Since I didn't do a round-up last week, this week in blogging the religious right is really more like, recent blogging on the religious right. But there is still lots of good stuff you wouldn't want to miss. With any luck, we will return to a weekly schedule from here on.
Street Prophets
Pastordan reports that James Dobson's recent rally in Pittsburgh was "underwhelming." Organizers had confidently predicted that the Focus on the Family honcho would fill a 17,000 seat arena -- but they got 3,000. Interestingly, Dobson was trying to rally people to support the GOP, even while stating
"I have flat-out been ticked at Republicans for the past two years," he said, to some applause from a crowd that arena security estimated at around 3,000. However, he said, "This country is at a crisis point. Whether or not the Republicans deserve the power they were given, the alternatives are downright frightening."
And by the way, be sure to stop by and wish Street Prophets a belated happy birthday. It was the ground-breaking blog's first.
Religion Clause
Howard Fineman reports:
During an interview on educational issues with the Associated Press... Michigan Republican gubernatorial candidate Dick DeVos said he favors permitting, but not requiring, the teaching of Intelligent Design in Michigan public schools. He said: "I would like to see the ideas of intelligent design that many scientists are now suggesting is a very viable alternative theory. That theory and others that would be considered credible would expose our students to more ideas, not less."
The Daily Kos
Paul Rosenberg has more background on Youth With A Mission (YWAM), the cultic group that played a pivotal role in the deveopment of the controversial film, The Path to 9/11 that recently aired on ABC.
And diarist Ishmael also had some powerful background on YWAM's connecitons to genocidal dictator, Rios Montt of Guatemala.
Rios Montt is generally credited with the murder of some 70,000 Mayan peasants but all through the killing he maintained a love affair with the American Christian Right, which was delighted by the fact that he's an evangelical Protestant in a deeply Catholic country, converted in 1976 by American self-declared "Jesus Freaks," fundamentalist hippies.
Here's where YWAM comes in:
Rios Montt's ascension to power [by coup in 1982] was celebrated by thge U.S. Christian Right as a sign of divine intervention in Central America.... In May, 1982, [Pat] Robertson told the New York Times that his Christian Broadcasting Network would send missionaries and more than a billion dollars in aid to help Rios Montt rule the country. While Robertson's offer never came to fruition, it enabled Rios Montt to convince the U.S. Congress that he would not seek massive sums of U.S. aid. Instead, he would rely on "private aid from U.S. evangelicals.
Toward that end, Rios Montt's aide... came to the United States for a meeting with... [Reagan consigliore] Edwin Meese, Interior Secretary James Watt... and Christian Right leaders Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and Loren Cunningham (head of Youth With a Mission).
Blog from the Capital
Don Byrd responds to an op-ed by Christian Right legal stragist Alan Sears, regarding his historical revisionist views on separation of church and state.
We Unite Ohio
Bruce Wilson details the strange goings on at the Akron, Ohio school board
...one faction of the Ohio school board faction that appears to support ID [intelligent design], oppose stem cell research, and question the science of Global Warming seems to have moved the board to spend its two hour meeting on Monday erasing fake references Global Warming and stem cell research that were surruptiously added to the official minutes of the board's last meeting in July. A tape recording from the July meeting reveals those subjects were never discussed, and references to them were later secretly added. On Monday the official record was once again altered - this time more publicly - to expunge the fake references from the July record and thus erase official evidence of the attempted deceit.
Wall of Separation
Rob Boston notes that Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, recently told 200 religion reporters that "we're in the beginning stages of the erosion of freedom of religion in the United States." However, Boston observed, he "didn't offer much in the way of persuasive evidence of this crackdown."
Melissa Rogers
Melissa Rogers blogs a federal lawsuit against the funding of a Bible marriage counseling outfit, via president Bush's Faith Based Initiative.
The description of the case, is followed by the group's reactions and Rogers' comments.
Americans United... filed suit yesterday to block federal financing for an organization that provides marriage counseling based on the Bible.
The lawsuit is another challenge to the Bush administration's efforts to channel money for social services to religious organizations. While religious groups are not barred from getting public money, such financing can only be used for secular purposes, not "worship, religious instruction or proselytization," according to government guidelines.
Americans United, a watchdog group based in Washington, D.C., filed the lawsuit in Federal District Court in Tacoma, Wash., on behalf of 13 state residents. They object to federal funds being used to support the Northwest Marriage Institute, which states in its newsletter that it offers "Bible-based premarital and marriage counseling." The institute, in Vancouver, Wash., received $97,750 in federal grants in 2005 from the Department of Health and Human Services.
The lawsuit argued that the institute uses federal funds for religious purposes, including developing materials with religious content, buying equipment for use in religiously based programming and paying part of the salaries of employees who do Bible-based counseling.
Talk to Action
Chip Berlet returns with the latest installment in his series explaining how fundamentalist author Tim LaHaye is a danger to constitutional democracy.
The Rev. Tim LaHaye knows that the country is being subverted by the forces of Satan, and he knows who is behind the conspiracy. In his 1998 book, Rapture (Under Attack), LaHaye writes, "For twenty years my wife and I have worked tirelessly to halt the effects of this conspiracy on the church, our government, media, and the public schools; so obviously I am not hostile to the conspiracy theory"
John Gorenfeld has video of Rev.Sun Myung Moon with luminaries of teh GOP and other elements of the religious right, including Gerald Ford, George and Barbara Bush, Ralph Reed, Jack Kemp, and Bev LaHaye.
Carlos discusses an important new book on the vastly underappreciated influence of neo-Conservative Catholic thinker and strategist, Richard JOhn Neuhaus.
Frank Cocozeli profiles Tom Monaghan, the Pizza Man who Delievers the Dough (to the Catholic Right.)
As of 2004, he has given away approximately $450 million to the causes he believes in.
Michelle Goldberg responds to the Peter Steinfels See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil review of three books critical of the religious right -- including hers.
Moiv has the skinny on a big story about an antiabortion terrorist -- about whom the feds don't seem to be very serious.
David Robert McMenemy. He freely admits that on the morning of September 11, 2006, after scouting clinic locations in Midwestern states for several weeks, he used his car as a weapon in an attempt to fire bomb an abortion clinic. Luckily, on this September 11, events did not unfold as planned.
Based on what he told police, David McMenemy's plan to destroy an abortion clinic worked out much differently in his head from what played out Monday in Davenport, Iowa.
McMenemy ... admitted dousing the interior of his silver 2004 Saturn with gasoline he had in a Gatorade bottle and plunging the vehicle into a women's health clinic early that morning. And he told police he planned to die in the ensuing fire.
But the clinic whose lobby the native Detroiter drove into -- the Edgerton Women's Health Center -- doesn't perform abortions or even provide referrals for them. And the impact wasn't enough to cause a fire, so McMenemy had to pour more gas on the car.
And once it was ablaze, he scratched his plan to kill himself when he realized it was going to be painful.
Aside from those minor quibbles, McMenemy's attack on the Davenport clinic would have made Eric Rudolph or Clayton Waagner proud. But according to an agency spokesman, the FBI couldn't care less.