Religious Right Watch

JFK vs. Romney & Santorum on Separation of Church & State

 

Frederick Clarkson's "A Tale of Three Speeches About Separation of Church and State" -

Both candidates have staged high-profile speeches to define themselves in relation to John F. Kennedy's famous 1960 campaign speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association - a speech that has served as the model for how politicians balance religion and public life for a generation. But when they stepped up to the podium to define themselves in the bright light of history, each pandered to the religious right.

via www.truth-out.org

(Photo: Gage Skidmore)

Statement by Jeremy Ben-Ami on Newt Gingrich Remarks on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict | J Street

J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami released the following statement in response to Republican Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich’s recent remarks about the Palestinians.

Newt Gingrich’s comments about the Palestinian people and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are ill-informed, irresponsible and frightening.

The former Speaker’s assertion that the Palestinians are an ‘invented’ people shows an appalling lack of understanding of the history of the Middle East in the last century following the break-up of the Ottoman Empire.

Gingrich further misunderstands the present-day politics of the Palestinian people, willfully blurring distinctions among Palestinian factions and demeaning the Palestinian Authority’s commitment to state-building, security cooperation with Israel and pursuit of a two-state solution.

Most dangerous, however, is the threat a Gingrich presidency could pose to the future of Israel and the region. Israel’s long-term security as a Jewish homeland and democratic state depends on the establishment of a Palestinian state living next door. Israel simply cannot retain control of all of the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea and remain both Jewish and democratic.

This is a fact that Israeli Prime Ministers and US Presidents of all political persuasions have recognized for more than two decades. Achieving a two-state solution to the conflict is not simply essential to Israel, it’s also a fundamental American national interest. A truly pro-Israel President taking office in 2013 will do more, not less, to end this conflict in a two-state solution.

Newt Gingrich is recklessly pursuing political gain by throwing gasoline on the powder keg of the Middle East. The consequences will be dire not just for Israel but for the United States as well.

To us, the Speaker’s remarks are not what a pro-Israel politician should be saying. J Street calls on Speaker Gingrich to retract his comments and on other Presidential candidates – and the President himself – to push back strongly in the campaign to come against ideas like these that are far outside the mainstream of American foreign policy.

via jstreet.org

Report tracks explosion of religious lobbying in Washington – CNN

Lobbying and advocacy by religious groups in Washington have exploded in recent decades, increasing fivefold since 1970 to become a nearly $400 million industry, a new Pew report finds.

More than 200 groups are doing faith-related lobbying and advocacy in the nation’s capital, compared to fewer than 40 in 1970, according to the report. Put together, the groups employ at least 1,000 people.

The report, released Monday by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion and Public Life, found that religious groups spend $390 million a year to influence U.S. domestic and foreign policy.

“About one-in-five religious advocacy organizations in Washington have a Roman Catholic perspective (19%) and a similar proportion is evangelical Protestant in outlook (18%), while 12% are Jewish and 8% are mainline Protestant,” according to the report, called "Lobbying for the Faithful: Religious Advocacy Groups in Washington, D.C."

via religion.blogs.cnn.com

U.S. Military Teaches Foreign Students That Liberals Subverted America's Judeo-Christian Heritage | from Talk To Action

There's a program in the military called the International Military Student Officer (IMSO) program. This program is run by the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, and exists in all branches of the military. But, while this program is run by the military, the Secretary of State is responsible for its "continuous supervision and general direction."

The IMSO program includes military training (particularly the training of foreign military personnel on equipment acquired by their countries from the United States) as well as instruction in such things as foreign policy, civil affairs, and security. Another of its core missions is to "Promote better understanding of the United States, its people, political system, institutions, democratic values, and way of life." To fulfill this mission, the program also includes intensive instruction on American government and culture....

Foreign military students are taught that America is a Christian nation, and that liberals, starting with the liberal justices appointed by F.D.R., have subverted America's so-called judeo-christian heritage, and how the "courts struggle with ... accommodation of atheists demanding religion be kept out of public life."

These are the last three paragraphs of a lengthy essay on American religion in the "American Family Life and Community Life: Religious Institutions" section of the IMSO training:

via www.talk2action.org

Archbishop Timothy Dolan's gay bashing letter to President Obama | Manhattan Diary | IrishCentral

So what to make of Archbishop Timothy Dolan? This week he sent a letter to President Obama  outlining his growing alarm about actions the Obama administration has taken that he believes 'escalate the threat to marriage and imperil the religious freedom of those who promote and defend marriage.'

What imperiling threats is he talking about?

via www.irishcentral.com

Unfortunately, in our times in which the religious rightwing and Christian nationalists exert growing influence on America, it cannot go without saying that though Timothy Dolan may write any opinion, including these fear-mongering and crypto-demonizing ones, even declare them from his ecclesiastical throne, neither he nor the Bishop of Rome he answers to has jurisdiction in the free republic of the United States of America, founded without regard to any church or religious body, any creed, or any sect of any kind. His opinion is under law as unbinding and as devoid of special status as is this website's, a rabbi's, Pat Robertson's, or a Scientology representative's.

Unfortunately, not all Americans understand that it is important for us all to work to keep such a separation of church and state inviolable.

Under the rubrics of the overarchingly important commandes of Jesus Christ to His followers--be it the oft-called Summary of the Law given by Jesus in Matthew 22:34-40:

And He said..., "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it: 'You shall love you neighbor as yourself.'"

or his challenge in Matthew 25:41-43 to His followers regarding Christian priorities of eternal consequence:

"Depart from Me, you cursed...for I was hungry and you gave Me no food; I was thirsty and you gave Me no drink; I was a stranger and you did not take Me in, naked and you did not clothe Me, sick and in prison and you did not visit Me."

--and given the state of today's economy and the povery and insecurity that abounds, one might reasonably assume that the Archbishop might be pouring all of this mental and physical energies into matters other than policy-related missives to the President. And yet, throughout history too many church leaders have been too keen to hope to guide someone else's statecraft (or even grab the statecraft role for themselves) and enter into worldly disputes.

Bishop, love your God and your neighbor as yourself; feed the hungry and give them water, reach out to the stranger--do not instead show him or her the back of your hand or the bottom of your boot--care and help acheive dignity for those with basic material needs, nurse the sick, and be present for the needy and the lonely. I would think that that would be enough to keep you plenty busy for a lifetime.

The Multi-Pronged Effort To Mobilize Millions Of Religious Right Voters | Right Wing Watch

The Champion The Vote effort is of project of a group called United in Purpose, which is an organization that seeks to "mobilize 40 million out of the estimated 60 million evangelicals in the United States to vote" over the next decade.

United In Purpose was the group responsible for the Rediscover God In America conference in Iowa earlier this year which was organized by David Lane ... who also so happened to also serve as the National Finance Chairman for Perry's prayer rally.

Now United In Purpose/Champion The Vote is organizing an event called "One Nation Under God" to be held in November

via www.rightwingwatch.org

Christian Nationalism is, among other things, historical revisionism of a type that might be called "Bible Nation" or "Jesus Was a Founding Father" as a movement. It's a systematic attempt for political purposes to use or invent information about the United States' founding era and the republic's founders and other thinkers of that era in order to convince American voters that the United States was founded as an expressly Protestant Christian nation, that there is no Separation of Church and State, that America as a political experiment was God-favored at its founding and is always supposed to favor Christianity (specifically the Protestant evangelical or fundamentalist kind). It also warns that America suffers undesirable consequences (e.g., high crime somewhere, harmful meteorological events, economic problems, etc.) when Americans in attitude or behavior, or American law in particular, run in a direction contrary to the thought and ideas of conservative evangelicalism or fundamentalism. 

In other words, Christian Nationalism ultimately rejects history by refusing to notice the simple fact that in all points and times in history, undesireable things have happened in all societies--pre- and post-Christian--for myriad reasons, and insisting that historical reality applies differently to the United States because of supernatural reasons; and it either refuses to recognize that that perspective is irrational or insists that it is warranted and laudable as an act of faith.

Exposing religious fundamentalism in the US

the dominionist connection to the Tea Party goes far beyond just the two candidacies of Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry. Ron Paul, whose extreme anti-government positions helped to fuel the emergence of the Tea Party, has much deeper dominionist connections than either of the two new darlings. During his first term in Congress, one of his aides was Gary North, Rushdoony’s son-in-law, and a leading Reconstructionist in his own right, who has written extensively on so-called “Biblical Capitalism”, an ideology profoundly at odds with traditional Biblical-based teachings on economic justice.

While libertarians once traced their descent from John Locke, and more recently from the deeply anti-Christian Ayn Rand, Reconstructionism represents an increasingly important foundation for their views. A recently released sociology study,  “Cultures of the Tea Party”, found that Tea Party supporters are characterised by four dispositions: “authoritarianism, ontological insecurity, libertarianism, and nativism”. Since traditional libertarianism was purportedly the opposite of authoritarianism, this highlights how radically libertarianism has changed – a conclusion that’s echoed by the 2011 Pew Reaserch Political Typology Poll, which found that religious and economic conservatives had completely merged into one single group since 2006 and all previous polling.

via churchandstate.org.uk

Kenneth C. Davis: Why U.S. is not a Christian nation

The supreme law of the land, written in the summer of 1787, includes no references to religion -- including in the presidential oath of office -- until the conclusion of Article VI, after all that dull stuff about debts and treaties: "No religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States." (There is a pro forma "Year of the Lord" reference in the date at the Constitution's conclusion.)

Original intent? "No religious Test" seems pretty clear cut.

The primacy of a secular state was solidified when the First Amendment was included in the Bill of Rights. According to Purdue history professor Frank Lambert, that "introduced the radical notion that the state had no voice concerning matters of conscience."

Beyond that, the first House of Representatives, while debating the First Amendment, specifically rejected a Senate proposal calling for the establishment of Christianity as an official religion. As Lambert concludes, "There would be no Church of the United States. Nor would America represent itself as a Christian Republic."

The actions of the first presidents, founders of the first rank, confirmed this "original intent:"

-- In 1790, President George Washington wrote to America's first synagogue, in Rhode Island, that "all possess alike liberty of conscience" and that "toleration" was an "inherent national gift," not the government's to dole out or take away

-- In 1797, with President John Adams in office, the Senate unanimously approved one of America's earliest foreign treaties, which emphatically stated (Article 11): "As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion, -- as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen (Muslims) ..."

-- In 1802, Jefferson added his famous "wall of separation," implicit in the Constitution until he so described it (and cited in several Supreme Court decisions since).

via www.cnn.com

Historical Ignorance Warps American Politics: Jonathan Alter

Bachmann, like Palin, is a natural dog whistler. In politics, a dog whistle refers to a coded message meant to appeal to certain constituencies while flying right past the general public. A classic recent example was George W. Bush’s saying in a 2004 debate that he wouldn’t appoint anyone to the Supreme Court who supported the Dred Scott decision. This peculiar reference to an 1857 slavery case was meant to signal right-to-lifers that opposition to Roe v. Wade was a litmus test for Bush.

Bachmann is dog whistling when she pledges to “take back America.” The question this raises is: from whom? From a “socialist” president?

Let’s give Bachmann the benefit of the doubt and stipulate that no racial message was intended. A subliminal racial message, among others, will still likely be received. “Take back America” is also a dog whistle for “Take America back” -- back to a better time before a man like Barack Obama was president. Before, say, the number of Hispanics taking the national history assessment test in eighth-grade more than doubled in a mere five years.

via www.bloomberg.com

And about Bachmann's reading of Gore Vidal's historical novels:

Bachmann's simplistic view of Vidal's novels (she's cited both 1876 and Burr, only one of which has to do with our Founding Fathers) reveals her mindset--folks are big on the not-new but once-academic term "worldview" these days. It is a mindset that that also allows her to be comforted in her pre-scientific conservative evangelical religiosity. She hadn't the sense or ability to read an imaginary first-person narrative as being subjective, even purposefully untrustworthy through the novelist's craft. (An elderly Aaron Burr provides that perspective in Burr, Charles Schuyler in 1876, and both characters are clearly flawed, each a mix informed insight but also bias.) It's Literature 101 kind of stuff, and she didn't even get it.

Epistemological fundamentalism doesn't mesh as well with subtly, diversity, or compromise as it does with literalism, pigeon-holing, and inflexibility. It's mindset as the electrician's comparator--a reality with only two modes on offer and completely committed to either one or the other. Such black-and-white thinking is not suited to the job of head of state of our republic in a complex global era.

Selling the Idea of a Christian Nation: David Barton’s Alternate Intellectual Universe

I don’t question the necessity of pointing out Barton’s history of outright falsehoods, explaining the fallacies of his presentism (as in using a 1765 sermon or a 1792 congressional vote to show that the original intent of the founders was to oppose bailout and stimulus plans), and introducing to non-experts the abundant evidence calling his historical worldview of the Christian Founders into question. Yet while these kinds of refutations are necessary, they are not sufficient. That’s because Barton’s project is not fundamentally an historical one.

That’s why historians’ takedown of his ahistorical approach ultimately won’t matter that much. Nor will historians’ explanations of his presentism, and his obvious and unapologetic ideological agenda (albeit considerably muted for his appearance on The Daily Show). While all the historians’ refutations are good and necessary, ultimately they won’t matter for the audience which exists in his alternate intellectual universe, one described in much greater detail in my colleague Randall Stephens’ forthcoming book The Anointed: Evangelical Experts in a Secular Age.

via www.religiondispatches.org