Religious Right Watch

Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters: NYT column provides excellent counterpoint to 'religious liberty' sham

The blog Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters notes:

The column in [January 11th's] New York Times by writer Frank Bruni -  Your God and My Dignity Religious Liberty, Bigotry and Gays - is a dignified, but still take-no-prisoners counterpoint on the anti-gay idea of religious liberty.

Read the post here.

The post's author, BlackTsunami, quotes Bruni's key observation:

. . .  Baking a cake, arranging roses, running an inn: These aren’t religious acts, certainly not if the establishments aren’t religious enclaves and are doing business with (and even dependent on) the general public.

 

Their owners are routinely interacting with customers who behave in ways they deem sinful. They don’t get to single out one group of supposed sinners. If they’re allowed to, who’s to say they’ll stop at that group?

 

  . . .  I support the right of people to believe what they do and say what they wish — in their pews, homes and hearts. But outside of those places? You must put up with me, just as I put up with you.

 

Click the chart to enlarge it for better readability.

January 16: The Christian Right Does Not Want You To Know About This Day - updated

In some parts of America you may not feel like this is the case, but you're free to not have to be a Christian in America or an adherent of any religion. Please blog, write, tweet, post, and shout out about Religious Freedom Day, which (since 1992) is January 16 every year. Learn more about it from Frederick Clarkson and Elena Carlena. Of course,  blog, write, tweet, post, vlog, shout out, and everything else on January 16 itself about religious freedom in the United States. 

(One important aside: the domain name and website ReligiousFreedomDay.com is, alas, owned by a religious right-wing group.*)

Clarkson explains about the history of Religious Freedom Day:

In the heat of our political moment, we sometimes don’t see how our future connects deeply to our past. But the Christian Right does — and they do not like what they see.

The Christian Right has made religious freedom the ideological phalanx of its current campaigns in the culture wars. Religious freedom is now invoked as a way of seeking to derail access to reproductive health services as well as equality for LGBTQ people, most prominently regarding marriage equality.

But history provides little comfort for the theocratic visions of the Christian Right. And that is where our story begins.

For all of the shouting about religious liberty — from the landmark Hobby Lobby Supreme Court case, to the passage of the anti-gay Religious Freedom Restoration Act in Mississippi, and more — there is barely any mention, let alone any observance, of the official national Religious Freedom Day, enacted by Congress in 1992 and recognized every January 16 by an annual presidential proclamation.

The day commemorates the enactment of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom in 1786.

Read the rest of Frederick's excellent post at dailykos.com.

*This is to the point of several commentators. To quote Clarkson: "The Christian Right has made religious freedom the ideological phalanx of its current campaigns in the culture wars". So while it's true that the Christian Right doesn't want you to know about January 16, it might also be said that they don't want you to know about it unless they're the ones telling you about it.

Weighing 2016 bid, Bobby Jindal to meet with pastors in Iowa - Yahoo News

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal returns to Iowa on Tuesday to meet with local pastors and again look for support among Christian evangelicals for a possible White House campaign.

The stated reason for Jindal's trip is to talk about his headlining appearance later this month at a prayer rally that is expected to draw thousands of people to Baton Rouge, and to discuss ways to mount a similar event in Iowa.

"These are a group of Christian men and women very interested in spiritual revival, very interested in prayer," Jindal said in a Monday interview with The Associated Press.

But the private meetings with Christian religious leaders in Cedar Rapids and Des Moines also come as Jindal courts religious conservatives across the country ahead of the 2016 campaign.

Tuesday's trip to first-to-vote Iowa will be his fifth since June. In recent months, Jindal has also spoken to pastors in New Hampshire, at a gathering of faith leaders and conservative activists in Washington, and in Oklahoma at an event promoting a Bible museum planned by owners of Oklahoma City-based Hobby Lobby.

via news.yahoo.com

Christian right undermines marriage equality with religious supremacism – LGBTQ Nation

In his LGBTQ Nation op-ed, Frederick Clarkson looks at how Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council (FRC) thinks Christians who support marriage equality are not really Christians and that religious freedom is only for those who hold to what he calls "orthodox" views. Excerpt:

It...helps to clarify that when Christian Right leaders talk about religious liberty—they often really mean theocratic religious supremacism.

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, took to the airwaves after the filing of UCC’s suit to claim that the church is not really Christian, and that those who support gay rights don’t have the same rights as conservative Christians—because ‘true religious freedom’ only applies to ‘orthodox religious viewpoints.’”

Perkins’ blunt statements are a sobering reminder that theocratic factions of the U.S. Right have long sought to regain the religious and political hegemony they lost when the Constitution was ratified in the 18^th century

Read the op-ed in full at www.lgbtqnation.com

Censorship Challenge: Texas Pastor Seeks Restrictions On ‘Dangerous’ Library Books | Americans United

I think it’s pretty obvious what the Religious Right is up to here: They want to “protect” children from critical thinking, self-reflection and the type of curiosity about our world that an immersion into literature can give us.

via www.au.org

Rumblings of Theocratic Violence | Political Research Associates

Frederick Clarkson, senior fellow at Political Research Associates, examines a possible "ideological reorganization, or at least reconsideration, now taking place within the Christian Right" that calls for non-democratic means, possibly including martyrdom, to affect extremely conservative political change in the United States.

Clarkson begins with an essay by long-time Republican Party operative David Lane calling for religious war in the United States.

“If the American experiment with freedom is to end after 237 years,” wrote Republican campaign strategist David Lane in an essay published on a popular conservative website in 2013, “let each of us commit to brawl all the way to the end.”

Lane's essay, “Wage War to Restore a Christian Nation,” was published on World Net Daily (WND) and then removed from it. A month later, in July 2013, Lane

told conservative Iowa radio talk show host Steve Deace...that “car bombs in Los Angeles, Washington, D.C. and Des Moines, Iowa” would be merciful punishment from God for legalized abortion and for “homosexuals praying at the Inauguration [of President Obama’s second term].”

Since those comments, Lane is a man on the move, not a piraha. As Clarkson explains, in October 2013, Lane told the Dallas Morning News about an event of the Iowa Renewal Project,

one of several state-level units of the American Renewal Project—which is, in turn, a political development and mobilization project of the Mississippi-based American Family Association. Its most prominent figures are founder Don Wildmon and the abrasive radio host Bryan Fischer. Lane [said] that the goal of the event, which featured Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus and U.S. Sens. Rand Paul (R-KY) and Ted Cruz (R-TX), was the same as the others: “the mobilization of pastors and pews to restore America to our Judeo-Christian heritage and re-establish a Christian culture.” Lane said: “We’ve been in 15 states now, largely under the radar, and we’ve had 10,000 pastors plus spouses that we’ve put up overnight and fed three meals. The purpose is to get the pastors—the shepherds in America—to engage the culture through better registration and get out the vote.”

Clarkson also looks at writings of "theologian Peter Leithart, 55, a Christian Reconstructionist (hardline theocrat)", a "new Reformed Protestantism, called Federal Vision, whose leading lights include Neo-Confederate authors Wilson and Steven Wilkins",

Father C. John McCloskey, who believes that regional American strongholds of conservative Christianity may be necessary in light of the culture of religious pluralism and the constitutional doctrine of separation of church and state,

and Pastor David Whitney, 56, who leads the small Cornerstone Evangelical Free Church in Pasadena, MD (near Washington, D.C.).

Clarkson notes:

Taken singly, the views of [these] Christian Right leaders...would not necessarily signal a trend. But taken together, the commonalities of their views take the edge off of their many differences and reveal distinct, overlapping factions of a dynamic movement towards the ideas of nullification and secession—and the possibility of violence and revolution.

These leaders are not without influence, they are not without connections within the Republican Party, and, as Clarkson shows, they are deadly serious.

The rumblings may be faint, seemingly distant, but they absolutely must not be ignored.

Articles on Clarkson's essay have on Salon.com (article by Paul Rosenberg) and Buzzflash (an article by Bill Berkowitz).

Ohio Board Of Education Member Calls On Religious Right To Take Over Education | Right Wing Watch

PFAW's Right Wing Watch looks at Mark Smith and his agenda for Ohio education.

Mark Smith, who was appointed to the board of education by Gov. John Kasich last year, is president of Ohio Christian University and president of the Ohio Faith and Freedom Coalition. He said at one board meeting that books like Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye” are “quite divisive” and part of an “underlying socialist-communist agenda.”

Read the entire article and listen to the audio clips on www.rightwingwatch.org

Does a 'religious left' threaten Abbott? | Business Spectator

Here is a rare and interesting opportunity to read about progressive people of faith, the "religious left", outside of the U.S. Rob Burgess of the Austrialian Business Spectator looks briefly but effectively at the situation, its recent past, and the domestic issues that may bring together the "religious" and the "left". See also the piece by Barney Zwarts in the Brisbane Times.

One might expect, therefore, to see church leaders picking up the same themes and looking for ways to assist the left of politics to back their social justice vision.

Such a union was seen as pretty natural in Australia right up until the 1955 Labor Party/Democratic Labor Party split precipitated by B. A. Santamaria’s Catholic Social Studies Movement.

Since that time, however, gettting ‘religion’ and ‘left’ together has proven much more difficult. Many of the political issues raised during the liberationist movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s – sexual liberation, contraception, abortion, same-sex marriage and the like – helped drive a wedge between church groups and the political left.

via www.businessspectator.com.au

Meet the Billionaire Brothers You Never Heard of Who Fund the Religious Right

The Wilks brothers, whose fortune comes from fracking, give tens of millions to right-wing groups and anti-choice "pregnancy centers," anti-LGBT groups, and organizations affiliated with ALEC.

via prospect.org

Graham: Pastors Need To Be Willing To 'Get Our Heads Chopped Off' For Opposing Gay Rights | Right Wing Watch

Franklin Graham spoke at the Family Research Council's Watchmen on the Wall conference yesterday where he told the assembled pastors that they all needed to be willing to have their heads chopped off for speaking the truth that gays are bound for hell.

"Are we going to be cowards because we're afraid?," Graham asked the crowd. "Could we get our heads chopped off? We could, maybe one day.  So what? Chop it off!"

Graham went on to assert that he loves gays "enough to care to warn them that if they want to continue living like this, it's the flames of hell for you"

Read the entire article at www.rightwingwatch.org.

Neil deGrasse Tyson vs. the right: “Cosmos,” Christians, and the battle for American science - Salon.com

The religious right has been freaking out about Neil deGrasse Tyson’s “Cosmos” for what feels like an eternity. And, while the theological complaints seem laughable for their rancor and predictability, it’s time we thought harder about what they represent, because the Christian right’s “Cosmos” agita actually indicates a far deeper problem in religious conservatism — the selective acceptance of Enlightenment values. Religious conservatives have selectively adopted the legacy of liberal Enlightenment, from free speech to science, and jettisoned it when it does not suit their narrow ideological aims.

via www.salon.com

God Loves Uganda shows how American conservative evangelicals are exporting homophobia to Africa

"God Loves Uganda, which was broadcast earlier this week on PBS and is now available on iTunes and Netflix." 

The documentary shows how not only prominent American conservative evangelicals like Scott Lively and Lou Engle but many missionaries and organizations like the Kansas City-based International House of Prayer 

have done a great job convincing Ugandan parents that homosexuals are out to get their children. This “recruiting” notion is as old as time and should have been discredited by now, but it seems to work particularly well in a culture that has not had much experience with sexual minorities. Of course, the irony is that it’s the radical evangelicals who are doing the recruiting here, literally whispering their lifestyle into the ears of kids—as a poignant scene at the funeral of slain activist David Kato shows, actual LGBTQ people are struggling just to stay alive.

via www.slate.com

View the trailer of God Loves Uganda and visit the documentary's website.

On Twitter, look for the hashtags #UgandaNews #UgandaLGBT, and follow the documentary God Loves Uganda on Twitter--handle: @GodLovesUganda.

The documentary was released on DVD on May 19, 2014. It was directed by Oscar-winner @RogerRossWill.

How you can help.

Alabama Chief Justice: The First Amendment Protects Only Christians

“Buddha didn’t create us, Mohammed didn’t create us, it was the God of the Holy Scriptures. They didn’t bring the Koran over on the pilgrim ship,” he continued. “Let’s get real, let’s go back and learn our history. Let’s stop playing games.”

The chief justice was speaking at a Pastor for Life Luncheon, an event in Jackson Miss., sponsored by Pro-Life Mississippi, according to Raw Story.

READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE AT talkingpointsmemo.com

This guy's comments are imbecilic. The Pilgrims didn't write the Constitution, their worldview was written out of the Constitution deliberately, excluded as a matter of principle. Our godless Constitution was tantamount to a stated objection to the Pilgrims' theocratic Calvinism.

The spirit of the age of the Constitution is revealed here in there words of Thomas Jefferson from his Autobiography, in reference to the Virginia Act for Religious Freedom:

Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed by inserting "Jesus Christ," so that it would read "A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;" the insertion was rejected by the great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination."

Such examples abound and not just from Jefferson's quill but from others among the Founding Fathers. Chief Justice Moore's ignorance is menacing and worthy of official censure. The reason the world sat up and took note regarding our Constitution was that it was founded on reason, not divine right. It begins "We the people," not "In the Name of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit." It was at the time the single most secular document ever created relating to a nation's governance.

Oh, any by the way, Mr. Moore, the Koran doesn't attest that Mohammed created humankind, Buddhists don't believe that Buddha created humankind, and the only scientific explanation that exists for the existence of humankind is the theory of evolution by natural selection.

Moore claims that Americans don't know their history. Bollocks. It's Moore who doesn't. He does what many members of the religious right do when they expound in a sophomoric manner on early American history: conflate the Pilgrims' adventure with the founding of the United States.

The Pilgrims arrived in 1620. The Constitution went into effect 169 years later in 1789. That's nearly seven generations, what 1845 is relative to 2014.

In 1845, James K. Polk was President, slavery flourished, women couldn't vote, state legislatures elected U.S. Senators, the western-most state was Missouri, most people thought the Earth was about 10,000 years old, Neptune had yet to be discovered, kerosene was unknown, and perhaps most importantly, Adolphe Sax was still a year away from patenting the saxophone. In 2014, are things a bit different in terms of not only technology but political principles and ideals, policy and worldview? Yes. One-hundred-sixty-nine years makes a difference. The Pilgrims came ashore in 1620, but by 1789 there was a republic on these shores that did not obviate or subsume but replaced religion-based colonial entities.

It's Moore who needs the history lesson. It's a nation by, of, and for not "the Christians" but "the People." 

The Gathering: The Religious Right’s Cash Cow | TWO Care

Bruce Wilson writes about The Gathering, which provides millions of dollars to religious-right causes.

Like its familial evangelical parent The Family, The Gathering takes the coercive moral authoritarianism inherent to anti-LGBT laws being passed (aided and encouraged by The Gathering-funded groups) from Uganda to Russia, and fuses it to the radical economic libertarianism of the Koch brothers....
.....
[The Gathering] have bankrolled, from Uganda to Russia, the mounting international war on LGBT rights; evangelical opposition to healthcare reform and action to curb climate change; the promotion of young-earth creationism and Intelligent Design; ministries training African leaders in the “biblical worldview”; legal efforts that have fought against same-sex marriage and LGBT rights in the United States, and have forced anti-gay fundamentalist bible clubs into thousands of U.S. public schools....

Its foundation heads are plaintiffs in a legal challenge to healthcare reform now before the U.S. Supreme Court and they are leading efforts to attack organized labor and defund public schools.

The colossus of The Gathering is the National Christian Foundation, which gave out an estimated $670 million dollars in grants in 2013 and has rocketed, in just two years, from spot number 34 to number 12 on the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s “Philanthropy 400” list.

via www.twocare.org

TWO Launches Center Against Religious Extremism with $100,000 Matching Grant from Philanthropist Henry van Ameringen | TWO Care

Truth Wins Out announced today the launch of its new Center Against Religious Extremism (TWOCARE.org), which aims to hold America’s Religious Right accountable for promoting theocracy at home and shipping its dangerous brand of hate abroad. TWOCARE commenced today with a $100,000 matching grant from philanthropist Henry van Ameringen.

“If you’re like me, you are tired of American extremists literally getting away with murder from Uganda to Russia,” said Truth Wins Out Executive Director Wayne Besen. “The Center Against Religious Extremism is designed to monitor, counter, and ultimately serve as a bulwark against an ignoble enterprise designed to drag the world back into the Dark Ages.”

PLEASE READ THE REST OF THE ANNOUNCEMENT AND MAKE A CONTRIBUTION AT: www.twocare.org