Frameshop
Jeffrey Feldman has several incisive posts on Bill Donohue and his role in the villification of bloggers working for John Edwards.
Feldman reveals that on the CNBC broadcast of Kudlow & Company which aired February 9, 2007:
Without announcing it to his viewing audience-- [Larry] Kudlow turned his show into a broadcast outlet for Donohue's vicious incitements against John Edwards and Edwards' staffers, including an opening segment during which Kudlow virtually gave the broadcast to Donohue.
This broadcast came at a crucial moment in Donohue's attempt to intervene in the Edwards campaign and was, without question, a key moment in the escalation of the incitements that led, ultimately, to email threats of sexual assault and death sent by Donohue's followers.
At no point in his broadcast did Kudlow acknowledge that he was a board member of Donohue's organization,[the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights] but instead kept this information concealed in what was produced to appear as a "fair and balanced" debate.
Jews On First!
Jews on First! reports:
The leader of a fundamentalist Christian faculty organization at the U.S. Air Force Academy brushed off the headline-grabbing investigation of religious coercion by the school's faculty, attributing the probe to complaints by one individual. In a presentation to a Campus Crusade for Christ faculty conference last June, Air Force Academy Professor James Pocock assured his audience that, absent an activist individual, an investigation of religious intolerance was unlikely at their schools.
Pocock then went on to detail how successfully the Christian Leadership Ministries (CLM), which he leads at the Academy, has organized the faculty and staff -- and how important it is to proselytize at the school.
Melissa Rogers
Melissa Rogers discusses a recent Newsweek article that describes the kingmaker role religious right leaders are seeking to play in the GOP primaries.
Howard Fineman writes an article entitled Preacher Primary: Republican Presidential Hopefuls Court Evangelical Kingpens that Could Determine the 2008 Nomination. Here's how the piece begins:
The Republicans’ first primary contest is next week, and it’s not in New Hampshire. It is in Orlando, at the annual meeting of the National Religious Broadcasters. GOP presidential candidates will be there to try to generate buzz that will translate into evangelical airtime—and support in "the base" in 2008.
Toward the end of the essay, Fineman points to a potential development that might help former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee break out of the second-tier of Republican presidential hopefuls:
[James] Dobson has said nice things about [Mitt] Romney, but at a private meeting of Christian activists in Washington last week, I am told, he made the case—at least for the sake of argument—for [Mike] Huckabee, the personable former Arkansas governor who also spent a good bit of his career as a Southern Baptist preacher.
The whole article is worth a read -- it specifically describes a number of ways in which a handful of prominent religious conservatives are attempting to shape the race for the Republican nomination. While I don't agree with every point of Fineman's analysis, it seems to me that he's mostly right in terms of his description of how things are.
But what about how things should be? In my view, it's troubling to see ministers (and, in the case of James Dobson, a prominent religious leader) playing these kinds of roles. This activity goes far beyond ministers endorsing candidates in their individual capacities. It's a group of ministers acting, or attempting to act, as king-makers in a particular political party.
Wall of Separation
Rob Boston reports that Focus on the Family is all worked up that the Denver Regional Transportation District is considering dropping the requirement that employees recite a religous oath.
Everyone take a deep breath. This is a transportation board. Its job it to make sure the buses run on time and that they are safe, clean and accessible. Where the board members worship, and indeed if they worship at all, would not seem to be relevant to this task.
The framers of the U.S. Constitution understood this. The presidential Oath of Office, found in Article II, Sect. 1, reads, "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and I will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States."
Notice what’s missing? There is no reference to God. George Washington added the phrase "So help me, God" to the oath, and other presidents have followed suit – but it isn’t required. Under Minnery’s view, the presidential oath, as originally written, must be "practically worthless."
Actually, compelling someone to swear an oath that they don’t believe in is what makes the oath worthless. We do not honor religious liberty by coercing people to make professions of faith they do not sincerely hold to be true. The Denver Regional Transportation District understands this, as its recent action shows. Why can’t Focus on the Family?
Right Wing Watch
Ezra details GOP presidential aspirant John McCain's courtship of the religius right, including his appeal to the manufacturers of Intelligent Design (-- you know -- the idea that was explicity invented to get around a Supreme Court decision barring teaching of creationism in the public schools), which is to say, The Discovery Institute.
For much of the last year, Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona) has been cozying up to the Right Wing, apparently in anticipation of the Republican primary campaign for president next year. In his 2000 run, he lambasted Jerry Falwell and James Dobson as "agents of intolerance" and he attacked opponent George Bush for speaking at South Carolina’s Bob Jones University, which at that time had a ban on interracial dating. This time around, he’s made amends with Falwell, he’s trying hard to win over Dobson, and he’s open to speaking at Bob Jones. And next week, McCain will have an opportunity to solidify his creationist credentials.... at a Discovery Institute lunch in Seattle
The Daily Kos
Kos marvels at the revelation that a Texas Republican state legislator is at he center of a controversy over geocentrism.
Wow. Just when you think Republicans can't get any crazier, we find out that the powerful chairman of the Texas House Appropriations Committee, Warren Chisum, doesn't even believe that the earth revolves around the sun.
Still, it's enough to set the world a-spinning that the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, the most powerful committee in the House, distributed to legislators a memo pitching crazed wingers who believe the earth stands still -- doesn't spin on its axis or revolve around the Sun -- that Copernicus was part of a Jewish conspiracy to undermine the Old Testament.
Talk to Action
Bruce Wilson unearths the schism between theocratic adherents of geocentrism and heliocentrism -- and reports that Texas is not the only place where geocentrists have played a role in attempting to eliminate the teaching of evolution in the public schools.
...in 1999, Tom Willis --head of the Mid-Atlantic Creation Research Association -- was "intrumental in revising the Kansas elementary school curriculum to remove references to evolution, earth history, and science methodology".
Max Blumenthal reports that Ted Haggard's ex-church has purchased his silence as well as declaring him to now be heterosexual after 3 weeks of "therapy."
The Haggard scandal may have been a factor in the GOP's midterm losses last November, but until Haggard's ex-allies are called to answer the hard questions about their handling of the scandal's aftermath, he will fade into history like Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart and hundreds of other forgotten faith-based hypocrites. And as in the past, the amorphous movement comprising the Christian right will move forward unscathed.
Ed Brayton discusses the federal appeals court case over faith based funding of religious right leader Chuck Colson's Prison Fellowship:
The major problem with the program is this: despite being a heavily sectarian program that denigrates all religions other than protestant evangelicalism (including program materials blasting the Catholic Church and claiming that the Pope will be the anti-Christ), participation in the program carries enormous incentives for inmates, including a far higher chance of early parole and special privileges while in prison that those who do not participate do not receive.... The government is all but forcing inmates to take part in sectarian religious indoctrination or face longer sentences under worse conditions in prison, all paid for by our tax dollars.
Moiv reports on the repeal of theocratic legislation in Portugal, and sounds the alarm about the persistence of theocratically inspired antiabortion legislation in the United States:
On February 11, the people of Portugal spoke. A largely Catholic nation sick of seeing women endure imprisonment, injury and the risk of death voted to reject its "backward" criminalization of abortion. That same movement is making progress across the world, as the realization dawns that prohibition of abortion never has made it go away; prohibition only makes abortion dangerous, even deadly. Our own history tells us so.
But even as restrictions on abortion are eased in countries that have had their fill of needless pain and carnage, our own politicians on the Christian right are introducing one abortion ban after another legislation designed to plunge the women of our own country back into a hellish past.
Chris Rodda goes into deep background on how to take apart key elements of the the religious right's historical revisionsm:
With the 60th anniversary of Everson v. Board of Education just around the corner, articles about Thomas Jefferson's "wall of separation" metaphor seem to be everywhere. Many of these briefly refute the typical religious right myths about the meaning of Jefferson's letter to the Danbury Baptists (like those from D. James Kennedy and William Federer found later in this article), but I have yet to come across an article that presents an in-depth enough look at the history behind Jefferson's letter to satisfy a history buff like myself.
So, I decided to write one.
Chip Berlet debunks the debunkers of the idea that there is an active theocratic movement in the U.S.
Now the backlash against our concerns (and those of others worried about these trends) has reached a new level of sophistication in right-wing intellectual journals. In their recent articles, Ross Douthat in First Things and Mary Eberstadt in Policy Review serve as apologists for Christian Nationalist tendencies by creating what I call Straw Jeremiads, and then easily setting them on fire.
Jeremiah was a Biblical prophet who issued dire warnings. So a Straw Jeremiad is concocted by a critic who misrepresents and exaggerates the actual content of our warnings and concerns so that we can be burned in rhetorical effigy. Straw Jeremiads catch fire easily because they are flimsy and dry.
Since Fred Clarkson and I (and others from Talk 2 Action) participated in a conference on Dominionism in New York in April 2005, writers of the purple prose have saddled their horses for the counterattack.
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