Kevin Robert Dean just reminded me of a website that from Christian premises is very critical of the Christian Right and corporate capitalism, though it would be hard to say that one would put it in the category of the books on Liberation Theology published by Orbis.
An excerpt from the latest, http://www.endtimesnetwork.com/crt_nws.html
"WHERE IS DEMOCRACY IN ALL THIS?
Where is there here any room for democracy - REAL democracy? There is none - at least insofar as the poor and the near-poor are concerned. This is the point the student demonstrators were trying to make in Seattle, in Washington D.C., in Philadelphia, in Los Angeles, in Quebec City.
Democracy - REAL democracy - is fast disappearing from the cultural and political landscape, and is being replaced by a corporate oligarchy - a plutocracy (rule of the rich) run by General Electric, Viacom, Ford, DuPont, Microsoft, 3M, General Motors, Cargil, Exxon, Sun Microsystems, Boeing, Netscape, Bank of America, etc.
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN STATE-SPONSORED RELIGION AND THE ELITES
It's exactly here that we should remind ourselves of a point we made early on in this article regarding the relationship between democracy and religion: RELIGION IS IMPORTANT TO THE STATE IN INVERSE PROPORTION TO THE STATE'S UNDEMOCRATIC NATURE. The more undemocratic the state, the greater the need for its lraders to undergird their rule by a resort to religion. When democracy becomes an open sham, as it is fast becoming in the United States, and the elites are no longer able to rely on the "will of the people" as the basis of their legitimacy, religion becomes their "fall-back" position - the only means left to them of legitimizing their rule. The elite response here is to cynically substitute the "will of God" for the "will of the people."
It is, therefore, no accident or fluke of history that WHEREVER SOCIETIES FIND THEMSELVES UNABLE TO RELY ON THE "WILL OF THE PEOPLE" TO LEGITIMIZE THEIR EXISTENCE, RELIGION HAS STEPPED INTO THE GAP TO FILL THAT FUNCTION. It is not without reason, therefore, that the rich in this country - ESPECIALLY THOSE PEOPLE AND CORPORATIONS CONNECTED TO THE "ESTABLISHMENT WING" OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY - have found it convenient to "GET RELIGION." That's what the rich have always done! - though they care not a whit for it.
Michael Pugliese P.S. To Charles, did not some people get their kicks before Monsieur's deSade and Sacher-Masoch by engaging in S&M? The practices existed before the ideological labelling of their supposed inventors. Likewise with other sexual practices intertwined with identity. The cultural meaning of homosexuality has varied more than a bit over the ages, and the varying levels of tolerance, whatever the labels that were attached by persons practicing homosex, whether by "homophobes" (a word not invented until 1970, I think) or homosexuals, like "invert" "Third Sex" and more modern words. Homosexual, btw, I think, was German from around 1880 or so. Zillions of books from David Greenberg, Byron Fone, Jeffrey Weeks, Jonathan Katz go into all this.
Any good histories of S&M? There are more than a few bios of deSade. Michael Pugliese