So we hear a lot of complaining about the Christian Right these days. How they're trying to force their radical agenda on the rest of us. How they're manipulating churchgoers to vote against their own economic interests. How they're pushing fear, racism, homophobia, and perpetual war in the name of "values" and "patriotism". And how they are growing bolder in endorsing candidates from the pulpit in direct violation of IRS and election rules.
So what to do about it?
Monitor them and expose them.
What I'm talking about is a national grassroots effort to weaken and demoralize the Christian Right by building a database of right-wing churches and documenting violations of federal laws.
How do we do this?
A national non-profit and non-partisan organization, whose membership - all volunteer - is trained and tasked to attend conservative evangelical churches in their region and watch for violations.
Imagine if Democrats, liberals, and progressive Christians all across the country - let's call them our "Watchers" - started attending these churches every Sunday morning, taking copies of church bulletins, looking for "voter guides", documenting the topics of sermons or even recording them. In cases where church leaders hadn't actually broken any laws but made outrageous hate-driven statements, our Watchers would be trained to report their behavior either on our organization's website, on local blogs, or to their local media outlets.
The Watchers' visits would be random and consistent and each member would be specifically trained first to make sure that they knew what to look for in the way of legal violations and in how to work with their local media. Also, our Watchers would begin coding these churches, rating them on just how radical or mainstream they are. This would go into a national database that one day might be useful to the IRS in tracking violations. Finally, this organization could, periodically, begin a national issue campaign that has our Watchers dropping pamphlets on cars in these churches' parking lots.
Aside from the obvious effect of tracking the right wing's movements and cataloging them, the work of this new organization accomplishes several other goals very effectively.
The first and most obvious benefit I've already talked about - looking for churches who are mixing their preaching and their politics. A grassroots movement to expose them lets the Christian Right leaders - who have millions of dollars at stake through these tax exempt fronts - know that they could lose it all with a poorly turned phrase that could be caught on tape. Hence, their partisan rhetoric tones down for fear of being caught and turned in to the IRS.
A secondary benefit is that the extreme fear and paranoia that fuels these people would be turned against them. Once it becomes known that the Left is "infiltrating" their churches, it gets parishioners suspicious of their neighbor, thus diluting the powerful communal bond that is part of their culture. It won't be long before name-calling and back-biting break out in these churches as attendees who don't like each other begin accusing each other of being "spies". A witch hunt among the hunters.
A third benefit, and possibly the most important one, is the inherent message being sent by the very existence of the Watcher Project: that these churches teach hate and divisiveness and that they need to be watched. That very notion would solidify the perception in many people's minds that these people are radical and dangerous - so much so that average citizens have volunteered their time to monitor them. This also institutionalizes the idea that these people are practicing a hypocritical and deviant form of Christianity. Perhaps one of the requirements of being a Watcher might be that all Watchers are themselves Christians, thus robbing the Right of a perceived persecution by atheists, Jews, or whoever. If, in fact, our Watchers are all Christians, it allows more opportunities to get progressive Christian voices out in front of the media all across the country, which further diminishes the Right's power and influence in the Republican Party.
Are you convinced yet?
So what would one need to put this movement together? Very little. A website that is simple to use, yet powerful enough to handle loads of data. An online application and training program for Watchers so that they know how to conduct themselves while "undercover" at these churches, how to use listening devices, how to code churches and enter them into the database, how to write news releases and work with local media, and how to recruit new Watchers in their areas to cover more turf. This new organization would probably want to hold seminars and trainings for Watchers too - both online and on the ground in different regions of the country. There would need to be a national office, a media person, a technology director/webmaster, and probably an attorney on retainer.
With very little expense and some heavy support from the netroots and some national organizations that are concerned about mixing religion and politics, we could have a genuine, citizen-driven solution that puts the brakes on the Christian Right's arrogance and disregard for the law.
I know what several of the arguments could be against an initiative like this, but I don't want to bring them up here - I'm curious to hear what you think could be obstacles (and solutions to solving those obstacles). I'd also like to hear other ideas to expand on this organization and what other tactics and tools it might use.
It is time to stop complaining about the Christian Right and start acting to stop them. We cannot count on very many of our institutions to challenge them openly in the near future. The solution must start with us in order to give the media and the Democratic Party political cover to really scrutinize these people.
I believe that someone will see this diary and will be able to act on it, so long as it gets publicized and read by activists like you.
Please recommend this diary and help protect our democracy from the Christofascists.