religious right watch

Common Ground: Winning the Battle, Losing the Culture War

Chip Berlet writes in "Common Ground: Winning the Battle, Losing the Culture War,"

Obama’s Notre Dame speech seemed to reinforce the “common ground” school, which adopts Christian Right frames in the name of compromise. But a careful look at the numbers reveals that Democrats have more to gain by articulating a strong moral message—whatever the content—than by watering down the message in an effort to appease conservative Christians.
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I first became alarmed about Democratic Party backpedaling on these issues when Howard Dean, chair of the Democratic Party, came to the 2007 Daily Kos conference in Chicago. Before a crowd composed primarily of progressive or left-leaning Democrats, Dean spoke of reaching out to evangelicals mentioning just one name: the Rev. Rick Warren. While Warren may, as he appears, be a nice guy, he is certainly not a progressive. He is at best a moderate (with some baggage about gay people, especially in Africa). A buzz went around the conference typified by blogger Pam Spaulding who wrote: “I respectfully refuse to consider women’s rights and gay rights as a commodity to be traded for votes from evangelicals.”

Jindal conjures up commission to likely attack sexual health education, gay Americans, and reproductive rights.

Hat-tip to Dispatches From the Culture Wars:

[Gov. Bobby] Jindal announced the formation of the Louisiana Commission on Marriage and Family, billed as "an entity within the executive department that serves to propose programs, policies, incentives and curriculum regarding marriage and family...."

I'm sure you'll be surprised to hear that the group is made up of a virtual who's who of the religious right in Louisiana. 

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal (photo) is not unlike Southerner Mike Huckabee and she who is from that-state-so-north-it's-almost-the-South, Sarah Palin. They're Republican governors, all three. They're relatively or absolutely young, all three. They're tagged as rising stars within the GOP, all three. And they're magical, all three! The way each governor's worldview blends conservativism and crypto- (or not-so-crypto-) supernaturalism in the service of power evokes the Persian magi, medieval Vatican court astrologers, or Confucian diviners. (Huckabee loves the magic that is Creationism; Palin, the magic that is holy laughter and magical healing and witch-hunting, and Jindal, the magic that is demon possession.) 

However, as Huckabee (Christian fundamentalist) and Palin (The New Apostolic Reformation/Third Wave) flaunt a folksy, affable exterior, yet drop hits of anger simmering beneath--a riptide pulling along lovers of the politics of resentment--Jindal (who is Roman Catholic) offers an ostensibly more attractive and polished style, all the more seductive, especially probably to middle-class voters, thanks to his medical training and Ivy League credentials. (Of course, Sen. Bill Frist, Dr. Video-diagnosis From Afar in the Service of Ideology, has shown us the potentially low value of medical professionals in politics, and Ivy League degrees are a dime a dozen among the long list of villains in American political history--Pat Robertson, just to name one.)

A 2012 GOP presidential ticket combining any two of the three above-mentioned conjurers could almost certainly never occur. It might be a double-dose of craziness that "blue" American and a sizeable portion of even "red" America would find to be simply too much to stomach. However, any one of them balanced on a presidential ticket with a vigorous (but not frenetic) and probably non-Southern--or at least probably not from a state that went to Obama in the 2008 election--white male public offical. Who knows? Jindal has intimated that he'll not run for president in 2012 (which means he's considering doing so).

It's anybody's guess. The GOP may find their Obama (the "GOPama" candidate?), someone as of now still unelected or at least mostly unknown, between now and the 2011/2012 primaries and caucuses season. I don't at this time think that the Gopama is Jindal. But who knows? If he's not keen to be in the running for 2012 or 2016, he certainly has less need to curry favor with the religious right as he's doing with his worrisome Commission on Marriage and Family.

Rick Warren wants it bad - I'm a NICE-guy right wing religious leader! And Obama's ready to give it?

President-elect Barack Obama has tapped Rick Warren to say the prayer at the presidential inauguration on January 20, 2009. Warren is a leader of the religious right. He is: anti-gay, anti-science (believes in "Creationism"), opposed to reproductive freedoms, a biblical literalist, someone desiring political power and influence.

At the same time, Warren has been assiduously cultivating a public image as the warm-hearted nice guy ready to be "America's Pastor." As Frederick Clarkson reminded us, Warren's PR campaign is aided by center-left organizations such as Faith In Public Life (FIPL).

And now Obama's played into Warren's hand and at the same time has ably reminded his quick-to-forgive supporters of his easy decision last year to let Donnie McClurkin spout his anti-gay superstitions on stage at an Obama 2008 fund-raiser.

More skeptical supporters of Obama are wondering why it seems that when you give Barack Obama a stage, he likes to put divisive homophobes on it.

Michelle Goldberg puts the Warren decision in proper context:

[Rick] Warren compares abortion to the Holocaust, gay marriage to pedophilia and incest, and social gospel Christians as “closet Marxists.” He doesn’t believe in evolution. He has won plaudits from some journalists for his honesty in forthrightly admitting that he believes that Jews are going to hell, but even if one sees such candor is a virtue, the underlying conviction hardly qualifies him as an ecumenical peacemaker. Speaking to the Wall Street Journal earlier this year, Warren himself described his differences with Dobson as “mainly a matter of tone,” and was unable to come up with a theological issue on which they disagree.

If Democrats collaborate in positioning Warren as the centrist alternative to the religious right, they consign vast numbers of people, including many of the party’s most dedicated supporters, to the fringe. “It does strengthen Warren as kind of a new Billy Graham figure,” says the Reverend Dan Schultz, a United Church of Christ pastor and the founder of the progressive religious blog Street Prophets. That has especial relevance for Warren’s role in Africa, where a very conservative kind of evangelical Christianity is exploding, bringing with it virulently anti-gay politics. “What I have heard is that it will help Warren overseas,” Schultz says of Warren’s role in the inauguration. “He’s big into work in Africa. This will give him a lot of clout over there. Part of the reason this is kind of insulting for me is that Warren has supported some pretty awful people in Africa, including people who think homosexuals should be jailed.”

Take action. Here's how to let President-elect Obama and others know that you oppose Warren delivering the prayer at the inauguration.

Frank Schaeffer on the Christian Right w/in the GOP

From the article:

It is ironic that McCain hammered the final nail into the coffin of the Republican Party by trying to reach out to "my" religious conservatives once again. He did this through nominating Sarah Palin. The only reason he chose her was because Palin is ideologically pure on the culture war "issues" that have motivated the far right: abortion, prayer in schools, gay marriage, a concept of a "Christian America," the usual "End Times" Christian Zionism, etc., etc. And the only reason McCain thought this would work is because in the early 1970s through the mid 80s my late father (Francis Schaeffer) and I, along with many others from Dobson to C. Everett Koop to Falwell et al. preached a new religion: national salvation through religiously correct politics. For a while it "worked." Just ask Rove.

"Nail into the coffin" is far too strong. Political parties often rebound, reform, change. The GOP may or may not do so with an organized religious rightwing in its ranks. Only time will tell.

anti-Muslim propaganda film Obsession possibly shown to Indian students

From Chris Rodda, author of Liars For Jesus: The Religious Right's Alternate Version of American History Vol. 1 and Talk2Action.org contributor:

A teacher in Mifflin County, PA has reportedly shown the fear mongering, anti-Muslim propaganda film Obsession, recently distributed to 28 million swing state voters, to her class at Indian Valley High School, warning the students that if Barack Obama is elected, some of what they saw in the film would occur here in the U.S.

More here.

Sarah Palin's VP gaffe

Chris Rhodda offers an interesting and informed perspective on Gov. Sarah Palin's "role of the Vice-President" gaffe.

"Why Is Palin Such a Good Liar For God?"

Frank Schaeffer, author of Crazy For God -- How I Grew Up As One Of The Elect, Helped Found The Religious Right, And Lived To Take All (Or Almost All) Of It Back wonders "Why Is Palin Such a Good Liar For God?" He suspects that "Palin doesn't actually believe the rehearsed smears she's telling about Obama, but she does believe that she is morally right in lying."

Palin's Party: The Christian Right's New Star

From Michelle Goldberg:

Sarah Palin's nomination is an unparalleled triumph for the movement I wrote about in Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism. While George W. Bush provided the Christian right more power, access and political sympathy than it had ever enjoyed before, he was not, like Palin, a pure product of the movement. As I found when I went to Wasilla earlier this month, Palin owes her career to the grassroots stealth strategy that the religious right adopted in the 1990s.

You can read Goldberg's reporting on Palin in The Nation and The Guardian.

"Sarah Palin, faith-based mayor"

Sarah Posner's article on Salon.com takes a look at Palin and the International Association of Character Cities (IACC) and the Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP).

A disaster

From David Talbot's article on Salon.com, "The Pastor Who Clashed With Palin."

In 1996, evangelical churches mounted a vigorous campaign to take over the local hospital's community board and ban abortion from the valley. When they succeeded, [Howard] Bess and Dr. Susan Lemagie, a Palmer OB-GYN, fought back, filing suit on behalf of a local woman who had been forced to travel to Seattle for an abortion. The case was finally decided by the Alaska Supreme Court, which ruled that the hospital must provide valley women with the abortion option.

At one point during the hospital battle, passions ran so hot that local antiabortion activists organized a boisterous picket line outside Dr. Lemagie's office, in an unassuming professional building across from Palmer's Little League field. According to Bess and another community activist, among the protesters trying to disrupt the physician's practice that day was Sarah Palin.

Another valley activist, Philip Munger, says that Palin also helped push the evangelical drive to take over the Mat-Su Borough school board. "She wanted to get people who believed in creationism on the board," said Munger, a music composer and teacher. "I bumped into her once after my band played at a graduation ceremony at the Assembly of God. I said, 'Sarah, how can you believe in creationism -- your father's a science teacher.' And she said, 'We don't have to agree on everything.'

"I pushed her on the earth's creation, whether it was really less than 7,000 years old and whether dinosaurs and humans walked the earth at the same time. And she said yes, she'd seen images somewhere of dinosaur fossils with human footprints in them."

Munger also asked Palin if she truly believed in the End of Days, the doomsday scenario when the Messiah will return. "She looked in my eyes and said, 'Yes, I think I will see Jesus come back to earth in my lifetime.'"