The Greater Blogosphere is, as always, keeping an eye on the role of the religious right in public life.
This week, there are notable posts about the mobilization by the religious right to thwart efforts against global warming; assaults, (as always), on separation of church and state and reproductive rights; and on the struggle over the facts and interpretation of history.
Street Prophets
Pastordan highlights what ought to be obvious, (but alas), some people you can reason with, and some you can't.
He focuses-in on an article published by Focus on the Family, which incidentally has a national network of related political advocacy groups and think tanks called "family policy councils." (See Takin' It to the States: The Rise of State Level Conservative Think Tanks pdf) The leader of one of these declares himself theocratic, in all but name.
Jeff Laszloffy, president of the Montana Family Foundation, said the key is to link the issues to Biblical principles.
"If we can link issues to principles, the church will find relevance in society again," he said. "Right now the church believes there's a difference between public policy and theological issues. And I see no difference."
Slacktivist
Fred Clark (no relation) has a helpful discussion of the pitfalls of the phrases like " people of faith."
Both Shakes and Atrios take issue with the faux inclusive phrase "People of Faith." As Atrios puts it:
"People of Faith," despite its general acceptance as an inclusive term, is actually an exclusionary one, not just against nonbelievers like myself, but also against other non-dominant religions in which the concept of "faith," while usually present in some form, doesn't play a central role.
The context here was Mitt Romney's saying that, "We need to have a person of faith lead the country," only to find himself, shortly thereafter, the subject of a smear campaign based on the particulars of his great-great grandfather's Mormon faith....
Romney seems to hope that this phrase will endear him to the so-called "values voters" -- to use another phrase that means both more and less than it does on its face. "Values voters" does not mean "people who vote according to their moral values" any more than "people of faith" means "people whose lives are shaped by their religious faith." (As Shakes sardonically notes, "ask Keith Ellison about that.")
These phrases, when spoken to members of the religious right, both mean the same thing: People like you. As such they carry both a particular religious meaning -- certain kinds of Christians and Jews, and a particular cultural/political meaning -- antiabortion, antigay. Romney only meets the cultural/political portion of this (and that only suspiciously recently), so his faith isn't enough to qualify him as a "person of faith." As an evangelical Christian, I would qualify as far as the religious meaning, but I wouldn't pass the cultural/political portion of the test.
Right Wing Watch
Kyle reports:
Jerry Falwell dedicated this week’s sermon at his Thomas Road Baptist Church to debunking "The Myth Of Global Warming."
Almost right off the bat, Falwell issued the disclaimer that "I am quick to say that I am not a scientist," but that didn’t stop him from making a series of boldly incoherent statements:
The endless hysteria and alarmism over alleged global warming has increasingly become a national and international nuisance and loses credibility with every passing day. The entire myth has little to do with science and much to do with politics.
Falwell lays the blame for the perpetuation of this myth squarely at the feet of Al Gore, liberal politicians, the media, "radical Hollywood," ... and the Weather Channel
Faith in Public Life
Katie Barge observes:
In "A call to Truth, Prudence, and Protection of the Poor: An Evangelical Response to Global Warming" the Intefaith Stewardship Alliance, led by [James] Dobson claims that
"Government-mandated carbon dioxide emissions redcutions would not signficantly curtail global warming or reduce its harmful effects but would cause greater harm than good to humanity -- especially the poor -- while offering virtually no benefit to the rest of the worlds inhabitants."
Once again, pretty much the only time we hear about Dobson's passion for the poor is when he's attacking other evangelicals on global warming.
Wall of Separation
Rob Boston explains the Bush administration's position on a crucial matter of church state separation at issue in a case now before the Supreme Court.
The New York Times and other media outlets noted a telling exchange between Solicitor General Paul D. Clement and Justice Stephen G. Breyer. Breyer asked Clement if a taxpayer should have the right to challenge a law that commemorated the Pilgrims "by building a government church at Plymouth Rock where we will have the regular worship in the Puritan religion?"
"I would say no," Clement replied.
Breyer pressed further, asking about a law that required the government to build churches "all over America" that represented a single denomination. "Nobody could challenge it?" he asked.
Again Clement’s reply was shocking: "There would not be taxpayer standing."
So, in a nutshell, here is the Bush administration’s position: The federal government can actually start building churches, and you as a taxpayer should have no right to go to court to stop it. This view was also adopted by several Religious Right groups in legal briefs.
Talk to Action
Bill Berkowitz details how televangelist D. James Kennedy of Coral Ridge Ministries and Ann Coulter want people to believe that Charles Darwin was responsible for the Nazi holocaust.
According to Coulter, Hitler took Darwinism and applied it: "He thought the Aryans were the fittest and he was just hurrying natural selection along."
The film demonstrates that Darwinian theory "is scientifically bankrupt, [and] has probably been responsible for more bloodshed than anything else in the history of humanity," Jerry Newcomb, one of the program's two co-producers, told WorldNetDaily.
The back-story surrounding this film, involving CRM's duping of a noted scientist, and the ongoing schism in the Jewish community over the role of conservative Christian evangelicals, is more interesting than the film itself.
The buzz before and after the original broadcast of "Darwin's Deadly Legacy" last fall on Christian cable networks and about 200 television stations around the country, centered just as much on the film's assertion that Adolph Hitler grounded his genocidal actions on Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, as it did on whether a prestigious scientist was duped into participating in the documentary.
A few days before the film aired, Abraham H. Foxman, the National Director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), issued a statement calling the film "an outrageous and shoddy attempt by D. James Kennedy to trivialize the horrors of the Holocaust. Hitler did not need Darwin to devise his heinous plan to exterminate the Jewish people. Trivializing the Holocaust comes from either ignorance at best or, at worst, a mendacious attempt to score political points in the culture war on the backs of six million Jewish victims and others who died at the hands of the Nazis.
"It must be remembered that D. James Kennedy is a leader among the distinct group of 'Christian Supremacists' who seek to 'reclaim America for Christ' and turn the U.S. into a Christian nation guided by their strange notions of biblical law."
Mainstream Baptist finds a critical point of departure between the narrative of the religious right and the facts of history.
Randall Balmer, professor of American Religion at Barnard College, Columbia University recently engaged in an online debate sponsored by the Washington Post on ""Evangelicalism." His opponent was Richard Land, Executive Director of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, a key leader of the Religious Right who holds a degree from Oxford in church history.
Apparently Richard Land has not read Balmer's book Thy Kingdom Come. Had he read it, he would not have been so foolish as to link the rise of the Religious Right with evangelical opposition to abortion. That's one of the myths that Balmer buries in his book.
Kathryn Joyce asesses the religious right's plans to coopt the forthcoming film about abolitionist William Wilberforce, especially in their efforts to link the abolitionist movement with their campaign against abortion rights for women.
Though the movie may be documenting a noble cause and man with whom all sides of today's culture war may wish to align themselves, or strive to emulate, it seems as though the Christian Right is determined to have the lock on Wilberforce's legacy...
Moiv glimpses the dank theocratic soul of state Rep. Robert Talton of Texas, who has proposed legislation that would take discretion away from parents and doctors and automatically make any abortion on a girl under the age of 14 a matter for the state police:
What about legislation stripping parents of legal rights over what happens to their daughter in the event that she should have an abortion before age 14? What about a bill ordering doctors, under penalty of law, to preserve tissue from their daughter's body, and turn that tissue over to the state police for DNA analysis? What about a bill subjecting her equally young boyfriend to prosecution as a sex offender -- even though both sets of parents only wanted their children left alone?
Welton Gaddy's response to those who claim that the religious right is dead is so good, so on the money, it is tempting to quote the whole thing. I won't. So trust me on this and read the whole thing. (Don't worry, its not long.)
I don't like to attend funerals under any circumstances, but I surely have no desire to attend a funeral for someone or some thing that is not dead. Lately, in several news stories and speaking venues, I have encountered smug declarations that the Religious Right in our nation is dead. These announcements remind me of Mark Twain's famous observation that news of his death had been greatly exaggerated.... As for myself, I am going to pass on this funeral. I will continue... organizing against the Religious Right.
Since we do not to sing a dirge for the Right, please join me in singing stirring music that inspires and activates a progressive response.