Religious Right Watch

McCain loses if Christian conservatives don't vote?

"If Christian conservatives stay on the sidelines during the fall campaign, presidential hopeful John McCain probably stays in the Senate," according to an article by Philip Elliot from the Associated Press.

Representatives of conservative Christian organizations in Ohio--oddly referred to as "family groups" in the AP story--expressed doubts about Senator McCain in a meeting with his advisers last weekend. They stressed that who McCain picks as his running mate could improve the campaign's relations with conservative Christians.

Marlys Popma, McCain's director of evangelical outreach....said the campaign understands the interest in the vice presidential nominee, but she noted that McCain "is the one who is going to be nominating judges. He's going to be the one who is signing or not signing bills."

Putting additional pressure on McCain to reach out to a constituency whose leadership he once referred to as "agents of intolerance," is the fact that Senator Obama's reaching out to conservative Christians, too.

Meanwhile, Obama's campaign is aggressively reaching out to evangelicals.

The Illinois senator dispatched former 9/11 Commission member Tim Roemer to meet with fellow Roman Catholics. He sent Brian McLaren, one of the country's most influential pastors, to meet with fellow evangelicals. And aides have conducted more than 200 "American Values Forums," soon to be followed up with house parties and town hall-style meetings aimed at young Catholics and young evangelicals.

Hopefully, he's communicating, not placating by promising to compromise his many relatively progressive positions. To be sure, Christian conservatives are increasingly aware of the fact that they can at times be used and abused by the Republican Party, and Obama's sincere attention--even if it's not couched in terms of agreement--demonstrates respect at the very least, and perhaps provides an opportunity for him to share his own Christian perspectives, albeit more reformist and progressive ones.

Jacques Berlinerblau, "a religious scholar at Georgetown University who studies faith and the U.S. presidential campaign," summed up the value of Obama's American Values Forums and meetings with young Christians thusly: "If he can get up for 21 to 30 percent [of evangelical voters], he's gold.... And that's exactly what he's doing. He's going to fissure off this progressive evangelical voter."

Religious liberty, sharia law, gay adoption in UK House of Lords debate

From The Guardian: While Lord Bassam of Brighton (Labour) dismissed fears of a parallel sharia legal system in Britain, Baroness Park of Monmouth (Conservative) said

When we condone the practice of allowing girls to be withdrawn from school from 12 years onwards, so that they may be sent to Pakistan to marry and thus facilitate the entry of a young husband who may be illiterate and innumerate, we are not only allowing her to be unlawfully deprived of education up to age 16, but the country is losing a potentially skilled and valuable citizen.

The Bishop of Ripon and Leeds, the Rt. Rev. John Packer, said:

I very much regret the recent decision to force Roman Catholic adoption agencies to place children with gay couples, over-riding the conscientious rights of the Roman Catholics concerned. The result has been the loss of their skilled experience in placing some of our most damaged children for adoption.

He also stated, "It is important that religious communities are not denied the right to uphold ethical and moral standards, where these do not infringe basic human rights." Clearly, for the bishop, the right of same-sex couples to adopt--or the right of a child to be given every opportunity for fit caretakers--are not basic human ones.

Common (tired) misconceptions about evolution

The list of common misconceptions about evolution is pathetically long. Here are some of them courtesy of Michael Le Page of NewScientist.

Self-assured anti-intellectuals: could you please stop with the willful ignorance now? Read a little science. It won't kill you. But you sure act as if it could!

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved. - Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species by the Means of Natural Selection (1859).

"Does science make belief in God obsolete?" - a remarkable, welcome booklet

"Does science make belief in God obsolete?" is a booklet published by the Templeton Foundation and edited by Michael Shermer containing 13 essays of varying answers to the title's question.

Shermer notes:

Since I am aware of the reputation that the Templeton Foundation has within the skeptical, atheist, and humanist communities for harboring a right-wing Christian agenda, I would like to note that, in fact, they invited me to select the commentators and edit their essays, and insisted that I include skeptics, atheists, and humanists, which you will see that I did. There was never any hint to me that I should edit the commentaries to come out a certain way to match the alleged agenda; to the contrary, they seemed most eager to give everyone a fair shake … to the tune of over a million dollars spent in a national advertising campaign that included advertorials place in Scientific American, American Scientist, Nature, The New Scientist, The Atlantic Monthly, Commentary, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Economist, The Financial Times, The New Republic, Prospect, and the Sunday edition of The New York Times. Oh, and Skeptic magazine!

Answers to the question range from “yes” to “no” to “it depends” to “no, but it should.”

All the essays are available online.

(Photo: a recent Hubble image; M. Wong and I. de Pater of the University of California, Berkeley; click to enlarge.)

McCain reaching out to conservative evangelicals

From The New York Times article:

...McCain’s campaign has been ramping up its outreach to evangelicals over the last month, preparing a budget and a strategic plan for turning them out in 18 battleground states this fall.

The campaign has been peppering over 600 socially conservative grass-roots and national leaders with regular e-mail messages — highlighting, for example, Mr. McCain’s statement criticizing a May 15 decision by the California Supreme Court overturning the state’s ban on same-sex marriage, or his recent speech on his judicial philosophy. It has also held briefings for small groups of conservative leaders before key speeches. Charlie Black, one of Mr. McCain’s senior advisers, recently sat down with a dozen prominent evangelical leaders in Washington, where he emphasized, among other things, Mr. McCain’s consistent anti-abortion voting record.

Some key players in the outreach to conservative evangelicals:

...Marlys Popma, a prominent socially conservative leader in Iowa who has [taken] on the title of national coordinator for evangelical and social conservative outreach; Robert C. Heckman, the campaign’s director of conservative outreach who was the political director of Mr. Bauer’s presidential campaign in 2000; and Brett O’Donnell, the campaign’s director of messaging who was a debate coach at Liberty University, Mr. Falwell’s institution.

Former Senator Dan Coats of Indiana...is also playing an active role, as is Senator Sam Brownback....

A free media empowers a people to claim democracy for themselves

Bill Moyers has entreated journalists to defend the Internet, to resist the corporate-controlled media, to wake up to the fact that there is an ever-increasing amount of falsehood propagated by ever-shrinking newsrooms that as a result of cost-cutting are left with little choice but to parrot the talking points and memos of corporate interests.

Listen here: http://www.freepress.net/node/41314

A transcript of the speech is available here: http://www.democracynow.org/2008/6/9/moyers

Why the Internet was invented: holy spam

Knock yourselves out, folks; here it is: http://www.youvebeenleftbehind.com/

Surely it was for this that God created humanity, in order for humanity to create God's chosen nation, The United States of America, so the USA's blessed Department of Defense could create DARPA, so DARPA could give rise to the Internet, so that souls could be saved by this Internet-based service of Rapture-triggered proselytizing e-mails (verily, unsolicited) to be blasted to those assumed by the sender to have been left behind to face the Tribulation all alone.

(Hat-tip to omgblog.)

Prosyletizing in Iraq endangers US troops

Dogemperor has a diary, "Prosyletization in Iraq: A threat to national security," on dKos about

how our soldiers [in Iraq] are targeted and becoming targets [of armed attacks] due to the actions of dominionists...and how some of the very folks targeting both our nation's fighting folks and Iraqis are essentially dominionist rogue agents in the US military's chaplaincy.

If you can't say something nice...just vote quietly....

Too many observers in the mainstream media are too quick to see profound trends of political moderation among conservative Christians in the US. Many of these observers are the same ones who have also time and again reported the demise of the religious rightwing in America.

Is it a better day for science education, reproductive rights, and civil right for gay Americans when the next generation of conservative evangelicals, fundamentalists, and Pentecostals seem less inclined to join the rank and file of the Christian rightwing--that is, less inclined to put their energies into political activism and electoral politics--and more inclined to join the rank and file of a movement to, say, follow the spirit of St. Matthew's Gospel, chapter 25, and feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the imprisoned, and care for the sick (and even crusade for energy and environmental conservation and ecologically responsible living)?

Yes.

But that doesn't mean that they will vote differently when it comes to the issues that have motivated the religious rightwing for decades.

Frederick Clarkson offers a reality check on Talk To Action, citing Neela Banerjee's article in The New York Times, "Taking Their Faith, but Not Their Politics, to the People."

US soldiers proselytize Iraqis w/ Daily Devotional Bible study book

According to Jason Leopold of The Public Record (PubRecord.org) a Daily Devotional Bible study book of Bible Pathway Ministries is being used by US soldier to "minister to the local residents."

A recent article published on the website of Mission Network News reported that Bible Pathway Ministries, a fundamentalist Christian organization, has provided thousands of a special military edition of its Daily Devotional Bible study book to members of the 101st Airborne Division of Fort Campbell, Kentucky, currently stationed in Iraq, the project "came into being when a chaplain in Iraq (who has since finished his tour) requested some books from Bible Pathway Ministries (BPM).”

“The resulting product is a 6"x9" 496-page illustrated book with embossed cover containing 366 daily devotional commentaries, maps, charts, and additional helpful information," the Mission Network News report says.

Chief Warrant Officer Rene Llanos of the 101st Airborne told Mission Network News, “the soldiers who are patrolling and walking the streets are taking along this copy, and they're using it to minister to the local residents.”

Hat-tip to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation.