This week, like every week, the religious right is making news, and people are blogging about it. This is my more or less weekly round-up of interesting and signficant blog posts on the subject.
We have posts about the Christian Coalition of Alabama being told to go straight to hell; Christian rightist idolotry in Texas; and lies by Focus on the Family in Missouri.
All this, and more!
Bartholomew's Notes on Religion
Bartholomew reports that Jerry Jenkins, the co-author of Tim LaHaye's Left Behind series of novels, says, (in an apparent effort to deflect criticism of the controverisal forthcoming video game, Left Behind: Eternal Forces), that "It's not more violent than the Old Testament."
Faith in Public Life
David Buckley hosts a conversation between Dr. Bruce Prescott and Dr. Randall Balmer on historical revisionism by the religious right.
Daily Kos
Diarist quaoar reports on how a senior Democratic legislator in Alabama told the Christian Coalition of Alabama to "go straight to hell."
And Davidkc has a discussion of the politics of stem cells in Missouri, noting the over the top appearance of Alan Keyes:
Missouri Right to Life have set up a series of rallies with his friend, Alan Keyes. At a rally the other day in Cape Girardeau, in deep southeast Missouri, Keyes equated stem cell research "as the moral equivalent of Nazi medical experiments," as reported in the Southeast Missourian: Alan Keyes, the keynote speaker, said embryonic stem-cell research is the moral equivalent of Nazi medical experiments on the inmates of death camps during World War II.
And despite wording in Amendment 2 imposing harsh criminal penalties on anyone attempting to create a living human clone using the stem-cell research techniques, Keyes raised the possibility of an industrial effort to produce clones.
The result, he said, would be "new legions of humans to be enslaved and brutalized."
It appears that the primary tactic of No-Talent and others opposed to Missouri's stem cell ballot initiative is to bring up the threat of human cloning, even though the ballot measure specifically prohibits using stem cells for human cloning.
Wall of Separation
Joe Conn memorializes Robert Alley, a champion of religious freedom, who took on the religious right with the clear-eyed dedication of a scholar who knew history and why it matters.
Alley did not worship the Founders as alabaster saints, but instead saw them as visionary figures whose cause we must take up. He understood that the Religious Right forces assailing individual freedom today must be resisted, just as Jefferson and Madison did so in their age.
"One should not embrace religious freedom in 1985 merely because two prominent Virginians did so two centuries ago," Alley wrote in James Madison on Religious Liberty, a 1985 work he edited. "Rather we develop respect for those individuals and their associates because they espoused principles considered essential to true democracy. This is no game in which each side seeks to uncover old quotes favorable to their cause; it is a confrontation over basic presuppositions, a conflict between democracy and theocracy, both of which have deep roots in our past....
"One does not need to evoke Madison or any person in order to justify an unswerving dedication to the principles of justice and liberty; but we will always require women and men to espouse those rights and freedoms if they are to be secured for posterity," Alley continued. "To such persons, as to Madison, we owe a debt that can only be paid in the currency of continued vigilance regarding the first experiment on our liberties."
Talk to Action
CynCooper has the scoop on how Focus on the Family adopts a faux feminism -- and a pack of lies -- in their fight against stem cell research in Missouri.
Moiv uncovers the covert plans by Crisis Pregancy Centers to recover from the devastaing report by Rep. Henry Waxman, regarding the practices of many such agencies.
With recent public exposures of CPC tactics, such as the investigation sponsored by Rep. Henry Waxman, informing young women across the country of what awaits them beyond the doors of "pregnancy care centers," some CPC administrators are beginning to worry about the fallout.Is there any strategy out there for pregnancy centers on how to respond to this new wave of attack? We're a Care Net center and abide by all policies and procedures to protect us legally, however this bad press can cause women to stay away from us.
It's more likely that knowing what "pregnancy care centers" really do would cause women to stay away. And here, in their own words CPC operators take us beyond the doors.
Paul Hackett announces Operation Ohio, a public education campaign to expose the agenda of the religous right.
Jonathan Hutson reveals that yet another court house-based monument to the ten commandments that a federal appeals court has ruled unconstutional -- is also "trashy neon-lit idolatry."
The Bible forbids idolatry, and even mocks those foolish enough to pray to stone statues, graven images, and gimmicky gewgaws. For example, take Leviticus 26:1: "Do not make idols or set up an image or a sacred stone for yourselves, and do not place a carved stone in your land to bow down before it. I am the LORD your God."
...There's the word of the Lord, friends, so fresh and hot, even after thousands of years, that it needs no neon.
A gaggle of conservative Christian pastors has prayed over this trashy monument and has pointed to it as a sign that America's constitutional separation of church and state should end.
Here's what should end: neon-lit trashcan idolatry in the name of Christianity, and unconstitutional behavior in the name of patriotism. This monument is un-American, because it violates the Constitution, and it's unbiblical, because it violates commandments against idolatry.
Mainstream Baptist tangles with an Oklahoma state judge who, the Roy Moore Ten Comandments monument, and other federal cases not withstanding, thinks a courthouse monument to the Ten Commandments is, well, OK.