Religious Right Watch

The Dominionist Movement That's Undermining Democracy

Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin have all flirted with Christian Right Dominionism, but there's lots of misinformation about just what that means.

Dominionists want to impose a form of Christian nationalism on the United States, a concept that was dismissed as eroding freedom and democracy by the founders of our country. Dominionism has become a major influence on the right-wing populist Tea Parties as Christian Right activists have flooded into the movement at the grassroots.

via www.talk2action.org

Chip Berlet has an informative article on Talk2Action.com about Dominionism. (It's also on Daily Kos.) Arguably, Dominionism is an academic term insofar as not all Dominionists and perhaps the vast majority of those the Christian Right who have been influenced by Dominionism do not use the term themselves. As summarized on the Wikipedia entry for Dominionism:

In 2005, Clarkson enumerated the following characteristics shared by all forms of dominionism:^[21]

1. Dominionists celebrate Christian nationalism, in that they believe that the United States once was, and should once again be, a Christian nation. In this way, they deny the Enlightenment roots of American democracy.
2. Dominionists promote religious supremacy, insofar as they generally do not respect the equality of other religions, or even other versions of Christianity.
3. Dominionists endorse theocratic visions, insofar as they believe that the Ten Commandments, or "biblical law," should be the foundation of American law, and that the U.S. Constitution should be seen as a vehicle for implementing Biblical principles.^[21]

Dominionism:

The term soft dominionism is applied by critics to various Christian Right social and political movements that claim that "America is a Christian nation". Soft Dominionists also disclaim the existence of the "wall of separation" between church and state. In her book Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, Michelle Goldberg called this tendency "Christian Nationalism".^[22] [Chip] Berlet and [Frederick] Clarkson have agreed that "[s]oft Dominionists are Christian nationalists."^[64]

‘Coming Out’ - Gay Teenagers, in Their Own Words - NYTimes.com

The New York Times embarked on the project “Coming Out” as an effort to better understand this generation’s realities and expectations, and to give teenagers their own voice in the conversation.

The Times spoke with or e-mailed nearly 100 gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender teenagers from all of parts of the country — from rural areas to urban centers, from supportive environments to hostile ones.....
.....
In the face of competing messages, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youths just want to be teenagers. While they envision a world where they can get married and have doors open to them, they do not want to be defined by their sexuality, regardless of how they are received by their community. It is just one part of their identity.

As Kailey Jeanne Cox, 15, said in her story: “I don’t want to have myself being seen by people as ‘Oh, she’s — she’s gay.’ I want them to see me as ‘Wow, she loves God, who cares what kind of people she likes? She is a Christian, she leads by example and she’s a wonderful person.’ That’s what I want people to think when they see me.”

via www.nytimes.com

Fact Checking Barton Part V: Treaty of Tripoli

When David Barton and Jon Stewart begin discussing the Treaty of Tripoli (11:30 into the interview), Barton maintains that it simply demonstrates that the US isn’t an anti-Muslim nation like Tripoli’s European enemies. But Article 11 of the treaty clearly states that the US isn’t an anti-Muslim nation because “the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.”

Here is the full text of 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 Mussulmen,—and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

via www.rightwingwatch.org

Right Wing Watch (a project of People For the American Way (PFAW)) has been doing a great job exposing the intellectual dishonesty of Christianist propogandist and historical revisionist David Barton through their series of fact-checking posts relating to Barton's appearance on Jon Stewart's The Daily Show.

Fact Checking Barton Part I: Texas Textbooks

Fact Checking Barton Part II: Constitution Explicitly References Religion

Fact Checking Barton Part III: First Amendment

Fact Checking Barton Part IV: "I Never Had To Retract A Single Thing"

Also, you can read online or download Religious Right Watch's report, "Barton's Bunk."

Religious Right Exceptionalism

the influence of Christian conservatives remains substantial and that they are rallying around the idea of "American exceptionalism" to press their political agenda and have lots of Republican presidential hopefuls to choose from.

via www.rightwingwatch.org

Of all possible sources, the mainstream media often produces the most belated of coverage on the Religious Right. When Newsweek writes about American exceptionalism, you can bet that others have been writing about it for months if not years earlier and probably more carefully.

Consider the coverage of the term "American exceptionalism." It's been identified with the Religious Right recently in the mainstream media. But, the media doesn't always explore well the fact that the Religious Right's version of American exceptionalism is not necessarily one informed about what the term "American exceptionalism" itself has meant throughout the nation's history. It's not a brand new concept. But, it's meaning changes--it's slipperly. This is an important part of the untold story, because it reveals how the Religious Right is claiming the notion of American exceptionalism as its own by stressing the theological characteristics of American exceptionalism, which does not necessarily mean excluding the non-theological characteristics, of course.

The original concept of American exceptionalism as understood in the early 1800's didn't imply national superiority in all things. It implied so many other interesting concepts--especially interesting when one considers that many European liberals embraced the reality of American exceptionalism, too--that one would think that would be sufficient enough to offer discussions, inspirations, or even mottos aplenty; but, no--not for today's Religious Right.

For the Religious Right, American exceptionalism is more likely to imply or even definitionally embrace the notion of America as somehow divinely best--not just a new thing in history but something with a divine role in history--that America serves in the political history of the world a role more or less like the role of Jesus in the Religious Right's theological understanding of the world: transformatively perfect, the best, the most powerful, the most humble, and essentially--that is almost in the Platonic sense of essence--aspecial nation with a special role and made real through God's will, (i.e., made actual, i.e., brought into "the course of human events"); and, therefore, to the extent that anything seemingly imperfect occurs within the American narrative, that something is also actually special, because it's happening within a nation specially blessed. It's as if America is under a unique heavenly dispensation. In less academic parlance: the US's shit either doesn't really stink or stinks with a Purpose, in the same way that for a Christian even bad things have a special divine purpose.

What is more, the Religious Right is keen to believe this wholeheartedly and see the understanding itself as special. American exceptionalism means special significance exists relative to anything American--including current events and certainly history--even if it's special significance best understood by or perhaps visible only to those who have the eyes to see it....even if it's superiority veiled in ostensible national imperfection. In other words, the Religious Right's understanding of American excetionalism is really about the Religious Right's own sense of exceptionalism--one, it might be added, that--like many theological assertions--is not falsifiable. They've got America, themselves, you, me, the purpose of history, and the rest of the world completely figured out; or, perhaps, for the proportionally humble among them, at least exceptionally figured out: figued out in a way that's figured out enough--more enougher than the way you've got it figured, anyway! There is no not-knowing--at least no not-knowing that's significant. There's only knowing about important truths in ways or to extents sufficiently superior to everyone else.

The culturally left-behind hit back. The theology behind Republican paranoia

The whole Republican mid term election victory was predicated on cashing in on years of Evangelical effort to sell the Right an image of being righteous outsiders.

A host of evangelical/fundamentalist Cassandras tour college campuses reinforcing their followers' perennial chip-on-the-shoulder attitude by telling fearful evangelical/fundamentalist students to hold fast against the secular onslaught. They tell their student listeners (and those students' even more worried parents) to not let "those people" -- professors, members of the Democratic Party, moderates, progressives, and such ordinary American men and women as Jews, gays, and members of the educated "elite" -- strip them of their faith. Hundreds of books by many evangelical/fundamentalist authors could be consolidated into one called How to Get Through College with Your Fundamentalist Faith Intact So You Won't Wind Up Becoming One of Them.

What just happened in this election is that the culturally left-behind hit back.

They won but will still claim they are victims of the "liberal elite." Actually they are victims of bad theology that has tutored them for generations to accept myth for fact.

via www.huffingtonpost.com

An important, autobiographical retrospective from Frank Schaeffer.

Constitution Party Candidate For CO Governor Tom Tancredo Tied With Democratic Rival

Bruce Wilson reports:

In a dead heat with Democratic Party candidate Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, Tom Tancredo is the official candidate of the Constitution Party whose platform claims "The U.S. Constitution established a Republic rooted in Biblical law" and declares, "The goal of the Constitution Party is to restore American jurisprudence to its Biblical foundations."

The Constitution Party was founded in the early 1990s by followers of the late theologian R.J. Rushdoony, who advocated the imposition of Christian government based on his own interpretation of "Biblical law." A virulently racist Holocaust-denier, Rushdoony's vision of "Biblical law" included "Biblical" slavery and the stoning, beheading, or burning at the stake, as forms of capital punishment, of adulterers, homosexuals, and women who have intercourse before marriage. Rushdoony also believed that the Sun rotates around the Earth.

Though mainstream media coverage of this aspect has been sparse and shallow, a few alternative press writers such as Alternet's Adele Stan have covered Tom Tancredo's candidacy in the context of the Constitution Party's roots in Rushdoony's movement, called Christian Reconstructionism.

via www.talk2action.org

The top 12 lies of Tony Perkins and the Family Research Council

Recently, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council published a piece in The Washington Post spouting his usual brand of anti-gay distortions.

And he was lambasted from all corners. From Box Turtle Bulletin, to Pam's House Blend, to Media Matters. Even those responding to his post pointed out Perkins's deceptive tactics of half-citing studies and relying on bad research.

via www.pamshouseblend.com

A Leading Progressive's Strategic Thoughts About The Right

Longtime social justice activist Urvashi Vaid has an exceptionally thoughtful essay at her blog titled "Ideas Needed to Defeat the Right."  One needn't agree with every point in order to find it an excellent starting off point for people seeking to approach the subject of what to do.  It is long, nuanced and well worth reading and discussing among those who take the long view.

via www.talk2action.org

Tea Party theocracy and other observations about the religious right

An interview by Bill Harnsberger, a Daily Kos front page diarist, with Bruce Wilson of Talk To Action, a "platform for reporting on...the religious right." Some highlights:

The American left, the secular mainstream, and many secular Republicans...have missed, and still do to this day, the disproportionate influence conservative evangelicals exert in American politics and culture.... And in specific, immediate terms they've missed the political impact of Christian Zionism [and] misinterpreted the Tea Party movement.

On Christian Zionism:

[T]here's a Christian Zionist/Likud political symbiosis going back to the late 1970's, and John Hagee and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are close allies.
.....
[Pastor John] Hagee is selling Jewish-Americans the proposition that his Christians United For Israel lobby offers benign, non-Book of Revelations (sic) based support for Israel (that's demonstrably a lie). But Hagee's people are...gradually peeling off Jewish support for the Democratic Party. It's bizarre, because Hagee also demonizes Jews to a remarkably vicious degree. [Link.] In his globally distributed books and sermons Hagee claims Hitler was Jewish and promotes the conspiracy theory that European-based Rothschild bankers control the world economy and are scheming to bankrupt America.

On Sarah Palin:

[N]either mainstream media or even progressive media have paid much attention to where she came from, but there's video from a summer 2008 religious conference near Seattle during which Palin's long-time personal prayer leader, Mary Glazier, tells evangelical leadersthat Sarah Palin joined her prayer group in '89, around the time Palin decided to go into politics. Glazier then advocatescleansing "the land" of unbelievers. Palin's clearly in the "prayer warrior" movement - she hangs around with the leaders, uses the lingo, and so on.

On the religious right's quickly changing nature:

The charismatic wing of the movement is where the real action is....  Lou Engle...has become the de-facto prayer leader for the Republican Party. It's targeting entire states for political takeover (Hawaii, for example) and is infiltrating traditionally liberal cities - such as Newark, Orlando, and Baltimore - working with police departments in those cities to "pray down" crime. But what's really going on is the creation of neighborhood watch groups whose church leaders hold a virulently anti-gay, eliminationist ideology. And they're evangelizing the cops, which is what evangelicals do.... "Pray For Newark" [is] organized by city ward. And the leadership is virulently anti-gay and opposes abortion in all cases (including rape & incest), is contemptuous of church-state separation, and is radically pro-big business. In 2010 will that volunteer army work the Newark streets for Democratic candidates? I doubt it.

On the religious right's influence in the US military:

Then there are the chilling inroads the movement has made in evangelizing the US military. Spend some time browsing the extensive media archives from the Military Religious Freedom Foundation...and I guarantee you'll come away with a different sense of conservative evangelical influence in US government.

On the Tea Party movement and the religious right:

I see the Tea Party movement in part as an evangelizing tool that pulls secular libertarians towards the Christian right. Ron Paul was staging 'Tea Party' events across America back in 2007, and Paul's no libertarian. He's good friends with Constitution Party Founder Howard Phillips, a leading Christian Reconstructionist who served briefly as a staffer for Paul's congressional office.

On the growing influence of the religious right within the Republican Party:

[T]he Christian right by 2000 had a strong to moderate level of influence in 44 out of 51 [state Republican parties - link -].... Barry Goldwater was warning...about the Christian right's takeover of the Republican Party trend for over two decades prior to his death, and most media voices are still in denial.

What's wild is that the new Christian right, the charismatic wing, videotapes almost everything it does. The movement chronicles itself, and much of that video is free on the Net. But almost nobody outside of the movement watches it. I can show you a video documentary, from a Ugandan evangelist who backs Uganda's so-called "kill the gays bill," showing his people organizing a partnership between Baltimore churches and the Baltimore police department.... The vision is to purge the Earth of all competing beliefs. It's an expression of Christian supremacy that could hardly be more bigoted or more totalitarian.

Some of the few topics related to the religious right that Bruce does not touch on include its efforts to influence America's courts, its attacks on science education, and its efforts to promote a revisionist history of America's founding. These topics can be explored in part through the sites listed under this site's "Lamp Lighters" blogroll.

(Photo: Brian McClister/iStock)

On Olbermann, Chris Rodda "Debunks Glenn Beck's History Lies"

[On July 8,] Keith Olbermann's Countdown featured an interview with historian Chris Rodda, who debunked a number of American history lies featured in the first installment of Glenn Beck's new "Glenn Beck University" online course curriculum (see video.) As announced with a flourish, "[Glenn] Beck University is a unique academic experience bringing together experts in the fields of religion, American history and economics." Ah yes, 'experts.'

via www.dailykos.com

David Barton's twisting of facts and grotesque manipulation of his audience's ignorance about history are patently immoral. He is intellectually dishonest. Barton's goal is political and his tactics propogandistic; he gives his Christian Nationalism lectures even on US military basis.

Bruce Wilson, the author of the above-cited DailyKos.com diary, rhetorically asks how the falsification of American history by the Religious Right and Fox News play out in the real world. He continues:

Well, to take one notorious example, recently a panel of "experts" appointed by the Texas Board of Education recommended a number of changes to Texas public school social studies curriculum. Changes included renaming the slave trade the "Atlantic Triangular Trade," minimizing the historical role of Thomas Jefferson, who advocated for separation of church and state, and emphasizing the view that the Founding Fathers were motivated by Christian principles. David Barton was on the panel.