Sleepless summer nights with the architects of the Christian Coalition.

By Jamie Borgan (originally published on 9.06.09)

As summertime wanes to a close my biological mojo has been disrupted.

Despite running and playing this summer with the intensity of a sixth grader aware that her carefree days as ruler of the elementary school playground are ending with every late summer rotation of the earth, and despite peppering busy outside play with work, travel, weed-pulling, cooking, and all around busy-ness, I have spent the past month NOT sleeping.

Like any annoying and potentially destructive habit, the pattern of insomnia began innocuously about a month ago when a stretch of three or four anxious nights left me drowsy.  Couple that with some camping and traveling (where an unfamiliar bed left me tossing and turning) and suddenly, I was running a serious sleep debt.  I use the term sleep debt intentionally, as I’ve struggled to maintain consistent sleeping habits for years, probably since the sixth grade, when I remember pulling my first all-nighter to finish a school project.

In the past, bouts of insomnia have left me almost as psychologically devastated as physically, as increased sleeplessness turns to increased anxiety about sleeplessness which precipitates more sleeplessness which really gets my amygdala (see 60 Minutes episode, “Science of Sleep”, which originally aired March 13, 2008) twitter pated.  However, this time, I’ve adopted what I refer to as a “Zen” (some might say defeated) attitude about it all.  Instead of spending sleepless nights contemplating awkward conversations and accounting for how I’ve been doing at following my monthly budget, I’ve given myself permission to indulge other pleasures, mainly late-night reading and increasingly, watching clips of movies available for viewing instantly online.

As I watch George W. Bush’s friends talk about Bush’s conversion experience after a revival led by Arthur Blessitt, I felt like I was hearing the story of my high school friends’ salvation experiences at Bible camp, the difference being, of course, that none of my friends have yet to acquire the power to decide our nation should wage war against “evil-doers.”

On account of my carefree attitude toward what could be a serious physical problem, an unlikely hero has emerged to pass time with me on these sleepless summer nights: Pat Robertson.

Pat and I became nocturnal buddies when I stumbled across the 2004 Calvin Skaggs and David Van Taylor-directed documentary “With God On Our Side,” subtitled “George W. Bush and the Rise of the Religious Right in America.”  The film chronicles the politicizing of the evangelical movement in the U.S. from the 1950s on, epitomized by Jerry Falwell’s summary statement about the goal of evangelical political figures, “Get people saved, get them baptized, and get them registered to vote.”

The commentary in the film is provided by the heavy hitters of the Christian political right: Falwell, Robertson, Ralph E. Reed Jr., Billy James Hargis, Morton Blackwell, amongst others, speaking with candor and thoughtfulness about their strategic maneuvering to mobilize a  powerful, but historically politically disinterested segment of the population, i.e. evangelical Christians, into a persuasive and persuadable political voice.  On the face of it, there wouldn’t seem to be much news here to someone of my age and generation, as I can’t remember a time before the existence of the “moral majority,” (a term whose coining is referenced in the film). But the figures profiled in the documentary talk with absolute earnestness about their efforts to galvanize millions of the fervently religious, who had previously been distrustful of politics, into a coalition of strident, vocal voters.

It’s the story-telling quality of the film that hooked me, and soon my night-time ritual consisted of reading until I was drowsy and then propping open my laptop on the pillow beside my head and watching the leaders of the Christian Coalition and the Midland, Texas oilmen who were George W. Bush’s best friends tell me about the interstice of born-again faith and dichotomous political thinking that so shaped our 43rd president.

Because I was only watching fifteen or twenty minutes at a time, it took me several days to watch the film, and the irony of the situation is not lost on me. Instead of watching soporific scenes of whales lackadaisically pirouetting underwater, I’ve been watching perplexing and stimulating material that makes me want to have a conversation, not roll over and snore.

On account of my carefree attitude toward what could be a serious physical problem, an unlikely hero has emerged to pass time with me on these sleepless summer nights: Pat Robertson.

But why? I realized after several days of watching the film that what draws me to this material is that I’m watching the men (and they are all men by the way) behind the curtain.  It’s the same thing that made “Fog of War” such a compelling documentary for me; it humanized Robert McNamara and portrayed some of the conflict (not quite enough conflict in my mind) that festered in him about decisions he made that resulted in the deaths of millions of people.

“With God On Our Side” has the same effect for me; it demystifies the architectural foundation of the Christian right and allows Pat Robertson to tell me exactly what he was thinking when he ran for president.

The fact that I was watching it in the middle of the night with chronic sleep deprivation seemed to heighten the sense of not only its importance, but its accessibility.  As I watch George W. Bush’s friends talk about Bush’s conversion experience after a revival led by Arthur Blessitt, I felt like I was hearing the story of my high school friends’ salvation experiences at Bible camp, the difference being, of course, that none of my friends have yet to acquire the power to decide our nation should wage war against “evil-doers.”

There’s no glorious denouement to this story. I didn’t find that understanding that George W. Bush probably sincerely believed much of the heavily religious language and thought that infused his politics was the magic anecdote to a good night’s sleep.  And once the film concluded, I quickly move on to watching other things, for example, clips of “Moonstruck,” and deciding that Nicholas Cage’s enraged rant about losing his hand, containing the line–“I ain’t no freakin’ monument to justice!!”–may be some of the best screenwriting of all time.  However, I’m surprised to say that spending the bulk of a week listening to televangelists unburden their heart was enriching, mostly because there was no perceived agenda to it.

In the distance created by the passage of time and the stillness of the latest parts of the night, these men asked nothing of me: no money, no declarations of faith, no promises to vote for “morality.”  To the contrary, they greeted me  as characters in a gripping and thought-provoking bedtime story, characters with possibly their own proclivities for watching late night clips of “Moonstruck,” telling a story with immense ramifications, but also one, in the space between my insomnia and the laptop screen, with the ability to entertain and keep my amygdala engaged.