise of right-wing Christian nationalism and finding...Kenneth Copeland? 

In today's print version of the Washington Post (which you might have missed if you cancelled your subscription), I read the following, describing a pro-Trump rally at a Louisiana megachurch:

"We have every right there is to tell the Devil: 'You take your hands off this nation!'" roared televangelist Kenneth Copeland, who put on a U.S. flag jacket and red MAGA hat when he took the stage.

The scene could have come from any of the hard-right Christian road shows now barnstorming the country, with a focus on swing states in a razor-close election.  Extremism analysts say the tours serve as both a get-out-the-vote juggernaut and power flex for a Christian supremacist movement that aims to transform the church the same way MAGA did the GOP: by forcing out moderates.

Ministers like Copeland preach that Christianity is the bedrock of American identity and should influence all aspects of society, ideas central to Christian nationalism."

This is a new game for Kenneth, and in focusing on the political extremism, the Post did kinda miss that angle.  Copeland has, for decades, been most notable for both his wildly flamboyant preaching and the brazenness of his grift.  "Christian hard-liner?"  Hardly.   He's the capo dei capi of the Word of Faith Prosperity Gospel movement, owner of that international airport, possessor of multiple jets, and lives in an estate that sprawls even by Texas standards.  Because, again, private jets need room to land, baby!  He is the worldliest of the worldly, the alpha wolf of that pack of wolves.  Politics?  Nationalism?  Those were the realm of the actual fundamentalists, the Jerry Falwells of the world, whose battle was against modernity and liberalism.  Copeland was...and is...in a wholly different business.  There was a time when conservatives had issue with the Word of Faith movement, when they called it out as heretical, unbiblical, and a blatant con.  There was a time when a Republican Senator led an investigation into Copeland, concerned that he was just a scammer hiding behind a Jesus mask.

Now, though, it's Kenneth Copeland we find front and center as the face of right wing Christianity, wrapped in the stars and stripes and wearing a MAGA hat.  Like the rest of the Prosperity Gospel movement, he's been all in with Trump from day one...birds of a feather, and whatnot...but that's got nothing to do with Christian Nationalism, or a country governed by Christian virtues.

He's in it for the same reason that Elon's in it: there's money to be made.  Because freedom of religion means freedom to believe anything you want, eh?  What right does anyone have to say that getting rich off of the Gospel is a bad thing?

It's pure predatory Mammonism from a high priest of AmeriChrist, Inc., being packaged in the flag, injected straight into the veins of the gullible and the desperate, and bears precisely zero resemblance to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.