The Christian Right Goes Back to Bible Boot Camp

By Alexander Zaitchik, AlterNet. Posted December 4, 2006.

After a study revealed that less than 10% of evangelicals were bible literate, James Dobson's Focus on the Family is desperately taking a two-day multi-media Bible boot camp on the road, selling "truth" for $179 a seat.

It's been a rough season for the Christian right. Even for an eschatological movement, these are dark days. First came former Deputy Director of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives David Kuo's public admission that evangelicals were often derided as "nuts" and "goofy" within the inner sanctums of the Bush administration. Then, weeks before losing their shotgun seat in the 109th Congress, the booming voice of the National Association of Evangelicals, Ted Haggard, was silenced in a scandal involving a gay hooker, massage oils, methamphetamine, and a string of Denver hotel rooms booked under false names.

But even before all that hit the fundamentalist fan, the movement was contending with a quieter, more systemic crisis: functional Biblical illiteracy among the flock. That's right, religious conservatives aren't so religious, after all.