Fighting Words: A Toolkit for Combating the Religious Right

by Robin Morgan

The religious right is gaining enormous power in the United States, thanks to a well-organized, media-savvy movement with powerful friends in high places. Yet many Americans -- both observant and secular -- are alarmed by this trend, especially by the religious right's attempts to erase the boundary between church and state and re-make the U.S. into a Christian nation. But most Americans lack the tools for arguing with the religious right, especially when fundamentalist conservatives claim their tradition started with the Framers of The Constitution. Fighting Words is a tool-kit for arguing, especially for those of us who haven't read the founding documents of this nation since grade school. Robin Morgan has assembled a lively, accessible, eye-opening primer and reference tool, a "verbal karate" guide, revealing what the Framers and many other leading Americans really believed -- in their own words -- rescuing the Founders from images of dusty, pompous old men in powdered wigs, and resurrecting them as the revolutionaries they truly a hodgepodge of freethinkers, Deists, agnostics, Christians, atheists, and Freemasons -- and they were radicals as well.

Genres: Feminism, Religion, Nonfiction, Atheism, Politics, History

120 pages, Paperback

First published August 4, 2006

About the author

An award-winning poet, novelist, political theorist, feminist activist, journalist, editor, and best-selling author, Robin Morgan has published 20 books, including the now-classic anthologies Sisterhood Is Powerful (Random House, 1970) and Sisterhood Is Global (Doubleday, l984; updated edition, The Feminist Press, 1996); with the recent Sisterhood Is Forever (Washington Square Press, 2003). A leader in contemporary US feminism, she has also played an influential role internationally in the women’s movement for more than 25 years.

An invited speaker at every major university in North America, Morgan has traveled — as organizer, lecturer, journalist — across Europe, to Australia, Brazil, the Caribbean, Central America, China, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Nepal, New Zealand, Pacific Island nations, the Philippines, and South Africa; she has twice (1986 and 1989) spent months in the Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, West Bank, and Gaza, reporting on the conditions of women.

Her books include the novels Dry Your Smile (Doubleday, l987) and The Mer-Child A Legend for Children and Other Adults (Feminist Press, 1991); nonfiction Going Too Far (Random House, 1977), The Word of a Woman (Norton, 1992, 2nd ed. 1994), and The Anatomy of Freedom (Norton, 1994). Her work has been translated into 13 languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Russian, and Sanskrit. Recent books include the poetry anthologies Upstairs in the Garden (1994) and A Hot January (both Norton), as well as the memoir Saturday's Child (Norton, 2000), and her best-selling nonfiction piece The Demon Lover - The Roots of Terrorism (Norton, 1989—2nd ed. with a new introduction and afterword (Washington Square Press, 2001). Her novel on the Inquisition — The Burning Time — was published in 2006 (Melville House), and Fighting Words A Toolkit for Combating the Religious Right in 2006 (Nation Books).

As founder and president of The Sisterhood Is Global Institute and co-founder and board member of The Women’s Media Center, she has co-founded and serves on the boards of many women’s organizations in the US and abroad. In 1990, as editor-in-chief of Ms. magazine, she relaunched the magazine as an international, award-winning, ad-free bimonthly, resigning in late 1993 to become consulting global editor. A recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Prize for poetry, and numerous other honors, she lives in New York City.

Reviews

[David Melbie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had this in my tool belt; then I gave it to my sister! I must get another. . .

[Luke Peterson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Morgan's excellent little book is a compendium of famous Americans' statements on the separation of church and state. It's like a little refresher on American government from the position of deconstructing the many lies that have been put forward by religious leaders looking to destroy the founding principles of our governing system.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eye-opening!

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a good collection of quotations from founding fathers, presidents, Supreme Court justices, etc., concerning religion and its role in our country. However, it's a little thin; a number of quotations, including some more incendiary than those included, are conspicuously absent. Nowhere to be found, for example, is John Adams' "Twenty times in the course of my late reading have I been upon the point of breaking out, 'This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it!'" I was hoping the book would be a comprehensive one stop shop for everything the founders said on religion, but, sadly, it is not. It's definitely worth the one day it will take you to read it, though, and a dog-eared, underlined copy deserves a place on your bookshelf.

[Louise Silk · Rating 3 out of 5]

I will always have the highest respect for Robin Morgan and her initial push to begin the feminist revolution through the book Sisterhood is Powerful but somehow I wanted more from Fighting Words.

She makes a strong case that we have always been a country with a strong separation of church and state by siting our Constitution, Bill or Rights and the the Declaration of Independence. She also includes a very thorough set of exact quotes from our leadership throughout time and shows how changes to the contrary come from a select few who exert undue pressure and power.

The tool kit is all there, complete and ready to use. What is missing is the plan to carry it into action.

[Robu-sensei · Rating 3 out of 5]

A useful compendium of quotes from American historical figures and documents to refute the silly notion that the Founding Fathers envisioned or intended a theocratic America. The Introduction--an exposé on the encroachment of religion into contemporary American government and law--is chilling and infuriating in its accuracy. Perhaps the single most useful reference here is the Treaty of Tripoli, penned by George Washington. I really wish the book were longer. The chapter on the words of the religious Right doesn't go far enough: it could be far more damning than it is.

[Colleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great little resource for church-and-state separatists. You'll know just what to say the next time someone claims that America was founded as a Christian nation.

[stan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great reminder that our country was NOT founded as a Christian nation... in fact just the opposite, to be free of religious shackles.