Talk to Action New Site Address Below

2005-11-20T13:37:00.000-05:00

NEW TALK TO ACTION WEBSITE ALTERNATE TEMP ADDRESS. We've moved. Here's a temporary link to our new site :

Talk To Action

http://talk2action.scoophost.com

UPDATE : We are in the process of switching over our this domain name to our new site. Please bear with us. We expect to make the change shortly.

If you are receiving this message, the switchover has not yet occured but you can access the new TALK TO ACTION website via this link :

NEW TALK TO ACTION WEBSITE ALTERNATE TEMP ADDRESS :

Talk To Action

http://talk2action.scoophost.com

___________________________________________________________________________________

TALK TO ACTION new website :

This website will shortly be trannsformed to the new interactive Talk To Action.

If you have received a notice on the pending change, be advised that this is the old site. The new site features a dramatically expanded cast of writers and will allow users to join the sites and post their own writing and comments. The accounts will be free.

Clarkson to Speak at Harvard

2005-11-15T05:05:00.000-05:00

If you plan on being in Boston on Sunday, November 27th, you are invited to hear my speech titled, The Dramatic Progress of the Theocratic Right -- What in the World do We Do Now?.

Phillips Brooks House, Harvard Yard, 1:30 PM.

The event, which is free and open to the general public, is sponsored by the Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard and by the Humanist Association of Massachusetts.

Focus on Your Local Focus on the Family

2005-11-10T03:02:00.000-05:00

Anti-gay politics is at the center of American life these days. Some argue that many Republican successes are predicated on the idea of "turning out the base" with this "wedge issue." While it is not always clear that this tactic is as successful as some say, there is no question that it is taking place. Anti-gay politics is a staple of American life. So, who exactly is behind this?

Well, there are many actors, of course. But I want to focus on just one, multidimensional player: Focus on the Family headed by Christian radio psycologist James Dobson. And I want to zero in on one aspect in particular -- Focus on the Family political operations in the states.

Several years ago, I wrote a study about state level conservative think tanks and advocacy groups, published by Political Research Associates (pdf file). There were two, related networks started in tandem in the late 1980s. One emphasized the business/libertarian part of public policy, and the other emphasized the policy issues dear to the religious right. The latter, was the network of Family Policy Councils affiliated with James Dobson's Focus on the Family. The details have changed since I published that study, but the general trajectory remains the same. Most importantly, these groups are at the forefront of antimarriage equality campaigns nationwide, and their role as fronts for Focus on the Family are not widely understood and that Dobson's organization has active, organizational tentacle in 34 states, in addition to his radio program which is available just about everywhere.

For example, the point group in the recently defeated effort to repeal anti-discrimination laws in Maine, was the FOF affiliate, the Christian Civic League of Maine.

In defeat, the Maine FOF group immediately announced that they will now seek to amend the state constitution to ban marriage equality. When they do, they can draw on the experience of many other FOF-led efforts from around the country. For example, the point group in seeking to get an anti-marriage equality measure on the ballot in Massachusetts, is the Massachusetts Family Institute.

Some already existing local groups grafted onto FOF as state level affiliates, and others were started from scratch. And some groups have come and gone. But whatever their genesis, they are joined at the hip with Focus on the Family, just as the Family Research Council serves as the group's de facto political lobby in Washington, DC. The Family Research Council merged with FOF in 1988, but later decoupled in order to give it more flexibility politically without necessarily reflecting on the Focus on the Family. However, the distinction has always been pretty thin. Among other things, James Dobson has remained on the board of directors all these years.

Similarly, although the FOF states that the State Family Councils "have no corporate or financial relationship with each other or with Focus on the Family," this is disingenuous, since an organization must meet certain criteria to become affiliated with Focus on the Family; and must behave in certain ways in order to maintain it's standing. Some groups have been dropped over the years. Even a casual examination of the web sites of these groups will show, they have similar, although not uniform, structures, procedures, and policy agendas. But all are deeply involved in state politics, and thier activities often include voter mobilization and even distribution of voter guides.

There are currently FOF-affiliated state policy councils in 34 states: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin.

Have you focused on your local Focus on the Family?

[Crossposted at Political Cortex and FrederickClarkson.com]

Anti-Defamation League Denounces Efforts to "Christianize America"

2005-11-08T01:32:00.000-05:00

In recent weeks, several leaders of major American institutions have spoken-out against the Christian Right. First, Rev. John Thomas president of the United Church of Christ, a mainline protestant denomination.

Thomas denounced groups "within and beyond the UCC" that are "intent on disrupting and destroying our life together."

"Groups like the Evangelical Association of Reformed, Christian and Congregational Churches and the Biblical Witness Fellowship are increasingly being exposed even as they are increasingly aggressive," Thomas said. "Their relationship to the right-wing Institute for Religion and Democracy and its long-term agenda of silencing a progressive religious voice while enlisting the church in an unholy alliance with right-wing politics is now longer deniable. United Church of Christ folk like to be 'nice,' to be hospitable. But, to play with a verse of scripture just a bit, we doves innocently entertain these serpents in our midst at our own peril."

Then, up stepped Dr. Hunter Rawlings interim president of Cornell University, who used his state of the university address to rally the univeristy to come to terms with the problem of the "intelligent design" movement, which he described as "a subjective concept.... a religious belief masquerading as a secular idea. It is neither clearly identified as a proposition of faith nor supported by other rationally based arguments."

Rawlings' went on to quote from a letter written by university founder Ezra Cornell in which he warned "that the principal danger, and I say almost the only danger I see in the future to be encountered by the friends of education, and by all lovers of true liberty is that which may arise from sectarian strife. From these halls, sectarianism must be forever excluded, all students must be left free to worship God, as their conscience shall dictate, and all persons of any creed or all creeds must find free and easy access, and a hearty and equal welcome, to the educational facilities possessed by the Cornell University.....".

This week, Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, addressing an ADL conference, spoke out against efforts to "Christianize America."

The Isreali newspaper Ha'aretz, reported that the ADL "has in the past spearheaded campaigns against religious preachers and Christian elements deemed unusually extreme. But this is the first all-out media assault by an ADL head on the U.S. Christian establishment."

"Today we face a better financed, more sophisticated, coordinated, unified, energized and organized coalition of groups in opposition to our policy positions on church-state separation than ever before," Foxman said. "Their goal is to implement their Christian worldview. To Christianize America. To save us!" he said.

Foxman proceeded to describe the process and to name names: "Major players include Focus On Family. Alliance Defense Fund, the American Family Association, Family Research Council and more. They and other groups have established new organizations and church-based networks, and built infrastructure throughout the country designed to promote traditional Christian values."

The ADL continued the "media assault" with a press release today stating that the curriculum for teaching the Bible in the public schools being promoted by the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools, is unacceptable, because it "advocates the acceptance of one faith tradition's interpretation of the Bible over another."

"This wholly inappropriate curriculum blatantly crosses the line by teaching fundamental Protestant doctrine," said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director. "The text relies solely upon the King James Version of the Bible and hews to a fundamentalist reading, especially of New Testament passages. This is the primary flaw in the curriculum – that it advocates the acceptance of one faith tradition's interpretation of the Bible over another."

According to ADL, the King James Version is the least faithful one to the original Biblical languages of Hebrew and Greek.

There are acceptable resources available for teaching the Bible in public schools. For example, the newly published textbook, "The Bible and Its Influence" from the Bible Literacy Project is designed to meet the standards for teaching the Bible in public schools with one semester on the Hebrew Scriptures and one on the New Testament.

The U.S. Supreme Court has said that although public schools may not teach religion, they may teach about religion in a secular context. The Bible may be taught in a public school, but only for its historical, cultural or literary value and never in a devotional, celebratory or doctrinal manner, or in such a way that encourages acceptance of the Bible as a religious document. If a school district chooses to teach the Bible in this context, the adopted curriculum must be balanced and pluralistic in nature and the curriculum should not advocate one particular religion, interpretation or translation over another."

(For its part, Focus on the Family, one of the leading Christian right organizations, thinks the curriculum "should be in all public schools," although it promotes creationism, Christian nationalism, and has generated national controvery.)

It is encouraging that more and more important leaders in American public life are rising to meet the urgent challenge of our times: an antidemocratic movement, bent on religious supremacy and creeping theocracy at all levels of government, and in all areas of life. Let's encourage more leaders to follow the lead of Foxman, Rawlings and Thomas.

[Crossposted at Political Cortex]

Salon.com: GOP & Christian Right "wackos"

2005-11-04T00:41:00.000-05:00

Don't miss the must-read article by Michael Scherer at Salon.com. It offers a glimpse into how corrupt insiders play everyone for suckers while obtaining corrupt favors for clients, and whatever it is that favored business interests and campaign contributors want. Here is the money quote, as it were.

Consider one memo highlighted in a Capitol Hill hearing Wednesday that [Michael] Scanlon, a former aide to Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Tx., sent the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana to describe his strategy for protecting the tribe's gambling business. In plain terms, Scanlon confessed the source code of recent Republican electoral victories: target religious conservatives, distract everyone else, and then railroad through complex initiatives.

"The wackos get their information through the Christian right, Christian radio, mail, the internet and telephone trees," Scanlon wrote in the memo, which was read into the public record at a hearing of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. "Simply put, we want to bring out the wackos to vote against something and make sure the rest of the public lets the whole thing slip past them."

To read the whole story, you will need to view a brief ad. Either that, or you can subscribe. Small price to pay for independent media.

[UPDATE] A blogger at Political Cortex has a link to the report in which the "wackos" document appears. It's a very large PDF file, but for those whose computers can handle it, it's available.

Jimmy Carter Takes on the Christian Right

2005-11-02T21:07:00.000-05:00

"Blurring the line between church and state threatens civil liberties and privacy, says former President Jimmy Carter. That's the case he makes in his new book, Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis, which draws on Carter's experiences as a president and a Christian."

The above is a blurb promoting an interview on Fresh Air, with Terry Gross, on the web site of National Public Radio.

In the book he writes:

Nowadays, the Washington scene is completely different, with almost every issue decided on a strictly partisan basis. Probing public debate on key legislative decisions is almost a thing of the past. Basic agreements are made between lobbyists and legislative leaders, often within closed party caucuses where rigid discipline is paramount. Even personal courtesies, which had been especially cherished in the U.S. Senate, are no longer considered to be sacrosanct. This deterioration in harmony, cooperation, and collegiality in the Congress is, at least in part, a result of the rise of fundamentalist tendencies and their religious and political impact.

Fortunately, this degree of rigidity and confrontation has not yet taken hold among the general public.

Carter is right. But it will take some effort to learn how to engage in constructive conversation, and to learn with whom it is worth having such conversations and with whom it is not. I am not going to try to lay out a plan on this short essay. But rather to stake out the ground that it is not only possible, but necessary.

That's why is wrong to write off, as some do, all conservative Christians as beyond all conversation and all reason. I find the routine derisive language used by many against those with whom they disagree on matters of religion to be incompatible with the values of tolerance and equality to which progressives have historically been all about. It borders on religious bigotry -- and all too often falls well over the line.

Jimmy Carter is a conservative Democrat. He is also an evangelical Christian. His faith is an important to his identity. He is also hero of civil and human rights. He supports the separation of church and state. And he opposes the fundamentalist enforcers who have taken over the Southern Baptist Convention. He left the SBC out of principle. He opposes, among other things, their insistence on the subordination of women, and the banning of women from positions of leadership in the denomination.

Chip Berlet, Senior Analyst at Political Research Associates, has been a leader among progressives in articulating why the demonization of evangelicals and religious conservatives is politically ineffective at best; stupidly counterproductive at worst.

"Most Christian evangelicals," he wrote at Talk to Action recently, "are not part of the Christian Right. I know from talking with evangelicals and fundamentalists across the country that they are offended by the rhetoric from some liberal and Democratic Party leaders who do not seem to be able to talk about religion without chewing on their foot.

I have this fantasy about kidnapping a busload of liberal inside-the-beltway pundits and driving them to some town in Middle America where they have to learn how to talk to voters who think that going to a church, or synagogue, or mosque or other place of worship is a normal part of life. The pundits won’t be given a ticket back to Dupont Circle until they don’t flinch when someone says words like “faith,” “prayer,” or “blessing.”

I suspect some will have to walk back to the Potomac."

Crossposted at Political Cortex. Check it out for a sense of what the new Scoop-based Talk to Action will be like. The sites will look different, but function very similarly.

Is Alito the Dream Candidate of the Religious Right?

2005-11-01T12:50:00.000-05:00

DefCon, (the Campaign to Defend the Consitution) thinks so. Here is part of an e-mail they sent around about Sumpreme Court nominee Samuel Alito this morning.

What the religious right wants, the religious right gets.

At least that was message sent yesterday by the Bush Administration in nominating Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court.

After conservative Christians rallied to oppose Harriet Miers, President Bush caved and withdrew her nomination. In her place, he has nominated a darling of the religious right. According to Jay Sekulow, head of the conservative American Center for Law and Justice, on abortion Alito is "just fantastic." Sekulow went on, "you look at school prayer cases.... he has consistently ruled in our position."

Sekulow was not the only religious right leader rushing to support Alito. Within hours, Gary Bauer, Pat Robertson, Phyllis Schlafly, Tony Perkins and James Dobson all rallied to Alito's defense in national media.

Robertson: "I think this is a grand slam home run."

Dobson: "We are extremely pleased."

Schlafly: "Alito has a terribly impressive record."

Bauer: "If Harry Reid's disappointed, I think that's good news for us."

Alito's dedication to the religious right's agenda is no secret. Over the years, he has voted to restrict a woman's right to choose, to support the public display of religious symbols, and to oppose the longstanding "Lemon Test" (for decades the legal standard for upholding the separation of church and state).

As Family Research Council leader Tony Perkins told ABC, "To think that we're going to reverse the liberal activist court without a fight is wrong. There's going to be a fight. There needs to be a fight. We are ready to rumble."

Taking Leadership in Response to the Religious Right

2005-10-24T22:23:00.000-04:00

The Religious Right rose to power while most of the nation remained somnambulant. Books and articles were written; film documentaries broadcast; and activist and scholarly seminars and conferences held -- but most of our leading institutions have had little to no response. Fortunately, this is changing. Leaders of major religious and secular institutions are beginning to speak out -- and to lead their institutions into the central struggles of our time.

Last week Rev. John Thomas, president of the United Church of Christ, spoke out against the attacks on the mainline churches -- including his own. This week, Dr. Hunter Rawlings, interim president of Cornell University called on the Cornell community to address the "invasion of science by intelligent design."

According to an account of his speech by Susan Lang of Cornell news service, Rawlings' call came in his first "State of the University" address since becoming interim president in June.

Read on. Meet Hunter Rawlings: professor of classics; hero of constitutional democracy; and role model for how university leaders can and must respond in this era of theocratic creep in American public life. Here is an excerpt from Lang's report.

Rawlings said, "I.D. [intelligent design] is not valid as science... I.D. is a subjective concept.... a religious belief masquerading as a secular idea. It is neither clearly identified as a proposition of faith nor supported by other rationally based arguments." Advocates of I.D. voice a creationist argument that some features of the natural world are so "irreducibly complex" that they must have required a creator, or an "intelligent designer."

I.D. is, he said, "a matter of great significance to Cornell and to this country as a whole ... a matter ... so urgent that I felt it imperative to take it on for this State of the University Address." The packed auditorium gave Rawlings a lengthy standing ovation at the conclusion of his address.

"I am convinced that the political movement seeking to inject religion into state policy and our schools is serious enough to require our collective time and attention," he said. As such, he asked that Cornell's three task forces -- on the life sciences, on digital information and on sustainability -- consider how to confront such questions as "how to separate information from knowledge and knowledge from ideology; how to understand and address the ethical dilemmas and anxieties that scientific discovery has produced; and how to assess the influence of secular humanism on culture and society."

He said that Cornell, which some refer to as the world's land-grant university, is in a unique position to bring humanists, social scientists and scientists together to "venture outside the campus to help the American public sort through these complex issues. I ask them to help a wide audience understand what kinds of theories, arguments and conclusions deserve a place in the academy -- and why it isn't always a good idea to 'teach the controversies.' When professors tend only to their own disciplinary gardens, public discourse is seriously undernourished," he said.

In his address, Rawlings first reviewed how the I.D. issue is playing out across the country, with disputes about evolution making news in at least 20 states and numerous school districts. He then recounted the controversy historically, with Darwin publishing his groundbreaking book, "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection," in 1860; the 1925 Scopes trial that deterred anti-evolution legislation pending in 16 states at the time; and the 1987 Supreme Court ruling that ruled as invalid Louisiana's "Creationism Act" that would have forbade teaching evolution in public schools. Now the controversy is back full throttle in a highly polarized nation, Rawlings said, challenging again what is taught in schools and universities.

Rawlings then reviewed how Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell's first president, were definitive about the issue when they created the first "American" university. Rawlings quoted White as writing that the institution "should be under the control of no political party and of no single religious sect." Rawlings then quoted from a letter Ezra Cornell had placed in Sage Hall's cornerstone in 1873, and unearthed just a few years ago...."

Rawlings' quote from Ezra Cornell's letter well summarizes the role of religion in a secular institution and a secular society. Cornell warned "that the principal danger, and I say almost the only danger I see in the future to be encountered by the friends of education, and by all lovers of true liberty is that which may arise from sectarian strife. From these halls, sectarianism must be forever excluded, all students must be left free to worship God, as their conscience shall dictate, and all persons of any creed or all creeds must find free and easy access, and a hearty and equal welcome, to the educational facilities possessed by the Cornell University.....".

Living Proof Ministries vs. Living Proof Inc. - A Clarification

2005-10-20T15:31:00.000-04:00

A correction, an apology, and a developing story : I've withdrawn my story posted here on October 20th due to an inaccuracy : there are apparently two "Living Proof" entities involved in radio broadcasting, and I received an email from a representative of Living Proof Ministries, the nonprofit founded by evangelist Beth Moore, to the effect that Living Proof Ministries and Living Proof Inc. are not legally related entities.

The confusion was somewhat widespread and seems to have originated in an inaccuracy on the WAVM website which identified the competing applicant for the WAVM low power FM broadcast band as the "Living Proof Inc" associated with Beth Moore's "Living Proof" ministry. That was incorrect, and at least two Boston area newspapers also carried stories repeating that inaccurate attribution. My apologies to Beth Moore and Living Proof Ministry for my part in further broadcasting the mistake.

This confusion has proved oddly serendidipitous however, as an exploration into the correct "Living Proof Inc." has revealed a little known and startling avenue by which the Christian right is expanding an ability to bring its message to a wide sector of the American public, even to Massachusetts and on a national scale.

I will be introducing this story, likely in segments, for the upcoming launch of the new Talk to Action website. Stay tuned.

Last Call for Hot NYC Conference on Dominionism

2005-10-19T19:48:00.000-04:00

Some of the best of those who think and write about the Religious Right are convening at the graduate school of the City University of New York this weekend. The occasion is a conference jointly sponsored by CUNY and the New York Open Center It is a rare opportunity to listen to and interact with these exceptionally thoughtful and well informed people.
I am honored to be included among them.

Dominionism, Political Power & the Theocratic Right

Dominionism is an influential form of fundamentalist religion that believes that in order to fulfill biblical prophecy, "godly Christians" must take control of the levers of political and judicial power in America in the near future.... Just how has this religious ideology gained influence in Congress, American political culture, and in shaping U.S. policy in the Middle East and on the environment? What can be done to alert concerned citizens to the theocratic impulse growing in their midst? The goal of this seminar is to examine the power and influence of a religious and political movement that questions the separation of church and state, and that aims to establish a biblical society governed by biblical laws.

Chip Berlet, Senior Analyst, Political Research Associates; co-author, Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort; Frederick Clarkson, author, Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy; Michelle Goldberg, senior writer, Salon.com, Esther Kaplan, author, With God on Their Side: How Christian Fundamentalists Trampled Science, Policy and Democracy in George W. Bush's White House. Chris Hedges, former New York Times reporter and author of Losing Moses on the Freeway: The 10 Commandments in America; Craig Unger, journalist and author whose journey to the Middle East with Tim LaHaye is the subject of a forthcoming article in Vanity Fair.

Friday October 21 7:30-9:30pm & Saturday Oct. 22 10am-6pm $85; $50 students

Friday October 21 7:30-9:30pm $15

Saturday October 22 10am-6pm $75

Click here to register.

UCC President Says Rightist Groups "intent... on destroying our life together" as a Church

2005-10-16T13:18:00.000-04:00

Rev. John Thomas, president of the United Church of Christ acknowledged on Friday what mainline protestant church leaders have been reluctant to address for two decades: the rightist Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD) and allied groups are seeking to undermine if not destroy the mainline Christian churches in the United States.

The conservative movement and parts of the corporate sector have loathed the rise of the social gospel in the mainline churches for a century. They have loathed the social justice traditions that were catalysts for the civil rights movement, women's rights, and principled opposition to the excesses of American foreign policy from Vietnam to Central America. It was the latter that led to the formation of the IRD as a hub of antichurch organizing. Since then, IRD-affiliated "renewal" groups have been at the center of nearly every controversy in mainline Christianity -- most recently, but certainly not exclusively, issues of gay and lesbian equality in church and public life.

Thomas spoke, according to United Church News about groups "within and beyond the UCC" that are "intent on disrupting and destroying our life together."

"Groups like the Evangelical Association of Reformed, Christian and Congregational Churches and the Biblical Witness Fellowship are increasingly being exposed even as they are increasingly aggressive," Thomas said. "Their relationship to the right-wing Instit ute for Religion and Democracy and its long-term agenda of silencing a progressive religious voice while enlisting the church in an unholy alliance with right-wing politics is now longer deniable. United Church of Christ folk like to be 'nice,' to be hospitable. But, to play with a verse of scripture just a bit, we doves innocently entertain these serpents in our midst at our own peril."

UCC seminarian and blogger Chuck Currie has more over at Stree t Prophets. Currie has written about the IRD-affiliated Biblical Witness Fellowship in the past, as have I.

Last year, the IRD and its Association for Church Renewal, (of which the BWT is a member) attacked the UCC for its warmhearted TV ads that had been rejected by the TV networks as "too controversial."

Last summer when the UCC's General Synod endorsed same sex marriage, the Biblical Witness Fellowship (BWT) went ballistic and implied that the UCC is no longer a Christian denomination. Previously, it had called for the resignation of John Thomas.

All of the major denominations as well as the National Council of Churches have been affected by this well-funded, and sustained campaign of attrition over the past two decades.

IRD has received substantial funding and direction over the years, from what some might consider the first couple of theocratic philanthropy, Howard and Roberta Ahmanson who were profiled by journalist Max Blumenthal for Salon.com last year. This article is a must-read for anyone seeking to understand what John Thomas is talking about.

The Ahmansons have reportedly contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to IRD, on whose board Roberta Ahmanson sits. The institute, Blumenfeld reported, has a

"Reforming America's Churches Project, which aims to 'restructure the permanent governing structure' of 'theologically flawed' mainline churches like the Episcopal Church in order to 'discredit and diminish the Religious Left's influence.' This has translated into a three-pronged assault on mainline Presbyterian, Methodist and Episcopal churches. With a staff of media-savvy research specialists, the institute is able to ply both the religious and mainstream media, exploiting divisive social issues within the churches."

It is a good thing that the courageous leader of a major denomination has publicly acknowledged that his denomination is under attack by politically motivated agencies. I hope the UCC and all of the mainline denominations will begin to take a more forceful posture in relation to groups who have abused their standing in tolerant and welcoming communities in order to sew division and discord.

Prophecy Belief and Constitutional Boundaries

2005-10-14T22:25:00.000-04:00

A group of ultraconservative political operatives have harnessed a particular reading of Biblical prophecy, known as Premillenial Dispensationalism, (embraced by tens of millions of evangelical Christians) and transformed these beliefs into campaigns to deny basic rights to groups of people framed as sinful and subversive.

Premillennial means a belief that Jesus Christ returns in the End Times and, after a series of confrontations and battles against evil, he reigns over an earthly utopia for a thousand years…a millennium. Therefore, Christ returns before (“pre”) the Godly millennial kingdom. Dispensations are epochs, or blocks of history, during which certain things happen. Premillennial Dispensationalists think that we are poised on the edge of that historic epoch during which the End Times preface the second coming of Christ and his millennial reign.

A large portion of Christian evangelicals who hold these specific theological beliefs also believe that devout and Godly Christians, before the tremendous confrontations or “Tribulations” that culminate in a huge global Battle of Armageddon, will be spared injury or death when they are brought away from Earth and held in God’s protective embrace in an event called the “Rapture.”

It is easy to poke fun at these types of religious beliefs, but it is deeply offensive and provocative in a way that undermines a serious and important public debate over the proper boundaries for religious belief and public policy decisions.

It is not accurate to dismiss Christians who hold these beliefs as ignorant, uneducated, or crazy. Social scientists have thoroughly refuted these stereotypes with polling data and in-depth interviews. In addition, it is not fair to ask people of faith simply to abandon their beliefs when they step into the Public Square or political arena.

It is also not fair, however, for those in the Religious Right to use God as a trump card in public policy debates.

Premillennial Dispensationalism and a belief in the Rapture have only recently been steered toward a particular ultraconservative agenda. For many decades the evangelicals who held these beliefs were wary of too much political participation, which they saw as pulling them away from their religious obligations and devotions. Most felt that God’s plan for the End Times would reveal itself without the need for political activism. After all, God in the millennial utopia would ultimately reward devout Christians, and this was especially true if they believed the Rapture would protect them from all harm during the End Times confrontations.

In the 1970s a group of right-wing political operatives, seeking to rollback the economic policies and social safety net woven by the Roosevelt Administration, decided to recruit evangelicals into their political movement to take over the Republican Party. In doing so they pushed political debate in our country away from democracy and toward theocracy.

Evangelicals, however, require a Biblically based reason for their actions. Christian Right leaders, including Jerry Falwell, Tim LaHaye, Paul Weyrich, James Dobson, and Pat Robertson, provided the justification by arguing that, according to the Bible, Christians had an obligation to struggle against evil in the political arena, and to purify and restore the sanctity of secular society.

The leaders of the Religious Right mobilized millions by arguing there was no compromise with evil. The political operatives provided long lists of who was evil and how these sinners were subverting God’s plan for America. They presumed to speak for God and country. Moreover, they created a politicized religious movement willing to strip away rights from persons categorized as sinful. This type of demonization and scapegoating is toxic to democracy. It erodes the concept of informed consent and masks prejudice and bigotry with a veneer of religious devotion.

Because the leaders of the Religious Right have mobilized such a large voter base, they regularly have meetings with powerful political leaders, including the President. Today the Religious Right plays a major role in shaping foreign and domestic policies.

We can change this situation. The Religious Right does not speak for all Christians or even all evangelicals. The leaders of the Religious Right sometimes argue for policy positions that make their own followers uncomfortable. In a constitutional democracy, the ideal path for the nation is always open to debate; and the idea of God is too big for small minds to shackle. If we want to defend the Constitution, we must learn the religious beliefs of those evangelicals who dominate the Religious Right, treat them respectfully, and yet engage them in a critical public conversation over the appropriate boundaries for civic political debate set by the founders and framers of our nation.

Ported from Campaign to Defend the Constitution
Visit: Chip Berlet's Blog

Is Bush Seeking to Revive the Religious Test for Public Office?

2005-10-12T14:21:00.000-04:00

The Christian Right of the 18th century didn't like the U.S. Constitution because it did not declare that the U.S. a Christian nation. Not only that, but the Consitution explicitly banned religious tests for public office in Article Six. This set in motion of the disestablishment of the official churches in the colonies that had mostly functioned as little theocracies -- and made the United States the first nation in the history of the world to be founded on religious equality. But the Christian nationalists have never given up.

Now the Bush administration, way down in the polls and facing a conservative revolt over the nomination of Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court is making at least a gesture in the direction of giving the Christian Right one of its dearest goals: the revival of the religious test for public office.

The New York Times reported this morning: "On a radio show being broadcast Wednesday, [religious broadcaster James] Dobson said he discussed Miers with [White House political strategist Karl] Rove on Oct. 1, two days before her nomination was announced. Dobson said Rove told him 'she is from a very conservative church, which is almost universally pro-life,' but denied he had gotten any assurances from the White House that she would vote to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion."

Later in the day, the Campaign to Defend the Constitution (DefCon) issued a blistering statement denouncing the apparent White House collaboration with Christian Right leader James Dobson, head of Focus on the Family. "I am deeply troubled by the appearance that the President is applying a religious litmus test for his judicial appointments," said Isaac Kramnick, professor of government at Cornell University. "Such a test violates the Constitutional prohibition on religious tests as a qualification for public office."

"Since 2002," Kramnick continued, "the President has repeatedly said that he will appoint judges who believe that God is the source of our civil rights. The notion of asking judges to acknowledge a source of law other than – and perhaps higher than - the Constitution is unacceptable. It shatters the fundamental premise of our founders that the Constitution itself is the supreme law of the land."

Later today, an Associated Press story underscored Kramnick's concern: "'People are interested to know why I picked Harriet Miers,' Bush told reporters at the White House. 'Part of Harriet Miers' life is her religion.'"

"Bush, speaking at the conclusion of an Oval Office meeting with visiting Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski, said that his advisers were reaching out to conservatives who oppose her nomination 'just to explain the facts.' He spoke on a day in which conservative James Dobson, founder of Focus on Family, said he had discussed the nominee's religious views with presidential aide Karl Rove."

Meanwhile, according to The Boston Globe, Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, speaking to a Republican group in North Carolina recently, warned of the danger of Islamic theocracy in the United States.

While the dangers of Islamic fundamentalism around the world are certainly not to be minimized, someone needs to tell Gov. Romney that the theocratic movement in the United States is not trending Islamic.

John Danforth & the Christian Right

2005-10-07T00:13:00.000-04:00

Former U.S. Ambassador to the UN, former GOP Senator-- and Episcopal priest -- John Danforth is at it again.

According to a story running on Religion News Service, "Since publishing two confrontational op-ed pieces in The New York Times earlier this year, Danforth has accepted a series of invitations to take his provocative questions on the road. This fall, he's a panelist at Notre Dame, a guest preacher at Harvard and Yale, and a featured speaker for Roman Catholic and Episcopal groups in Washington. Danforth is on a speaking tour denouncing the "divisiveness" of the Christian Right."

"I've been away from (the Senate) for more than 10 years," he said recently at the Memorial church at Harvard University, "and I see politics from a distance. And I'm appalled by what I see.... Right there in the midst of all the partisanship, in the midst of all the nastiness, right there with their wedge issues and litmus tests and extreme rhetoric, right there as the most divisive force in American life, are my fellow Christians."

As encouraging as it is to hear Danforth speaking out, his words are unlikely to have much effect. The power of the Christian Right is not in the divisiveness of their rhetoric, although that is a factor. It is in the political power they have attained -- largely through the effectiveness of their political organizing. What Falwell, Robertson, and Dobson say now is little different, and no more divisive, than what they were saying 20 years ago when Danforth was in the U.S. Senate and not (to my knowledge) speaking out. Since that time, the Christian Right has become the best organized faction in American politics -- and one of the most powerful.

As someone who has been writing and speaking about this subject for almost 25 years, I want to underscore that as important as issues of language are, they are not as important -- not nearly as important -- as issues of power.

I'd like to hear what John Danforth thinks should be done about those.

Roy Moore's Run for Theocrat-In-Chief of Alabama

2005-10-04T21:33:00.000-04:00

Roy Moore has made it official. He is running for the GOP nomination for governor of Alabama. He may also be launching what could become a storied career as one of the most prominent, if cagily, theocratic politicians in America.

His platform as outlined on his campaign web site, might be best described as theocratic populist. Mr. Moore, as is now well-known, abused the office of Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, by secretly commissioning a 2 1/2 ton granite religious monument featuring the Ten Commandments -- and installing it in the state court house.

Moore was looking for a showdown in federal court. He got it, and he lost. And when Federal District Judge Myron Thompson ordered him to remove the religious display, Moore refused. Ultimately Mr. Moore was removed from office; his monument was removed from the courthouse; and he is still kicking and screaming about it.

Moore says public officials have the right to "acknowledge God." Well, all Americans have that right. But Moore, (as Judge Thompson made clear and the appellate courts confirmed), had no right to use the state courthouse to display a religious monument. Moore insists to this day that he has the right to do as he pleases and has made the right of public officials to "acknowledge God as the moral foundation of law, liberty and government," a cornerstone of his platform.

If all this were not disturbing enough, Moore's anti-immigrant, anti-union, anti-gay, anti-abortion, anti-democracy and anti-separation of church and state politics are worthy of national concern. He wants to eviscerate the power of the state legislature by requiring it to meet much less frequently; term-limit legislators; and strengthen the veto power of the governor.

Finally, Moore's politics may be best viewed in terms of his apparent national ambitions. Scholars are already comparing his style to that of the late George Wallace who as governor of Alabama in the 1960s demagogued high-profile segregationist stands into a run for president -- winning four states of the old confederacy as the candidate of the American Independent Party in 1968.

But for now, Moore still needs to get past incumbent Gov. Bob Riley in the June 2006 GOP primary. Will the Ten Commandments Judge act start to wear a little thin? It could. Last year, John Rowland was forced to resign in disgrace as governor of Connecticut in the face of probable impeachment on corruption charges. Roy Moore is no more entitled to call himself "judge" than John Rowland is entitled to call himself "governor." Yet the unrepentant Mr. Moore's campaign slogan is "Judge Roy Moore for Governor of Alabama."

Indeed, Mr. Moore's major accomplishment as an elected public official was to get thrown out of office for defying the order of a federal judge. His campaign bio, which features a long list of awards from Christian Right groups, may be the single most vainglorious resume in recent American political history. But if anyone can pull off this demagogic stunt of a campaign, it's Roy Moore -- who has a national Christian Right fundraising base, and is the best-known pol in Alabama.

Candidate Moore pledges to return Alabama to the people. But what he is really saying is 'turn Alabama over to me.'

If You Think the Religious Right is a Problem....

2005-10-01T18:29:00.000-04:00

There are lots of things to be done.

One of the first things to do --- is to learn more about it.

The Christian Right is one of the most successful political movements in American history. Yet people's level of literacy about the subject is often, well, shockingly low. The Christian Right is the dominant faction in the GOP. There are reasons for that. But few seem to know what those reasons are. If we are going to have intelligent conversations about all this, let alone be able to have coherent discussions about what to do, we need to have more people who share a common base of knowledge and the language necessary to have meaningful conversations. After many years, I know that useful knowledge and conversation in this area can be hard to come by.

So here is my up-by-the-bootstraps, do-it-yourself program for coming up to speed: books, magazines, conferences, videos, blogging -- and a radical idea.

Pick any three books: Among general interest books, I will certainly recommend my own. Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy; but also Facing the Wrath by Sara Diamond; The Most Dangerous Man in America and Why the Religious Right is Wrong, both by Robert Boston. Current hot and excellent books are With God on Their Side by Esther Kaplan, Losing Moses on the Freeway: The Ten Commandments in America by Chris Hedges; and The Republican War on Science, by Chris Mooney. For the academically inclined: Rightwing Populism: Too Close for Comfort by Chip Berlet and Matthew Lyons; Roads to Dominion, by Sara Diamond; and With God on Our Side, by William Martin.

Pick one or both magazines: Church & State; The Public Eye. (Yes, other publications cover the religious right periodically and well. Most recently Harpers has had some important coverage, and an upcoming issue of Mother Jones has good stuff. Max Blumenthal's articles in the The Nation online are not to be missed, nor are Bill Berkowitz columns for Working Assets. But for regular coverage, its the monthly Church & State and the quarterly Public Eye.)

Read Blogs devoted to this subject: Talk to Action, DefCon blog; Dark Christianity, Religious Right Watch, Frederick Clarkson, Chip Berlet, and for more general discussions of politics and religion, Street Prophets.

Attend Conferences: These are, unfortunately, few and far between. The Texas Freedom Network has one going on this weekend. The National Cathedral in Washington, DC has a good looking conference October 13-15 that is mostly about progressive religious values, (which is not really to be confused with learning about the religious right, but there will be some of that). And finally, there is one focused on understanding the Christian Right, sponsored by the Graduate Program at the City Univeristy of New York and the New York Open Center.

Dominionism, Political Power & the Theocratic Right

Dominionism is an influential form of fundamentalist religion that believes that in order to fulfill biblical prophecy, "godly Christians" must take control of the levers of political and judicial power in America in the near future.... Just how has this religious ideology gained influence in Congress, American political culture, and in shaping U.S. policy in the Middle East and on the environment? What can be done to alert concerned citizens to the theocratic impulse growing in their midst? The goal of this seminar is to examine the power and influence of a religious and political movement that questions the separation of church and state, and that aims to establish a biblical society governed by biblical laws.

Chip Berlet, Senior Analyst, Political Research Associates; co-author, Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort; Frederick Clarkson, author, Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy; Michael Northcott, teaches Christian Ethics, University of Edinburgh, Scotland; author, An Angel Directs the Storm: Apocalyptic Religion and American Empire; Esther Kaplan, author, With God on Their Side: How Christian Fundamentalists Trampled Science, Policy and Democracy in George W. Bush's White House.

Friday October 21 7:30-9:30pm & Saturday Oct. 22 10am-6pm $85; $50 students

Friday October 21 7:30-9:30pm $15

Saturday October 22 10am-6pm $75

Click here to register.

View and Discuss Videos & DVDs: A DVD of highlights from a previous CUNY conference from last April Examining the Agenda of the Religious Far Right is available for $19.95. It features Karen Armstrong, Joan Bokaer, Joseph Hough, Robert Edgar, Hugh Urban, Chip Berlet and Frederick Clarkson. (212) 219-2527 / info@opencenter.org. Theocracy Watch has produced a very useful educational piece which is available on video or DVD. It can be downloaded for free or ordered by mail. Why not get a group of people together for a showing and discussion?

Consider a Radical Idea: Follow the above program and then do the same thing with religious right sources. Its a good thing to have some direct experiences of the people, books, periodicals and events of the religious right. In fact, I would argue that there is no substitute for it. One of these days, I will write up a beginner's program for how to do this.

But in the meantime, try some or all of the above. Ideally, do them with others, perhaps as a reading and discussion group. I would add that when we launch the scoop-based version of Talk to Action, the above resources will be listed along with others, and whenever there are interesting events, we will announce them -- and of course chew over whatever happens. Many of the people mentioned in this post will be frequent contributors at Talk to Action. You can think of it as a rolling conference on the religious right and what to do about it; how to talk about it; comparing notes on what works, what doesn't, and why. We want to learn lessons from our mistakes and failures. And we want to celebrate and tell the stories of our victories -- and it will be important to have many such celebrations, won't it? As I often say, this is one of the central struggles of our time.

DefCon: Campaign to Defend the Constitution

2005-09-30T12:27:00.000-04:00

There is a new major effort to combat the Religious Right that is trying to be respectful of spiritual belief, yet sharply critical of Dominionism and Theocracy.

Launched only a few days ago, the website is a combination resource center and blog that proclaims:

"The Campaign to Defend the Constitution combats the growing influence of the religious right over American democracy, education, and scientific progress and leadership."

As one post explained:

"We are dealing with a powerful group driven by a specific agenda, who seek to control many different facets of our culture. As their power has grown, the religious right has alienated, frightened, or infuriated millions of Americans along the way. DefCon is here to unite these Americans. Regardless of what drove you to fight the religious right, it is imperative we realize that advancements of their agenda anywhere increase their power everywhere."

DefCon has already sent a letter to all 50 governors urging them to "keep science curricula based on science, not religious rhetoric." The group has published "Islands of Ignorance: The Top 10 Places Where Science Education is Under Threat."

Everyone concerned about the Religious Right, defending the Constitution, and respecting separation of religion and state should log on, join the debate, and make a donation. I plan to do all three.

OK, so I seem to be contradicting my last post. But when a new idea comes along that changes reality, I get to change my tune.

DefCon: Campaign to Defend the Constitution

Ported from Chip Berlet's Blog

What to Do About Bill Bennett's Racist Remarks?

2005-09-30T12:21:00.000-04:00

Sarah Posner has published a well-researched piece at The Gadflyer, about the Salem Communications radio empire that carries a vast array of conservative programming. Here is an excerpt:

"Michigan Democrat John Conyers has written a letter to the Salem Radio Network," writes Posner, "requesting that it suspend Bill Bennett's program for his outrageous remarks that '[Y]ou could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down."' But who owns Salem, and what do you think they're going to do about Bennett?"

"Salem Radio Network's parent company is Salem Communications, a publicly traded media company which openly claims its programming is from a conservative Christian perspective. The company owns over 100 radio stations in major metropolitan markets and syndicates its programming to 1,900 stations around the country.

"Salem's principals, CEO Ed Atsinger and his brother-in-law and Board Chairman Stuart Epperson (himself a radio host), are long-time patrons of the Christian right and its favored Republican candidates and causes."

Much more.

Its Time to Fight the Religious Right

2005-09-29T22:52:00.000-04:00

DefCon, the Campaign to Defend the Constitution, officially launched today.

The campaign promises to aggressively challenge the religious right on the facts and the law. One defining characteristic of DefCon's approach -- is that it has apparently made a clean break with the dubious Inside-the-Beltway driven tactic of name calling. A failed effort over many years relied on focus-group derived labels such as "radical religious extremists" rather than clear, forceful arguments and messages. This is very good news and offers hope of the development of a far more productive strategy to persuade the American people that theocracy is not the direction we want to go.

Duke University Law Professor Erwin Chemerinsky writing at the DefCon Blog says its "Time To Fight the Religious Right"
"I believe that the greatest threat to liberty in the United States is posed by the religious right, largely comprised of Christian fundamentalists. Across a broad spectrum of issues they want to move the law in a radically more conservative direction, ultimately threatening our freedom."

DefCon (aka, Campaign to Defend the Constitution) released a report titled Islands of Ignorance, describing the threat to American science education in ten states and localities where "intelligent design" is being promoted by the religious right as an alternative to evolution. DefCon also released a letter, signed by leading scientists, clergy, Nobel Laureates and others, urging the governors of all 50 states to work to stop the erosion of American science education.

Specifically, we are concerned about efforts to supplement or replace the teaching of evolution in our public schools with religious dogma or unscientific speculation. Science classes should help provide our children with the tools and scientific literacy they need to succeed in a 21st century economy.

We are well aware of studies showing American children falling behind those of other nations in their knowledge and understanding of science. We certainly will not be able to close this gap if we substitute ideology for fact in our science classrooms – limiting students' understanding of a scientific concept as critical as evolution for ideological reasons.

We do not oppose exposing our children to philosophical and spiritual discussion around the origin and meaning of life. There are appropriate venues for such discussion – but not in the context of teaching science in a public school science classroom.

We have come together – people of science and people of faith – for the sake of our children and the competitiveness of our country, to urge you to ensure that:

· Science curricula, state science standards, and teachers emphasize evolution in a manner commensurate with its importance as a unifying concept in science and its overall explanatory power.

· Science teachers in your state are not advocating any religious interpretations of nature and are nonjudgmental about the personal beliefs of students.

· There are no requirements to teach "creation science" or related concepts such as "intelligent design," or to "teach the controversy" – implying that there is legitimate scientific debate about evolution when there is not. Teachers should not be pressured to promote nonscientific views or to diminish or eliminate the study of evolution.

· Publishers of science textbooks should not be required or volunteer to include disclaimers in textbooks that distort or misrepresent the methodology of science and the current body of knowledge concerning the nature and study of evolution.

Our nation's future rests, as always, in the hands of our children. We hope to have your commitment to ensure that our schools teach science, not ignorance, to our children as they prepare the next generation for the challenges of a new century.

Roy Moore to Make a "Major Announcement"

2005-09-28T23:22:00.000-04:00

Roy Moore, the disgraced former Chief Judge of the Alabama Supreme Court is thinking of making a comeback -- a run for the GOP nomination for governor of Alabama in 2006. According to the web site We Need Moore, the web site of the Draft Roy Moore campaign (backed by Conservative Christians of Alabama), Mr. Moore will make his intentions known in what is described as "a major announcement" on Monday, October 3 at 1:00pm in Gadsen, Alabama, Moore's hometown. "This will be an historic occasion," according to We Need Moore. "The eyes of the nation are upon Alabama. We need a crowd to show support for Judge Roy Moore and the media that we have strength. Ya'll come and bring a carload."

Moore, popularly known as the "Ten Commandments Judge" is thought to be a serious contender against the business oriented incumbent Republican governor, Bob Riley. Moore is also said to be seeking to field a full slate of candidates for statewide office.

On the Democratic side, the Associated Press reports that current Lt. Gov. Lucy Baxley is expected to square off against former Gov. Don Sielgleman.

Moore is best known for installing a two and a half ton monument to the Ten Commandments in the state courthouse, shortly after his election as Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court. A federal judge declared that the monument was religious display that violated the constitutional separation of church and state and ordered Roy's rock removed. Moore refused to remove the monument and was subsequently removed from office. In so doing, he became a national hero of the Christian Right, and a central figure in far right efforts to undermine the federal judiciary.

As much as many Christian Right pols are a departure from the golf club Republicanism of much of the latter 20th century, Moore is a further departure, representing an overtly and confrontationally theocratic politics -- reminiscent of the pugnacious populism of former Gov. George Wallace.

The Birmingham News recently reported about one of Moore's recent appearances at a church in Ozark, Alabama: "More than 200 people filled the green pews of the Glory to Him Church to hear Roy Moore preach about God and government on a humid Thursday night. "We will always be one nation under God. No federal court, no federal government, no state government can deny it," Moore thundered. "Amen" the crowd answered back.

New Group to Fight the Religious Right Online

2005-09-27T21:06:00.000-04:00

DefCon, short for Campaign to Defend the Constitution: Because the Religious Right is Wrong, is a promising new Washington, DC-based internet campaign modeled on the success of MoveOn.com.

I have had a few advance peeks while it was in development, so I can attest that considerable thought has gone into its creation. DefCon says that "Americans deserve all the freedoms and rights promised in the Constitution. We cannot let religious zealots turn back the clock on civil rights, privacy, scientific progress, and quality education."

So check them out. They've got a good daily summary of articles on the controversy over intelligent design; and useful profiles of some religious right leaders.

Here is some of the press release about the official launch planned for Thursday:

New Online Campaign Launched Against Religious Right

Report Thursday Will Highlight Top Ten "Islands of Ignorance"
Where Teaching Evolution Is Threatened

The Campaign to Defend the Constitution will release a letter on Thursday to all fifty governors signed by Nobel laureates, other leading scientists and scores of clergy, calling on the states to ensure that science classes teach evolution and base curricula on established science, not ideology.

The Campaign will also release a report highlighting the top ten "Islands of
Ignorance" around the country where science education is under attack.

These announcements are the first actions of the newly formed Campaign to Defend the Constitution (DefCon), an online grassroots movement to combat the threat posed by the religious right to American democracy, public education and scientific leadership. The Campaign is led by prominent national scientists, legal scholars and clergy......

The Campaign's Advisory Board includes such notable leaders as:

Bruce Alberts, former President of the National Academy of Sciences
Francisco Ayala, former President and Chairman of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
Ira Glasser, former Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union
Rev. James Lawson, former President of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference
Harold Varmus, former Director of the National Institutes of Health
Erwin Chemerinsky, Professor of Constitutional Law, Duke School of Law

The launch of DefCon coincides with the start of the trial in Dover, PA over a school board mandate to teach intelligent design as an alternative to evolution.

I will be a guest blogger at the DefCon blog from time-to-time, in addition to launching Talk to Action over the next little while.

The tide is turning, folks. We are adding a focused, netroots capacity for taking on the religious right that we have not had before. DefCon officially launches on Thursday. Talk to Action launches soon.

And you are invited.

Evolution: Just a Guess?

2005-09-25T23:48:00.002-04:00

The blog Religion Clause has great primer for what is shaping up as a classic court case over the teaching of evolution or intelligent design in science classes. The federal trial begins Monday Sept 26th in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania regarding the "Dover Area School District's policy on intelligent design. Intelligent design has become a flash point in the war over the role of religion in American society, and Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District seems destined to become a symbolic battle..... At the heart of the case is a statement that the school district requires biology teachers to read to ninth-grade students:

The Pennsylvania Academic Standards require students to learn about Darwin's theory of evolution and eventually to take a standardized test of which evolution is a part. Because Darwin's theory is a theory, it continues to be tested as new evidence is discovered. The theory is not a fact. Gaps in the theory exist for which there is no evidence. A theory is defined as a well-tested explanation that unifies a broad range of observations. Intelligent design is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin's view. The reference book, "Of Pandas and People," is available for students who might be interested in gaining an understanding of what intelligent design actually involves. With respect to any theory, students are encouraged to keep an open mind. The school leaves the discussion of the origins of life to individual students and their families. As a standards-driven district, class instruction focuses upon preparing students to achieve proficiency on standards-based assessments.

No doubt one aspect of the case will be the religious right's slippery use of language. One key argument in the religious rights's grab bag is that the theory of evolution is well, "just a theory" and that other "theories" such as intelligent design, deserve to be presented in the name of academic freedom. The New York Times recently published a set of F.A.Q.s about evolution borrowed from a pamphlet used by the Museum of the Earth in Ithaca, NY as part of their staff training program.

Is evolution 'just a theory'? A "theory" in science is a structure of related ideas that explains one or more natural phenomena and is supported by observations from the natural world; it is not something less than a "fact." Theories actually occupy the highest, not the lowest, rank among scientific ideas. ... Evolution is a "theory" in the same way that the idea that matter is made of atoms is a theory. Is it true that there is lots of evidence against evolution? No. Essentially all available data and observations from the natural world support the hypothesis of evolution. No serious biologist or geologist today doubts whether evolution occurred.

Values, Culture and Politics

2005-09-24T03:41:00.000-04:00

Who's afraid of freedom and tolerance? Why are fundamentalists so frightened by liberal family values? A look at competing worldviews, by Doug Muder, is the cover story in the Fall issue of UU World magazine, published by the Unitarian Universalist Association.

For those seeking to find progressive religious "values-based" approaches to understanding and responding to conservative evangelicalism, it is an interesting and important read. Muder makes a spirited and convincing case that conservative values hold no distinct advantage for the family or for anything else, and that statistics on such matters as divorce and pornography bear him out.
He calls for greater understanding of conservatives and better articulation of progressive religious values as essential in the culture war. Here is an excerpt:

"It is tempting, human, and (to an extent) inevitable for religious liberals to respond with our own feelings of persecution, helplessness, and anger. But in doing so, we fall into the vicious cycle of polarization: Our anger feeds their sense of persecution just as theirs feeds ours.

We have a way out of this cycle: a message of hope that the Right cannot match. Our way of life works in this new world and does not demand that we roll history back. We need to broadcast this Liberal Good News loud and clear.

But in order to communicate our message, we need to understand the anger and helplessness of the Christian Right, so that we can cut through the static that jams our signal. We need to talk about more than freedom and choice; we need to explain why we want freedom and choice. We need to talk about the committed life and how committed liberals escape the superficiality and nihilism that the Right fears and assumes we represent.

We need, in short, to reclaim one of Christianity's best ideas and hardest practices: We need to love our enemies and to bless with hope those who curse us with anger. Such love and such blessing would not be a signal of weakness or an overture to surrender, but rather a portent that we had found the true power of our religious heritage. Armed with that power, we can win these culture wars. Without it, we may not deserve to."

While I agree with much of the article, I think there is a problem, well more of a limitation, I suppose, with this approach. And its not unique to this article -- it's a limitation endemic to liberalism across the board in the U.S. The article substitutes the idea of "values" and "message" for political strategy and electoral activism -- when there is a need for both. Love and understanding and good message are not to be confused or conflated with recruiting and fielding good candidates, mobilizing voters and winning elections. There is no evidence that reframing of values, and coming up with better articulations of those values taken by themselves, affect electoral behavior or electoral outcomes.

That said, I do think that people of liberal or progressive values can and should better understand conservatives of all sorts. They should also, as Chip Berlet has persuasively argued in several essays here at Talk to Action -- stop the pointless and counterproductive demonization of conservative Christians. There are those who think that calling conservatives names like "religious political extremists" is smart politics. But this focus-grouped, inside-the-beltway-manufactured style of sloganeering has often substituted for having an actual political and electoral strategy in response to the Christian Right. I think the current composition of Congress ought to give anyone who thinks this stuff is a good idea, considerable pause.

Let me be blunt: there is no substitute for direct engagement as a citizens in electoral politics. Electoral politics is citizenship. It is here that our major civic conversations take place, and choices are made for our communities by electing our governmental representatives to office at all levels. It is the nature of electoral politics that there is some conflict as people differ about what choices should be made -- and by whom. This is normal, and valuable. The avoidance of this conflict means abandoning the playing field to the far-better organized Christian Right.

The Christian Right political movement is crystal clear about this -- and works across the election cycle to build for power sufficient to make their values real in public policy. Liberal and progressive organizations, with a few exceptions, (notably Neighbor-to-Neighbor and Progressive Democrats of Massachusetts), are not so engaged.

Politics begins, but does not end with values. "Message," whether a message of love and understanding, or ruthless labeling and demonization, is only one dimension of political life in our constitutional democracy. A key to the success of the Christian right has been the way that it has integrated participation in civic and electoral life with their values. In fact, that participation is a value in itself. There is no liberal or for that matter, Democratic, "message" that will make much, if any electoral difference, absent a major retooling of our approach to electoral politics.

Crossposted at FrederickClarkson.com.

Repealing One Civil Right at a Time

2005-09-23T13:50:00.000-04:00

Two weeks ago Paul Pressler, the architect of the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention, described how the Religious Right intended to deal with Roe v. Wade. After expressing his elation with the selection of John Roberts as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court he said, "Roe v. Wade won't be revoked, it will die the death of a thousand cuts and qualifications and regulations until it gradually disappears."

I suspect that Pressler has described the Religious Right's strategy for dealing with more than Roe v. Wade. They are already applying the same strategy to repealing the First Amendment and civil rights legislation.

One of the most egregious examples is the authorization that congress gave churches and religious groups to discriminate in hiring yesterday. Churches and religious groups have always been free to discriminate in their hiring when they were spending money received from private donations. Yesterday congress authorized them to discriminate in hiring with the money they receive from federal grants.

First, this administration opened the flood gates for churches and religious groups to receive billions of dollars from the federal treasury. Now they are permitting the churches and religious groups to ignore laws protecting the civil rights of minorities when using that federal money. Already they have seized on hurricane Katrina as an opportunity to distribute more federal money to faith-based organizations and give vouchers to private and religious schools.

It's not hard to see what is happening here if you just ignore their pious sounding rhetoric and look at the reality of what they are doing. They are slowly creating an established church. It is being established not by a direct act of congress (that would violate the First Amendment which says "congress shall pass no laws respecting the establishment of religion"), but indirectly by government appropriations. Christian churches and religious groups are being funded while minority faiths, with tokens here and there for the Jews, are being marginalized as a matter of public policy.

A good example of this establishment of religion by appropriation is taking place in Houston. A couple weeks ago Texas State Representative Garnet Coleman told participants at an Americans United forum that Second Baptist Houston "bought" the right to direct relief efforts for the victims of Hurricane Katrina in the city. He said they came in with a million dollars and offered it for the relief efforts on the condition that they take control of the effort. He also indicated that the church's much publicized assent to work with the interfaith community was forced upon them by the mayor of Houston. Coleman asked, "Why is this church that never showed an interest in helping the poor in the past suddenly interested in leading this effort?" He answered, "They are making an investment. They know that billions of dollars are going to be funneled into this and they are the ones who will be in position to control it."

By the time the graft, corruption and injustice of what is now being done in the name of "faith-based initiatives" and "hurricance relief" is widely known and publicized, the Supreme Court will be stacked with jurists who will deny minority rights and interpret the constitution to mean that Christianity has always been the established religion of our nation.

This entry is cross-posted from the Mainstream Baptist weblog.

Remembering Christian Realism

2005-09-22T09:41:00.002-04:00

Sunday's New York Times published an essay on "Forgetting Reinhold Niebuhr" by Arthur Schlesinger Jr. that deserves wide circulation. Niebuhr described his political philosophy as a "Christian Realism" and it corrected the modernist underestimation of human sin and fallibility that was in vogue prior to World War II.

Hopefully Schlesinger's essay will remind American Christians of the rich and mature heritage of theologically informed political thought that existed before the moral majority and Christian coalition took over the public square. Here's the conclusion to Schlesinger's essay:

The last lines of "The Irony of American History," written in 1952, resound more than a half-century later. "If we should perish, the ruthlessness of the foe would be only the secondary cause of the disaster. The primary cause would be that the strength of a giant nation was directed by eyes too blind to see all the hazards of the struggle; and the blindness would be induced not by some accident of nature or history but by hatred and vainglory."

This entry is cross posted from the Mainstream Baptist weblog

Blogging Religion and Politics

2005-09-21T00:21:00.000-04:00

Religion and politics is a hot topic these days. And one of the very best places to talk about it online will be a new site called Street Prophets. Some of the names over there will be familiar to readers over here. Its the first of a promised series of "spin-off" sites related to The Daily Kos, and the effort is led by pastordan, who is also one of the founders of Talk to Action, which is still inching along to launch into a fully interactive site that will function much like Street Prophets.

So what's the difference?

"Street Prophets is a place to talk about faith and politics," writes pastordan. "That's it. You're welcome to hang around here, on the condition that you're not a jerk or a hater."

At Talk to Action, we will focus on the religious right as a political movement, and what to do about it. That's it. (We will have somewhat more detailed site guidelines, although avoiding jerks and haters will be important over there too.)

Street Prophets lists Talk to Action as among the "friends of the blog." And indeed we are.

Richard Lands an Oxymoron

2005-09-17T21:41:00.000-04:00

Richard Land, a honcho over at the Southern Baptist Convention has been a pivotal figure in the building of the theocratic movement in the United State for a generation. But in a recent speech reported by The Baptist Press, noted by the fine legal blog Religion Clause he has also made a significant contribution to the wider culture by his high-profile use of an oxymoron.

Dr. Land's distinct, albeit inadvertent, contribution to the culture is not entirely original. Dr. Bruce Prescott of Mainstream Baptist reports that several speakers used the term. However Land gets the credit, because I happened to realize its significance when I read his use of the term. Land's contribution joins the list of such classics as jumbo shrimp, final draft, saying nothing, hot chili, industrial park, junk food, plastic glasses, working vacation, computer jock, incomplete stop, natural additives and, of course, cheap gas.

Drum roll please:

badda badda badda badda badda badda badda badda boom!

Secular Fundamentalist

Ta Da!~

The occasion for Dr. Land's contribution to our culture was his twistedly preposterous argument that "The greatest threat to religious freedom in America are secular fundamentalists who want to ghetto-ize religious faith and make the wall of separation between church and state a prison wall keeping religious voices out of political discourse."

There is no suppression of religious voices in American political discourse. This is variation on the same strawman the Christian Right has been relentlessly knocking down for a generation. What Land and his theocratic cohort don't like is religious equality and separation of church and state. For government to be the protector of the rights of all in religiously diverse society, it cannot be in the business of forming alliances with various sects and coalitions of sects to promote their interests; or promoting religion or religious practices.

Land and the theocratic movement are desperate to claim that there is religious persecution in the U.S. and the stifling of religious expression. This desperation is well-exemplified by their use of term "secular fundamentalist," which is being used to tar the values of those who actually stand for religious freedom; and to reinterpret the Constitution and American history to advance their contemporary political and religious goals.

Newdow's Case to Return to Supreme Court

2005-09-16T11:18:00.000-04:00

Michael Newdow's challenge to forcing school children to recite "under God" in the pledge of allegiance will soon be back before the Supreme Court.

Last year the Supreme Court dismissed the case on a technicality. Newdow refiled the case with new complainants and a District Court in California has upheld the findings of the previous Newdow decision.

This case is the most egregious example of the duplicitous witness of evangelical Christians in American history.

In court, evangelical Christians will argue that the words "under God" do not violate the First Amendment prohibition against establishing a religion because the words have "no significant religious content." In other words, "under God" in the pledge of allegiance does precisely what is proscribed in the ten commandments when men are commanded to not take the name of the Lord God in vain and make it meaningless.

In public, evangelical Christians will argue that the words "under God" refer to the Divine and lament that the courts are persecuting people of faith and trying to kick God out of the public square.

The only prominent figure on the right who does not engage in doublespeak on this issue is Judge Roy Moore. He is open and honest about expressing his belief that Christianity is the established religion of the United States and that the words "under God" in the pledge of allegiance mean something.

Although I strongly disagree with Moore about the U.S. having an established religion, I strongly concur with his admission that the words "under God" in the pledge of allegiance have religious meaning. They are not symbols of "ceremonial Deism," they are intended to express religious content, and for evangelical lawyers to argue otherwise is an outright lie -- which violates the prohibition in the ten commandments against bearing false witness.

What is the value of breaking two of God's commandments in order to force children to mouth the words "under God" at school?

This entry is cross-posted from the Mainstream Baptist blog.

Technorati Tags Politics, Newdow, church and state, under God, Supreme Court, Religion

Conference on Dominionism, Oct. 21-22

2005-09-13T07:14:00.000-04:00

Last spring, the Graduate Program of the City University of New York and the New York Open Center, co-sponsored an important conference on the theocratic Christian Right. I was pleased to be among the speakers, and am honored to be participating in the follow-up conference -- along with fellow Talk to Action writers, Chip Berlet and Esther Kaplan -- who will be joining us soon.

Here is some info about the event, and a link to where you can get registration info.

Dominionism, Political Power & the Theocratic Right

Dominionism is an influential form of fundamentalist religion that believes that in order to fulfill biblical prophecy, "godly Christians" must take control of the levers of political and judicial power in America in the near future.... Just how has this religious ideology gained influence in Congress, American political culture, and in shaping U.S. policy in the Middle East and on the environment? What can be done to alert concerned citizens to the theocratic impulse growing in their midst? The goal of this seminar is to examine the power and influence of a religious and political movement that questions the separation of church and state, and that aims to establish a biblical society governed by biblical laws.

Chip Berlet, Senior Analyst, Political Research Associates; co-author, Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort; Frederick Clarkson, author, Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy; Michael Northcott, teaches Christian Ethics, University of Edinburgh, Scotland; author, An Angel Directs the Storm: Apocalyptic Religion and American Empire; Esther Kaplan, author, With God on Their Side: How Christian Fundamentalists Trampled Science, Policy and Democracy in George W. Bush's White House.

Friday October 21 7:30-9:30pm & Saturday Oct. 22 10am-6pm $85; $50 students

Friday October 21 7:30-9:30pm $15

Saturday October 22 10am-6pm $75

A DVD of highlights from the previous conference Examining the Agenda of the Religious Far Right is available for $19.95. It features Karen Armstrong, Joan Bokaer, Joseph Hough, Robert Edgar, Hugh Urban, Chip Berlet and Frederick Clarkson.

Democrats, Religion, and Rhetoric

2005-09-12T18:18:00.000-04:00

Less than a third of Americans think the Democratic Party is friendly toward religion. According to a Pew Research Center poll conducted in July of 2005, only 29% of those surveyed thought Democrats were "religion-friendly;" down from 40% in 2004. More than half of those surveyed--55%--thought the Republicans were friendly toward religion.

At the same time, 45% of those polled thought that “religious conservatives” had too much control over the Republican Party, while 44% thought that “non-religious liberals” had too much control over the Democratic Party.

These results can be interpreted in many ways, but I think they show that the Democratic Party and its allies need to spend more time thinking about how the average American perceives their attitude toward religion.

In reality, millions of people of faith are loyal Democrats. In the past few years, however, many Democratic Party leaders have demonstrated their inability to discuss religion, politics, and the Christian Right using language that teaches rather than trashes. Every week I get postal mail and e-mail solicitations for donations that use demonizing buzz phrases such as “Radical Religious Right,” or “Religious Political Extremist.” That type of rhetoric may scare some people into writing checks in the short run, but it makes it harder in the long run for grassroots organizers to build a broad-based movement for social change that includes people in progressive, liberal, and centrist religious groups.

I do worry about the Christian Right. I worry about separation of church and state. I worry about theocracy and the tendency toward Dominionism that leads some in the Christian Right to seek a form of Christian nationalism that would rewrite Consitutional protections for those with whom they disagree or see as sinful. Frankly, George W. Bush scares me. He owes the Christian Right a bunch of political favors for their electoral support, and he has been delivering.

Most Christian evangelicals, however, are not part of the Christian Right. I know from talking with evangelicals and fundamentalists across the country that they are offended by the rhetoric from some liberal and Democratic Party leaders who do not seem to be able to talk about religion without chewing on their foot.

I have this fantasy about kidnapping a busload of liberal inside-the-beltway pundits and driving them to some town in Middle America where they have to learn how to talk to voters who think that going to a church, or synagogue, or mosque or other place of worship is a normal part of life. The pundits won’t be given a ticket back to Dupont Circle until they don’t flinch when someone says words like “faith,” “prayer,” or “blessing.”

I suspect some will have to walk back to the Potomac.

Like I said, it’s just a fantasy, but rhetoric is important. If we are to change the perception that Democrats are not friendly to religion, then a good first step is changing language that is offensive.

Ported from Chip Berlet's Blog

Bill Moyers on Confronting the Christian Right

2005-09-10T00:13:00.000-04:00

Bill Moyers delivered a powerful address at Union Theological Seminary in New York last week. He drew on central themes of American and Chrisian history to offer perspectives on what Americans need to do to come to grips with the dangerous, anti-democratic Christian Right.

An edited version appears on TomPaine.com.

Its worth sitting down to read Moyers'speech with a cup of coffee, a notebook, and a mind to figure out how we can preserve the best of constitutional democracy in our time, against the most dangerously anti-democratic movement to come along since the McCarthy era. Here is an excerpt to get your mind warmed-up for a stirring read:

"At the Central Baptist Church in Marshall, Texas, where I was baptized in the faith, we believed in a free church in a free state. I still do. My spiritual forbears did not take kindly to living under theocrats who embraced religious liberty for themselves but denied it to others. 'Forced worship stinks in God's nostrils,' thundered the dissenter Roger Williams as he was banished from Massachusetts for denying Puritan authority over his conscience.

In l651 the Baptist Obadiah Holmes was given 30 stripes with a three-corded whip after he violated the law and took forbidden communion with another Baptist in Lynn, Massachusetts. His friends offered to pay his fine for his release but he refused. They offered him strong drink to anesthetize the pain of the flogging. Again he refused. It is the love of liberty, he said, 'that must free the soul.'

Such revolutionary ideas made the new nation with its Constitution and Bill of Rights 'a haven for the cause of conscience.' No longer could magistrates order citizens to support churches they did not attend and recite creeds that they did not believe. No longer would 'the loathsome combination of church and state' -- as Thomas Jefferson described it--be the settled order. Unlike the Old World that had been wracked with religious wars and persecution, the government of America would take no sides in the religious free-for-all that liberty would make possible and politics would make inevitable.

The First Amendment neither inculcates religion nor inoculates against it. Americans could be loyal to the Constitution without being hostile to God, or they could pay no heed to God without fear of being mugged by an official God Squad. It has been a remarkable arrangement that guaranteed 'soul freedom.'.....

Democrats are divided and paralyzed, afraid that if they take on the organized radical right they will lose what little power they have. Trying to learn to talk about God as Republicans do, they're talking gobbledygook, compromising the strongest thing going for them -- the case for a moral economy and the moral argument for the secular checks and balances that have made America 'a safe haven for the cause of conscience.'

As I look back on the conflicts and clamor of our boisterous past, one lesson about democracy stands above all others: Bullies--political bullies, economic bullies and religious bullies--cannot be appeased; they have to be opposed with a stubbornness to match their own. This is never easy; these guys don't fight fair; Robert's Rules of Order is not one of their holy texts. But freedom on any front -- and especially freedom of conscience -- never comes to those who rock and wait, hoping someone else will do the heavy lifting."

Anti-Abortion "Emergency" Mocks Real Needs

2005-09-05T10:54:00.000-04:00

By Cyn Cooper

Missouri is about to enter into a political exercise that mocks the tragedies in New Orleans by its wholesale anti-abortion political pandering.

Governor Matt Blunt of Missouri called a special "Emergency Session" of the state legislature. What's the emergency? Housing for Katrina survivors? Terrorists? Strapped schools? Oil prices?

No, the emergency, says Governor Blunt, is that teenagers might cross state lines to get an abortion. According to the Kansas City Star, Blunt said the Legislature's failure to approve anti-abortion measures in May poses "an immediate danger to the public health, safety and welfare" of Missouri residents.

At a projected cost of $100,000, the state legislature will convene immediately following Labor Day to consider anti-abortion legislation that the state failed to pass in its regular session.

The legislation, SB 2, shouldn't be passed in any scenario or any session. That the session is opening now when people across the country are seeing the real devastation of real emergencies is simply sick.

One measure will make anyone liable for giving information to a teenager who then gets an abortion out-of-state, including across the bridge from St. Louis in Illinois. This gag order could shut down a Clergy Consultation Service, said Rev. Rebecca Turner, executive director of the Missouri Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice.

Anyone who actually helps a teen go across state lines can be sued, even for loaning a car. [9-10-05 -- I originally said they could go to prison, but Rev. Turner kindly corrected me on that.] The idea, it seems, is to force teens to navigate on their own, not unlike those left behind for days on the Gulf Coast.

The U.S. Supreme Court has said that teens can go to court and present their situation to a judge if they can't get consent from their parents and a state requires it. Missouri wants to make that harder, too, by limiting adult assistance to a teen who needs to go to court. Oh ... the law may allow an exception if the teen is an incest survivor.

The state is also expected to pass miles of red-tape that will make it harder, if not impossible, for clinics in the state to operate. They will be declared ambulatory surgery centers, and must have hospital privileges within 30 miles. [Update 9-10-05: I originally thought the teen consent called for 15 years in prison, but it's doctors who do abortions but have hospital privileges beyond 30 miles. Abortion doctors travel long distances because providers are scarce. LEgal abortion is one of the safest medical procedures in any medical catalog.) This 'regulate-them-off-the-map' strategy of the anti-abortion movement, first started by a rabid anti-abortion group, Life Dynamics in Texas, doesn't seem to bother the right-wingers, who argue at every other turn against government regulation.

In fact, like Gov. Blunt, many wrap their warped concepts into the thin cloth that they are helping women. That's the so-called "health and welfare" emergency in Missouri. But, where is the emergency contraception that women really want? And the support for birth control, asks Planned Parenthood of Kansas and MidMissouri?

Planned Parenthood of MidMissouri has a petition online to oppose this measure. Prochoice groups will rally at the state capitol on September 14.

In St. Louis, NARAL ProChoice Missouri is also taking busloads to the rally, has phone banks going and will host a presentation of Words of Choice at 7 p.m. on September 14 in St.Louis . A discussion of what's happening in Missouri will follow.

If there is an emergency in Missouri, it's the need for someone to blow the whistle on Gov. Blunt and the anti-abortion groups that trail him, and to tell them to get a grip on reality. The country has too many pressing needs to allow this massive anti-abortion diversion sap any more of our time and energy.

Banned Books Week in the Spotlight

2005-09-03T20:49:00.000-04:00

The 25th annual Banned Books Week, sponsored by the American Library Association and the American Booksellers Association for Free Expression, among others, and which will be held September 24 - October 1 -- is getting national media attention.

The Associated Press reports:

Attempts to have library books removed from shelves increased by more than 20 percent in 2004 over the previous year, according to a new survey by the American Library Association.

Three books with gay themes, including Maya Angelou's "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," were among the works most criticized.

"It all stems from a fearfulness of well-meaning people," says Michael Gorman, president of the library association. "We believe in parental responsibility, and that you should take care of what your children are reading. But it's not your responsibility to tell a whole class of kids what they should read."

The number of books challenged last year jumped to 547, compared to 458 in 2003, with the library association estimating four to five unreported cases for each one documented. According to the ALA, a challenge is "a formal, written complaint, filed with a library or school requesting that materials be removed because of content or appropriateness."

National [Christian Right] organizations such as the American Family Association have been involved with library challenges, but far more complaints come from individual parents and patrons, according to the ALA."

The American Library Association states in thier press release:

Thousands of libraries and bookstores will sponsor events and exhibits speaking out against attempts like these to censor books and celebrating the freedom to read during Banned Books Week. An Alabama librarian plans to bring author Chris Crutcher, whose book "Whale Talk" was banned in Limestone County schools, to discuss his books and experiences with censorship. South Dakota State University library hosts petitions calling for the release of imprisoned writers. And the first-ever Downtown Omaha Lit Fest will salute Banned Books Week with readings and an art exhibit.

A challenge is defined as a formal, written complaint, filed with a library or school requesting that materials be removed because of content or appropriateness. According to Judith F. Krug, director of the Office for Intellectual Freedom, the number of challenges reflects only incidents reported, and for each reported, four or five remain unreported.

"I believe the more we exercise our freedom to read and read widely, the better equipped we are to make good decisions and govern ourselves," [ALA president Michael] Gorman said. "Controversial ideas should be debated, not driven into dark alleys."

To find out more about Banned Books Week, click here.

Antiabortion Militants Outraged: Planned Parenthood Helps Out

2005-09-02T08:16:00.000-04:00

Apparently militant antiabortion activist Jim Sedlak thinks refugees from Katrina who have lost everything should have to pay for reproductive health services -- even if they are raped -- or (heaven forbid), happen to be so fortunate as to have consensual sex.

Antiabortion leader Sedlak is outraged that Planned Parenthood of Houston is providing a free month of birth control pills and free emergency contraception to refugees from Katrina. He considers is a "publicity stunt" -- and issued a national press release to say so:

"While Planned Parenthood's latest stunt is disgusting and utterly inappropriate, it is not surprising," said Sedlak of STOPP International, a subsidiary of the American Life League. "The bottom line is that Planned Parenthood is out to promote its own agenda and will stop at nothing to take advantage of an opportunity to do so... the organization is exploiting one of the worst natural disasters in American history for cheap publicity by offering one month's supply of free birth control and so-called emergency contraception to victims of Katrina.

Here is the real story:

Planned Parenthood of Houston and Southeast Texas has announced that it "is working closely with Planned Parenthood of Louisiana and the Mississippi Delta (PPLAMD) to ensure that individuals from Louisiana can continue to get birth control and other reproductive health services during the current crisis. PPLAMD provides services in Baton Rouge and New Orleans. As of August 30th, the Baton Rouge clinic has re-opened, New Orleans has not. Planned Parenthood of Houston and Southeast Texas has offered to those fleeing Hurricane Katrina one free cycle (one month) of birth control or one free Emergency Contraception kit to women presenting to a PPHSET clinic with a valid Louisiana or Mississippi driver's license."

Donations to help Louisiana Planned Parenthood can be made here.

The Christian Right vs. The Mormons

2005-08-31T00:19:00.000-04:00

It was just a matter of time before the religious supremacism of the Christian Right began to fracture the coalition which made it possible to ever describe the movement as "the religious right."

The Boston Globe's Nina Easton has a must-read article about how key elements of the Christian Right could never bring themselves to support the candidacy of Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts for no other reason than that he is a Mormon. Here is an excerpt:

"The Southern Baptist Convention website categorizes the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as a 'cult' that is 'radically' different from historic, biblical Christianity."

"A faith guide issued by the influential Christian right group Focus on the Family declares that 'God cannot be identified.... with the Mormon religion's notion of god.' And each year, evangelical organizers behind the National Day of Prayer bar Mormons from speaking at their proceedings."

"As Governor Mitt Romney mulls a race for president in 2008, his strategists expect their 'family values' candidate -- who opposes gay marriage, abortion, and some forms of embryonic stem cell research -- to find a natural base of support among religious conservatives. 'As Mitt's traveled the country and tested the waters, he's gotten very strong responses, including from religious conservatives,' said Michael Murphy, a political consultant who advises Romney."

"But an examination of the views of powerful Christian right groups suggests that, even as some of these voters might appreciate Romney's lifelong commitment to his church, the governor's Mormon faith could become an obstacle for others among this same group, who make up a large and vocal segment of Republican primary voters...."

"Dobson's Focus on the Family website features a guide for teaching Christianity to children that lumps Mormons in with pagan worship. 'God cannot be identified with an object, such as a metal or wooden idol, or with some aspect of nature, such as a star or tree, or with a person, such as Japan's Emperor Hirohito in World War II or the Mormon religion's notion of god,' the guide declares."

Will Pat Robertson be Extradited to Venezuela?

2005-08-29T11:53:00.000-04:00

CBS News is reporting that Venezuela may ask the United States to extradite Pat Robertson.

Robertson publicly called for the "assassination" of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on his television program.

Chavez says, "Calling for the assassination of a head of state is a terrorist act."

He's got a point.

How can the U.S. succeed in getting Middle Eastern nations to regulate the terrorist rhetoric of their clerics if we won't do the same with ours?

This entry is cross-posted from the Mainstream Baptist blog.

Banned Books Week: Coming Right Up!

2005-08-26T22:24:00.000-04:00

Censorship is alive and well in America. And the fight against it has many fronts.

Led by the Christian Right, public school boards, teachers, public libraries, and public colleges and universities are all too often pressured to eliminate books from curricula, reading and recommended reading lists, and public library shelves.

Fortunately, The American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression (ABFFE) the American Library Association and other major organizations sponsor the annual Banned Books Week, "the only national celebration of the freedom to read." Thousands of libraries and bookstores will sponsor events and exhibits during Banned Books Week, September 24 -- October 1, -- speaking-out against attempts to censor books and celebrating the freedom to read.

The American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom received 547 reports of challenges -- or attempts to remove books from schools and libraries -- in 2004. Robert Cormier's "The Chocolate War" was the most challenged book of last year. They also maintain a list of the 100 most censored titles.

Other sponsors of Banned Books Week include the Association of American Publishers, the American Society of Journalists and Authors, and the National Association of College Stores. Banned Books Week is also endorsed by the Center for the Book of the Library of Congress.

This year, the ABSFFE has a Banned Books Week Handbook, and the American Library Association has a Banned Books Week Kit. Both have lots of resources, many of them, free.

There are Banned Books Week posters available to download. And of course, there are Banned Books Week tee-shirts, buttons and bumperstickers.

The American Library Association kit goes for $35 and includes three posters, a list of titles that have been challenged over the last year, 100 bookmarks and a Banned Books Week pin.

One suggested activity is to hand out the Campaign for Reader Privacy bookmarks and petition urging Congress to restore the safeguards for bookstore and library privacy that were eliminated by the PATRIOT Act. The bookmarks can be ordered free from the American Booksellers Association by calling ABA at (800) 637-0037, ext. 6635. The petition can be downloaded.

The American Library Association's Office of Intellectual Freedom has a host of resources for Banned Books Week, including a discussion of book burning in history.

In one episode this year, a Colorado newspaper reported on February 3:

".... a book that was being used as part of an English assignment was confiscated from freshmen at Norwood [Colorado] High School due to references of paganism and an alleged magnitude of profanity.

"Here in Norwood, a small group of parents sent letters to Superintendent Bob Conder, expressing their concern over, "Bless Me, Ultima," a book being used in the classroom as a literature book. Conder said the books, about 2 dozen in total costing $6.99 each, were pulled from the classroom, and designated to be destroyed. The parents approached the superintendent and asked that they be able to burn the books instead of the school janitor destroying them.

"Conder granted them their request.... "

Mark your calendars!

Banned Books Week:
September 24 -- October 1, 2005

Roberts, Law Enforcement and Reproductive Rights

2005-08-17T00:21:00.000-04:00

The controversy over the now withdrawn NARAL ad attacking John Roberts, president Bush's nominee to the Supreme Court, obscured an important bit of history, and a fair question about Roberts' role in Bray v. Alexandria Women's Health Clinic, the Supreme Court case at the heart of the ad controversy.

Gloria Feldt, who served as president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America from 1996-2005, recounts, in a recent article on Alternet, what it was like for clinics during the days of mob attacks by Operation Rescue. Prior to becoming president of PPFA, Feldt had headed the Planned Parenthood affiliate in Phoenix. Keep in mind, that OR was never a non-violent protest organization. They were more like angry mobs intent on interfering with people's constitutional rights to receive and to perform abortions. Criminal violence was often involved.

Feldt writes that Robert's legalistic amicus brief written in support of Operation Rescue's position, had the effect of supporting their activities. To say that Roberts was just doing his job in arguing a point of law before the court would have more merit, if he and his colleagues in the Bush Justice Department had chosen to take action to otherwise protect the rights of clinics and patients against the thuggery of Operation Rescue and similar groups operating at the time.

One does not have to agree with the NARAL ad to see that there is a wider problem of indifference to and arguably tacit support for Operation Rescue's highly public activities and the concurrent acts of violence. If this kind of activity had been directed against say banks, car dealers, newspapers or courthouses, the response of the Justice Department would have been quite different. Why the double standard? It is OK to look the other way when mobs attack legal health care organizations?

Here are some excerpts from Feldt's article:

"From 1977 to 2000, there were 675 blockades, 365 invasions, 322 death threats, 502 bomb threats, 112 assaults and batteries, 40 bombings, 16 attempted murders and 8 murders in the name of 'life.' I personally was stalked, picketed at home and subjected to death threats, in addition to enduring bomb and arson attempts, vandalism, and an invasion at the health centers for which I was responsible."

"The year Bray was decided, 1991, was smack in the middle of this period years. It was a pivotal time, before any murders had occurred. It was a moment of opportunity when the violence and harassment could have de-escalated if law enforcement at all levels had joined together and taken strong stands against it."

"One of the things I learned during this time was that local law enforcement takes many cues from the Justice Department, and further, that the Justice Department has a unique capacity to bring law enforcement at all levels together, to enhance the effectiveness of local law enforcement when it is overwhelmed by massive actions like OR. They can proactively set a pattern of enforcing the law and keeping the peace."

"Instead, the Bush I justice department -- with Ken Starr as its chief litigator and John Roberts as his top deputy, strategist and chief arguer -- did no such thing. Indeed, they chose to do just the opposite..."

"Though Roberts says he was merely arguing on behalf of the administration's position, in the end that is an inexcusable reason. He appeared twice before the Court to argue Bray, and appeared in the media to speak for his case. And though the case was decided 6-3 in favor of the protestors on a technicality concerning the law's applicability to this case, quotes from dissenting justices, including Sandra Day O'Connor, whose seat Roberts wants to fill, are telling...."

"Justice Stevens.... castigated the plaintiffs, saying, "[T]he demonstrations in the 1960's were motivated by a desire to extend the equal protection of the laws to all classes -- not to impose burdens on any disadvantaged class. ... The suggestion that there is an analogy between their struggle to achieve equality and these petitioners' concerted efforts to deny women equal access to a constitutionally protected privilege may have rhetorical appeal, but it is insupportable on the record before us."

"Justice O'Connor compared Operation Rescue's behavior to the Ku Klux Klan itself, noting that "[l]ike the Klan conspiracies, Congress tried to reach in enacting §1985(3), '[p]etitioners intended to hinder a particular group in the exercise of their legal rights because of their membership in a specific class."

"Am I saying then that John Roberts supports or condones violence? Of course not.... But I am saying that when he had a chance to weigh in and explicitly oppose the rising tide of violence that continued to escalate over the ensuing years, he did not. That is a serious question of character."

Discussion of Eternal Hostility

2005-08-16T00:56:00.000-04:00

Well, life intervened and the online discussion didn't quite happen. The organizer wasn't able to post the diary on The Daily Kos at the scheduled time, and it looks like most people missed it. Still, I am honored by shock's summary of the text. It was and is deeply gratifying to see how well he read the book and the excellent summary he presented. Thank you shock, for all of your efforts and the many kind words.

Its possible that the discussion will be rescheduled. If I hear about it, I will post something here. But anyone can check here to find out about a new discussion time, or anything else about The Daily Kos Reading Club.

(By the way, there is currently an effort to bring me to Northern Virginia and Washington, DC for a mini-speaking tour in October. Anyone who would like to help, let me know and I will put you in touch with the organizer.)

Backgrounder on Justice Sunday II

2005-08-13T16:38:00.000-04:00

First a bit of news. The American Jewish Committee has asked House Majority Leader Tom DeLay not to appear on the Justice Sunday II telecast.

"Sponsors of Justice Sunday II are promoting the insidious and baseless notion that the U.S. Supreme Court is hostile towards people of faith,' wrote AJC President E. Robert Goodkind and Executive Director David Harris in a letter to Rep. DeLay. 'We urge you to reconsider lending your name and the stature of your office to the Justice Sunday campaign."

"'America is a nation of diverse faith communities, and the political views of members of those communities run across the spectrum,' wrote AJC. 'The Supreme Court, like the judicial branch as a whole, is a microcosm of this diversity.'"

"'The publicity campaign of Justice Sunday II inaccurately suggests that all good people of faith adhere to the same tenets, beliefs, and understanding of political or legal questions. This characterization erroneously implies that promoting an interpretation of the law at odds with the conference’s sponsors constitutes hostility towards religion,' Goodkind and Harris wrote in their letter to Rep. DeLay."

Yesterday, I updated the state of the struggle, Battle of Justice Sunday Heats Up which generated considerable discussion on The Daily Kos. And I am glad to see that Armando has followed-up with a dicussion this afternoon.

For those interested in more background going into tomorrow's rally for religious supremacism, here is an anthology of my posts on this subject over the past few weeks. The most recent first:

Counter Event to Justice Sunday

Focus on Dobson & Perkins

Taking on the Demagogues Behind Justice Sunday

DeLay to Speak at Rally for Religious Sumpremacism.

A Black Baptist Minister Takes on the Theocrats.

Rally for a Theocratic Judiciary.

The Counter Event to Justice Sunday

2005-08-12T00:09:00.000-04:00

COMMUNITY OF FAITH AND UNITY

When: Sunday, August 14 at 3 p.m.

Where: Cathedral of Praise (Pentecostal Tabernacle) 4300 Clarksville Pike, Nashville, TN

What: Several Nashville and national organizations will gather to let Americans know that there are many people of faith who understand the importance of the separation of church and state, who believe that all faith traditions should respect one another, and who oppose the use of government to impose the beliefs of one doctrine upon our diverse country. The gathering is intended to give Americans a spirited and inclusive message.

Local Speakers: Bishop Maynard, Cathedral of Praise Tabernacle; Bishop Walker, Mt. Zion Ministry; and numerous others to be confirmed later this week.

National Speakers: Rev. Rita Brock, theologian and founder of Faith Voices; Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for separation of Church and State; Patrick Mroteck, president of Christian Alliance for Progress, and Rev. Emilee Whitehurst, director of Austin area Interreligious Ministries.

Battle of Justice Sunday Heating Up Fast

2005-08-11T19:56:00.000-04:00

The battle of Justice Sunday II promises to be a pivotal moment in the struggle over the federal judiciary that will set the agenda of the nation for generations. The effort is to energize conservative Christians in support of president Bush's judicial nominees. But progressive religious leaders of many faiths are speaking out against the Christian Right's rally for religious supremacy this Sunday, and the battle is likely to escalate before and after the event.

Focus on the Family is countering with pre-rally interviews with the speakers, and the Trinity Broadcasting Network, the largest religious broadcaster in the U.S., announced today that TBN will broadcast a tape delay of the rally at 10pm EST on Sunday.

And in recognition of the importance of bloggers, the Family Research Council is paying to import a number of unnamed bloggers to Nashville to generate post event buzz. Uninvited is progressive blogger and UCC seminarian Chuck Currie who charges that the leaders of Justice Sunday, are attempting to "equate Christianity with support of conservative judicial nominees."

Meanwhile, progressive religious leaders held a national teleconference with reporters today. Their entire statements and the audiofeed are available at the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism.

Here are some quotes:

"It is damaging to the legitimacy of the confirmation process to suggest that the necessary and comprehensive examination of a nominee's record, as well as support for or opposition to a nominee is in any way religiously motivated." -- Rev. Dr. Robert Edgar, General Secretary, National Council of Churches USA

"The judiciary has long upheld the Constitutional guarantee of free exercise of religion and separation of church and state that make our nation the most religiously diverse and robust democratic country in the world. It is troubling when people of faith are calling for the courts themselves to break down the wall separating church and state that has protected the right to freely exercise their beliefs." -- Ms. Mirin Kaur Phool, President, Board of Directors, Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund

"People are [asking] a diverse array of questions pertaining to Judge Roberts' broader judicial philosophy and constitutional interpretation as well as more detailed queries regarding his interpretation of privacy and the establishment clause. What all of these questions do have in common is that they deserve to be answered." -- Rabbi David Saperstein, Director, Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism

"No person or group can honestly claim to represent 'the' single authentic faith perspective on a given issue. Americans of faith and good will differ on the issues facing our country today, but those differences should never be cause for questioning another's faith or patriotism." -- Rev. Bill Sinkford, President, Unitarian Universalist Association

Meanwhile, Focus on the Family's political magazine Citizen Link is conducting a series of interviews with rally speakers in advance of the event.

Phyllis Schlafly, head of Eagle Forum, claims in her interview that "the Supreme Court is demonstrating hostility to religion," and she will urge "Congress to act on its Article III power to take away jurisdiction from the court on those areas where we don't trust them -- starting with the Pledge of Allegiance, the Ten Commandments, the definition of marriage and the Boy Scouts."

Bishop Harry R. Jackson Jr., senior pastor of Hope Christian Church in Bowie, MD, invokes the bogus ideology of Christian nationalism to explain his involvement in Justice Sunday: "America will either remain a Christian nation protected by laws based on morality or it will become more morally lawless than every before.... The Supreme Court is the front line of the spiritual battle for the culture." Regarding his message to viewers on Sunday, Jackson said: "I will call upon the two sleeping giants of America's culture--the black church and the white church--to move from individual impact to combined significance."

For a discussion of the views of rally organizers James Dobson and Tony Perkins, see my post, Focus on Dobson & Perkins:

"James Dobson the founder and caudillo of Focus on the Family.... who may be the most powerful Christian Right leader in the country, routinely uses his national radio broadcasts to demagogue his concerns about what he calls the "unelected and unaccountable and arrogant and imperious" judiciary. He claims judges are "determined to redesign the culture according to their own biases and values, and they're out of control...."

"Dobson could more accurately say these things about himself: he is unelected and far less accountable for his words and actions than judges at any level."

[Via FrederickClarkson.com]

Online Book Discussion: Eternal Hostility

2005-08-11T15:46:00.000-04:00

There will be an online discussion of my book Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy on The Daily Kos, the largest political blog community in the country, on Monday, August 15th beginning at about 1 pm EST. The discussion is sponsored by the dKos Reading Club, the members of which have been reading the book this month.

Stop on by and join in. I'll be there!

To order a copy of Eternal Hostility, or to read some reviews, click here.

This is the kind of event we hope that people will want to organize on Talk to Action when we launch The Daily Kos-style interactive site.

Focus on Dobson & Perkins

2005-08-10T14:52:00.000-04:00

The Christian Right's staging of Justice Sunday II provides an opportunity to learn more about the men and women behind this event and the people they are presenting as exemplars of Christian values. Let's focus on the principals, James Dobson and Tony Perkins (and for the others, check out the very useful backgrounder on the speakers at Justice Sunday published by People for the American Way.)

James Dobson the founder and caudillo of Focus on the Family will deliver a prerecorded video message to this second rally for religious supremacism. (He appeared in person at the first Justice Sunday.) Dobson, who may be the most powerful Christian Right leader in the country, routinely uses his national radio broadcasts to demagogue his concerns about what he calls the "unelected and unaccountable and arrogant and imperious" judiciary. He claims judges are "determined to redesign the culture according to their own biases and values, and they're out of control...."

Dobson could more accurately say these things about himself: he is unelected and far less accountable for his words and actions than judges at any level. Federal judges are vetted through a rigorous process, and ultimately our elected Senators get to decide who merits a lifetime appointment to a federal judgeship. Dobson wants to reduce that rigor in order to pack the federal bench with as many Christian Right nominees as he and his fellow theocrats can squeeze out of the Bush administration.

Interestingly, in the run up to the first Justice Sunday, Dobson (who is given to rhetorical excesses) compared the Supreme Court to the Ku Klux Klan, and when called on the inappropriateness of the analogy, he later backpeddaled. But if Dobson were actually concerned about the Klan, he could probably get some inside information from the man he hired to run the Family Research Council, Tony Perkins. (The FRC was originally the official lobbying arm of Focus on the Family and Dobson remains on the board of directors.)

Perkins came up through the FOF farm team of state level family policy councils -- state think tanks and political and legislative advocacy groups that function much like FRC does in Washington. (For a detailed discussion of these groups, see my 1999 report in The Public Eye magazine, published by Politcal Research Associates, titled Takin' it to the States: The Rise of Conservative State Level Think Tanks.) Perkins founded and headed the Louisiana Family Forum before Dobson tapped him to head the FRC.

"During his unsuccessful run for the U.S. Senate in 2002 information surfaced about Perkins’ willingness to associate with racist groups," according to the People for the American Way profile. "During that campaign, Perkins addressed the Louisiana chapter of the Council of Conservative Citizens, successor to the White Citizens Councils, which battled integration in the South. In 1996, Perkins paid former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke $82,000 for his mailing list. At the time, Perkins was the campaign manager for Woody Jenkins, a right-wing Republican candidate for the US Senate in Louisiana. The Federal Election Commission fined the campaign Perkins ran $3,000 for attempting to hide the money paid to Duke."

Dobson hired Perkins to head the FRC in 2003 after Perkins unsucessful 2002 run for the Senate when the Duke connections surfaced.

Max Blumenthal published a detailed account of Perkins secret dealings with Duke in The Nation following the first Justice Sunday. As I commented at the time: "The Christian Right has a long and shifty history with white supremacist groups in the U.S. Certainly many do not and never have embraced racism. Others play ball."

Throughout American history, racial and religious supremacism have often been deeply intertwined. The racism of the Klan and others has often been justified in terms of Christianity. And many contemporary conservative Christians, (including Ralph Reed) have acknowleged that conservative Christians were generally either on the wrong side, or on the sidelines, of the struggle for racial justice in the U.S. And just as that history informs the present, so does the history of the role of the federal courts in ordering the racial desegregation of society, having determined that racial discrimination in all of its forms was and is unconstitutional. Just a generation ago, the leaders of "massive resistance" to the racial integration of the public schools routinely denounced the federal judiciary as unelected tyrants in black robes. This is the same rhetoric we hear today from the leaders of the Christian Right and their allies in Congress.

Consider this history when we hear Tony Perkins making claims like federal judges have not only "become hostile to Christianity" but that "they pose a worse threat to this country than terrorists," and when James Dobson compares the Supreme Court to the Ku Klux Klan.

[Via FrederickClarkson.com]

What Moral Authority?

2005-08-09T17:59:00.000-04:00

Today's New York Times has a story about Christian groups pressing Bush to put pressure on North Korea to end human rights abuses in that country. The Midland, Texas Ministerial Alliance, the National Association of Evangelicals, the Southern Baptist Convention and other groups are taking the lead in this effort.

I'm in complete accord with the efforts to call for an end to the human rights abuses by the government of North Korea. I also believe Christians need to call for an end to human rights abuses by the government of the United States.

What makes conservative Christians think that this administration and this country has any moral authority to put pressure on any country to end human rights abuses? What are the Midland Ministerial Alliance, the National Association of Evangelicals, and the Southern Baptist Convention doing to put pressure on Bush to end the torture and abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib?

The eyes of the entire world are focused on conservative, evangelical Christians in America. History will give evangelical Christians full credit for unconscionably supporting this administration's pre-emptive war under false pretenses, it's criminal treatment of prisoners of war, and it's hysterical suspension of civil rights. Nothing has done more to undermine the credibility of the gospel in the eyes of the unbelieving world in my lifetime.

When are evangelicals going to start removing the logs that are in our own eyes?

This entry is cross-posted from the Mainstream Baptist weblog.

Taking on the Demagogues of Justice Sunday

2005-08-09T12:08:00.000-04:00

"A focal point of Justice Sunday II apparently will be to underscore the argument that the court has been anti-faith," writes Melissa Rogers at TomPaine.com. [Family Research Council head Tony] "Perkins has said that the Nashville event will focus on the Supreme Court’s 'hostility toward religion and Christianity in particular....'"

Rogers is an attorney and visiting professor of religion and public policy at Wake Forest University Divinity School.

"It has become fashionable," she continues, "to say that the court is demonstrating hostility toward faith when it prevents the government from promoting faith for us. But those who make this argument are either ignorant of or willfully blind to the rationales expressed in Supreme Court precedent in this area. The court traditionally has refused to promote or to interfere with religion not because it is anti-religious, but because it wants to leave people free to make choices in matters of faith and to ensure that religious people and organizations may worship as they see fit, rather than as the government sees fit. Further, anyone who suggests that the court has scrubbed religion from the public square is inexplicably missing the rich religious landscape all around us--a landscape that has thrived in the midst of the Supreme Court’s so-called 'hostility' toward religion."

"Family Research Council has every right to hold this event. The precise role religion should play in public life, the exact place where the court should draw the church-state line, and the morality of abortion as well as other policy and legal matters are all legitimate topics for public debate. Religious citizens have the same rights as non-religious citizens to argue their side. But disagreement with those positions is not automatically anti-religious bigotry or hostility to faith."

Rogers is right on the money. There is no attack on faith, people of faith or religious institutions going on in America. Not by anyone, and certainly not by the courts. This is the strawman that partisans of the Christian Right has been relentlessly knocking down for a generation -- abetted by some religious progressives who, attempting to occupy an equally false middle ground, denounce the so called "secular left" in the same terms used by the Christian Right.

This bogus crisis of faith under seige is the gasoline thrown on the fires continuously stoked by both the protestant and Catholic wings of the Christian right in the U.S. -- and it will be on spectacular display next Sunday in Nashville.

Crossposted from FrederickClarkson.com]

Ramping-Up Opposition to Justice Sunday II

2005-08-08T21:10:00.000-04:00

Next weekend we will be treated to yet another rally for religious supremacism, Justice Sunday II, organized by the Family Research Council. Like the first Justice Sunday, the event will be broadcast to churches and Christian Rightist groups in hopes of whipping up support for some of president Bush's controversial judicial nominations. And as before, the rally claims that anyone who doesn't support these nominees is an opponent of "people of faith."

Meanwhile, a coalition of religious leaders who affirm the importance of separating church and state will be hosting events across the country and speaking out in the media. Among these will be Rev. Bob Edgar, president of the National Council of Churches, Dr. Susan Thistlewaite, president of Chicago Theological Seminary, and Rev. Carlton W. Veazey, President, Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice.

According to a general press release today:

"Different groups' plans include a tele-conference Thursday with religious leaders, "Justice Everyday" events around the country and a counter-rally in Nashville preceding the Justice Sunday service on August 14th. That prayer service is being used as a platform for injecting right-wing religious views
into the upcoming Supreme Court nomination battle. Rep. Tom DeLay headlines a list of speakers intent on breaking down the wall between church and state and undermining the independence of the federal judiciary.

Though all groups are not participating in all events, they are united in their support for the careful balance struck in the First Amendment, supporting the free exercise of religion and preventing its imposition on the American people. In events throughout the week and in media appearances.

Here are the highlights:

Media Tele-Press Conference Thursday, August 11, with with progressive religious leaders including Rev. C. Welton Gaddy (Interfaith Alliance), Rev. William G. Sinkford (Unitarian Universalist Association), Rabbi David Saperstein (Religious Action Center) and others.

Freedom & Faith Counter-Event is planned for 3pm on Sunday, August 14th at the Cathedral of Praise church (8200 Macon Road, Cordova, TN), including national and local religious leaders. Details to come.

Across the country people of diverse faiths will participate in "Justice Every Day" activities to provide an alternative vision of justice and the courts to the one being promoted by organizers of Justice Sunday. Townhall meetings, letters to Senators, rallies and paid media will focus on what's at stake with a new Supreme Court Justice-voting rights, the right to privacy and protections of religious liberty.

Meanwhile, editorial writers are continuing to voice their outrage against the campaign of "intimidation" being waged against the federal judiciary by Tom DeLay and his allies on the Christian right.

"At the end of the day," writes the Austin American-Statesman, "Americans understand that the courts must be as free as possible of electoral politics."

"DeLay and the unbending Christian conservatives might come to realize that the hard way -- by defeat at the polls."

[Crossposted from FrederickClarkson.com]

Letters from an Abortion Doctor

2005-08-07T17:27:00.000-04:00

Every summer Operation Save America takes a massive, weeklong protest to some fortunate city in America where their director, Flip Benham, leads them in “storming the gates of hell.” A couple of weeks ago, OSA swarmed Colorado in Operation Save Denver. But when Benham’s “saints” and “gentle Christian warriors” pack up to go marauding, they carry along so much hellfire and brimstone that they had plenty left over for Boulder, where they focused the wrath of their angry God upon Dr. Warren Hern.

Dr. Hern is a provider of exemplary abortion care. He is also a renowned anthropologist, as well as an internationally recognized authority in his highly specialized field of medicine. Together with Dr. George Tiller of Wichita, Dr. Hern has been at the top of the antiabortion mob's hit list for over 20 years.

And this time was no exception.

OSA besieged various Colorado targets for a week--abortion-providing clinics, gay and lesbian groups, mosques, and even a school of theology—but they singled out Dr. Hern for some viciously personal attention by papering his North Boulder neighborhood with what looked very much like “wanted” posters.

Scary stuff. But if the “Reverend” Flip and his “gentle Christians” thought that Warren Hern would bolt for the basement and lay low until they left town, they mistook their man.

The indomitable Dr. Hern came out swinging, immediately purchasing a newspaper ad that gave the OSA flyer far greater exposure than Flip Benham could have dreamed of, along with some well chosen words of his own.

PAID ADVERTISEMENT
STATEMENT TO THE PEOPLE OF COLORADO
By DR.WARREN HERN
Director, Boulder Abortion Clinic
23 July 2005

This flyer was placed in the doors of all my neighbors in North Boulder on Wednesday afternoon (7/20/05) by the antiabortion fanatics who have been screaming at the people of Colorado this week. The purpose of the flyer is to cause hate and fear. Its purpose is to get someone to kill me.

This kind of flyer has preceded the assassination of each abortion doctor in the United States. It is terrorism. Its authors hate freedom. Its authors hate thought. Its authors hate what America means.

On Wednesday afternoon, after demonstrating at my office and another clinic for two days, after harassing abortion doctors in Denver in their private homes, the leaders of “Operation Save America” came to my neighborhood to place these leaflets at every house.

“Operation Save America” wants all my neighbors to hate me. This despicable, threatening, outrageous personal attack is anonymous, although we know who did it, and it is cowardly, because they won’t admit it. It is a dangerous action, and the authors know it. That’s what they intend.

The fundamentalist “Christians” who make up “Operation Save America” are fascists. “Operation Save America” is the face of fascism in America. Americans need to understand fascism. This is how fascists create an atmosphere of fear, suspicion, intolerance, hatred, bigotry, repression, destruction of individual lives, and the destruction of a free society.

It is right out of George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” or “1984.” “Big Brother Is Watching You.” The name of this gang, “Operation Save America,” is a fulfillment of Orwell’s prophecy: a lie in the service of totalitarian repression.

How is “Operation Save America’s hatred and demonization of abortion doctors different from the Nazi’s persecution of Jews in the Germany of the mid-1930’s? How is it different from how white racists and the Ku Klux Klan treated black people in the South before the lynching began? How is it different from the Salem witch-hunts, and how is it different from the hysterical anti-communist McCarthyism of the 1950’s? How is it different from the Taliban’s puritanical repression? It isn’t.

If you think it's different, just give “Operation Save America” more power. Their friends are already running the federal government. American women who want to have reproductive health and freedom and who want to live in the 21st century instead of going back to the 9th century have less to fear from the overturn of Roe vs.Wade by the Supreme Court than from “Operation Save America.”

A little more of this, and doctors just won’t do abortions. Would you?

"A little more of this, and doctors just won’t do abortions. Would you?"

That’s a fair question. If you were an average, everyday OB/GYN with a wife, 2.4 kids, a country club membership and a Golden Retriever, and couldn’t even attend your annual ACOG conference without facing down the menacing presence of dozens of Army of God goons every year, would you go out on a limb and risk losing all you'd worked for by providing your patients with abortion care?

Like OSA, the Army of God understands the power of fear: “Abortionists should remember that there could always be another Paul Hill or James Kopp who will do more than just talk. To make that point clear, signs were displayed praising both Paul Hill and James Kopp, both convicted of killing abortion doctors, and other signs calling for the execution of abortionists.”

So if your answer to Dr. Hern's question is no, don’t feel guilty, because this ever-present threat of violence, or even death, is a big part of why most other physicians don’t provide abortion care, either.

But something kind of wonderful happened when Dr. Hern went public with the threat directed at him by OSA. In fact, it was so wonderful that he bought some more newspaper space just to say thank you.

THANKS TO THE PEOPLE OF COLORADO!

We have received many messages of support by phone, fax, email, and letters since our two full-page ads were published in the Rocky Mountain News (7/23/05) and Sunday Camera (7/24/05) denouncing the hate-message flyer attacking me that was distributed in Boulder on 7/20/05 by the leaders of “Operation Save America.” Most respondents left their names and contact information, which we have omitted to protect their privacy.

This ad is to thank all those many people who have expressed their support. Many have sent unsolicited contributions wishing to help pay for those ads and to help women who need abortions but have limited resources. We do not and will not solicit contributions from the public, but will use these contributions specified for those two purposes.

This statement is paid for by Warren M.Hern, M.D., M.P.H., Ph.D.
Director, Boulder Abortion Clinic,1130 Alpine, Boulder, Colorado 80304
Tel:303 447-1361.
More information on this subject may be found at
www.drhern.com/abanthropologists.htm

If you are interested in knowing how you can work to protect reproductive freedom in Colorado, please call or write to me at the address and telephone number above. I will return all phone calls and respond to all written messages from those seeking to help, and I will help you find the ways of helping that are most appropriate to your beliefs and means.
Warren M. Hern, M.D.

Dr. Hern needed a full page of extremely fine print, but here are just a few messages from the copy of his ad that I received.

”I live in Denver....but would gladly show you to offer support, security, anything. You bear the brunt of this sad, right-wing jihad and I salute your bravery. Thank you for being who you are.”

“Use the enclosed in a way that represents your beliefs. ... I abhor the path our government is taking and the crazies who support the ‘Operation Save America.’ I admire your wording in your ad, admire you as a human being and support what you believe and are doing. Seldom do I reach out like this but Lord knows we must kiss you for your stand.” (Check for $25.00 enclosed).

“Sorry these Nazis are giving you trouble. I was in WWII and know how they operated. Call me if I can assist in some way.”

[Husband] “My wife and I have never had an abortion, nor do we plan to, but we support someone’s right to choose. Operation Save America represents the worst that right wing America has to offer. ... PS: You have some big cojones to run that ad. Thank you for doing it.”
[Wife] “We support what you do and your dedication to keeping women healthy. Thank you for taking such a big risk to provide your services. I know our [$25.00] donation is small, but we both felt very strongly that this is the most important donation we’ve ever made.”

“So many thoughts run through my mind as I sit down to write this. ... The first election I was old enough to vote in, I voted to legalize abortion in Washington state. By then my roommate had had an illegal abortion. I will never forget calling her family after I had taken her to the E.R. Her complications were serious. The work you do is important to women; please know that many of us support you. ... You are a very courageous man. My heart goes out to you and all those who love you. The abuse you are subjected to is really unjust. Be safe. Thank you, K.”

“Thank you for helping women every day, and having the courage to do so in the face of all the threats you receive. I appreciated you publishing the notice in the paper today to shed light on the sleazy work that Operation Save America and others are doing. I’m writing to let you know that I support you as do millions of other women on whose behalf you are working. My thoughts are with you in this dangerous time.”

“Thank you! We love America and as women we need our RIGHT TO CHOOSE! Babies need to be born BECAUSE THEY ARE WANTED! I am a Christian and I am disgusted by the Operation Save America movement. They and the Dobson camp seem to love the word HATE. Jesus would not do what they are doing. Thank you for your courageous article.”

“I was disgusted to read in Saturday’s Rocky Mountain News of the recent picketing of your clinic (although that is not news, I am sure) and of your home and of the flyer that “Operation Save America” has been distributing. I fear that there is a moderate possibility that this country will within a few years regress to the time of coat hangers. I am ashamed of my country. Please find a check for $50.00 to be used toward reimbursing yourself for the cost of the ad you placed in the same issue of the News. If you would rather, this contribution can be used for pro bono work done at the clinic.”

“Many years ago you helped me when I needed it. Right after my abortion procedure I began to cry, you touched my face and comforted me. I have thought of that through the years and felt grateful. ... Whenever there is a discussion about abortion I speak up and state my beliefs but I haven’t had to defend my life because of it. I want you to know I think you are a very courageous man. Thank you. Sincerely, S.”

“First I want to thank you for standing up to a religion that is full of hate, they are hiding under God’s name. If you don’t thump a bible and yell what a good Christian you are, you are their enemy. I’m 70 years old and believe we are supposed to have freedom of choice in America, but our government is making it into an Iron Curtain. ... Our religion has become Bush ‘Taliban.’ I understand because I live in the bible thumper country, also called ‘Christian.’ Also I was lucky not to ever had an abortion, but know some special people who had to. If only people could walk in their shoes during their painful situation. Thanks for being there when they needed you and you didn’t judge them.”

“You probably don’t need my support, but I need to give it. I am a Christian Senior citizen a resident of Lakewood Colorado. I am sick and tired of listening to ‘fascists’ claiming to be ‘Christians.’ Christians do not judge other persons based on their choices, medical or otherwise! Christ gave us the gift of ‘free will’ that includes making choices in all areas of our lives, and the consequences of those choices are ours alone with Christ as our only judge. I do NOT support ‘abortion,’ I DO support our freedom as citizens of this country to make our own choices. I do support your work because you are also free to make your own choices, so women do not need to go to butchers. I was in an illegal clinic in the ‘50’s. I pray we never go back to that! Be careful my Brother!”

“Thank you for having the courage to operate your clinic. ... You were right to compare the OSA people to the Ku Klux Klan. They don’t even try to hide who they are. Please use this [$20.00] to help pay for the newspaper ad or to help an indigent woman.”

“Dear Dr. Hern: I am 79 years old and ... I have some thoughts to share with you regarding your recent publication that I feel are important. After reading your announcement in the Rocky Mountain News, I feel obligated to submit the following: In describing the thugs who would do you harm, you omitted three appropriate adjectives: ‘zealots, gangers and criminals.’ The problem you are dealing with if not fomented by our current administration, is at least being given the nod by default. Abortion and other emotional subjects are being used as wedge issues to advance their own political agenda. Our constitution is not the rule and guide of their thinking. Don’t look for support or even sympathy from the occupants of the white house. And I believe the recent nominee for the Supreme Court is a callous indication of the contempt that our president holds for the people who made him our leader.”

When Dr. Hern read a longer version of this article at Liberal Street Fighter, he forwarded to me, through a mutual friend, a letter of his own.

My thanks to moiv for giving an account of our problem with OSA and responses here in Boulder, Colorado. We appreciate this very much, and we also appreciate the support from moiv and others who have made comments.

This is good, but we need to make the next step. As long as the Republicans under current leadership are running anything, there is no hope. Wherever possible, we must convert this energy into solidifying Democratic control over any political institution (such as a state legislature or governor’s office) and to restore Democratic control where it has been lost (legislatures; both houses of Congress).

There is no other solution, and it can’t happen too fast. Some Democrats, particularly among the national leaders such as Howard Dean, do not understand this and are irrelevant to this process, which must come from below. Anti-choice Democrats must be blocked. The political message must be: vote with us, and you get elected; vote against us, you don’t get to be precinct captain next time. Nothing else will do.

Republicans who are not part of the current fascist leadership of that party must throw those bastards out, and that is the most important and difficult task. Only then can we get back to civil discourse and bipartisan consideration of important public issues, particularly on issues of reproductive freedom. It has happened before. We can make it happen again.

Warren M. Hern, M.D., M.P.H., Ph.D.
Director, Boulder Abortion Clinic

Dr. Hern isn’t a politician. He doesn’t buy and sell abstractions. He lives in an all-too-physical world, one awash with the daily sweat and tears of living, breathing and bleeding women to whom reproductive freedom has suddenly become more than just a poll-tweaking talking point. He and all the other physicians who are still hanging in and providing skillful and compassionate abortion care in this country--come hell, high water or the ground troops, fifth column or otherwise, for the Culture of Life--don’t spend their mornings spinning policy, their lunchtimes eating rubber chicken or their afternoons counting their bargaining chips.

They live in my world, the real world, where this is the way it is.

DeLay Joins Rally for Religious Supremacism

2005-08-04T00:38:00.000-04:00

Justice Sunday II, the Family Research Council's retread rally for religious supremacism slated for August 14th in Nashville, has shaken up its line up.

Country singer Lee Greenwood originally scheduled to appear is out -- and House Majority Leader Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX) is in. But Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN, once considered the favored candidate of the Christian Right for the GOP presidential nomination in 2008, seems to have fallen out of favor.

DeLay and Frist have long hitched thier political futures to the leaders of the Christian Right. Speaking at a secret conclave hosted by the Family Research Council early this year, they each pledged their fealty to the lords of the Christian Right. The tape of the proceedings obtained by Americans United for Separation of Church and State and released to the media generated national outrage.

Sen. Frist who was the marquee pol at the first Justice Sunday, (via video) faced a firestorm of criticism for appearing with gang of theocrats who had equated opposition to president Bush's controversial nominees to the federal bench, with opposition to "people of faith."

Nevertheless, Frist was not invited to speak this time -- even though the rally is being held in his home state of Tennessee. He has apparently fallen out of favor for having flip-flopped on stem cell research.

In any case, over the next ten days, the event promises to draw national attention, considerable opposition, and throw into sharp relief the still-formidable role of the theocratic Christian Right in national politics.

pastordan issues a correction

2005-08-03T20:25:00.000-04:00

Well, I asked somebody to prove me wrong....

Ted Olson of Christianity Today has the goods:

The July 24, 2005, issue of the Sunday News Perspective section contained an article by Dan Schultz titled "Where is the conservative outrage." [Published here as Where's the Outrage?] It included this comment early in the column:

Christianity Today’s Weblog, which carries news of just about everything happening in the Christian world, linked to a Washington Post story on the church’s recovery, without specifying the nature of the attack.

I would have thought that the term "anti-gay attack" would have been specific enough. Perhaps Mr. Schultz is upset that we did not describe the exact words spraypainted on the walls? The precise color of paint?

I should also note that this was not the first time we linked to an article about the crime. On July 14, we linked to a Washington Times article and promoted it like this: "Fire at vandalized church was arson, federal investigators say | Federal investigators concluded that a fire at a church vandalized with anti-homosexual graffiti was set." That particular Weblog posting also included information about the arson of a black church in Sparta, Tennessee.

Schultz accuses us of silence. But (unlike all the Lancaster newspapers) we have not been silent, and we do not appreciate the suggestion that we turn a blind eye to bigotry. Since this is a rather easy fact to check (our site is searchable), I'm a bit disappointed in the Sunday News for not vetting Schultz’s column, especially since his accusations are rather severe. It seems to me that a correction is in order.

So here it is: I regret having missed these items. I once told the folks at Weblog that while I disagreed with them on many issues, I thought of them as principled and cogent.

I stand by those words.

However, I also stand by the main contention of the article. The silence from the Religious Right has been deafening on this subject, particularly because so many on the right are so quick to cry "persecution!" And I notice, despite Olson's correct characterization of the attacks, that Weblog has not seen fit to editorialize on the subject. That's their right, and mine to disagree with it.

However, it is incorrect to say that the folks at Weblog have not noticed the nature of the attack, and for that they have my sincere apology.

Conference on Dominionism: October in New York

2005-08-03T12:08:00.000-04:00

The Graduate Center, City University of New York and The New York Open Center will once again collaborate to present: Dominionism, Political Power, and the Theocratic Right.

Dominionism is an influential form of fundamentalist religion that believes that in order to fulfill biblical prophecy, "godly Christians" must take control of the levers of political and judicial power in America in the near future.

FEATURING: Chip Berlet, Senior Analyst, Political Research Associates; co-author, Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort; Frederick Clarkson, author, Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy; Michael Northcott, teaches Christian Ethics, University of Edinburgh, Scotland; author, An Angel Directs the Storm: Apocalyptic Religion and American Empire; Esther Kaplan, author, With God on Their Side: How Christian Fundamentalists Trampled Science, Policy and Democracy in George W. Bush's White House.

Friday October 21 7:30-9:30pm

Saturday October 22 10am-6pm

You can register for the full session or Friday evening or Saturday separately. To register or for more information contact: The Graduate Center, CUNY 212 817-8215. Or The New York Open Center 212 219-2527.

A DVD of highlights from their previous conference in April, Examining the Agenda of the Religious Far Right, is available for $19.95. It features Karen Armstrong, Joan Bokaer, Joseph Hough, Robert Edgar, Hugh Urban, Chip Berlet and Frederick Clarkson.

The edited, DVD version of the program will be broadcast on CUNY TV Channel 75 in New York City. The show will air on: Wednesday August 3 10am, 3pm & 8pm; Saturday, August 6 8pm; and Sunday August 7 10am.

The Hate and the Silence

2005-08-02T21:36:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago, the United Church of Christ (UCC) endorsed same sex marriage at their national synod in Atlanta. A short time later, someone broke into St. John's United Church of Christ in Virginia, stacked up hymnals and burned them. Graffiti such as "Gays lover," "Lesb hell," "UCC siners" and "sinners," were spraypainted on the walls.

Even as the FBI is now investigating the incident as a hate crime -- three active hate groups have announced that the crime is understandable and that gay-friendly churches need to be targeted.

St. John's is the third UCC church in the Shenandoah Valley that has vandalized in recent months. "Two other attacks came after we launched the 'God is Still Speaking' campaign," blogger Chuck Currie a UCC seminarian told The Washington Blade.

"The 'Still Speaking' campaign included a commercial depicting a church welcoming gay congregants. NBC and CBS rejected the ad last year, Currie said, after the networks decided it had a political, rather than religious, message."

"'I think there is a direct correlation between the rhetoric that has been unleashed by the political and religious right comparing [gay and lesbian] sexuality to murder or other violent crimes,' Currie said. 'This gives people the political and theological cover to attack gay people and the churches that welcome them.'"

Last week, American neo-nazi groups threatened churches that support gay rights. This came in the wake of the vandalism and arson at parish of the United Church of Christ in Virginia where some had stacked up hymnals and burned them. The FBI is treating the case as a hate crime. The silence from the Christian Right, usually quick to decry persecution of Christians, is deafening.

But Chuck Currie posted a detailed report, based in part on news accounts. Nazis quoted in the story then besieged his blog site with anti-Jewish other hateful comments such that he had to turn off the comments on that post.

"The writing on the wall, literally, tells the story," (Michael) Foster said, "This was a politically motivated attack because of the gay issue, and the FBI is going to investigate it."

Meanwhile, a neo-Nazi group is urging their followers to target gay friendly churches."

"After the Middlebrook attack, the News Virginian, a newspaper in Waynesboro, Va., published a story about the responses of three white supremacist groups to the arson."

"In that story, Bill White, a Virginia-based spokesperson for the National Socialist Movement, also known as the American Nazi Party, condemned the arson but said that he understood how the actions of the United Church of Christ could provoke such a reaction."

"White told the Blade that he believes homosexuality is a mental illness, and that the UCC is a 'heretic' church. 'Their encouragement of homosexuality is simply a modern extension of their 200-plus-year history of anti-social, anti-white and anti-Southern activities,' White said...."

"White told the Blade that his group is discussing 'targeting pro-homosexual events being organized by local "gay" churches.' He went on to name the Metropolitan Community Church of the Blue Ridge in Roanoke as a specific target of his group's efforts, which he said included distributing messages on leaflets and through direct mail."

Two seeks ago, Pastordan, writing at Talk to Action and elsewhere, wondered "Where's the Outrage?" on the part of the Christian Right and their media outlets.

"I've checked," he wrote. "So far, there's been no report on the assault from the Christian Bible Network, none from the Christian Post, nor from Persecution.org or Voices of the Martyrs. The websites of Albert Mohler, Gary Bauer, Jerry Falwell, and Pat Robertson are all silent. Christianity Today's Weblog, which carries news of just about everything happening in the Christian world, has yet to carry the news. Nor has Agape Press, which picks up within days stories of persecution--no matter how minor--against Christians around the world."

The UCC says God is Still Speaking, but even as neo-Nazis threaten Christian churches, the Christian Right apparently is still not listening.

Nationalism Dividing the Church

2005-07-27T17:39:00.000-04:00

Associated Baptist Press has published a story about how nationalism is becoming an increasingly prominent point of contention in America's culture wars. Terry York, Professor of Christian Ministry and Church Music at Baylor University and Truett Seminary, sees Christians within all denominations dividing into two camps:

"Those who want to try to re-establish Christendom and those who refuse to wrap the cross in the flag."

He predicts that these divisions will be deeper than the divisions caused by changing worship styles. He says,

"Fighting over what songs we sing pales beside the clash of kingdoms, and this is a kingdom clash."

Kudos to York for clearly articulating the most essential decision in Christian discipleship for our place and time. Count me among those opposed to the equation of Church and state. I stand firmly with those who resist all demands for uncritical, idolatrous allegiance to the state.

This entry is cross-posted from the Mainstream Baptist blog.

Ignorance Ain't Bliss

2005-07-27T14:04:00.000-04:00

For years, a number of us who have studied the evolution of the Christian Right have been concerned about how difficult it can be to have thoughtful conversations about the Christian Right and its various components. Simple ignorance about this large, complicated, religious, cultural and political movement is part of the problem. How can people discuss what they don't know much about, or really understand? And of course, what this movement asserts is rightfully concerning and actually frightening to many.

Over the years, as various sectors of society have struggled to come up to speed about the Christian Right in its many manifestations, the discussion is often reduced to semantics and "messages," in short, what to call "them?" Some forcefully assert that "they" are not "real Christians," and therefore we should not use the term. Some think that analogies to fascists and Nazis make sense. Others think that using manufactured, focus-grouped terms like "religious political extremists" is smart politics. Still others insist that the most important thing is that we offend no one, particularly "people of faith."

It is difficult to talk about the substance of politics, tactics, and strategy -- when people are not well informed, and cannot get past such basic issues of language.

In several essays here at Talk to Action and in comments in the media, Chip Berlet has urged people to stop using "labeling" and demonization tactics that he thinks have proved ineffective and even counter productive. We will be discussing such matters in more detail when we launch the "scoop" based interactive version of Talk to Action (modeled on The Daily Kos, among others) in the next few weeks.

In 1997, I talked extensively about matters of knowledge, language, framing and strategy in Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy.

Here are a few excerpts about language issues:

"Serious criticism often requires strong words. But to have a chance at prevailing, such things must be said with the person-to-person persuasiveness that comes from knowledge and conviction. Anything less leaves one open to the charge of religious bigotry. Worse, sometimes the charge may even be true."

"While it is possible that 'theocratic' is not the kind of word or concept that will be widely understood, or play well in polls and focus groups, it is at least necessary for political leaders and journalists to understand this element, lest political analysis be skewed or dumbed down."

"While it is essential to respect people's beliefs, confidence in one's own commitment to and knowledge of the meaning of religious freedom allows one to distinguish between religious bigotry and fair criticism and to defuse the charge -- the Christian Right's skillful exploitation of such matters not withstanding. There is no one word or phrase that will resolve these concerns."

"...progressives and moderate have been scattered by a continuing debate over what to call their opponents... Demonization is a two-way street... sometimes it adds a B-horror movie excitement to the normalcy of politics. Whatever the outcome of the political struggles of the day, people still need to live in the same communities when it is over. This does not mean that debate and political mobilizations need to be meek and mild -- only that those who would speak for democratic values need to effectively and forcefully speak for those values, in ways that demonstrate those values in action."

I offer these excerpts by way of saying that this discussion has been going on for a long time. From where I sit, I think that progress has been made. But I also think we have a ways to go.

Talk to Action in the News

2005-07-22T18:16:00.000-04:00

Talk to Action is getting some media traction -- and we haven't even graduated from our temporary site to our planned, fully interactive site, modeled on such interactive political blogs as The Daily Kos.

First, Z Magazine mentioned Talk to Action in its recent report on a major conference on challenging the religious right.

Then, the prominent, Boston-based gay newsweekly Bay Windows profiles Talk to Action contributor Chip Berlet and his vision of his, and Talk to Action's, niche in the contentious political blogosphere. Here are some excerpts:

"Berlet, who co-authored Right Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort and edited Eyes Right! Challenging the Right Wing Backlash has joined with a host of other veteran right-wing watchdogs like Frederick Clarkson, author of Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy to create talk2action.com, an umbrella site for likeminded folks that will link to his online musings."

"A bunch of us are trying to organize a response to the Christian right that focuses on being respectful of their right to hold beliefs, but challenging those beliefs," Berlet explains. "Which is basically an argument against labels like 'religious political extremists' or 'radical religious right...'"

"Berlet is clear that while he may be looking to make nice with the right, he's not looking to placate their political views, or even find common ground in the great progressive/right wing divide. 'I think it's a balancing act,' he says of his blogging style. 'It recognizes what the first amendment means when it talks about freedom of speech and freedom of religion. [That] means that I have to acknowledge that people on the Christian right have an absolute political right to hold certain views. But what I want to argue is that there's a way to challenge the content of those views that is not dismissive and disrespectful of people of faith.'"

"While interested in respecting the first amendment Berlet is not about conceding the rights of people targeted by the Christian right. 'I'm not interested in giving an inch on gay rights or women's rights or reproductive rights or immigrant rights or the science of evolution,' he explains 'I'm not interested in finding a common ground with people who reject the basic message of constitutional law in the U.S...."

Sacred Text, Progressive Voices

2005-07-21T14:17:00.000-04:00

Back in the late 1960s and early 1970s I was part of a group of young adults who ran an ecumenical conference for youth concerned about social justice. It was held at a Protestant retreat center on Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire. Some years ago a group of us returned for a reunion, and now we continue to gather every few years to renew our commitment to social justice and to search for ways in which secular ethics and spirituality can co-exist in these turbulent times.

This summer we decided to read a book for discussion, and we picked The Sins of Scripture: Exposing the Bible’s Texts of Hate to Reveal the God of Love, written by Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong. When it came my turn to pick some text to discuss, this is what I selected:

"Anxious because God could not be reduced to a human formula, the leaders of the church contented themselves with the task of enforcing the faith they could not define. If one disagreed with these ever-more-differing explanations, one was simply evil. The problem was not in the words; it was in the hardened hearts of the heretics whose obstinacy and sinfulness prevented them from believing. The stage was thus set not for unity but for a purge. Whenever deviant beliefs were discovered, they had to be rooted out and those who espoused them killed in the service of conformity to the catholic faith. So Christianity turned demonic. Infidels like the Jews were constantly persecuted and Muslims as well as Jews were killed in the Crusades. Heretics were burned at the stake. Religious wars were waged to defeat anyone who did not worship properly. Efforts to force people to conform were accomplished by way of torture first and if that failed by execution" (Spong, p. 228).

For some people this represents the entire history of Christianity—and given this history, I am not surprised when people ask me why I consider myself a Christian. I usually toss off a glib line such as “I am unchurched but not uncouth.” What I mean by saying that phrase is the limits and flaws of all organized religions frustrate me, but I see in each a struggle for the identity of the faith. The lessons I learned from the Christian Bible were about helping the weak and the poor, seeking justice, opposing violence and war, speaking truth to power—all of which led me into the progressive movement. Moreover, I learned to highlight a different history of Christianity based on this perspective. As I learned more about the sacred texts of other major world religions, I came to realize that some members of those faiths highlighted these same concerns. They challenge those in their religion who turn toward demonization and scapegoating.

Spong explains that these different approaches derive from the fact that there are different ways to read sacred text. Peter J. Gomes, a preacher at Harvard University and author of The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart makes a similar argument. Gomes urges us to read the Bible carefully and be aware of what passages represent the contemporary prejudices and norms woven into the text by the all-to-human authors.

Rosemary Radford Ruether, author of several books, explores the need to unpack these prejudices when examining spirituality. She uses an analysis of race, class, and gender that sees them as “interconnected structures that create multiple differences.” The group Equal Partners in Faith is built around this notion.

In the past few weeks, there has been a flurry of media coverage declaring that progressive Christians have finally found their voice. We have had our voices all along, thank you. Glad you folks in the media finally decided to listen.

Ported from Chip Berlet's Blog

John Roberts: Champion of Majoritarian Religious Privilege

2005-07-20T13:09:00.000-04:00

The President has nominated John Roberts to serve on the Supreme Court.

Most of the media attention is directed toward his opinion on the Roe v. Wade decision. My own concerns are with his opinions in regard to the First Amendment of the Constitution.

If the report from People for the American Way is reliable, then Roberts is clearly an advocate for the government to extend special privileges and endorsements of majoritarian religious expression.
Roberts was co-author of a brief in the landmark Lee v. Weisman decision that argued in favor of prayers at public high school graduations. He argued that graduates opposed to religious exercises were free to voluntarily skip participating in their graduation exercises. SCOTUS ruled against Roberts opinion in that decision.

Roberts has also argued that the "Lemon test" should be jettisoned. The "Lemon test" is the standard that SCOTUS set forth in the landmark "Lemon v. Kurtzman" decision that gave guidance on how government legislation on religion could be considered constitutional. The "Lemon test" says the government's action must have 1) a legitimate secular purpose, 2) it must not have the primary effect of either advancing or inhibiting religion, and 3) it must not result in an "excessive entanglement" of government and religion.

In my opinion, Roberts opinions demonstrate extreme insensitivity toward the rights of religious minorities. When the hubris that demands special privilege is coupled with the obsequity that grants it, it inevitably creates enough outrage at such injustice that the privileged become despised and the privileges are rejected.Those who think justices like Roberts will be good for the church are mistaken. To paraphrase the words of Jesus, "Those who wish to save their way of life shall lose it, but whoever loses his way of life for Christ's sake shall find it." (Matthew 16:25)

This entry is cross-posted from the Mainstream Baptist blog.

A Bright Light of Hope in a Dark Time

2005-07-19T23:56:00.000-04:00

Here at Talk to Action, we have been laying the groundwork for a far more ambitious version -- and now we need your help.

We are ready to take the leap to an interactive site modeled on The Daily Kos and Booman Tribune. These sites have proved to be unusually conducive to wideranging online political conversation. Our goal is to create a place where the pace is slower and the tone is more considered; a place where people who share our concerns can come to strategize; share research, news, and stories; network; find allies and useful resources. There is no place on the internet or anywhere else in society to do this.

That's why the next phase of Talk to Action will be so exciting. We can engage large numbers of people in thinking creatively about, talking about, and acting on the problems posed by the theocratic Christian Right in ways unimaginable only a few years ago. Imagine a rolling, creative, action-oriented conference on the Christian Right -- of the sort we all wish there were more of, but rarely take place.

Joan Bokaer, founder of Cornell University's Theocracy Watch; Dr. Bruce Prescott, a veteran of the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention and a leader of Mainstream Baptists; and Chip Berlet, Senior Analyst at Political Research Associates are just a few of the extraordinary writers, thinkers and activists who have already come on board or will be joining us soon.

While we will be rich with expertise, the strength of Talk to Action will be the national community of readers and participants who are engaged in these central struggles of our time. We know the interest is there, and that Talk to Action will enhance and bring visibility to the efforts of the organizations and individuals already working in this general field.

Well, thats the short pitch. Please give us a hand in getting this pioneering project off the ground. All you have to do is hit the "make a donation" button in the left column.

Keeping Cool

2005-07-19T14:35:00.000-04:00

The Dominionists are coming! The Dominionists are coming!

Some contemporary Paul Revere's of the internet write breathlessly about the Christian Right as if the advocates of theocracy have all but won. They conflate a sense of urgency about the situation or concern about the "agenda" of the Christian Right, with the inevitability or even the imminence of victory. I am writing this from the perspective of over twenty years of researching and writing about the Christian Right -- and up front I want to say -- don't believe everything you read. As the song goes in West Side Story: "stay cool, boy."

Has the Christian Right gained great political power? Yup.

Should we take it seriously? Yup.

Do we have a lot to learn? Yup.

Is it over? Far from it.

One more quickie Q&A.

Does this movement have a theocratic political agenda? Yes they do, although most of its leaders deny it, and certainly most conservative Christians would not agree with the more theocratic or "dominionist" elements. They have, however, been sold on a form of historical revisionism that claims that the U.S. was founded as a "Christian nation," and that this legacy has been stolen -- stolen! -- by those who would betray God and the original intentions of the Founding Fathers. This is a powerful myth. And it is but one element of why the Christian Right is the best organized faction in American politics.

But politics is about many things, and it is always in motion. Many people have a tendency to freeze certain perceptions about political realities in thier minds -- hence the danger of getting the notion of the power of the Christian right fixed in one's mind such that one cannot see outcomes other than a Christian theocracy and a looming inquisition. The truth is that this is the stuff of B horror movies.

Well, OK. There is also The Handmaid's Tale. (Margaret Atwood's novel is much better than the movie.) But whether this tale of a future corrupt theocracy is a warning or a prophesy is entirely up to us.

But there are reality-based ways of evaluating the Christian right. And there are a lot of people who have spent a lot of years acquiring the kind of knowledge that will be useful in this time.

Meanwhile, let's consider that the polls are way down for the GOP -- and that the Christian Right that has bet everything on electing Christian Right pols via the Republican Party and that they may be in for a drubbing in 2006.

But whatever the next elections may hold, the doomsaying style of thought, analysis and writing about the Christian Right, can be deeply discouraging to the point of actually diminishing the capacity of opposing political forces to win elections. Can those who feel all is already lost be able to imagine victorious political and electoral outcomes? Can they participate in civic life with imagination and what John F. Kennedy used to call "great vigor" if they feel hopeless and defeated?

This kind of problem is not new, it just takes on different forms anc character in the age of the blogosphere. In my book Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy, I devoted a whole chapter to the tendency in political and journalistic circles to treat the Christian Right as either a juggernaut or a joke. (There is less of the latter these days, but a good bit more of the former.) I particularly dissected the way that the media hyped and exaggerated the strength and power -- first of Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority organization and later Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition. Its not that these organizations were not strong and important at the time of these articles, its that they were not nearly as strong as reporting often made them out to be, and they had weaknesses that reporters often did not dig enough to see.

One of the key Christian Right strategists of the era, Colonel Donor (his name, not his rank), later marveled about this. "It was true," he wrote of the late 1970s and early 1980s, "that the Christian Right... was viable and growing; but the media consistently gave the few national Christian Right organizations credit for larger budgets, more memberships, and more 'muscle' than actually existed. Memberships and financial strengths were routinely inflated by both the media and the Christian Right organizations themselves. But the media needed a good story in 1980," he continued, "and the emergence of the Christian Right seemed to be as good as any."

There are many players on the Christian Right, just as there are in any other sector. It can seem overwhelming to take it all in. It can be even harder to discern what is important from what is not. Thanks to the Bush administration, we all know the consequences of "flawed intelligence." And while we know that there is a vast difference between errors and lies, what Colonel Doner is talking about above -- is lies by Christian Right leaders that were printed as fact by the media. (And lets not get huffy about the mainstream media here, the alternative press was not immune from these kinds of errors.)

So lets keep a cool head. (And I say this as someone who is running a fever and gulping chicken soup as I write.) There are many pitfalls in understanding and evaluating the Christian Right in all of its manifestations.

Here are a few pointers from my experience.

Don't confuse the agenda with the outcome.

Consider the sources of whats reported, and who is doing the reporting.

Don't be afraid.

As Franklin Roosevelt said in his first inaugural address: "The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself."

In short, let's not pyche ourselves out.

Let's learn the things we need to learn to understand, and better contend with formidable opponents.

Let's stay cool.

This is the second in a series of essay based on themes taken from Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy. The first was "The Dems Could Take a Cue from Jefferson."

[Crossposted from FrederickClarkson.com]

Where's the Outrage?

2005-07-18T21:45:00.000-04:00

It's my next column for the Lancaster Sunday News, and it goes something like this:

Forgive me if I seem a bit angry today.

Why? Well, you may have heard about a recent attack on a UCC church in Middlebrook, Virginia. The interior was trashed, the walls were spray-painted with hateful, homophobic epithets, and the vandals attempted to start a fire with the congregation's hymnals. The attack came days after the UCC's General Synod approved a resolution affirming same-sex marriage.

As I say, you may have heard about this--as long as you don't rely on news outlets geared to conservative Christian churches.

I've checked. So far, there's been no report on the assault from the Christian Bible Network, none from the Christian Post, nor from Persecution.org or Voices of the Martyrs. The websites of Albert Mohler, Gary Bauer, Jerry Falwell, and Pat Robertson are all silent. Christianity Today's Weblog, which carries news of just about everything happening in the Christian world, has yet to carry the news. Nor has Agape Press, which picks up within days stories of persecution--no matter how minor--against Christians around the world.

So I have to ask: why not? Why this silence?

Where is the outrage?

I'd love to be proved wrong on this. Please, prove me wrong. But to date, no major conservative Christian news organization has carried this story.

Again, why not? Why hasn't the religious right spoken out against this offense?

I know what some folks will write in to tell me: same-sex marriage and homosexuality are abominations, offenses against God's clear and concrete moral ordering of the universe. Therefore, this doesn't count as persecution.

Baloney.

First of all, in the United Church of Christ's polity, the General Synod "speaks to, but not for, the church". That the national gathering affirmed same-sex marriage does not mean that local congregations do. The congregation in question in fact had no statement on the question one way or another. Even the suggestion that the crude bigotry perpetrated on this church should be overlooked because of a decision they didn't make is reprehensible.

Nor do I recall it saying anywhere in the Bible that churches being torched is acceptable if they don't agree with a particular doctrine. I do seem to remember Jesus praying "that they may be as one" (John 17:11).

Whatever you may think of the General Synod's actions, vandalizing churches is not a Christian response. The leaders of conservative churches need to stand up and say so, loud and clear.

They need to do so not just as leaders of the Church universal, but as leaders of civil society.

For freedom of conscience works both ways. It protects those who oppose same-sex marriage, and those who advocate for it. It protects conservatives and liberals, traditionalists and postmodernists, and so on. The price of freedom, it is often said, is eternal vigilance--not against the enemies of liberty "out there"--but against our own intolerance and self-satisfaction. If conservative churches want to be free from persecution, as they so often claim, if they want to take their rightful place in the public square, then they need to shoulder the burdens that go along with those things.

They need to say, loud and clear, that violence in the name of traditional values is not a Christian activity. Not now, not ever.

They need to say, loud and clear, that violence in the name of conservative social policies is not a Christian activity. Not now, not ever.

They need to say, loud and clear, that what happened to this congregation in Virginia is unacceptable, and that the offense is not just against that church but against all Christians.

They need to say that persecution against any religious group for any beliefs--no matter how controversial--is unacceptable. That does not constitute an endorsement of those beliefs; only of the God-given liberty to pursue them without fear of harassment, intimidation, or arson.

They need to say that moral authority can only be preserved if one is willing to extend the same freedom to others that one would claim for oneself. They need to say that Christians are called to emulate Jesus, who poured himself out in love and humility on behalf of humanity (Phil. 2:7).

They need to say these things, or explain why they will not.

Theocratic Cure-All

2005-07-18T13:09:00.000-04:00

File this under 'this is what theocracy looks like."

What happens when faith meets a reality that is not included within its world view?

One answer is to try to cure it with evangelism; and then pass off the evangelism as medical science; claim victory; move on. This is what is going on in the area of so-called "reparative therapy," a bizarre profession created by operatives of the theocratic Christian Right to cure homosexuality through conversion.

Reparative, or "conversion therapy" claims that homosexuality can be "cured," and that "faith-based" approaches can do the job. Major medical and psychological organizations think its bunk and potentially harmful. But since a teenager named Zack went public and described the abusive and patently bogus alleged therapy at an ex-gay boot camp in Tennessee, government agencies are taking a closer look as is the media -- notably, Salon.com which has a 4-part investigation that ought to help crystallize the debate.

Salon reports that reparative therapy is "according to virtually all mental health professions, wrong, bizarre and potentially dangerous."

"'I can give you a short answer of where reparative therapy fits in with the modern mental health profession: It does not," says Dr. Douglas Haldeman, president of the Association of Practicing Psychologists, a group affiliated with the American Psychological Association. "These theories have been discredited for years.'"

"Despite their dubious scientific and therapeutic standing, reparative therapy ministries, some of which accept kids and operate like a cross between churches and boot camps, largely function without oversight and licenses."

Calculated Compassion: How The Ex-Gay Movement Serves The Right's Attack on Democracy by Surina Khan is pioneering study of the various ex-gay ministries and the general subject of therapy through evangelism. It was published by Political Research Associates, the Policy Institute of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and, Equal Partners in Faith.

The study examines ex-gay ministries in the wider context of the agenda of the theocratic Christian Right. The executive summary of the report reads in part:

"Tolerance and pluralism are bedrock principles of American society. Yet, as this report shows, the ex-gay movement and the Christian Right are attacking these principles and furthering a divisive political agenda which offers fundamentalist Christian dogma and heterosexuality as the only acceptable norms. Challenging the leadership of the ex-gay movement is essential if equal rights for all people, regardless of sexual orientation, are to be defended. To be effective, such a challenge must take into account the broader theocratic agenda of the Christian Right which the ex-gay movement is being used to promote."

It is worth pointing out that the repackaging religious belief and evangelism as science is not unique to ex-gay ministries. This is also what is happening with the Christian Right's strategy of attacking the teaching of evolution in the public schools: disguise creationist beliefs by repackaging them as a scientific theory: "Intelligent Design."

Currently, the Christian Right feels the need to be fairly covert. The law and public opinion are not on thier side in most placees, most of the time. For two decades they have generally had the advantage that their opponents have often vastly underestimated the Christian Right in its many manifestations. But that is changing, even as the Christian Right has been emboldened since George W. Bush came to power.

A thorough debunking of ex-gay, repartative therapy is long over due. It may be happening now. If so, there is much to learn from how the mainstream religious, scientific and medical communities address the matter -- not to mention the media and public officials at all levels.

[Crossposted from FrederickClarkson.com]

O'Conner Nailed It

2005-07-16T13:35:00.000-04:00

by Joan Bokaer

Justice Sandra Day O’Conner hit the nail on the head in one of the last opinions she wrote during her tenure on the U.S. Supreme Court:

"Those who would renegotiate the boundaries between church and state must therefore answer a difficult question: why would we trade a system that has served us so well for one that has served others so poorly?"

The Supreme Court was ruling on a case regarding the constitutionality of placing the Ten Commandments on public land, June 27, 2005.

Was O'Conner referring to the kind of people Bush has been appointing to the U.S. Appellate Courts who are notorious foes of church-state separation? Justices such as Michael W. McConnell of the Tenth Circuit of Appeals? McConnell is on a very short list for the Supreme Court and would clearly "renegotiate the boundaries between church and state."

When talking about the next Supreme Court appointment, there is much discussion of Roe v. Wade, but something much deeper is at stake. "Twenty-five years ago," explains Pulitzer Prize wining journalist Chris Hedges, "Pat Robertson and other prominent evangelists began speaking of a new political religion that would direct its efforts at taking control of all major American institutions, including mainstream denominations and the government so as to transform the United States into a global Christian empire." (Harper's, May, 2005)

This "new political religion" now reaches far into both houses of Congress and the White House. Their greatest obstacle has been a Supreme Court that supports the principle of separation of church and state.

Joan Bokaer is the founder of Theocracy Watch

A Black Baptist Minister Takes on the Theocrats

2005-07-16T01:29:00.000-04:00

Much has happened in the wake of the first Justice Sunday, a national rally for theocracy led by Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council and James Dobson of Focus on the Family in April. The showdown over the nuclear option came and went. Several judges the theocrats liked were confirmed by the Republican-controlled Senate. Religious progressives have begun to organize. And now, with more federal judgeships up for consideration, including at least one opening on the Supreme Court, Justice Sunday II is planned for August 14th in Nashville.

I wrote a bit about all this yesterday. And today I found an analysis of the first Justice Sunday, titled "On the Brink of Theocracy," written by Reverend Carlton W. Veazey, president of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice. The Religious Coalition "is an alliance of national organizations from major faiths, affiliates throughout the country, and the national Clergy for Choice Network, Spiritual Youth for Reproductive Freedom, and The Black Church Initiative. While our members are religiously and theologically diverse, they are unified in the commitment to preserve reproductive choice as a basic part of religious liberty."

Here are a few excerpts from Veazy's analysis, but it is worth reading the whole thing -- and spreading it widely. This is a time when some democrats are making noises about abandoning Roe vs. Wade. It is a view not shared by thousands of mainstream religious leaders who are prochoice, prosexuality education, and certain theocratic demagogues not withstanding, obviously pro-faith.

"Progressives who think warnings about 'theocracy' are an exaggeration should take a closer look at 'Justice Sunday: Filibustering People of Faith,' Veazy wrote. The event was "beamed into conservative churches across the country: a political rally from a large, comfortable mega-church in Louisville, with a middle-class audience listening with rapt attention to political operatives who self-identify as religious leaders-and at the bottom of the screen, streaming video with the photos, names and phone numbers of targeted U.S. senators. The visual message was clear: the church is dominant over the state and senators should toe the line on eliminating the filibuster and confirming Bush judges or pay the price."

"There is a right way and a wrong way to engage religious voices in the public square. I believe "Justice Sunday" reflects the latter and highlights several disturbing trends... As a Baptist minister for more than 40 years with a profound respect for religious freedom and pluralism, I fear it will get worse. In fact, I think we are teetering on the brink of theocracy and the Christian Right could conceivably use the battle over the judiciary and weakening support for reproductive rights to push us over the edge...."

"One of the "Justice Sunday" speakers, Dr. Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary... believes there is only one correct interpretation of the Bible -- his -- and he equated the inerrancy of his interpretation of the Bible with the inerrancy of the Constitution, based on his biblical beliefs. In bringing the Bible and the Constitution together, fundamentalists like Mohler are moving toward mainstreaming their biblically based interpretation of the Constitution. Judges would be held to the standard of biblical teachings, as interpreted by fundamentalists. I don't doubt the sincerity of Mohler and other fundamentalist ministers who share this view that the Bible is literally true and they alone know what it means, but they are on dangerous ground when they then suggest that they alone also know what the Constitution means-and that anyone who thinks differently is anti-Christian. Christians have strong differences of opinion on the meaning of scriptures and most of us don't want to see a particular brand of Christianity held up as the only real Christianity. We certainly don't want a particular brand of Christianity enacted as the law of the land."

"Reproductive justice is an issue on which they hope to divide and conquer progressives."

"In my view, the intensifying battle over the courts has brought progressives face-to-face with the need to take a firm stand on the morality of reproductive rights. Not only must we overcome the polarization generated by the Christian Right, we also must find a way to come together in compassionate concern for women and families. Speaking as a minister, I believe that the realities of women's lives must be included in any vision of a moral society that honors individual dignity and worth. I believe that women, and men, cannot live in dignity and equality if they cannot render for themselves their most intimate family decisions. "

[Crossposted from FrederickClarkson.com]

On Evangelicals as Military Chaplains

2005-07-15T16:23:00.000-04:00

Earlier this week the New York Times published an interesting article about the "growing force" of evangelicals in the military chaplain corps. Today, Mercer University's Baptist Studies Bulletin posted a brief dispatch that I wrote about the aggressive proselytization that is going on at the Air Force Academy. Ironically, as the military grows increasingly diverse, the military chaplain corp is becoming increasingly evangelical.

The NY Times article picked up a theme from the recent report of a task force that discovered "religious insensitivity" at the Air Force Academy. That report seemed to suggest that the problem arose because of the increase in the number of evangelicals in the chaplain corp.

Does blaming the increase in the number of evangelical chaplains address the issue of "insensitive" chaplains or does it merely explain it away? In the past, thousands of "born again" Baptists have served as chaplains in the military without creating such problems. Insensitivity is not a trait peculiar to evangelicals. In fact, the article cites an instance where a liturgical chaplain rudely and insensitively took over an evangelical chaplain's worship service.

I suggest that the problem has less to do with the growth in the number of evangelicals than it has to do with growth of intolerance within the chaplain corp. The article addressed this most clearly when it discussed the case of Chaplain Gordon James Klingenschmitt, of the Evangelical Episcopal Church, whose chaplain contract was not renewed due to his aggressive proselytizing.

"The Navy wants to impose its religion on me," he said. "Religious pluralism is a religion. It's a theology all by itself."

What's changed most is the increasing proportion of chaplains, officers and soldiers who are no longer willing to tolerate religious pluralism within the military. Reports from the Air Force Academy indicate that some of the "insensitive" officers at the school recently attended seminars teaching such intolerance on duty hours.

The military is right to decide that the kind of intolerance that Kilingenschmitt expresses is intolerable. When acting in an official capacity, chaplains must be required to be tolerant of and sensitive to the religious convictions of all the soldiers that serve of our country.

It shouldn't be that hard to find chaplains who are tolerant. All they have to do is find people who believe in and practice the golden rule -- "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." In some form, that principle is common to most faiths.

Rally for a Theocratic Judiciary

2005-07-15T03:21:00.000-04:00

The theocratic Christian Right, this time led by the Family Research Council are portraying opponents of President Bush's judicial nominations -- as well as the Supreme Court -- as opponents of "people of faith" in announcing Justice Sunday II, a rally for theocratic judicial nominees to be held in a church in Nashville on August 14th. The rally, led by such veterans of the Christian Right as James Dobson, Phyllis Schlafly and Chuck Colson will be simulcast to churches and they hope on cable networks.

Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council and the principal organizer of the event told The New York Times that the rally will focus on "the court's hostility toward religion and Christianity in particular."

The nadir of the Christian Right's rhetorical assault on the religious character of their fellow Americans was the first Justice Sunday in April. At the time fliers for the event claimed that those who oppose the Christian Right's most extreme judicial nominations were "against people of faith."

"As the liberal, anti-Christian dogma of the left has been repudiated in almost every recent election, the courts have become the last great bastion of liberalism," Perkins wrote on the Family Research Council web site. "For years, he continued, "activist courts, aided by liberal interest groups like the A.C.L.U., have been quietly working under the veil of the judiciary, like thieves in the night, to rob us of our Christian heritage and our religious freedom."

The ugly attack on the religious faith of the opponents of the theocratic right, drew outrage and sparked a mobilization in response.

The New York Times editorialized against what they called Bill Frist's "religious war":

"Right-wing Christian groups and the Republican politicians they bankroll have done much since the last election to impose their particular religious views on all Americans. But nothing comes close to the shameful declaration of religious war by Bill First, the Senate majority leader, over the selection of judges for federal courts.... Frist is determined to get judges on the federal bench who are loyal to the Republican fringe and, he hopes, would accept a theocratic test on decisions."

Numerous editorial writers and columnists agreed.

I wrote at the time: "The Christian Right has framed it's battles as against the supposed religion of "secular humanism," but this was always a straw man. It was and is a war of agression being waged by a certain coalition of rightist Christians who hold to overlapping notions of Christian theocracy. They share a common cause in their desire to demolish the wall of separation between church and state, and to be able to utilize taxpayer money and public institutions and infrastructure to build their movement to a position of unassailable and permanent power in the United States."

Once again, the theocratic Christian Right is making a big show of conflating the notion of "people of faith" with membership in he Christian Right of the Republican party. The rhetoric is a tad less strident, but the message is the same.

But the preach-fest of last time has been replaced with a more dramatic production, that will include three country music stars. Notably Lee Greenwood, the singer-songwriter best known for his patriotic hit, "God Bless the USA." This song has been an anthem at Christian Right rallies for years, and no doubt it will be the emotional highlight of what we can expect will be a carefully choreographed program.

Like last time, religious leaders who do not share the theocratic agenda of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) and his allies can be expected to be outraged. The first to speak out was the Rev. Dr. C. Welton Gaddy, President of The Interfaith Alliance:

"Here we go again!" Rev. Gaddy said. "And, this time the imagery and the implications of the message advanced by leaders of the religious right are more offensive, sacrilegious, and undemocratic than those so integral to Justice Sunday I."

"Right now, the most serious threats to the fundamental rights and liberties in our nation are not coming from a lack of God's interest but from a small group of religious right leaders who have assumed the mantle of national religious authorities and seek to impose on the whole nation and its constitution their particular views on religion, the courts, politics, and justice."

Its my sense that the Christian Right's power is cresting, and that with the fortunes of President Bush and the GOP plummeting in the polls, if they want to get more theocrats nominated and confirmed to the federal bench, they will have to pull out the stops. This is just the beginning.

[Crossposted from FrederickClarkson.com]

Debunking Christian Nationalism, Cont.

2005-07-14T02:38:00.000-04:00

Marci Hamilton, a constitutional lawyer has a fine commentary on Alternet in which she attacks the bogus history undergirding Christian Nationalism, one of the ideological building blocks of the theocratic Christian Right. She is understandably concerned about the clout the Christian Right will exercise in the selection of a replacement for Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Here is some of what she wrote:

"This country was not founded on a single religious viewpoint, as the far right would have it, but rather on a wide diversity of religious beliefs. The current far right believers are reminiscent of the Puritans who settled what would become Massachusetts and who established their religion as the religion of the colony (and then the state). The Puritans believed in the right to believe whatever one wanted, so long as dissenters left their cities and communities. They believed in a religious culture controlled by the majority. Rhode Island was founded because of the Puritans' rank intolerance."

"Many of the dissenting Christians in Massachusetts were Baptists, whose charismatic preachers, including the Revs. Isaac Backus and John Leland, preached the separation of church and state. Backus declared that the "notion of a Christian commonwealth should be exploded forever" while Leland called established religions, 'all of them, anti-Christocracies.'"

"Yet, far right Christians today, many of them Baptists, have no respect for disestablishment principles. They are intent on removing barriers between government and religion, and, in fact, making government the servant to religion. They want their religious messages on courthouse walls, their theology in the science classrooms, their prayers in public schools, and their values to mandate constitutional policy. They even argue that Protestants are a majority and therefore have the right to have the government deliver their religious messages. This is their agenda for the next Supreme Court Justice."

I learned by reading the tag line on Hamilton's piece about her new book -- which sounds like a must read. Here is a bit more about it from the publisher's web site:

"God vs. the Gavel: Religion and the Rule of Law challenges the pervasive assumption that all religious conduct deserves constitutional protection. While religious conduct provides many benefits to society, it is not always benign. The thesis of the book is that anyone who harms another person should be governed by the laws that govern everyone else -- and truth be told, religion is capable of great harm."

"This may not sound like a radical proposition, but it has been under assault since the 1960s. The majority of academics and many religious organizations would construct a fortress around religious conduct that would make it extremely difficult to prosecute child abuse by clergy, medical neglect of children by faith healers, and other socially intolerable behaviors. This book intends to change the course of the public debate over religion by bringing to the public's attention the tactics of religious entities to avoid the law and therefore harm others. God vs. the Gavel will bring much-needed balance to the contemporary, heated debate about religion and its role in society."

Tip o' the Hat to Jesus Politics for alerting me to the post on Mainstream Baptist about Hamilton's article on Alternet. These blogs are increasingly important sources of information and analysis in the struggle with the theocratic Christian Right.

[Crossposted from FrederickClarkson.com]

From Talking Heads, to Talk to Action

2005-07-12T00:05:00.000-04:00

In April, some will recall that there was a major conference in New York called Examining the Agenda of the Religious Far Right. Z Magazine has just published an article about the conference titled "Taking on the Christian Right" that will be of interest to many. (The conference organizers, by the way, have produced a one-hour DVD of the conference which they will make available soon.)

The Z piece also mentions Talk to Action. This summer, our temporary blog site will evolve into a far more ambitious interactive site that will function much like The Daily Kos and Booman Tribune. (If you are not familiar with these sites, give one or both a try. If you are able to participate in either of those, you will be able to participate in Talk to Action. TTA will be easier.)

Meanwhile, our Talk to Action colleague Scott Isebrand has a fine inaugural post on his new Religious Right Watch blog site. Scott picks up on the theme we have been stressing regarding the need to reclaim American history from the bogus version peddled by Christian nationalists like Dr. D. James Kennedy and David Barton.

Isebrand succinctly concludes: "...the governing document of the United States, our Constitution, nowhere mentions God. The Constitution demands that there will never be religious tests for public office, and Jefferson's ideals of the separation of Church and State were embraced by the day's thinkers."

"But this is no longer the case. These concepts dear to Jefferson are not self-evident any longer. They are not embraced by the majority of our nation's Congressmembers, our President, or many judges. They are in danger of being forgotten and replaced by something altogether different, something anathema to the rational citizen."

This is the kind of thinking and writing that will help to change the terms of debate in America.

If you had to prove to an otherwise informed, but open minded person that the U.S. was not founded as a Christian Nation, how would you do it?

Isebrand sources some of his post the excellent book, The Godless Constitution. I also try to answer this question in my book Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy. What are the simplest, best, and most convincing ways to make the argument? How would you tell the story of how the framers of the Constitution approached matters of religion? This is something that I expect we will be discussing a great deal (among other things) when we launch the interactive version of Talk to Action.

[Adapted from FrederickClarkson.com ]

Extinguish the Fires of Hate

2005-07-09T21:14:00.000-04:00

Hate crimes and violence in America go on all the time. The latest outrage is directed against a Virginia congregation of the United Church of Christ -- whose General Synod endorsed gay marriage this week. Here is a report on that -- and a few others from the past few days.

Thanks to blogger and UCC seminarian Chuck Currie for alerting the blogosphere to a vicious hate crime. Someone set fire to a UCC church in Viginia today. A local newspaper reports that "The outside of the church was vandalized with anti-gay messages and a declaration that United Church of Christ members were sinners. The graffiti's message appeared to be a reference to the national church’s decision earlier this week to endorse gay and lesbian marriages. The United Church of Christ's General Synod voted Monday in Atlanta to approve a resolution that is accepting of gay and lesbian marriages but is not binding on local congregations. A member of the congregation discovered the graffiti Saturday morning when he stopped by to mow the grass. He went into the church building, and when he opened the sanctuary there was still a small fire."

"I have no idea," Currie writers, "whether or not the congregation at St. John’s Reformed UCC were in favor of the resolution passed by the General Synod of the United Church of Christ supporting gay marriage or not. That is irrelevant."

"It is tragic that whoever committed this hate crime did so because they were misled into believing that supporting legal equality for gays and lesbians is sinful. It simply is not."

"The rhetoric of the religious right and their allies in the political right, Currie continues, "who claim that homosexuality is a sin -- must take some of the responsibility for the increase in hate crimes such as this one. Albert Mohler, the prominent Southern Baptist leader, has even compared legal and legislative decisions in support of gay marriage to the attacks against the United States on September 11th. People hear that kind of hateful preaching and believe they are acting as faithful Christians as they torch churches or beat up gays."

The United Church News further reports that "two other churches in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley were vandalized near the time the United Church of Christ's Stillspeaking Initiative began running television ads welcoming all people, including gays and lesbians."

Contributions to help the church can be sent to:

St. John's Reformed United Church of Christ
1515 Arbor Hill Rd
Staunton, Va 24401

The Associated Press is also reporting that two, apparently unrelated black churches were burned to the ground in Tennnessee, as well as a mosque in Indiana. The latter is being investigated as a hate crime.

Meanwhile, a clinic in Palm Beach, Florida was closed following a serious arson attack on Monday. The Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinal reports that the arson follows a similar attack last year at this time. Terrorists often pick symbolic dates for thier crimes. In this case, the Palm Beach arsonist torches clinics on or about the fourth of July. Domestic terrorism aimed at abortion providers has been going on for a long time, inflamed in part by the rhetoric of the leaders of the Christian Right, in much the same fashion that hate is directed against others.

Hate crimes and domestic terrorism take many forms. Sometimes that hate is directed against people because of their race, thier religion, their sexual orientation, or for excercising thier constitutional right to receive or provide reproductive health services to women.

It is time to extinguish the fires of hate.

[Crossposted from FrederickClarkson.com]

Family Research Council Chickens Out

2005-07-08T14:06:00.000-04:00

It comes as no surprise that the Washington, DC-based Christian Right lobby -- Family Research Council (FRC) has a difficult time respecting other people's religious traditions. It was the FRC that declared that those who oppose President George Bush's nominees for federal judgeships are "against people of faith" in connection with the Christian Right's widely denounced "Justice Sunday" event in April.

Anyway, this week, in response to the United Church of Christ's stand endorsing marriage equality in the church and in the nation, the FRC unsurprisingly took exception. What was surprising was their line of argument and thier failure to harshly denounce the decision in the way they normally denounce homosexuality in general and marriage equality in particular:

"Ironically, this historic Congregationalist denomination, whose New England churches played a role in the American Revolution, also violated their democratic traditions in the vote of their 884-member General Synod. 'If we had put it to a vote of the people in the pews, it would have failed overwhelmingly,' declared the Rev. Brett Becker, a spokesman for more conservative churches in the UCC."

And what does Becker's opinion (Becker was a sponsor of a competing, losing resolution) have to do with democracy? The United Church of Christ's General Synod voted for this resolution by about 80%. The delegates to this body are elected. Whats more, the resolution they passed is not binding on individual congregations because the polity of the UCC respects the right to difference. Had the Synod passed Becker's resolution would the FRC claim that the vote was a violation of the denomination's democratic tradition? Not likely.

Let's look a the question of democracy in Christian denominations a little further. When was the last time any of the pronouncements of Southern Baptist Convention or the Catholic Church were put to a vote of the entire membership? (How, for example, do we think that the Pope's encyclical on birth control would fare in a plebiscite? How about the Southen Baptist Convention's doctrine that women are to be in submission to thier husbands?) In fact, there is no Christian denomination -- or any major religious grouping I can think of that puts such matters to a vote of their national membership.

The UCC, as the Family Research Council acknowledges, has a democratic polity. What they don't mention is that the UCC has none of the doctrinal police tactics conservatives use in other denominations to enforce their views.

What stands out to me in all this is how muted the Christian Right has been in response to the UCC's clear and strong stand in favor of marriage equality. From where I sit, I see two related reasons for the Christian Right's overall silence on this, and for the FRC's strained and ineffectual response.

One is that the UCC's endorsement of marriage equality demonstrates that there are many Christians who support this, and that the UCC's institutional weight and moral authority is more considerable than many may think. You can hear the fear in the FRC's statement.

Indeed, the descendants of the of the Pilgrims and the Puritans have a long history not only of democracy, but of advances in social justice that were ahead of their time -- such as ordaining the first African-American as a minister in 1785; and ordaining the first openly gay minister in 1972.

And as the UCC writes in its list of "firsts," in 1853 Antoinette Brown was "the first woman since New Testament times ordained as a Christian minister, and perhaps the first woman in history elected to serve a Christian congregation as pastor. At her ordination a friend, Methodist minister Luther Lee, defends 'a woman's right to preach the Gospel.' He quotes the New Testament: 'There is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.'"

The other reason the Christian Right is uncharacteristically silent in the face of this historic development is that they do not want to draw any additional media attention to the UCC and UCC president Rev. John Thomas -- because they want to define Christianity as representing only their point of view. Quick to denounce marriage equality and homosexuality in general, they are afraid to take on the authentic voice of the oldest Christian tradition in America, a tradition that profoundly informed the development of democracy and representative government in the United States.

This is a significant retreat by the Christian Right. Just as their claim that the U.S. was founded as a Christian Nation is bogus, they have no standing to criticize the democratic polity of the United Church of Christ. And in the wake of the overwhelming vote of the General Synod and unequivocal language of resolution, the silence of the Christian Right suggests that they understand the weakness of thier position in the face of strong, clear and credible Christian opposition.

[Crossposted from FrederickClarkson.com]

Awaiting Theocratic Fireworks

2005-07-01T22:38:00.000-04:00

Chuck Currie marked his second day guest blogging on the new blog site of the United Church of Christ by writing about.... bloggers!

The UCC is breaking new ground this week, using an official blog to provide information and commentary on the proceedings of its biennial conference, or General Synod, to church members not in attendance and to the wider public. Response to the UCC blog is already lighting up the blogosphere, which is always interested in new developments, as Currie shows. He writes: "There will be a lot more in the coming days. Stay tuned." Indeed. And in the run up to the vote on marriage equality, and whatever the outcome, the blogopshere will light up like the Fourth of July. And the fireworks will not all be celebratory.

The UCC is poised to become the first major Christian denomination to endorse marriage equality. Even in considering such a move, it has been under attack by conservative and evangelical groups. The other day for example, UCC President John Thomas endorsed the marriage equality resolution that will be considered by the General Synod. Imediately, a UCC rightwing caucus, the Biblical Witness Fellowship, demanded Thomas' resignation, declaring "He now now longer enjoys the credibility to continue as a religious leader of a Christian church." One can only imagine this outfit's reaction if the General Synod passes the marriage equality resolution.

This group is affiliated with the rightist Institute on Religion and Democracy, which has a twenty year history of external agitation and opposition to the social justice missions of the mainline denominations. IRD sponsors a network of conservative "renewal" groups that oppose the historic social justice mission and democratic traditions of the mainline churches. The annual meeting of this group is held in conjunction with the National Association of Evangelicals.

Last year, when the UCC sought to air a television ad that sought to portray the church as a place of welcome to all during the Christmas season, the Biblical Witness Fellowship joined with IRD in denouncing the ad. The tiny group is often given far more play in the media than they represent in numbers.

The UCC's General Synod is an elected and representative body in the Congregational tradition. As the UCC points out on its web site, "Because every UCC congregation is self-governing, its [the General Synod's] resolutions speak 'to' but not 'for' the local church." In other words, if the synod endorses same sex marriage, it does not mean that local churches are required to perform any. But if groups like the Biblical Witness Fellowship got their way, they would be seeking to create not only conservative doctrine, but to police doctrinal purity.

Religion News Service recently reported that Diana Butler Bass, a senior researcher at Virginia Theological Seminary "worried about conservatives' attempts in the UCC and other churches to centralize authority, discipline and doctrinal standards, especially in the UCC where local congregations relish their autonomy. Such a move violates 'the democratic impulses of American Protestantism,' she said."

"'These denominations are so closely tied to the practice of democracy in this country,' she said. 'If they lose that kind of local meeting-house democratic impulse, it makes me wonder what's going on in the larger culture.'"

[Crossposted from FrederickClarkson.com.]

Making Distinctions - Seeing Possibilities

2005-07-01T13:40:00.000-04:00

We have learned a few things at Political Research Associates (PRA) over the past 24 years of studying U.S. right-wing political and social movements, and we have captured our best advice in a document titled "Ground Rules and Tips for Challenging the Right." There are three sections--Do Your Homework, Stay Cool in Public, and Keep Organizing--each with several suggestions.

When PRA staff speak in public we often expand on these recommendations, and a blog seems like a good place to enshrine these musings in written form. Over the next few months, I will pick one suggestion and write a short essay around it, with some useful links if I can find them.

To start, let’s look at the following recommendation:

Distinguish between leaders and followers in right-wing organizations.

Leaders are often “professional” right-wingers. They’ve made a career of promoting a rightist agenda and attacking progressives and progressive issues. Followers, on the other hand, may not be well-informed. They are often mobilized by fears about family and future based on information that, if true, would indeed be frightening. This so-called “education” is often skillful, deceitful, and convincing. These followers may take positions that are more extreme than those of the leaders, but on the other hand, they may not know exactly what they are supporting by attending a certain organization’s rally or conference. To critique and expose the leaders of right-wing organizations is the work of a good progressive organizer, writer or activist. In the case of the followers, however, it is important to reserve judgment and listen to their grievances. Do not assume that they are all sophisticated political agents or have access to a variety of information sources.
--
PublicEye.org - Ground Rules and Tips for Challenging the Right

This does not mean that we should think that followers are dimwitted, ignorant, or crazy. That was a common perception promoted by centrist academics during the 1960s, but since the late 1970s sociologists have shown that people who join social movements--left or right--are remarkably similar to the population from which they emerge. And people in social movements are not mesmerized by crafty leaders, cluelessly following the whims of charismatic demagogues. Demagogues exist, to be sure, but they primarily succeed by swaying large groups of people by developing clever ways to frame ideas and issues.
Frames are necessary but not sufficient to build a movement, but frames are an important tool.

That's good news for progressives who want to mobilize a counter-movement. We can examine the frames put forward by the Hard Right and devise alternative frames that drive wedges between specific constituencies. We can do that with topical analysis, for example exploiting the tension between Christian conservatives and libertarians on social issues such as abortion and gay rights. And we can recognize that participants have different levels of commitment and loyalty to social movements.

Letha Dawson Scanzoni has produced a useful set of distinctions that explain this in her AlterNet article The Gospel On Gay Marriage

Aggressive Combatants, who mobilize their followers to go to battle against whatever they consider to be the current threat (most recently, same-sex marriage);

Loyal Followers, who consider the Combatants to be their religious authorities, buying their books, tuning in to their broadcasts, accepting their interpretations of the Bible, and responding to their fundraising pleas;

Thoughtful Questioners, who were drawn to the movement by its emphasis on a personal relationship with God and the importance of the Bible in their lives but are not convinced that all issues are settled or that all the answers are already in;

Hurting Strugglers, sincere believers who earnestly practiced their faith and followed the rules they had been taught, yet were faced with some circumstance that turned their well-ordered world upside down -- a divorce, a gay child, a pregnant teenager, domestic violence, mental illness, job loss, bankruptcy, a suicide in the family.

These are useful names for important distinctions. As Scanzoni observes, we should be focusing our attention of the last two categories: Thoughtful Questioners and Hurting Strugglers, because they are already in a place where new ideas and new frames have a better chance of finding fertile soil.
I happen to think that a commitment to the idea of civil society means we should be treating people with sincere spiritual belief systems with courtesy and respect--just as I think we should be treating secular ethical and moral belief systems with courtesy and respect. In this case, there are hardball pragmatic reasons to be able to talk with Christian conservatives about moral values…we just might change their minds.

Ported from Chip Berlet's Blog

Thank You, John Thomas

2005-06-29T21:16:00.000-04:00

AP:

With a possible historic vote looming on a measure supporting same-sex marriage, the head of the United Church of Christ on Tuesday publicly endorsed the resolution for the first time.

The Rev. John H. Thomas said Tuesday that the church's General Synod "should affirm the rights of gay, lesbian and transgender persons" to have marriages "equal in name, privileges and responsibilities to married heterosexual couples."

"I believe our local churches, as they are able, should move toward the development of marriage equality policies," Thomas added during a speech at Emory University.

I've mentioned before that if the UCC adopts this proposal, it will be history-making: we will be the first mainline denomination to positively affirm same-sex marriage.

It's by no means a done deal; there are two competing resolutions, one against SSM, one asking for more time for prayer, reflection, and conversation. And Thomas' opinion, while influential, is just that: opinion. His vote counts only as much as any other delegate's.

Still, it's a step in the right direction, and worth some thanks, don't you think?

Light them up. Let 'em know you support them.

Chuck Currie has more on General Synod.

Village Voice Cites Bloggers in Report on the Christian Right

2005-06-29T14:42:00.000-04:00

Rev. Billy Graham's last crusade in New York last week spawned a great deal of hagiographic reporting on the career of the famous evangelist. But one of Graham's less reported legacies is his catalytic role in the formation of the modern Christian Right.

James Ridgeway, longtime Washington correspondent for The Village Voice reports this week that "If there is any one person responsible for George W. Bush's presidency it is Billy Graham. It is safe to say that Graham, old and sick now, is the most politically adroit religious figure of our time."

Ridgeway, who is a reader of FrederickClarkson.com and Bruce Prescott's Mainstream Baptist has a succinct round-up of some of the more significant leaders of the Christian Right including Tony Perkins, Albert Mohler, Ralph Reed, and Ted Haggard.

Here is what he writes about Haggard: "Pastor of Colorado Springs's large New Life Church and head of the National Association of Evangelicals, with a membership of 45,000 churches, Haggard talks to the president or his advisers regularly. His is the most powerful religious lobby in the U.S. Pastor Ted believes in the military as a public service and backs preemptive war. "My fear," he tells Harper's, "is that my children will grow up in an Islamic state."

[Crossposted from FrederickClarkson.com]

New "Religious Left" Group Attacks Dems and the Left

2005-06-27T15:39:00.000-04:00

I regret having to say this, but the Christian Alliance for Progress is off to an inauspicious start.

The new organization, presenting itself as a voice of the "Religious Left" has received some national and international press coverage, and it has set out some well articulated issue statements from a progressive Christian perspective. It says it wants to form a national progressive grassroots political organization. It has also been duly denounced by the Christian Right.

But there is one really big problem.

The group's Director of Religious Affairs and principal spokesperson, Reverend Timothy F. Simpson, thinks and acts just like a leader of the Christian Right in one important respect. He publicly accuses the Democratic Party and "the left" of being anti-religious and suppressing religious expression. It is a baseless accusation and I hope he will abandon it.

In an interview with The American Prospect, here is what Simpson said:

"One of the great problems of the Democratic Party," he said, "is that the 5 percent or so [of its members] who don't want any religious rhetoric at all, and who do not represent the mainstream of American political or religious life, have been allowed to call the cadence in the [party]. And when that happens, Democrats get their butts kicked. Because people in this country are believers."

"For Republicans and Democrats, he said, openness to religion 'is clearly the winning strategy in this, the most religious of the Western industrial democracies. You just cannot ask people to check their faith at the door of the public-policy arena and expect to resonate with any significant segment of the electorate, because that's not where people are. And folks on the left have just got to deal with that.'"

"Simpson characterized Democrats who are opposed to the injection of religion into politics as 'extremists,' saying that he can call for more religion to influence politics while still advocating a clear separation between church and state."

"'What we think the extremists in the Democratic Party fear, and rightly so, is a Christian takeover,' he said. 'We're trying to emulate the style of [the Reverend Martin Luther] King, which is more to speak to the government than to become the government -- which is what the folks on the right are doing."

I am particularly struck by Simpson's claim that "extremists" are calling the shots with regard to religion in the Democratic Party. Its a curious, and I think reckless use of the term.

The press release announcing the formation of Christian Alliance for Progress denounced "the extreme rhetoric and political agenda of the Religious Right." The organization's foundational Jacksonville Statement further denounces the "extremist political goals" of the Christian Right. If the leaders of the Democratic Party are extremist and the Christian Right is extremist, what does extremist really mean?

Rhetoric aside, the simple fact is that religion and religious expression has never been banished from the Democratic Party and Simpson presents no evidence that it has. Who is this supposed group that has "called the cadence" in the party with regard to religion? And who are these "extremists" and in exactly what ways are they extreme?

Perhaps at this point you are thinking, well, maybe Simpson was misquoted or having a bad day. Unfortunately, he said similar things at a press conference at the National Press Club on the occasion of the public launch of the Christian Alliance for Progress. Here is a quote from, the nationally syndicated Knight-Ridder newspapers account:

"Simpson said at the Press Club launch, 'There is a sector of folks on the left that have been enormously vocal about (stressing secularism), that have shouted down the vast majority of folks on the left who are people of faith, who do believe in God.'"

This, friends, is hokum.

Simpson has no evidence that the Democratic Party or anyone in it is opposed to religion or its expression in public life. There is also no evidence that more secular people on the Left have "shouted down" anyone from the Religious Left. (It has certainly never been my experience.)

Could the Democratic Party (and for that matter, all other sectors of society, handle the matter of religion better? Why yes, as a matter of fact it could. But Simpson's divisive rhetoric is no help at all.

Simpson seems to have internalized one of the central message frames of the Christian Right of the past quarter century. (I discussed this frame in detail in chapter 8 of Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy, and some of the problems that result.)

For all of the good things the Christian Alliance for Progress stands for and has set out to do, it will gain little traction if one of its main themes is to attack Democrats and the Left as anti-religion and engaging in suppression of religious expression. We already have plenty of people who do that. We call them the leaders of the Christian Right.

[Crossposted from FrederickClarkson.com]

The Battle Over Public Broadcasting

2005-06-23T19:06:00.000-04:00

Salon.com reports that Ken Tomlinson, the chair of the federal Corporation for Public Broadcasting is a conservative ideologue, hell-bent on twisting the CPB-funded PBS and National Public Radio to conform to his world view.

There are those who want to go even farther: two committees of the U.S. House of Representatives voted to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting by $100 million, but ultimately after a popular outcry, the House passed an amendment by Rep. David Obey (D-WI) restoring the money.

But the the battle over public broadcasting is far from over. The Christian Right and the wider conservative movement have long despised PBS and NPR and will continue to wage a war of attrition against independent public broadcasting.

Meanwhile, Members of Congress, notably Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) have called for Tomlinson's resignation, and People for the American Way is mounting a campaign to pressure Tomlinson to do just that.

Paul McLeary writes regarding Tomlinson in his Salon opinion piece, "if his actions are any guide, administration-approved appointments, secret contracts with conservative content monitors and suppressing polls that refute his 'liberal bias' charge are part and parcel of his vision of balance. In effect, Tomlinson is stacking the deck so far to the right at the CPB that what he claims to see as balance, many others view as a right-wing coup in public broadcasting."

McLeary quotes Jeffrey Chester of the Center for Digital Democracy as saying the Bush White House and the Republican Party "have no intention to drop their campaign against public broadcasting."

"Ken Tomlinson is channeling Richard Nixon," Chester adds. "These dirty tricks, backdoor communications with the White House, the purging of senior executives, recruiting top-level GOP operatives -- all to scare public broadcasting officials" -- are reminiscent of Nixon's anti-public broadcasting crusade in the early '70s."

[Crossposted from FrederickClarkson.com]

Ralph Reed for President?

2005-06-20T00:10:00.000-04:00

The Associated Press (via Salon.com) reports that Ralph Reed, the founding and former executive director of Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition has announced that he is running for Lt. Governor of Georgia.

Much is rightfully being made that Reed has had many unsavory dealings with lobbyist Jack Abramoff who stands accused of ripping off Indian tribes who were lobbying to be able to operate casinos. While its possible that opponents in the Republican and in the Democratic Parties, (not to mention sitting grand juries and Congressional investigations of Abramoff's affairs) may be able to make the charges stick, to count on this would be unwise.

The fundamental lesson of Reed's tenure at the Christian Coalition is the organization matters. People who believe that the tinge of scandal, or of ties to people who make extreme or outrageous statements (like Robertson) will trump skilled and sustained organization, and the growing power of the Christian Right, have missed the most important lessons in politics of the past 15 years.

Meanwhile, the Lt. Governor's office in Georgia is thought to be a powerless office. So why would Reed, the current chairman of the state GOP want the job?

The AP reports: "Marshall Wittmann, who worked with Reed at the Christian Coalition but now works for the Democratic Leadership Council, thinks Reed wants to be president."

"'He knew he couldn't go from the Christian Coalition, so he became a political consultant, then Georgia GOP chairman, then coordinator for the Bush campaign. The next logical step is to win a political office. This is what's available, but it's clearly a stepping stone to higher office," Wittmann said."

It should be noted that Lt. Governor is a statewide office -- which means developing a statewide campaign infrastructure, which can be deployed into a race for governor or senator down the road

[Crossposted from FrederickClarkson.com]

Ohio, Blackwell & the Christian Right Part II

2005-06-17T18:30:00.000-04:00

Recently, the Ohio Restoration Project announced plans to mobilize conservative Christian voters towards the 2006 elections. The principal beneficiary appears to be Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell who is running for the Republican nomination for governor. (I referred to this in passing in Part I, which described Blackwell's involvement in a dominionist seminar at Cedarville University on June 17th.) The story has been widely reported, including by the New York Times, and much blogged, for example by Bruce Prescott at Talk to Action.

But there was one part of the Ohio Restoration Project action plan that was strikingly familiar to me. It incorporates a feature of two pivotal events in the development of the contemporary Christian Right -- the Washington for Jesus rallies held on the mall in Washington, DC in the 1980s. Interestingly too, they may very well also follow the model of abuse of non-profit tax-exempt organizations that accompanied these events.

The Ohio Restoration Project is a carefully planned campaign to maximize conservative Christian voter participation in the 2006 elections. The project will among other things engage people through a series of "pastor policy briefings" for large numbers of leaders and followers in the largest cities in Ohio, coupled with advertising featuring comments from Ken Blackwell. And they want to recruit some 2,000 "Patriot Pastors" to lead the way. They also intend to ensure that Christian Right voter guides from any of several groups (Christian Coalition, American Family Association, etc. are in widespread use. They aim for 4 million. Of course some of this would have happened anyway, but they are providing an organizing focus that will not only ensure mere distribution, but generate interest and enthusiasm. There are plans to build e-mail lists, host "non-partisan" voter registration drives in churches, all of these activities are intended to build a political network that will influence the 2006 elections and beyond, and seize control of Republican party organizations in every county in the state.

As the New York Times reported, "In a manifesto that is being circulated among church leaders and on the Internet, the group, which is called the Ohio Restoration Project, is planning to mobilize 2,000 evangelical, Baptist, Pentecostal and Roman Catholic leaders in a network of so-called Patriot Pastors to register half a million new voters, enlist activists, train candidates and endorse conservative causes in the next year."

"The initial goal is to elect Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, a conservative Republican, governor in 2006. The group hopes to build grass-roots organizations in Ohio's 88 counties and take control of local Republican organizations."

This represents a new, and possibly dynamic wave of energy and organizing. Its got a well thought out plan, that build on existing models, including the Christian Coalition, Focus on the Family, and more. Far from being an original, out of the blue scheme, it shrewdly and knowledgably builds on and applies, Christian Right organizing models of the past generation.

A highlight of the campaign, going into the fall elections, is an event they will call "Ohio for Jesus" rally set for the spring of 2006. They hope to have top Christian Right leaders like Pat Robertson and James Dobson join Kenneth Blackwell as headliners for the rally.

The model comes from ground-breaking rallies in Washington, DC in 1980 and again in 1988. These events called Washington for Jesus, had similar political messages, but disingenuously claimed to be apolitical. They were transparently aimed at the political mobilization of evangelical Christians in general and charismatic and Pentecostals in particular. I wrote about these events in my 1997 book, Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy, from which this discussion is adapted.

These events -- pivotal events in the history of the development of the Christian Right -- were also integral to the political mobilization of Pentecostals and charistmatics that became the base for the electoral ambitions of Pat Robertson, and later the core of the Christian Coalition that built on Robertson's unsuccessful run for the presidency. These were historic events in part because Pentecostals and charismatics had previously been largely apolitical. It took a multi-year and multi-institutional, multi-campaign effort to gradually orient them to political and electoral engagement.

Washington for Jesus, held in the spring of 1980 in the run up to the fall elections, was originally billed as a "prayer rally" -- but controversy erupted when a political declaration which was to be released at the supposedly apolitical event, leaked to the press. The declaration, drafted by rally leaders, including Pat Robertson, Bill Bright of Campus Crusade for Christ, and Demos Shakarian of the Full Gospel Businessmen's Fellowship International, claimed, among other things, that "unbridled sexuality, humanism and Satanism are taught [in the schools] at public expense" and "our currency has been debased... and our armed forces weakened." The manifesto also called for "laws, statutes, and ordinances that are in harmony with God's word." Some, seeking prayer not politics, dropped out. In the name of unity, the declaration was dropped as well.

Nevertheless, Bill Bright called the event "the single most important day in the history of the United States since the Declaration of Independence." Rally coordinator Ted Panteleo said "I think President Reagan was elected as a result of what happened up there."

Soon after the WFJ rally for "Godly government," the non-profit Freedom Council was organized by Pat Robertson, who provided cash, mailing lists and office space at the headquarters of his Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN.) Ted Panteleo, the founding director... said in 1982 that they were organizing in every congressional district toward "a Christian president, and a Christian government."

U.S. News and World Report reported that CBN pumped $8.5 million into the Freedom Council, which concentrated its efforts in states likely to boost Robertson's 1988 GOP presidential primary efforts: "early voting states like Michigan and Iowa where Robertson's campaign has subsequently done so well" the magazine noted.

By the fall of 1987, the Internal Revenue Service and the press were probing for links between the Freedom Council and Robertson's as yet undeclared candidacy. That October, the Freedom Council shut down, and the results of the IRS investigation were never made public. Four months later Robertson ally Rev. John Giminez of Virginia Beach, VA announced Washington for Jesus 1988 -- with Ted Panteleo as coordinator. Former Freedom Council officials later admitted that they fronted for the Robertson campaign. "The entire process was to create a launching pad for Pat Robertson's bid for the presidency,' former Council executive director Dick Minard told NBC News."

While the model, borrowed from the pioneers of the Robertson wing of the Christian Right is obvious, one thing that is remarkable about Ohio for Jesus is how it is so openly a front for the electoral ambitions of Ken Blackwell. The participation of churches in this effort may very well jeopardize their 501(c)(3) tax status conferred by the IRS. Tax-exemptions for churches require being scrupulously nonpartisan with regard to use of church resources.

Interestingly, partisan abuse by partisan Christian Right groups is not new in Ohio. In 1996, in response to concerns raised by Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the Ohio Roundtable, then the leading Christian Right political organization in the state, and an affiliate of James Dobson's Focus on the Family, was forced to drop their biased voter guide. One wonders if the reasonable constraints placed on non-profit organizations regarding electoral activity are enforceable in today's political climate. Focus on the Family has a national network of state level "Family Policy Councils." The current recognized FOF affiliate in Ohio is the Cincinnati based Citizens for Community Values, which is also very active.

In any case, the Ohio Restoration Project plan as written is fraught with the likelihood that churches or other tax exempt organizations could stray well over the lines drawn by the IRS. It may very well be that this is intentional. There is a similar effort underway in Texas to recruit and mobilize "patriot pastors." Interestingly, Focus on the Family is promoting this effort, and an article in its magazine suggests possible collusion with the Republican Party: "Internal data from the Republican National Committee shows that an estimated 40 percent of Christians -- that’s about 24 million people -- are not registered to vote. Considering that just over 100,000 votes enabled four pro-choice candidates for the U.S. Senate to defeat pro-life candidates, church voter registration is a key force in changing our nation’s future."

Christian Right attorney Matt Staver is quoted in the article claiming that no church has ever lost its 501(c)(3) tax status over electoral work. While this is not so, available evidence suggests that this election cycle will see a further pushing the envelope of non-profit tax abuse by Christian Right groups fronting for Republican candidates for office.

It is said that those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it. The Christian Right has learned from and is building on its own history. This is an example of how and why the Christian Right is the best organized faction in American politics. They have developed and evolved models of political organizing appropriate to the constituencies they are seeking to organize. They persist across the election cycles. They plan ahead. The rest of society has pretty much yet to come to terms with the sea changes in politics brought about by the Christian Right -- which only benefits from being underestimated and misunderstood.

[Crossposted from FrederickClarkson.com}

Investing in Ideas

2005-06-17T10:31:00.000-04:00

For over thirty years conservative and right-wing foundations and funders have invested in ideas. They have poured over $2 billion into creating a right-wing network and infrastructure, and used that to build a large political machine and a huge populist mass base.

These funds have been spread across a range of ideologies and identities. Business conservatives, Christian evangelicals, libertarians, neoconservatives, military interventionists, anti-union activists, moral traditionalists, and others have been funded to pursue the ideas that facilitate action in the political and social arenas.

Most liberal and progressive foundations refuse to fund basic research, think tanks, alternative media, publishing, and conferences. That's exactly what conservative and right-wing funders have targeted in a strategic way. And by funding a range of conservative ideas, it is now possible to hear a radio debate on some policy issue where there are three views from the political right, one liberal, and no progressives. That's balance.

There is nothing new in this complaint. In the mid 1990s activist leader Suzanne Pharr asked Loretta Ross and me to help pull together some progressive strategy sessions at the Blue Mountain conference center in upstate New York. After one meeting we sent a delegation down to New York City to meet with representatives of over one dozen foundations and funders to explain how the political right had invested in the struggle over ideas. We talked about Gramsci’s theory of cultural hegemony, and the importance of being able to field-test slogans, frames, and different ways of explaining ideas and telling stories.

We explained how right-wing funders had shifted away from short-term project grants toward unrestricted grants over many years to guarantee and enhance the survival rate of right-wing think tanks and alternative media. We explained how an echo chamber had been created for conservative and right-wing arguments to challenge progressive and liberal theories and goals. We explained how we were being outmaneuvered. We explained that we were losing. We explained what would happen if we continued to lose in terms of the attack on gay rights, women’s rights, and immigrant rights. We explained that racism and xenophobia would continue to be rebuilt as acceptable public positions. To be fair, a few funders shifted their focus. Most did not.

The Institute for First Amendment Studies, which monitored boycotts by the Christian Right among other things, went under. The reproductive rights magazine Body Politic stopped publishing. The human rights group Northwest Coalition for Human Dignity (itself a merger of two groups) ceased operations.

In the mid 1990s groups such as People for the American Way shifted focus to monitoring legislative and political maneuvers by conservatives in the nation’s capital. This is an important task, but groups such as Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Policy Institute, and Political Research Associates (where I work) could not raise the funds to hire more research staff to monitor and analyze the slew of right-wing campaigns being generated by the well-funded right-wing infrastructure.

In the early 1990s there were three progressive researchers who produced books and articles about the rise of the political right and the ascendancy of conservative Christian evangelicals into the political system: Sara Diamond, Russ Bellant, and Fred Clarkson. Not one of them could make a living writing about the rise of the right. Compare them to Ann Coulter, Dinesh D’Souza, and the swarm of right-wing ideologues financed with stipends, grants, and fellowships to do research and write about the political scene.

A real democracy requires the type of informed consent that emerges as many competing ideas struggle for acceptance in the public square. In the culture war, one side has been disarmed.

Ported from Chip Berlet's Blog

Rural Republicans Uphold Public Schools in Texas

2005-06-17T07:42:00.000-04:00

The Christian Supremecist machine that has taken over the GOP in the large metropolitan areas of Texas did not expect to face resistance from their party's own legislators in rural areas, but that is what is happening.

The Speaker of the Texas House, Tom Craddick (R-Midland) was confident that he could deliver a pilot school voucher plan for his affluent Christian Supremecist backers in the last legislative session. His train was derailed by rural legislators from his own party who do not want to see already scarce funds siphoned off from their public schools.

How they defeated the proposal is most enlightening. They amended the bill to place the pilot program in the districts of the legislators who sponsored the proposal.

Obviously, vouchers must be the answer to problems with everybody's public schools but your own. The teachers at your own public school have names and faces and they are doing more than should be reasonably expected with the inadequate resources they've been given.

This entry is cross-posted from the Mainstream Baptist blog.

Ohio, Blackwell & the Christian Right

2005-06-16T23:10:00.000-04:00

The theocratic Christian Right in Ohio promises to gather a lot of attention in the run up to the 2006 elections. The controversial Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell is the movement's apparent choice for governor.

Plans by a group called the Ohio Restoration Project to mobilize conservative Christians on Blackwell's behalf has been widely reported, including by the New York Times.

But Blackwell is trolling for support in other precincts of the Christian Right as well. He is a featured speaker at a Christian Right conference on Friday, June 17th at Cedarville University, a Baptist school in southwestern Ohio.

The conference is transparently seeking to persuade conservative Christian businessmen to become political activists and political donors. "This conference is for folks who earnestly desire to make a difference in their generation through economic means," according to the description on the conference web site. "They want to learn how to win in the marketplace and win big so they can leverage their resources and influence on behalf of a Kingdom agenda."

The event is sponsored by "Business Reform" magazine -- which brags about its line up of speakers: "It would cost you thousands for a day with them, but you and up to three friends can join them June 17th at Cedarville University from 8 - 5 with a single $49 subscription to Business Reform magazine."

Whatever else it may be, it is an event with dominionist Christian Right overtones. One of the featured speaker is Rev. Dennis Peacock, a longtime theocratic activist, whose organization Strategic Christian Services says it brings a "Biblical Worldview" to business. In a recent column posted on his web site, Peacock attributes the nation's problems to "our increasingly anti-Christ culture where secular humanism has gutted our cultural morality and worldview with a perjurious historical revisionism worthy of the Hitlers and Stalins whose ambitions we claim to have not only defeated but transcended."

Peacock was a founder and leader of the Coalition on Revival, which led a series of theological conversations in the 1980s that have been pivotal in animating, and setting the more decisively theocratic direction of the Christian Right.

Another seminar speaker is Dr. Gary Cass, who heads the Center for Reclaiming America, a political arm of Rev. D. James Kennedy's Coral Ridge Ministries. For ten years, Kennedy has held an increasingly influential political conference at his church in Ft. Lauderdale. This year, the Christian Science Monitor ran a feature story about the conference.

"In material given to conference attendees," according to the Monitor, Kennedy wrote: "'As the vice-regents of God, we are to bring His truth and His will to bear on every sphere of our world and our society. We are to exercise godly dominion and influence over our neighborhoods, our schools, our government... our entertainment media, our news media, our scientific endeavors -- in short, over every aspect and institution of human society.'"

The Center for Reclaiming America, the Monitor reported, "aims to increase its 500,000-strong 'e-mail army' to 1 million, and to encourage Christians to run for office. It has plans for 12 regional offices and activists in all 435 US House districts. And a new lobbying arm in Washington will target judicial nominations and the battle over marriage."

"'If they don't vote our way, we'll change their view one way or another,' executive director Gary Cass tells the group. As a California pastor, Dr. Cass spearheaded efforts to close abortion clinics and recruit Christians to seek positions on local school boards. 'We're going to take back what we lost in the last half of the 20th century,' he adds."

The title of Cass' Cedarville talk is: "Winning the Culture Wars."

Of course, just because Mr. Blackwell is speaking at a conference with Cass and Peacock, does not mean that he necessarily shares their views. On the other hand, this is yet one more example of the way that the ambitious Blackwell, who is running for governor in 2006, is positioning himself as the candidate of the Christian Right.

[This is part I of a two part series on Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell and his relationship to the Christian Right. Crossposted from FrederickClarkson.com]

Anti-Gay Campaign in Maine

2005-06-15T02:16:00.000-04:00

Two Anti-gay campaigners from Massachusetts, Brian Camenker (of the Parents Rights Coalition and the Article 8 Alliance) and David Parker were in Maine on June 13th and 14th for six city "Wake Up" tour by Christian Right groups. The tour sought to gain attention for their effort to gather enough petition signatures to stop implementation of a new law that bars discrimination based on sexual orientation in employment, credit, housing, education, and public accommodations. The law is due to take effect on June 28th.

According to an article in the Morning Sentinel, Parker and Camenker were the guests of the Christian Civic League at one stop on Tuesday "to alert Mainers to what's happened in other states with progressive gay-rights laws."

Parker, as the father of a child in the Lexington, MA public schools, complains about a picture book that depicts a same sex couple as parents; and he wants to be able to remove his son from any possible reference to homosexuality in school. Here in MA, we often allow children to begin to understand that there may be different kinds of families in the world. Parker and Camenker, however, are obsessed with "the gay agenda." Parker was arrested when he refused to leave school property until he got his way in the matter.

Here is what the Coalition for Marriage says on its web site about the "hidden agenda of the homosexual rights movement:"

"When the homosexual rights movement succeeds in their effort to gain absolute power, they will vent their fury on men of God with all the rage of the crowd gathered outside Abraham's door in Sodom and Gomorrah."

The nasty crusade is not going unopposed. "As Parker and Camenker told their stories," reported the Morning Sentinel," a small group of people holding signs stood silently in the back of the room to show their opposition to the event. Members of Waterville's First Congregational Church, United Church of Christ, said they want the public to know that not all Christians agree with the civic league's efforts."

Mainers might be interested in MA blogger Marry in Massachusetts' eye-opening take on Parker's tale. They might also be interested in knowing about the noxious electoral activities of Camenker's Article 8 Alliance last year, and again this year during special elections for the MA House of Representatives.

Its hard to beat Maine's Coalition for Marriage for absurd and inflammatory rhetoric, but the Article 8 Alliance is certainly in the running, as Cecilia d'Oliveira, a resident of a town that knows them well showed in a letter-to-the-editor.

Here is part of what she wrote: "The Article 8 Alliance has aligned itself with David Parker in his effort to undermine the inclusive and welcoming nature of Lexington's public schools. Article 8 may also have been instrumental in creating the incident in order to generate press coverage sympathetic to their political views. So perhaps residents would be interested in learning more about this group."

"The Article 8 Alliance is an organization that is behind multiple pieces of harmful anti-judicial and anti-gay legislation. One proposed bill would actually require all parents to "opt-in" before a teacher could even mention the same-gender parents of a student!"

"If you go to the Article 8 Web site and click on their MassResistance blog, you will find many inflammatory quotes, some about our town. Here are four examples: 1) 'the jackbooted thugs currently in control of the Lexington schools;' 2) 'the fascists of Lexington are marching in lockstep!;' 3) 'Lexington lemmings;' 4) 'Lexington LGBTQI Fourth Reichers.'"

( A Tip o' the Hat to fellow MA blogger .08 Acres and a Donkey for pointing the way on this story.)

[Crossposted at FrederickClarkson.com]

Busting Domestic Terror Networks

2005-06-14T00:43:00.000-04:00

In recent years, some in federal law enforcement have pushed the "lone wolf" theory of criminal activity by far-right organizations from neo-Nazis to revolutionary antiabortion terrorists. Prosecutions may be easier if there is a focus on individuals. But time and again, it is clear the those who have been convicted of crimes based on their far-right ideologies, almost always came from a culture and organizational context that nurtured their views and honed their skills. What's more, its also so that these individuals often had help, and rarely act alone -- except in the narrowest sense of criminal culpability.
I discussed the underground networks behind antiabortion violence in Eternal Hostility: The Strugle Between Theocracy and Democracy.

Vicki Saporta, executive director of the National Abortion Federation, and others in the prochoice leadership told me in interviews for Womens eNews a few years ago that they saw pursuing the wider networks that support violent antiabortion criminals -- as essential.

"Other criminals," Saporta said, "will continue to rise up to replace the high-profile criminals who get caught, because they know they can count on food, shelter and other support. I think that until we put those people in jail, we will not be able to stop the violence."

The nationally syndicated radio news program Democracy Now recently featured an interview with a former FBI undercover operative who takes exception to the F.B.I.'s lone wolf theory. Here is part of their interview:

AMY GOODMAN: Today, we're joined by an ex-F.B.I. agent, Mike German, a whistleblower. He resigned from the agency last year in protest of what he saw as continuing failures in the F.B.I. counterterrorism program. German had worked for years going undercover to infiltrate domestic terrorist organizations like white supremacist skinhead groups and anti-government militias. On June 5, he wrote an editorial in The Washington Post advocating law enforcement pay more attention to groups that produce so-called lone wolf extremists like Timothy McVeigh, executed for the Oklahoma City bombing, and Eric Rudolph who planted the bombs at the Atlanta Olympics and women's health clinics, a gay night club, as well...

AMY GOODMAN: Looking at the piece that you did in The Washington Post, "Behind the Lone Terrorist, a Pack Mentality," you talk about every once in a while, a follower of these movements bursts violently into our world with deadly consequences. McVeigh, Eric Rudolph, Buford Furrow, Jr., Paul Hill, to name just a few, all convicted murderers, identified as lone extremists, the most difficult terrorists to stop, because they act independently from any organization. Or do they? You write, "Tim McVeigh seemed able to find a militia meeting wherever he went. He was linked to militia groups in Arizona and Michigan, white supremacist groups in Oklahoma and Missouri, and at gun shows he sold copies of The Turner Diaries, the racist novel written by the founder of a neo-Nazi organization. No one finds such groups by accident." You talk about Eric Rudolph who planted the bombs at the Atlanta Olympics, two abortion clinics, gay nightclub, grew up in the Christian Identity Movement, which identifies whites as God's chosen people and encourages the faithful to follow the Biblical example of Phineas, by becoming instruments of God's vengeance. Aryan Nations, formerly of Hayden Lake, Idaho, was the center of Christian Identity thought. Not incidentally, Buford Furrow worked there as a security guard before going on a shooting rampage at a Jewish day care center in Southern California. And you talk about Paul Hill, wrote of the need to take Phineas actions to prevent abortions and was so well known that the news media used to -- used him to speak in support of Michael Griffin's killing of abortion doctor, David Gunn, that Hill later shot an abortion provider himself should have surprised no one. Give us the landscape of these groups. They're well known.

MIKE GERMAN: Sure, they're well known. And they're very well organized, and they're very smart. They understand criminal conspiracy laws. They understand the First Amendment. And they take advantage of those in training their operatives to go out and do these activities. And the point I was trying to make is -- is that we can't look at these as isolated instances. It would be as if we were investigating the mafia and looking at every mafia hitman as a lone assassin and not looking at the underlying organization that was producing these murders, you know. And these people are careful, the leadership are careful about separating themselves from the actual criminal conspiracy, you know. But they do set the motive. They set the method that's used, and I believe that makes them part of the conspiracy. Now, I'm not saying necessarily you can make a criminal case against them, but all I'm saying is if we're -- if our number one priority is to prevent acts of terrorism, we have to pay attention to these needle factories, because that's what they're producing is these lone extremist terrorists. And it's not just random violence that occurs once in a while, it's an organized pattern of activity.

AMY GOODMAN: I remember during President Bush, the first's presidency, Planned Parenthood trying to get the administration to talk about the whole movement of burning, bombing, attacking women's health clinics as a conspiracy, because the same kinds of things were happening around the country, not to mention the targeting of women's health professionals, and doctors who performed abortions. They could hardly get an audience with the Justice Department at the time, and the administration was adamant about not talking about conspiracy of these groups. What is the significance of this?

MIKE GERMAN: Well, I think the problem is if you blind yourself to the conspiracy, then the chances of them being successful in their next act of lone extremist terrorism is more likely. So, you know, again I'm not saying that we could necessarily take these leaders into court and convict them, because the whole purpose of their methodology is to separate themselves from the actual criminal activity, but what I'm saying is if we don't pay attention to those leaders, you're going to insure that the next group is successful, just as if we were only investigating the mafia one murder at a time and not looking at the underlying organization."

[Crossposted from FrederickClarkson.com]

Right Wing Coalition Unraveling

2005-06-13T16:35:00.000-04:00

The right wing coalition between Neo-Conservatives and Religious Supremecists is beginning to unravel. Both sides have long been using the other to achieve political power. Now both sides are jockeying to blame the other for the backlash that is building against their joint leadership. Recent polls reveal that support for the right wing leadership of both the administration and congress has fallen through the floor.

The Neo-Conservatives overreached in pursuit of their objectives by attacking the third rail of American politics -- social security.

Religious Supremecists overreached in pursuit of their goals by politicizing the tragic circumstances around the death of Terri Schiavo and by their campaign to end the filibuster in the Senate.

Now that support for the war in Iraq is declining, the Religious Supremecists who took the lead in generating support for the war in Iraq, are beginning to peel away from the Neo-Conservatives who crafted the policy and plans for the war. The key figure in this latest split is Walter Jones. He says he will offer legislation next week to set a timetable for our withdrawal from Iraq.

Religious Supremecists are clearly beginning to distance themselves from the failed policies of the Neo-conservatives and moving on with their own agenda. Jones is still working hard to legalize the politicization of churches and Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell and Texas Governor Rick Perry are already openly leading Religious Supremecist organizing efforts in their key electoral states.

This entry is cross-posted from the Mainstream Baptist blog.

Christian Right Xenophobia Radio

2005-06-10T18:20:00.000-04:00

The Tupelo, Mississippi-based American Family Association, founded by United Methodist minister, Rev. Don Wildmon, has been a leading Christian Right organization for a generation.

In recent years, AFA has developed syndicated radio program, American Family Radio, which it claims airs on about 200 stations around the country.

Wildmon and some of his senior staff recently engaged in a xenophobic discussion of the recent election of Antonio Villaraigosa, according to an account of the program by Max Blumenthal of Media Matters for America. (The organization has, for some time, been monitoring the news and public affairs programs of Christian Right media outlets.) Among other things, American Family Radio's Fred Jackson claimed that the recent election of Antonio Villaraigosa as mayor of Los Angeles was "a direct result of... illegal immigration."

Jackson claimed that "that scenario... is going to repeat itself in communities across the United States." He went on to say that "...the problem is, like brother Don [Wildmon] said, we don't want to have two nations within our borders that can't communicate with one another and natural hostility will develop."

If there is a "natural hostility," it would appear to be emmanating from Jackson and Wilmon.

Incidentally, Wildmon's "ministry" is an excellent example of how some of the Christian Right is not part of explicitly conservative denominations. Historically, the Christian Right has had a significant and growing base in mainline Christianity as well. This has often resulted in the development of conservative and evangelical factions, (sometimes financed and egged on by outside agencies), that are at odds with the rest of the denomination, creating tension, division and gridlock.

[Crossposted at FrederickClarkson.com]

Catholic Women Watch New Pope

2005-06-09T01:16:00.000-04:00

Catholics for a Free Choice -- a courageous organization that has stood up for the equality of women and for reproductive rights for many years -- has a new project.

"As with any transition of power," CFFC stated in a press release today, "the first 100 days are a crucial indicator and opportunity to establish the values and priorities of a new administration. As we reach Day 51 of the papacy of Benedict XVI, Catholics for a Free Choice... reveals that the new pope is squandering that chance."

CFFC has launched a project they call the First 100 Days Campaign to advocate for change in the church and to monitor the actions of Vatican. The new Pope, the former Cardinal Ratzinger, once headed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith -- the agency that defines and enforces doctrinal orthodoxy. Back in the day, it was the Vatican agency responsible for the Inquisition.

CFFC has a few suggestions for the new Pope.

"The recommendations of the First 100 Days Campaign are easy. They do not require theological change. Each of the recommendations could and should be done immediately. These things remain undone not because of doctrinal restriction, but because the Vatican has chosen not to act. Among the requests: meet with sexual assault survivors, hear their stories and apologize publicly, lift the ban on condoms to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS, and appoint women to high level positions in the curia and throughout Vatican agencies."

"CFFC president Frances Kissling noted, 'The first 100 days of any leadership post signals to the world the values, priorities and style of the leader. While not every issue can be addressed—nor every problem solved—in this time, the initial steps of any administration sets a tone that both predicts and guides future work.'"

"However, instead of taking steps forward in the church, the new pontiff has focused his energies on ensuring that things are 'business as usual' at the Vatican: reappointing Pope John Paul II's leadership team, attacking the separation between church and state and making divisive statements."

"On Day 18, a prominent Jesuit editor of a Catholic magazine resigned his position under pressure from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, formerly headed by the new pope. On Day 35, the Vatican declared that there would be no investigation into the allegations of abuse against the Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado, founder and head of the Legionaries of Christ. On Day 48, Pope Benedict XVI reiterated his opposition to homosexuality, which he once called 'a more or less strong tendency ordered towards an intrinsic moral evil,' and condemned same-sex unions at a conference on families at the Diocese of Rome. As part of his screed, he also strongly spoke against contraception and divorce."

"As we pass the mid-point of this critical period, CFFC has launched a new website to monitor the actions of Pope Benedict XVI and evaluate what he is and is not doing to address the needs of Catholics—and non-Catholics—around the world."

The Washington-based CFFC will continue to highlight the activities of Pope Benedict XVI at a new web site called Pope Watch.

Check it out.

[Crossposted from FrederickClarkson.com]

Federal Funds for Bible-based Program

2005-06-09T00:28:00.000-04:00

In a blatant run around the wall of separation between church and state, the Department of Health and Human Services is bankrolling the Pennsylvania-based John Guest Evangelistic Team's religiously oriented chastity program The ACLU has filed a federal lawsuit. And Cynthia Cooper of Women's eNews has a report.

"The Silver Ring Thing," writes Cooper, "is a live three-hour, high-tech sound, light and video show complete with actors and comedy sketches with a stated mission to impress teens to promote teen chastity and so-called Christian values."

"The mobile shows -- set up in churches, conference centers and other venues around the country--culminate with teens pledging abstinence until they present a silver ring that symbolizes their celibacy to their spouse on their wedding day... The $15 silver rings that teens are encouraged to buy for the ceremony are inscribed with a biblical reference of 1 Thessalonians 4:3-4, which reads 'God wants you to be holy, so you should keep clear of all sexual sin. Then each of you will control your body and live in holiness and honor.'"

The Silver Ring Thing newsletter, Cooper reports, "mentions Jesus Christ 17 times in 8 pages. 'Who would have ever thought we would see the day when promoting sexual abstinence among students would become an opportunity to communicate the Good News of the Gospel?' the newsletter asks."

Womens eNews is a free, daily news service "covering issues of concern to women and their allies."

Check it out.

[Crossposted from FrederickClarkson.com]

Skepticism or Cynicism?

2005-06-08T09:37:00.000-04:00

This past weekend my wife and I traveled to Williams College to attend the graduation of our niece, Abby. The main commencement speaker was Thomas L. Friedman, columnist for the New York Times. The speech was an impressive display of public speaking that matches Friedman’s reputation as a top notch writer. Williams College Commencement 2005

I say this, despite the fact that what Friedman writes in his columns generally drives me crazy. I could provide a big list of my complaints as a journalist on the political left, but instead let me quote from Friedman on what is the heart of real journalism:

"Always remember, there is a difference between skepticism and cynicism. Too many journalists, and too many of our politicians, have lost sight of that boundary line....there [is] a big difference between skepticism and cynicism. Skepticism is about asking questions, being dubious, being wary, not being gullible, but always being open to being persuaded of a new fact or angle. Cynicism is about already having the answers -- or thinking you do -- answers about a person or an event. The skeptic says, 'I don't think that's true; I'm going to check it out.' The cynic says: 'I know that's not true. It couldn't be. I'm going to slam him....' Always remember, real journalists are not those loud mouth talking heads you see on cable television."

On this matter Friedman and I are in total agreement. I know journalists across the political spectrum who see journalism as a craft that demands adherence to a set of principles. Fairness and accuracy for starters.

For over ten years I have been teaching a summer course on "Strategic Research, Analysis and Reporting" at Z Magazine’s summer institute; a course developed and taught over the years along with progressive journalists Holly Sklar, & Abby Scher. This coming weekend I head down to Wood’s Hole on Cape Cod to teach another session. Here’s how we traditionally open the class:

"Progressives have a long and proud tradition of muckraking, and there are plenty of role models such as Ida M. Tarbell, Nellie Bly, Lincoln Steffens, Upton Sinclair, George Seldes, I.F. Stone, Rachel Carson, Alan Nairn, Deborah Nelson, Laura Washington, Sara Diamond, Russ Bellant, Frederick Clarkson, Trudy Lieberman and many more. If you haven't heard of one or more of these journalists, get acquainted with their lives and work by doing your own research."

We assume many of these names are unfamiliar to the mostly young audience, and hope they poke around and learn about their predecessors. All of these investigative journalists were skeptics, not cynics. Some could be acerbic or even harsh, but underneath the bravado was a clear sense that the point of their work was to make society a better place to live.

Skepticism helps us fix what is wrong with our society. Cynicism leads us to question if it is worth the effort. As we embrace skepticism, we need to reject--and criticize--cynicism.

More on Rev. Fred Phelps

2005-06-07T14:27:00.000-04:00

As I reported yesterday, there was widespread community response to the invasion of Rev. Fred Phelps and his followers to several towns in eastern MA on Sunday and Monday. The Lowell Sun has a story on the protests and counter protests in Dracut and Bedford on Monday titled: "Signs of tolerance meet signs of hate"

The Sun also reported on the successful efforts of blogger Lynne Lupien "to beat the Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church's anti-gay group at its own game netted $606" for MA gay rights organizations.

"...Lupien's new Web blog, www.leftinlowell.com, encouraged those opposing the Westboro group and its leader, the Rev. Fred Phelps, to pledge whatever they pleased for each minute the Phelps group protested locally.
“So between the hour and a half they were at the Tsongas Arena Sunday and the half-hour they were in Dracut Monday, we raised the money,” said Lupien, a local activist and member of Greater Lowell for Peace and Justice. It worked out to $5.05 per each minute..."

Meanwhile, it has come to my attentiont that the Anti-Defamation League has an excellent report summarizing not only the background of Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church and thier vulgar and bigoted anti-gay activities, but thier track record of anti-black, anti-Jewish and overtly anti-American statements. It is a useful resource for communities faced with visits by Phelps' travelling carnival of hate.

[Crossposted from FrederickClarkson.com]

Scapegoats, Whistleblowers, and Bystanders

2005-06-07T13:52:00.000-04:00

USA Today has an insightful article by Jonathan Turley, Professor of Law at Georgetown University, about what "may be the U.S. military's longest unbroken tradition" -- offering scapegoats from the lower ranks to atone for the sins of their superiors.

The military offers its scapegoats in the antiseptic setting of the courtroom. The same cannot be said about how whistleblowers at national laboratories are treated. AP is currently reporting -- complete with gruesome pictures -- the beating of a whistleblower at the national lab in Los Alamos who was scheduled to testify before Congress soon.

I used to read about incidents like these in history books and shake my head at the corruption of the powerful in previous generations. My generation, however, witnessed the resignation of a President who acted like he was above the law. If even Presidents submit to the rule of law, surely corruption is under control.

Our system of checks and balances seemed to be working fine thirty years ago. Now the old "law and order" crowd and the new "religious values" crowd are working overtime to dismantle what remains of the system of checks and balances that was designed to correct the corrupting influence of power.

When the powerful finish with the whistleblowers and scapegoats they'll start picking on the bystanders. Bystanders think they'll escape the attention of bullies and tyrants, but all they really do is ensure greater abuses at a later time or for another generation.

This entry is crossposted from the Mainstream Baptist blog.

MA Blogger Takes on Fred Phelps -- Wins!

2005-06-06T20:29:00.000-04:00

Blogger and social justice activist Lynne who writes Left in Lowell has done a fine thing.

Picking up on a tactic pioneered by pro-choice activists, Lynne organized a "pledge a picket" campaign in response to an invasion of Dracut and Lowell, MA by the roving hate monger Rev. Fred Phelps of Topeka, Kansas and his band of cult followers. (Abortion clinics have used this tactic for years as a fundraiser -- the more pickets show up, the more money raised for the clinic.)

Lynne reported that Phelps was in the area to protest, among other things, Lexington High School's graduation ceremonies because of the school's strong gay/straight alliance group; and Dracut's Englesby Intermediate School because the subject of a 12-year-old girl's winning Women in History essay was Ellen DeGeneres. Phelps' group described these schools to The Boston Hearld as "fag infested moral cesspools."

The Boston Globe reports that Phelps also picketed area churches, and that over 100 people attended an advance training in how to handle the situation. The Bedford Minuteman also carried a detailed article in advance of the events.

Phelps is a profoundly polarizing figure and provocateur -- his signature slogan is "God hates fags." And he is good at drawing attention to himself. People are sometimes divided about the best approach. Here is Lynne's evaluation of that question. "On some level, I can see the point of those who didn't want to make a big deal of their visit -- because they love just getting the opportunity to spout hate on TV. I wonder though; would they still have gotten interviewed if there were no counter-protests? It's possible, but there would be no opposite viewpoint given. And that would be unfortunate."

Meanwhile, Lynne also demonstrated how effective a blog -- they are free ya know -- can be as an organizing tool. She had links to relevant information, details of times and places, and even links to maps and directions to the protest sites.

Phelps had 15 people. Lynne had over 70. And her pledge-a-picket effort received over $600 in pledges for gay rights groups in Massachusetts. The Lowell Sun covered the events -- which were described as "uneventful."

[Crossposted from FrederickClarkson.com]

Combating Anti-Gay Hate Politics

2005-06-05T18:44:00.000-04:00

I am sometimes asked, what we can do in response to the Christian Right? And while I have written a great deal about that, and will certainly do more, for today, I want to focus on one important aspect. We have to do our homework. And I'd like to suggest an approach to this homework that may different than you may think.

Too often we look at the threat of the Christian Right in terms of single issues. While this is understandable, when we do this, we become like the story of the blind men, each with their hands on the elephant, trying to describe it. I think as we tackle any one issue, we need to develop a more comprehensive view in order to be more conversant with the nautre of the elephant. When we become more conversant, it will be easier to talk about what is going on, and therefore what we can do about it. Failing that, let's acknowledge that we may find ourselves winging it, with all that that may imply.

Nevertheless, for today, let's begin by looking through the lens of anti-gay hate politics, which is currently at the cutting edge of the politics of the Christian Right, and indeed, much of the Republican Party. In order to better contend with the politics of the growing ugliness and opportunism, here is an introduction followed by some homework. (You can pick how much you want to do, and at your own pace. You'll see.)

The current issue of Intelligence Report, published by the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization that researches and combats hate groups, offers a comprehensive overview of the history of the Christian Right's attack on homosexuality, including an anthology of hateful rhetoric by Christian Right leaders, For example Rev. Jerry Falwell founder of the Moral Majority has said that homosexuals are "Brute beasts... part of a vile and satanic system [that] will be utterly annihilated, and there will be a celebration in heaven."

"The State carries the power of the sword, that is, the power to prohibit [homosexual] conduct with physical penalties, such as confinement and even execution. It must use that power to prevent the subversion of children toward this lifestyle." So said then-Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore, (and possible 2006 candidate for governor of Alabama) in a concurring opinion in a lesbian child custody case.

Is that just rhetoric or do they really believe it? In the case of Falwell, maybe both. In the case of Moore, I have no doubt that he believes it. In anycase, an Intelligence Report editorial, explains, "In this issue, the Intelligence Report takes a look at the religiously based crusade against homosexuals in America -- a 'thirty years war,' as the story points out, that has intensified since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down state anti-sodomy statutes in the 2003 Lawrence decision. Key points in the report include the religious right's repeated use of bogus 'science' and the bully-boy tactics of its leaders.'"

"These leaders angrily rebut charges that their cruel name-calling -- public descriptions of gays as 'perverts,' 'child molesters,' 'deviants' and 'evil' people — has led anyone to violence. They say they "hate the sin, but love the sinner."

"That is a hard one to swallow. When perpetrators of hate crimes against gays use identical words to describe their victims, you have to wonder where it began."

The editorial also refutes the key points in the Christian Right's arguments against homosexulality, among others, scientific and Biblical"

"Nothing in the legitimate scientific literature supports the notion that homosexuality is a 'perversion' or a mental illness. The American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Counseling Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, the National Association of School Psychologists, and the National Association of Social Workers have all taken the position that homosexuality is not a mental disorder. It needs no cure."

"Even the notion that the Bible unswervingly condemns homosexuality is open to debate," the editorial continues. "Many scholars believe that several key passages actually are denouncing orgies and prostitution -- or in the case of the town of Sodom, inhospitality -- and not homosexuality."

"There are two Old Testament passages that do appear to condemn homosexual acts, one of them calling for the death penalty. But they both show up amid a long list of religious prohibitions, including eating pork and wearing mixed fabrics, that have been abandoned by almost all contemporary Christians."

The editorial goes on to make analogies to the rhetoric of the most virulent forms of racism and anti-semetism. But the Intelligence Report is not the only one writing about the ongoing campaign of anger, resentment and fear mongering aimed at gays, immigrants, and others.

Author David Neiwart, writing at his blog Orcinus, writes that part of what is going on is "a hatred of multiculturalism. What happens on the street level is that all of the minorities whose presence is embraced by multiculturalism are the natural first targets of this intolerance as it festers into white working-class resentment and finally action."

Indeed, Rush Limbaugh was recently engaging in just this kind of hate-based propaganda when he attacked a high school that happens to have a fine multiculturalist curriculum.

"Remember, too," Neiwart continues, "that multiculturalism arose specifically as a response to white supremacism -- which, in fact, it replaced as the reigning national racial ethos. Those who constantly disparage multiculturalism seem oddly reticent about what they'd replace it with -- except, of course, white supremacists like David Duke and Billy Roper, who are fairly clear on the subject."

He quotes Chip Berlet of Political Research Associates (PRA) as saying "I have seen what appears to be an increase in anger toward gay people and immigrants, as well as anti-Semitic conspiracy theories."

PRA has been developing resources for understanding elements of, as well as the Right as a whole, for 25 years.

One useful PRA report documents the various "ex-gay ministries." For those interested in dominionism, PRA has definitions and a set of readings. For those who are ready to really engage in more comprehensive online reading and tutorials, PRA has 'em.

OK. I know that not everyone is going to do all of this.

But remember too, a lot of people who talk about the Christian Right, and the issues and the players, don't actually know very much about it. And while it is not reasonable to expect every citizen, activist, blogger or elected official to become experts in all aspects of the Chrisitian Right, (frankly, I don't know anyone who is), far more of us need to become far more knowledgeable than we are.

If we care as deeply about our values as we say to ourselves and to others that we do, if we are genuinely concerned about the extant threat to those values, doesn't it stand to reason that we should become more knowledgeable about the nature of the threats against them so that we can develop good and effective strategies and not risk making costly mistakes?

Any comprehensive strategy necessarily involves a comprehensive understanding of the opposition. But it has been my experience that people tend to get parochial within thier issue area, the environment, labor, women's rights, separation of church and state, whatever. But even as we focus on these things, we have to understand that there are those with a comprehensive opposition to all of these things, and that we need to adjust our knowledge and our politics accordingly. But alas, we tend to resist change -- in our thinking, in our habits of language, and in our politics.

In order to best deal with the challenges of our times, we will all need to be making some changes, and soon. It will be interesting to find out what they are, and what we as individuals, as organizations, as interest groups, and as political parties we are going to do about it.

Meanwhile, the threat of anti-gay politics is real. It is obviously of most immediate concern to our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters. It will almost certainly be used as a wedge issue in the next round of elections just as it was in the last one. This should be of interest to a broad range of people from moderate republicans to progressive democrats in all parts of the country, regardless of thier sexual orientation. We are all in this together.

Time to go do our homework.

[Crossposted from FrederickClarkson.com]

On Ohio's Religious Supremecists

2005-06-02T17:52:00.000-04:00

Ken Blackwell, the Secretary of State in Ohio who oversaw the highly questionable 2004 electoral process in that state, is being featured in 30 radio second ads endorsing the agenda of a Ohio religious supremecist group.Here is the text of a letter to the editor printed in the Cleveland Plains Dealer from the Rev. John Lentz, a Presbyterian clergyman in that city:

A member of my church gave to me a copy of the Ohio Restoration Project. This project is led by so-called Christians who have a plan for Ohio. The project will target 2,000 pastors throughout the state to become "patriot pastors." These patriot pastors will be briefed on a specific political agenda and asked to submit names of their parishioners in order to increase a database to 300,000 names. These pastors will be asked to place voter guides in their church pews.

Ken Blackwell, Ohio's secretary of state and a governor hopeful, is named throughout the document. Blackwell will be featured on 30-second radio ads promoting this group's agenda and supporting the "Ohio for Jesus" rally set for the spring of 2006. At the end of the document are the words, "America has a mission to share a living savior with a dying world."

This is not America's mission. This is frightening, diabolical stuff for non-Christians and Christians alike. It is blasphemous to claim that any earthly kingdom is God's kingdom. The theological foundations of this movement are vacuous. They are set on the sands of opportunism, self-righteousness and greed.

It is time for the citizens of Ohio to wake up. This group and those like it will stop at nothing in making America a theocracy shaped by one very limited interpretation of scripture.

The media must investigate and show this movement for what it is. Courageous preachers must help their congregations understand what is at stake. Silence is not an option.

Thank you Rev. Lentz for raising a hue and cry against this groups' truly alarming project.

The Dominionist group that tookover the Republican Party in Harris County (Houston) Texas also claimed to be "Restorationists." They claimed to be "Restoring America" and distributed video tapes about "How You Can Impact Civil Government" which was a primer on how to takeover your Republican Party precinct meeting.

This entry is cross-posted from the Mainstream Baptist blog.

LA Conference Against Theocracy

2005-06-02T00:58:00.000-04:00

Sunday June 5, 2005
March of the Theocrats:
The Religious Right's Assault on the Judiciary--And What We Can Do About It!
2:30 - 5:30 pm - Free Admission

Westwood United Methodist Church
10497 Wilshire Blvd
310 474-4511

Using Religion as an Instrument of Oppression

co-sponsored by
Progressive Christains Uniting
and African American Ministers in Action

A Rally and Teach-In

Keynote Remarks:
Jack Miles, commentator and author of God: A Biography

Respondents:
Rev. Cecil "Chip" Murray, Bishop Mary Ann Swenson, Hussam Alyoush

plus great workshops on judicial "activism," religion's re-emergence in public education, the worldwide Christian campaign against contraception and family planning, tactics & strategies of the Religious Right, faith-based social services and many others.

Visit the web site for directions and a downloadable conference flyer.

Readin' & Writin' 'bout Theocracy

2005-06-01T22:08:00.000-04:00

Christian Reconstructionism is "arguably the driving ideology of the Christian Right today."

Thats what I wrote in my 1997 book Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy. Its not that I thought then -- or now -- that everyone on the Christian Right is a Reconstructionist. Far from it. Rather, I think that the explicitly theocratic Christian Reconstructionist movement has played a catalytic role in moving large sectors evangelical Christianity from apolitical stances, to active political participation, brought distinctively theocratic ideas into mainstream discourse. And this has happened in just one generation.

"For much of Reconstructionism's short history." I wrote in Eternal Hostility, "it has been and ideology in search of a constituency. But in recent years, its influence has grown far beyond the founders' expectations. As Reconstructionist writer Gary North observes. 'We once were shepherds without sheep. No longer.'"

I was surprised when Terry Gross asked me about Christian Reconstructionism in our interview on Fresh Air recently. I have been surprised every time it has come up for the past year or so, because for so long the idea that there are active modern theocratic thinkers whose views inform the contemporary Christian Right, has been difficult for a lot of people to take in.

For those unfamiliar with the term here is how I defined it in my 1994 study of Reconstructionism in The Public Eye, the scholarly publication of the Somerville, MA-based Political Research Associates.

"Reconstructionism is a theology that arose out of conservative Presbyterianism (Reformed and Orthodox), which proposes that contemporary application of the laws of Old Testament Israel, or "Biblical Law," is the basis for reconstructing society toward the Kingdom of God on earth."

"Reconstructionism argues that the Bible is to be the governing text for all areas of life--such as government, education, law, and the arts, not merely "social" or "moral" issues like pornography, homosexuality, and abortion. Reconstructionists have formulated a "Biblical world view" and "Biblical principles" by which to examine contemporary matters. Reconstructionist theologian David Chilton succinctly describes this view: 'The Christian goal for the world is the universal development of Biblical theocratic republics, in which every area of life is redeemed and placed under the Lordship of Jesus Christ and the rule of God's law.'"

That was pretty arcane stuff in 1994 and 1997 -- but no more. The name of the Christian Reconstructionist movement's seminal thinker R.J. Rushdoony, is even starting to become more widely known. It was also not long ago that the word "theocracy" was not uttered in mainstream political discourse in relation to the Christian Right. Now even mainstream newspapers and mainstream polititians of both major parties are using the term -- not as a term of disparagement, but as a fair descriptor of the political views and actions of some Christian Right leaders.

Of course there is still a lot of adjusting going on. There are those of all political stripes who would rather we not use the term "theocracy" at all. Some, quite understandably, are afraid the term will tar their movement. Others think it is not an effective term for tarring the movement -- as if that were the only legitimate use of the word. Some object to misapplications of the term. Others just have thier heads in the sand and don't want to see that there is, in fact, an active Christian theocratic movement in the United States.

Whatever people may think of the word theocracy, the fact remains that this movement is not new. It is not going away. And it is gaining power. Because this is so, many of us are going to continue to not only use the term, but growing numbers of people will be thinking and writing about it.

There is currently a well done series of articles published on the progressive news and opinion site Truthout that is making the rounds of the blogosphere. The series includes helpful discussions of Christian nationalism and Christian Reconstructionism. Check it out.

[Crossposted from FrederickClarkson.com]

Anatomy of a Bloviation

2005-05-31T22:21:00.000-04:00

Albert Mohler has a longish review of a new book by Paige Patterson:

The American denominational landscape has experienced significant shifts in recent times, but one major story stands out among them all—the massive redirection of the Southern Baptist Convention. America’s largest evangelical denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention was reshaped, reformed, and restructured over the last three decades, and at an incredibly high cost.

Was it worth it? That is one of the crucial questions addressed by Paige Patterson in his new essay, Anatomy of a Reformation: The Southern Baptist Convention 1978-2004. Published in booklet form, Patterson’s analysis offers an invaluable insider’s perspective on the Southern Baptist controversy and its meaning. Patterson, now president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, was one of the key architects of the plan to change the direction of the Convention. Born to Southern Baptist aristocracy, Patterson was the son of T. A. Patterson, a prominent Texas pastor who later became executive secretary of the Baptist General Convention of Texas. Surrounded from boyhood by Baptist preachers, theologians, and denominational leaders, Patterson quickly gained both an intuitive and an educated understanding of Baptist identity.

Wonder if Patterson will have nice things to say about Bruce Prescott?

Didn't think so.

The Erosion of Civil Discourse

2005-05-31T10:40:00.000-04:00

Anna Quindlen, in her Newsweek column of May 30, writes that among the legacies of the terrorist attacks on 9/11/01, is that "America has become a country that sets its young people the terrible example of closed minds. The terrorists want to kill infidels. We only aim to silence them." Quindlen bemoans the fact that America has been "hijacked by those who cannot tell the difference between opponents and enemies, between disagreement and heresy, between discussion and destruction."

As a country that aspires to be a constitutional democracy, this is more than just bad news. Democracy requires the type of informed consent that can only be achieved through vibrant and often tumultuous debate. Closed minds slam shut the door of civil discourse and block the path to civil society.

Oppose the war in Iraq and we become traitors. Challenge the increase in political repression and the decrease in civil liberties and we are allies of the terrorists. Call for basic human rights in the treatment of prisoners and we are soft on crime. Ask that immigrants and undocumented workers be treated fairly and we are throwing open our borders to criminals. Suggest that access to abortion is an integral part of reproductive rights for women and we become baby killers. Protest the demonization and scapegoating of gay people and we want to destroy the sanctity of marriage. Suggest that religious supremacy is toxic to pluralist democratic society and we spit in the face of God.

At the root of this problem is the wedding of dualistic demonization and moral supremacy. It’s not just the dualism of “I’m right and your wrong.” It raises the stakes to “I’m the guardian of the morality and the society that you seek to destroy for evil purposes.” That’s a box that’s hard to get out of. What sane person would debate the devil incarnate?

This paradigm is operational in both religious and secular spheres of society, from the speeches of our President and certain Congressional leaders, to the guiding lights of the Christian Right, to television talk shows, to the lack of debate on college campuses. I tend to see dualistic demonization most frequently used as a tool of the Political Right. When I see it used by the Political Left, I think it needs to be opposed as well.

If we want to preserve the idea of democratic civil society, we all need to agree to certain ground rules regarding the boundaries of acceptable civil discourse. I don’t mean good manners. Non-violent civil disobedience may be bad manners to some, but it is one of the tools democratic civil society needs to protect. I mean claiming the intent of my opponent is evil and destructive. I have no problems seeing evil in the world, nor in arguing that the outcome of certain policies would be destructive. But when any of us assumes our opponent is inherently evil and intentionally seeks to destroy all that is good--we have driven a nail through the heart of democracy.

Standing Up to Rush Limbaugh

2005-05-30T23:03:00.000-04:00

One of the most polarizing men in America is at it again. But this time one of the victims of his latest smear job is standing up to the bully in an essay on Salon.com.

Valerie Kaur and her dad used to be Rush Limbaugh fans. No more.

"In mid-May," she writes, "I played an Iraqi prisoner in the opening night of the play Abu Ghraib, an original student production at Harvard University... My father called to wish me luck. Imagine his disappointment when I told him what Limbaugh had said about me in his radio program that day:

"'Here you have these dunces ... at Harvard now doing a playing on the travesties of Abu Ghraib, and you know this is going to get back to the people in Baghdad, the insurgents and this sort of thing. It's just typical. These people hate the country, folks. I'm telling you: There's an anti-American bias in the American left.'"

"My dad, who has voted Republican all his life, was shocked. 'But this is beyond partisan politics!' he said. 'Has he seen the play?'"

"No, and Limbaugh still has not seen the show. Neither... has Bill O'Reilly, who lambasted the play on his television program... "

Abu Ghraib, which has a cast of 15 students, was written and directed by Harvard sophomore Currun Singh. It tells the stories, "of a soldier whose friends were killed in war, of an insurgent filled with hatred for Americans, of the sergeant who turned in the incriminating photographs from Abu Ghraib."

Kaur, who is studying ethics at the Harvard Divinity School, reports that these are "factual accounts."

"My character," she writes, "is based on a real Iraqi prisoner, Huda Alazawi, arrested by American soldiers in December 2003 after she inquired after her missing brother. They detained her at Abu Ghraib overnight, and in the morning they threw his dead body at her feet."

Thanks to Valerie Kaur for her courage in standing up to Limbaugh and O'Reilly -- and to Salon.com for giving her the space to tell her story.

[Crossposted from FrederickClarkson.com]

UPDATE: Illinois High School Kids Challenge Rush to Debate.

Nationally syndicated radio demagogue Rush Limbaugh not only picks on college student productions of plays he has not seen, but he picks on high school students he knows nothing about. Kate N. Grossman, a reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times wrote that Limbaugh recently claimed "that Evanston Township High School students 'don't know anything about World War II' and 'they've probably never heard the name Adolf Hitler' because they're so focused on a multicultural curriculum."
"The comments prompted a response Friday from ETHS Superintendent Allan Alson, who wrote in a letter to the Review that Limbaugh 'spoke inaccurately and unconscionably about Evanston Township High School and its students....'"

"Some Evanston kids want to show Limbaugh what they know. They want to debate him on American history." [More]