According to Religious Right leader Lou Engle, evangelical Christians who don't get political are helping elect Satan's candidates.
In an interview with Charisma magazine, Engle said he believes that a rally he is leading this weekend in Sacramento could profoundly affect the midterm elections.
"There is a hill above Capitol Hill," Engle said. "It's God's praying church who actually begins to influence the governments of the earth through their prayers."
Engle makes no apologies for his political advocacy. He believes if Christians don't influence politics, Satan will.
Prayer and preaching the gospel are the church's primary calling, he said. "But to say don't get involved in those high places [of government] is actually allowing our archenemy Satan to put his own people in those high places, where spiritual powers can actually control societies and release laws that actually legalize systemic evil," Engle added.
The Satanic candidates are, of course, those who endorse marriage equality and reproductive rights. The statements of purpose of The Call, and the wider Pray & Act initiative are crystal clear about that.
(Engle, and the Pray & Act co-chair Jim Garlow were leaders in the successful campaign to pass Prop 8 in California.)
Engle's actions and words have been somewhat lost amidst the national hoo ha over Glenn Beck's pseudo Martin Luther King dream rally.
I posted an essay a few days ago at Talk to Action (crossposted here at Daily Kos) detailing how this relates to some of the Religious Right's main plans for the Fall. Since then, Joe Conason at Salon.com has picked-up on my report, and shows the connection between Beck's quasi religious political rally, and Engle's quasi political religious rally in Sacramento. Also, AlterNet reprinted my original story today.
But the political blogosphere has been pretty quiet about all this -- even though this weekend's rally is intended as the kick-off of a series of Christian Right events intended to stimulate their constituencies -- young people in particular -- into political action this Fall. What's more, these events are being choreographed by none other than Newt Gingrich (!!!). These events are not intended as mass rallies so much as mass cyber-casts. There is a press release just today giving the details of the weekend broadcasts on "God TV." It will be interesting to see how well this works for them. It will also be interesting to see how effectively the emergent new stage of reorganization, coordination and cooperation among conservative Catholics, Protestant fundamentalists and neo-Pentecostals works out as well.
Rather than repeating myself, I offer this as an FYI reminder on a hot summer night, that the Religious right has been doing some rather shadowy organizing while Glen Beck draws all of the attention. But they will begin to step out into the sunlight this weekend.