Religious Right Watch

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

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

Kamal Saleem Lecture in Midland Prompts Scrutiny « Bartholomew’s Notes on Religion

From the Midland Daily News (Michigan) in September:

Self-described “former terrorist” Kamal Saleem will be speaking in Midland on Sunday and Monday as part of an effort to “wake America” to the threat of radical Islam in the United States, an organizer of the event says.

“This man has a unique perspective on things,” said Midland resident Rebecca Smith, a member of Citizens Concerned for Our Nation, the group sponsoring Saleem’s talks at 2 p.m. Sunday and 7 p.m. Monday at the Midland Center for the Arts.

Saleem is one of several US immigrants of middle eastern background who now make a living from visiting churches and conservative groups with lurid tales of their Muslim pasts – last November, Saleem and his associate Walid Shoebat joined Robert Spencer and Gen “Jerry” Boykin at an anti-Islam “Fort Hood Memorial” event, and Saleem and Boykin also spoke at an event organised by the Oak Initiative, a neo-Pentecostal Christian Right organisation led by Rick Joyner.

However, as with Shoebat, Saleem’s back-story has been challenged....

via barthsnotes.wordpress.com

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.

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

Rights Group Reports 3 Hanged in Iran for Sodomy

Three men were executed in Iran on Sunday for having gay sex, according to Iran Human Rights, an organization that monitors state news there.

The group noted in a blog post today that the state-run Iranian news agency, ISNA, reports that three people who were hanged had been convicted of sodomy and other crimes such as robbery. A Sharia judge is allowed to decide how to kill any man who violates the anti-sodomy article of the law.

via www.advocate.com

A very muscular brand of Christianity | The Guardian

After 2,000 years, the Messiah is getting a makeover.
.....
The macho Jesus movement has been bolstered by books like No More Mr Christian Nice Guy and The Church Impotent – the Feminisation of Christianity. But it's artist Stephen Sawyer, whose paintings of the Son of God as a tattooed biker and boxer have captured the imagination of Christian men searching for a more manly role model.

As Kentucky-based Sawyer, 58, points out: "I scarcely think Jesus could have overturned the tables of the money-lenders and driven them from the temple if he was a wimp. The model I use for my paintings is a surfer guy who's built like a brick shithouse."
.....
According to recent polls, the ratio of women to men worshippers in this country is 65% to 35% – and too much girliness is getting the blame for the gender imbalance.

Hence the rising number of conferences and sermons aimed at men that present a more muscular version of Jesus, along with the continuing success of Christian lad's mag Sorted.

via www.guardian.co.uk

A new "Jesus is a hawt!" aesthetic? Arguably, not so new insofar as in the 1400s and 1500s, Jesus was sometimes depicted, in part as an evocation of Christ as the New Adam, as a prototypical man, "The Man," as it were. 

Ecce Homo,* Man of Sorrows (c. 1525) by Flemish artist Maerten van Heemskerck is one of several extant examples (this particular one is now at Bob Jones University, Greenville, South Carolina) of religious imagery in which Christ's virility and, perhaps, more symbolically his resurrection from death, is indicated, albeit in a literally shrouded manner.

Interestingly, some far earlier depictions of Christ depicted him in a more hermaphroditic manner, which is assumed by many art historians to be an indication of the theology of Christ's salvific actions' sufficiency for--and all his actions relevance to--all of humanity The best example of this is the mosaic above the Arian Baptistery in Ravenna, Italy.

Some of the earliest known depictions of Christ are in the mode of Hermes, who was also symbolized (before Christ was) as a "good shepard," as sage or philosopher in the Greek manner, and as Apollo the Sun God. Examples of all three types of those depictions exist on early Christian funerary art.

*Latin, "Behold, [the] Man."

Norway Massacre: Anders Breivik’s Deadly Attack Fueled by Hatred of Women - The Daily Beast

Conservatives worried about the Islamization of Europe often blame feminism for weakening Western societies and opening them up to a Muslim demographic invasion.
.....
[A]n attack on feminism coupled with purported concern about Muslim fundamentalist misogyny...is repeated again and again in Islamophobic literature. Now it’s reached its apogee in mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik’s 1,500-page manifesto, “2083: A European Declaration of Independence.” Rarely has the connection between sexual anxiety and right-wing nationalism been made quite so clear. Indeed, Breivik’s hatred of women rivals his hatred of Islam, and is intimately linked to it.....

Breivik describes himself as a disaffected product of the Norwegian liberal political elite, furious at the way sexual instability has affected his own life. His father was a diplomat, stationed first in London and then in Paris. His parents divorced when he was a year old, after which his feminist mother married a Norwegian army captain, and his father wed a fellow diplomat who Breivik calls a “moderate cultural Marxist and feminist.” Though he describes his stepfather as somewhat conservative, he nevertheless complains of a “super-liberal, matriarchal upbringing,” which he says has “contributed to feminise me to a certain degree.”

via www.thedailybeast.com

Berlet: Islamophobic Norway Shooting Suspect Using Antisemitic "Cultural Marxism" Model

Anders Behring Breivik, charged in the terror attacks in Oslo, Norway, described himself in online posts as a cultural conservative and a Christian conservative who felt that Protestantism had lost its way and that Christianity should recombine under the banner of a reconstituted and traditionalist Catholic Church. These views are almost identical to the views of the late Paul Weyrich, founder of the Christian Right epicenter in the United States, the Free Congress Foundation. Weyrich and Lind developed an aggressive theory of Cultural Conservatism as a way to save Western Culture. Lind addressed the right-wing group Accuracy in Academia in February 2000. See also: What is Cultural Marxism? by William S. Lind.

via www.talk2action.org

As Gore Vidal demonstrated in his essay, "The Meaning of Timothy McVeigh," it can be as overly-simplistic--reckless even--to dismiss a politically-motivated mass killer merely as "crazed" as it can be to assign blame for a politically-motivated mass killer's actions to an entire movement, even a hate-based one.

Timothy McVeigh did not hear little voices in his head before he set off a car bomb in Oklahoma City, targeting a federal government building (one that, unbeknownst to his callous and not-always-so-clever self, had a child daycare center in it). He was a cold-hearted killer. (He saw the children killed in the blast as collateral damage.) But, he picked the target that he did for a reason. A political one, too.

While not all evidence of Anders Behring Breivik's actions before his attacks in Norway this week are currently known, it seems at this time pretty clear that Breivik also picked his targets for a reason. He killed because he was capable of it. But he targeted who he targeted based on a fear of "cultural Marxism," based on a political concept and goal. He didn't kill just to kill--an entirely random act. It is not true to say, "Oh, if he'd not attacked young members of a progressive-socialist political party organization, he would have killed someone else." Who? The neighbor's bridge club?

To be sure, extremist, eliminationist, rhetoric has at times in history certainly existed on the political left, too, and created rationales for cruel and unloving people to rip others' lives away and toss them upon a pyre of ideology. That doesn't mean Berlet should not draw our attention specifically to the extreme right-wing's decades-old actions--including, especially, those promoting illegal activity--in the US and Europe. 

As Berlet rightly tweeted recently: "To stop terror investigate illegal activity not ideology or 'radicalism' - Right-Wing violence is a concern." And as he elaborated on Facebook, it is important not to blur "the line between right-wing ideology—protected by the First Amendment—and right-wing violence and illegal activity." Clearly, the ultimate problem to be dealt with when it comes to the extremist rightwing is illegality, violence. And the US and Europe remain vulnerable to it.

What Opponents of Theocracy Can Learn from the Nuba

Frederick Clarkson of Talk To Action (Talk2Action.org) says of his Religious Dispatches interview with Anglican Bishop Andudu Adam Elnail: "Sudanese Anglican Bishop Andudu's articulation of the values of inter-faith respect and understanding is a model for how we can better contend with some of our own theocratic demagogues."

Anglican Bishop Andudu Adam Elnail, who is a leader in interfaith relations for his church in Sudan was in the U.S. when he and his fellow Anglican pastors were hunted and their cathedral burned on the northern province of South Kordofan.  He believes if he had not been here, he might now be in a mass grave in Kadugli.  As I learned in the course of our interview, he is an articulate exponent of the values of religious pluralism -- even in the face of a genocidal regime.  He thinks that this may be part of why he was targeted. It seems that Arab Islamic theocrats from Khartoum find religious pluralism of the Nuban people of South Kordofan, threatening.