Theocratic activist Dave "Coach" Daubemire has announced that his Ohio based Minutement United and Pass the Salt Ministries are sponsoring a political conference titled A Gathering of Eagles: America's Finest Front Line Warriors Come to Ohio.
"A Gathering of Eagles" is taking place in Coshocton, Ohio on December 14-15 as some of America's finest Christian leaders are gathering for a Leadership Summit and Biblical Worldview Conference. Dr. Alan Keyes is confirmed as the keyniote speaker and will be joined by the likes of Rev. Flip Benham, Chaplain E. Ray Moore Jr. , Rev. Rick Scarborough, Peter Labarbera, and Pastor Ernie Sanders and others. This NON-POLITICAL event is designed to educate Christians about the great moral issues facing this country. Learn the truth from the front lines in the cultural war regarding issues such as The Gay Agenda, Abortion, Individual Liberty, Hate Crime Legislation, and the religion of Secular Humanism.
The event is FREE. For more information on the speakers and lodging click here. This is the finest event of it's kind to ever come to Ohio!! Don't miss it. Bring a friend.
(List of conference speakers and other details is here: (PDF).
Alan Keyes has long been a favorite of the militant wing of the antiabortion movement, notably Operation Rescue, so it is no surprise that he would address a group like this. That he would do so at a time when he is struggling to be taken seriously as a candidate for the Republican nomination for president is the only surprise here.
But as I wrote earlier this year, he has made his political intentions clear. At a meeting of national committee of the far right Constitution Party earlier this year, Keyes strongly suggested that GOP front-runners Sen. John McCain, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, and Romney were all unacceptable to Christian conservatives -- and that the nomination of any of them would be a "betrayal:" He declared:
Because I know for sure that if they nominate some pro-abort at any place on the ticket, I will leave the Republican Party. I have said this before, and I will do it. But I think that it's really important that neither I nor others leave the party alone. We must take with us all those we can rouse so that a new possibility is created for America.
But that means, y'all, that this moment of crisis for the country, crisis for the Republican Party is a moment of opportunity and challenge for you. For, in many respects, in your principles, in your platform, in your courage--in the courage that you have shown as individuals, you represent the very thing America needs most. Are you ready for this challenge? That's the question, and it's not an easy one to answer.
Some of the "Gathering" speakers are well known national relgious right activists while others are local. Here is some background that should give some sense of what these far religious right leaders are all about.
Chip Berlet provided a back grounder (with lots of links) on Coach Daubemire and his several Ohio-based organizations at the time of one of his dubious escapades earlier this year:
Some of the same Christian Nationalists who helped fan the media hysteria over the staged events tied to "Judge Moore in Alabama, Terri Schiavo in Florida, and the 10 commandments in Washington DC" have called for a convocation April 19th-21st, 2007, of contemporary Christian patriot "Minutemen" at the historic Battle Green in Lexington, MA to save America from the new tryanny of the courts and the spreading sinful stain of homosexual marriage.
A number of participants at the conference are proponents of or influenced by the explicitly theocratic worldview of Christian Reconstructionism, whose seminal figure is the late theologian R.J. Rushdoony, notably Southern Baptist activist E. Ray Moore. As Michael McVicar wrote in a recent issue of The Public Eye:
One of the most obvious local expressions of Reconstruction's "reform" impulse can be seen in the Exodus Mandate Project. Exodus Mandate is a ministry organized by Rev. E. Ray Moore, Jr., a former Army chaplain and pastor active in the Southern Baptist Conference (SBC). Exodus seeks to "encourage and assist Christian families to leave government schools for the Promised Land of Christian schools or home schooling." In his writings, Rev. Moore explicitly acknowledges his debt to Rushdoony and other Reconstructionists. Dr. Bruce N. Shortt, one of Moore's allies in his fight against public education, has been promoted by the [Reconstructionist think tank founded by Rushdoony] Chalcedon Foundation and his book, The Harsh Truth About Public Schools, was published by Chalcedon. Since 2004 Moore and Shortt have teamed up with others in the SBC to promote an "exit strategy" from the public schools.
The resolution they proposed for the 2007 annual meeting calls for the formation of an alternative K-12 school system to be administered by Christian churches. Echoing Rushdoony's writings from nearly a half century ago the resolution states, "education is not theologically neutral, and for generations ... [children] have been discipled primarily by an anti-Christian government school system." If successful, this small grassroots movement could lead to the departure of millions of children from the public school system throughout the United States.
And then, of course there is Flip Benham, longtime director of Operation Save America, whom Talk to Action's Moiv has written about extensively. In a post last year, she detailed Benham's activities during an invasion of Jackson, Mississippi that unsucessfully sought to close the last abortion clinic in the state. Here is that post in its entirety:
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During his "Ecclesiastical Court" at the Mississippi State Capitol, Operation Save America director Flip Benham contemplates the Koran he didn't get to burn.
After being thwarted by the police in yesterday's attempt to burn the holy book of Islam on the steps of the Capitol building in Jackson, Benham had to be satisfied with ripping the Koran to shreds. But later that evening, his desire to destroy the Islamic scriptures by fire was satisfied at last.
Jackson Muslims and a statewide interfaith group reacted with disgust Wednesday to reports that the national anti-abortion group Operation Save America burned a Quran during a Tuesday night gathering at a Pearl church.
"A group that acts in such a hateful way does not really represent the word of God," said Emad Al-Turk, co-founder of the International Museum of Muslim Cultures in Jackson.
There's nothing in the word of God that justifies burning scriptures, or that advocates putting on fake funerals for pickled fetal specimens, either. But when it's show time, the Rev. Flip Benham and his friends don't let such piffling details get in their way. So praise the Lord and strike a match.
During a demonstration at the Capitol on Tuesday, anti-abortion activists tore up pages from the Quran, the Muslim holy book, along with a gay pride flag and copies of six U.S. Supreme Court rulings related to religion in public schools, sodomy and abortion.
The group intended to burn the items at the Capitol but couldn't because it didn't have a permit, said Operation Save America volunteer Pat McEwen, a retired college professor from Palm Bay, Fla.
But police confirm that on Tuesday evening, in a parking lot outside the Making Jesus Real Church in Pearl, Mississippi, the Koran indeed went up in flames.
Norma McCorvey, the Jane Roe behind the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion who later became an anti-abortion activist, lit the match, McEwen said. McEwen said the Quran was burned because it condones violence.
Operation Save America director the Rev. Flip Benham said his group also burned a Quran during a 2004 demonstration in Columbus, Ohio.
And as documented by Mike Doughney of BARF.org, they certainly did.
For Muslims, desecrating the Quran or any holy book is the "highest degree of insult," [Imam Shaheed Muhammad of Masjid Muhammad of Jackson] said.
Still, he said Operation Save America's action makes him more sad than angry.
"I know it's caused by a lack of understanding," he said. "I actually feel that's something they will live to regret or live to feel some shame and embarrassment."
Time will tell, of course, but shame and embarrassment just don't seem to be a part of Flip Benham's emotional vocabulary.
Which brings us to Frank Pavone of Priests for Life and his traveling fetus.
Abortion protesters hold memorial for fetus at park
A memorial service for an aborted fetus concluded today without the planned burial in Smith Park.
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Father Frank Pavone, director of Priests for Life, said the fetus, which is being preserved in a formaldehyde-like solution, will be buried in Alabama in a few months.
Photo: Joe Ellis, Clarion-Ledger
Pavone said the fetus was aborted at about 18 weeks. It has been used in demonstrations in New York and Columbus, Ohio, he said, and will be in several more before being buried.
The Rev. Flip Benham, the leader of Operation Save America, bristled at those who might question showing a fetus to children.
"This does not traumatize our children," Benham said. "This traumatizes the adults who would hide the horrors of abortion."
Frank Pavone's pickled fetus wasn't called Rebecca when it was fished out of its jar two years ago in Ohio for a similar mock funeral. Then it was referred to as "Baby Mercy." Otherwise, the events were much the same. Then as now -- and as last year, during OSA's Colorado crusade targeting Dr. Warren Hern -- Pavone (below, third from right) was on hand in priestly black, lending a much-needed touch of gravitas to the carnival atmosphere that Flip Benham generates by his very presence.
Benham and Dave Daubenmire of Minutemen United lined up small children for the viewing in Columbus, too.
Photos: Minutemen United
Frank Pavone told a Clarion-Ledger reporter that he received the preserved fetus from an anonymous donor who asked him to give it a "proper burial." But only after a longer-than-proper interval, since this anointed priest continues touring the country with what he claims to believe is the corpse of a child, in a manner more redolent of P.T. Barnum than of the sacraments.
And that similarity to the greatest huckster of all time just might be the most significant character trait that Father Frank Pavone and the Reverend Flip Benham have in common.
[Title photo: OSA's Flickr album]
[Crossposted from Talk to Action.]