Religious Right Watch

Scapegoating secularists and liberals...again

Frederick Clarkson in "Blaming the War on Christmas on -- You Know Who," tells it like it is:

Scapegoating of the secular is part of a transcendent politics of the Religious Right, and a variant of that old time McCarthism -- baiting everyone with whom they disagree as advocating a 'godless' agenda. From McCarthite screeds against "godless communism" to contemporary Coulterisms about "godless liberalism" there is a tradition of American conservatism that is as despicable as it is antithetical to the spirit of Christmas and to religious pluralism in our constitutional democracy.

They'll pray away Obama's flirtation with an anti-Christ army

From PFAW's Right Wing Watch blog comes this starkly predicable fear-mongering idiocy(nonetheless likely to convince many) from one corner of religious right in response to a set of policy recommendations to President-elect Obama (D) from the Secular Coalition for America and the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers:

[T]he Secular Coalition for America will eventually get its way. "There is a day coming in the end times when the military will be forced to be atheistic because, in order for the eventual man who is the man of sin -- the Anti-Christ -- as it is describe in the Bible, for him to come to power and to stamp out Christianity around the globe, he's going to need a good strong atheist military," he contends. "That is the first step toward Armageddon, and I'm concerned about that. And I pray that President (elect) Obama is not foolish enough to lead us down that road."

There's no suggestion in the above myth-based warning that Obama might actually be the Anti-christ. Perhaps the reality of Obama's long-ago established political centrism is actually sinking into the apocalypse-obsessed conscience of some religious right leaders. That would be impressive.

(Image: Giant Cobra Commander hairy atheist attacks polluting factories someplace.)

God's Army speaks Russian, too, of course.

From the blog Sean's Russia Blog:

Here’s a new one.  The Moscow Patriarch announced that it plans to create an “Orthodox People’s Militia” under the auspices of the Russian Orthodox Church. The militia, according to Father Vsevolod Chaplin, will be

Small groups which will literally dominate the street life of districts, small cities, and villages.  And here, I think the Orthodox militia can maintain order in their hometowns.  Now there exists military-patriotic groups who are physically fit under many church communes and parishes.  They could show a good amount of civil activity.

The groups, which seem to already have been created, will make their official debut on 1 December.
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[T]he militias are supported by Nashi. Nashi is no stranger to organizing street militias to aid the cops.  Readers will remember that Nashi created the Voluntary Youth Militia before the 2007 parlimentary elections to combat disruptions by “extremist organizations.” Now it seems this experience will be taste tested with an added Orthodox flavor.

More here under "God's Army."

Beating of Jewish soldier turns friends into foes

Chris Rodda has an updating regarding the anti-Semitic beating of the Fort Benning soldier:

At issue here is not just the inadequate response by the Army, but the gross mishandling of Pvt. Handman's beating by Fort Benning Jewish lay leader Neil Block. While Block should have been an advocate for Handman, he was anything but -- actually implying that Handman somehow brought the beating on himself, using phrases like playing the "Jew card," saying that "Any young Jew who uses his minority status to play the system is villainous," and writing in an email to Mikey Weinstein, "You give comfort and sanction to those who would really try to marginalize us and an excuse for those of us who don't or won't measure up and use our ethnicity as their excuse."

Liberals call to cave in to the religious right

Rather alarmingly, there are commentators calling for Senator Obama, once he becomes President, to not reverse President Bush's executive orders that limited reproductive choice. Frederick Clarkson of Talk To Action has called these commentators to account in his piece, "When Liberals Become the Religous Right."

From the article,

"E.J. Dionne...joined other Washington Insiders in arguing that the best way for Obama to find common ground on abortion is to capitulate to the demands of Religious Right anti-abortion activists.... In other words, the president should betray his pro-choice supporters and continue policies that are not based on science but on religious right ideology. He says, Obama should govern as the "cultural moderate he promised to be. He should not lose his chance to make cultural warfare a quaint relic of the past."

As Clarkson points out, the religious right shows absolutely no sign of working to make the culture wars a "quaint relic of the past," and he outlines some recent events as evidence.

"Religious Right Down but Not Out" (IPS)

From the IPS article, "Religious Right Down but Not Out," by Bill Berkowitz:

Although many in the mainstream media will write and talk about the movement's imminent demise, that demise is not likely to occur in the near, or distant, future. More relevant questions are how the religious right will behave during an Obama administration, and what steps the movement will take to revivify its disappointed, dispirited and angry ground troops.
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Tony Perkins, president of the powerful Washington-based lobbying group, the Family Research Council, predicted dark days ahead for the conservative Christian movement.

"We are going to see, I think, unprecedented attacks against our faith through measures like the hate crimes [legislation] to the Employment Non-Discrimination Act," he said.
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Fr. Frank Pavone of Priests for Life [stated,] "Americans have made a grave mistake in electing Barack Obama to the presidency...."

"Christian right regroups after Obama victory" (AP)

From the article:

[F]ew are writing obituaries this week for the Christian right, which has been wrongly considered dead after setbacks like the demise of the Moral Majority and crumbling of the Christian Coalition.

Amen.

Also:

[L]eaders [of the religious right] have no intention of shifting focus from their big three issues: abortion, gay marriage and judges.
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[Y]ounger white evangelicals did not vault en masse to Obama...

Distributive Justice

Frank Cocozzelli in "Catholic Neocons Distort Church Teachings on Economics," writes:

The Religious Right's argument that our present tax system is one based upon "the envy of wealth" or "is a redistributer of wealth" is a fraud (Robert Bork's choice description). Instead it is a value for value transaction-especially for the very wealthy.

In the article, Cocozzelli examines the Roman Catholic Church's teaching on economics, including the notion of Distributive Justice.

New Life Church hanging on

Mike Madden on Salon.com writes about Colorado's Amendment 48 ballot initiative and the conservative evangelical church formerly led its disgraced founding pastor and pro-Bush religio-activist the Rev. Ted Haggard, in "Sundown on Colorado fundamentalists."

Madden's observations include this one:

Should places like Colorado, and Ohio, and North Carolina and Virginia -- all states with more than their fair share of evangelical Christian conservatives -- go blue on Tuesday, it will be a clear sign that the sun may be setting on the political influence of fundamentalist churches like New Life.

Kudos to Madden on qualifying the term "conservatives;" not all evangelicals are broadly conservative in terms of public policy or theology. (He gets his terminology regarding baptism wrong in the article, but the error in no way affects the article's points.)

Madden can also be applauded for the qualifying "may" regarding any waning political influence of politically active fundamentalist churches. The religious right, which includes politically active fundamentalist churches, has been deemed dead or dying by commentators numerous times in the last 30 years. Each time, the declarations proved premature, sometimes ridiculously so.

NO ON PROP 8

The religious right is winning in California. They've dumped $10 million into TV ads that spread the lie that churches will lose their tax-free status if they don't marry same-sex couples. So now the mean-spirited Proposition 8 marriage ban is ahead in the polls. But when undecided voters see pro-ban versus pro-marriage ads side-by-side, most see how mean-spirited Proposition 8 is. Please contribute to the "No On Proposition 8" campaign to help them get their ads on television and on the radio.