Selected Stories By Michelle Goldberg
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The Rapture Takes Manhattan
New Evangelical video game meticulously re-creates the city so you can destroy it in a battle against the forces of darkness.
- New York Magazine

Abortion Under Seige in Mississippi
Preaching that abortion is as evil as Islam, Nazism and homosexuality, dozens of activists have descended on Jackson, determined to shut down the state's last abortion clinic. - Salon

How the secular humanist grinch didn't steal Christmas
The right-wing crusade against the liberal "war on Christmas" is great for rallying the troops. Too bad the war doesn't exist. - Salon

"Homosexuals are hellbound!"
Churches in Ohio are rallying their massive flocks behind the most strident anti-gay marriage amendment in the nation -- and the Republican National Committee is in heaven. - Salon

Banished from the American dream
The Kesbehs were a hardworking immigrant family with a successful business and deep roots in Houston. But after 9/11, the U.S. kicked them, along with thousands of other Arab and Muslim families, out of the country. Now, in a land the children barely know, they wonder why their life has been shattered. - Salon

The prisoner-abuse scandal at home
The stories sound familiar: Muslim prisoners beaten and sexually humiliated by American guards. But it happened in Brooklyn, not Baghdad. - Salon


The zealots behind President Bush's U.N. family planning sellout
A small band of antiabortion extremists says the U.N. agency supports Chinese infanticide. The rest of the world says they're wrong, but the White House is listening. - Salon

Antichrist politics
For many fervent Christians, support for Israel has less to do with Ariel Sharon than preparing for Armageddon. - Salon

Audio Downloads

The following radio shows are available for download.

November 17, 2006

Points of Inquiry Radio with D.J. Grothe

Michelle explains Christian Nationalism and its impact on American domestic policy.

Listen to the show

May 11, 2006

Fresh Air with Terry Gross

Michelle discussed her book on Thursday, May 11, on the nationally syndicated Fresh Air with Terry Gross.

Listen to the show

December 9, 2005
National Public Radio's On the Media

In the last segment of the show, Michelle discusses the myth of the war on Christmas.

120905_otm.mp3 [21mb podcast]

November 11, 2005

WBAI New York's Beyond the Pale

First reading from Kingdom Coming at the Beyond the Pale anniversary show at the Center for Jewish History. Right after the one-act playlet by Tony Kushner.

111305_btpale.MP3 [21mb podcast]

December 25, 2005

WBAI New York's Beyond the Pale

Michelle discusses the "War on Christmas" with Rabbi Michael Lerner on Christmas day.

122505_btpale.MP3 [10.4mb podcast]

Order the Book

Kingdom Coming:
The Rise of Christian Nationalism
By Michelle Goldberg
Paperback, 224 pages
Publisher: W. W. Norton

Paperback Book Tour

Highlights from Democracy Now

Author Interview Links

New Stories by Michelle Goldberg

PRAISe for kingdom coming

“Michelle Goldberg has done the impossible. She's written a serious, scathing, eye-opening expose of the ongoing takeover of our country by rightwing Christians– and somehow managed to make it witty, funny, and humane. If it were satire, Kingdom Coming would be hilarious. Unfortunately, it's all true – things are even worse than you thought. Read it while you can!”

–Katha Pollitt, columnist, The Nation ; author, Virginity or Death! : And Other Social and Political Issues of Our Time

 
“America’s theocrats have to be seen, heard, and read to be believed. Not all of us have the acute senses, stamina, guts and intelligence to uncover these forces of unreason and tyranny directly, so we rely on scouts. Michelle Goldberg is one of our indispensable scouts, and Kingdom Coming is a brave and important book. If you cherish plurality and reason, read it to get the bad news—and to restore your faith in journalism.”

–Todd Gitlin, Professor of Journalism, Columbia University, and author of The Intellectuals and the Flag

 
“Michelle Goldberg ventured into the heartland of American fundamentalist extremism -- and returned to warn us of the authoritarian ambitions that lie behind the moralistic posturing of the religious right.  Every patriot who still cherishes the freedoms we inherited from the nation’s founders should read her book.”

– Joe Conason, author of The Hunting of the President, Big Lies, and The Raw Deal

“Michelle Goldberg takes us on an eye-opening journey through the Christian right grass- roots, from the evolution battles in Dover, Pennsylvania to Roy’s Rock in Alabama and beyond. Along the way, she makes a devastating case that underlying this movement’s campaigns against abortion or gay marriage is a tremendous will to power, an ambition to achieve Christian domination of our public life and laws. Kingdom Coming offers a stark warning that our democracy is under attack from within.”

–Esther Kaplan, author of With God on Their Side: George W. Bush and the Christian Right

 “Kingdom Coming reveals just how thoroughly our national discourse has been corrupted by the mad work of religious literalists.  Goldberg demonstrates — elegantly and persuasively— that tens of millions of our neighbors are working each day to obliterate the separation between church and state, to supplant scientific rationality with Iron Age fantasies, and to achieve a Christian theocracy in the 21st century. This is a terrifying and necessary book.”

–Sam Harris, author, The End of Faith

“A chilling and lucid investigation into the rise of Christian extremism in America, as well as a how-to guide for thinking Americans who wish to preserve their civil liberties against the coming onslaught. An important book.”

–Julia Scheeres, author of Jesusland

“Tocqueville said in 1840, 'Various forms of religious madness are quite common in the United States.'  Michelle Goldberg demonstrates that various forms of religious madness are still quite common. Tocqueville thought that American democracy could contain the danger. Can it still? Only with an effort. That is Michelle Goldberg's well-illustrated and eloquently expressed point, and she is right to make that point, and we had better pay attention.”

– Paul Berman, author of Terror and Liberalism and Power and the Idealists

“Michelle Goldberg provides a critical wake up call for all Americans about a coalition of right wing Christian conservative groups determined to remake the United States into a Christian nation ruled by their conception of Jesus' will. Every American who cherishes religious freedom, civil liberties and the separation of church and state must read Kingdom Coming.”

–Abraham H. Foxman, National Director, Anti-Defamation League; author, Never Again? The Threat of the New Anti-Semitism

“Michelle Goldberg takes us on a superbly reported inside tour of the far-out Christian Right, distinguished by its contempt for democracy in this world in the hope of total victory over nonbelievers in the world to come. This book should scare every American who cherishes our secular Constitution and its separation of church and state. ”

–Susan Jacoby, author of Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism