nat'l assoc of EVANGLICLs

===

:{new 7/14 node for more out there xian:

probably neglected

}:

see also C Street

:{

}:

==

news:  http://www.rightwingwatch.org/topics/religious-right/

:{

}:

===

cf billy jr

:{

}:

proto-fox

he bitter political and religious divides we see today in America have roots that go back many decades. The televangelist Pat Robertson was one of the first to determine how battlelines were drawn. Robertson, now a leading and unflinching Trump supporter, rose to national prominence in the 1960s with hisChristian Broadcasting Network and his hit show The 700 Club.

Terry Heaton, who worked alongside Robertson at The 700 Club and became its executive producer, provides the inside story of how evangelical Christianity forced itself on a needy Republican Party in order to gain political influence on a global level. Using deliberate and strategic social engineering, The 700 Club moved Christians steadily into the Republican Party–and moved the party itself to the right.

With a gospel message that appealed to self-interest, The 700 Club violated numerous laws in an attempt to create a Shadow Government of Evangelicals, all in the name of doing God’s work on earth. The results of this longterm campaign were fully on display in the 2016 electoral season.

222 pages • Paperback ISBN 978-1-682190-83-8 • E-book 978-1-682190-84-5

http://www.orbooks.com/catalog/gospel-self-terry-heaton/

http://www.risingupwithsonali.com/terry-heaton-discusses-his-book-the-gospel-of-self-how-jesus-joined-the-gop-extended-interview/

TERRY HEATON: Televangelist Pat Robertson is not happy that Donald Trump is facing mass criticism for his unprofessional, dishonest, and unconstitutional policies. Robertson said recently, “the Lord’s plan is being put in place for America and these people are not only revolting against Trump, they’re revolting against what God’s plan is for America.”

He added, “These left-wingers and so-called progressives are trying to destroy the country that we love and take away the freedoms they love. They want collectivism. They want socialism. What we’re looking at is free markets and freedom from this terrible, overarching bureaucracy.”

Trump, whose lifestyle isn’t exactly terribly Christian, has embraced evangelical constituencies and their values as stated by Robertson. It is worth, now more than ever, to examine theorigins of the movement that sees capitalism and selfishness as a religious virtue.

==

==

President Trump spoke at a National Prayer Breakfast Thursday, at which he vowed to "destroy" the Johnson Amendment, a 1954 provision that prohibits tax-exempt religious or charitable organizations from "directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office." The provision does not prohibit political activity by churches or religious organizations overall, but it does place some limits on the role of religious institutions in U.S. elections. White evangelical Protestants have long pushed for the amendment to be repealed. This is President Trump.

President Donald Trump: "Among those freedoms is the right to worship according to our own beliefs. That is why I will get rid of and totally destroy the Johnson Amendment and allow our representatives of faith to speak freely and without fear of retribution. I will do that, remember."

==

==

Meet Trump's Peculiar Collection of Religious Leaders He Picked to Speak at His Inauguration

By Peter Montgomery [1] / Right Wing Watch [2]

January 2, 2017

Donald Trump’s inaugural committee has announced that six faith leaders will take part in his swearing-in ceremony by offering prayers or delivering readings. Among them are Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, andBishop Wayne Jackson, who draped a prayer shawl from Israel over Trump’s shoulders when Trump made a campaign stop at his Great Faith Ministries International church in Detroit for a scripted interview [3].

Here’s more on the other announced speakers, Paula White, Franklin Graham, Samuel Rodriguez and Timothy Dolan.

Paula White

Paula White has been in Trump’s “Amen Corner” of prosperity gospel preachers[4] for a long time; she has said that she gave [5] Trump a Bible signed with a “prophetic word” by Billy Graham for his 60th birthday.

“Paula White has spent her life taking money from gullible people in the name of religion,” writes Daily Beast reporter Betsy Woodruff [6], who adds:

:{

}:

Think of Paula White’s ministry as the church version of Trump University. She preaches the prosperity gospel, an approach to Christianity that is, shall we say, unorthodox. Prosperity-gospel preachers teach that God wants people to be rich, and that he makes them wealthy as a sign of his blessing and favor; the richer you are, the more God loves you…These preachers also teach that the way to become wealthy is—you guessed it!—by giving them money. If you make a “seed offering”—and the bigger the better—then preachers like White say the Lord will repay your generosity with bounteous riches.

The Florida-based White helped organize a group [7] of prosperity gospel preachers and televangelists who met with Trump in September 2015 and spoke at a Trump rally in Orlando in March. As we’ve noted, it’s not terribly surprising that Trump and White would find an affinity for each other, since she and other prosperity gospel promoters [8] preach that wealth is a sign of God’s blessing and he told voters that his being rich was proof that he could lead the country.

While promoting his 2006 book “Why We Want You To Be Rich,” Trump appeared on Paula White’s television show [9], where he told White that God “blessed” wealthy people like himself with “a certain something” and a good brain and that in order to succeed in business, “God has to have blessed you with a good mind or, at least, a business mind.”

White was one of the money-making evangelists who reportedly stonewalled an ultimately inconclusive investigation [10] by Sen. Chuck Grassley’s Senate Finance Committee, citing religious freedom [11] to justify their refusal to provide full information about their finances.

Never Trump conservative Erick Erickson has criticized White [12] as “a Trinity-denying heretic” and said “it should be a pretty damn big deal” that Trump is inviting her to pray at the inaugural.

Franklin Graham

Franklin Graham, son of the iconic evangelist Billy Graham, is a more intensely anti-gay right-wing version of his father, and reflects the continuing spiral of America’s right wing into anti-Muslim conspiracy-theory paranoia [13].

Like Trump, Graham is a fan of Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, praising Putin’s anti-gay policies [14] and defending his support for the Assad regime in Syria. Graham went to Russia [15] in 2015, where he praised Putin while criticizing secularism in America. While in Russia, Graham told a reporter that President Obama was “leading America down the wrong road” and “taking a stand against God.” [15] Graham also planned to host a conference in Moscow [16] with the Russian Orthodox Church to address anti-Christian persecution, but had to cancel after Putin outlawed evangelism from Christians who aren’t members of the Orthodox church.

Although Graham maintained that he was not formally endorsing a presidential candidate in 2016, he held rallies [17] around the country during which he made it clear what he thought Christians’ duty was at the ballot box. Graham, who has said the advance of legal equality for LGBT people is a sign of the coming End Times [18] and invites the judgment of God, repeatedly said [19] that2016 was the last chance [20] for Christians to save America from godless secularists[19] and the “very wicked” LGBT agenda being promoted by the Obama administration.

Graham was among the Religious Right leaders who spoke up for Trump when the tape of him bragging about sexually assaulting women was released, decrying “the godless progressive agenda of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton” and saying the Supreme Court was the most important issue for Christians when voting. When Trump called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on,” Graham defended him [21] and said he’d been making the same argument “for some time.”

Following the election, Graham addressed a Trump victory rally and claimed that Trump had been elected thanks to God’s intervention.

In April Graham called the separation of church and state “a lie [22] that the enemy uses to try to keep your mouth shut” and declared, “There’s no difference between secularism and communism. They’re both godless. Both are godless. And godless secularism is now taking control of our governments.” In response [23] to the Sandy Hook massacre in 2012, Graham said, “We’ve taken God out of our school, we’ve taken him out of our government and now we seem shocked at all of these things. Why are we shocked? We shouldn’t be shocked. This is what happens when a society turns its back on God.”

In a podcast with Fox News’ Todd Starnes [24] in March, Graham said, “I want the school boards of America in the hands of evangelical Christians within the next four to six years.”He also called for conservative Christians to run for other local offices, saying “We need Christian men and women running for mayors across this country [25]. Just think of America if the majority of mayors of America were born-again evangelical Christians.”

Samuel Rodriguez

Samuel Rodriguez, who heads the National Christian Hispanic Leadership Conference and is a regular speaker at Religious Right gatherings, has fostered [26] a media image as a nonpartisan moderate [27] while simultaneously urging Hispanic voters to support right-wing candidates and Religious Right causes, and even filming a video promoting the Republican Party’s faith outreach project. In May, for example, he said it would be “morally reprehensible” for Christians to vote for a candidate who supports Planned Parenthood, saying they would need to repent.

Rodriguez, who served on Marco Rubio’s faith advisory board [28], was initially critical [29] of Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric. In July 2015 he joined the Southern Baptist Convention’s Russell Moore in a Wall Street Journal op-ed denouncing Trump and declaring, “Those who see immigrants as easy targets for scaremongering will find that they will lose more than the Hispanic vote; they also will lose those who sing, maybe in different languages, from the same hymnbook.” In May 2016, after Trump provided an NHCLC conference a perfunctory video that included no apology [30] for his anti-immigrant demagoguery, Rodriguez said he had “no plans on endorsing Donald Trump whatsoever.” But Rodriguez threw immigrant families under the wheels of the Trump bus after the candidate’s big meeting with evangelical leaders in June, praising Trump’s comments about abortion, religious liberty and the Supreme Court.

Rodriguez had previously given Trump political cover by saying he is not a racist and telling Christians that getting conservative justices on the Supreme Court is more important than immigration reform.

Rodriguez pushes the Religious Right line that the religious freedom [31] of Christians is under threat in America.[ID victim politics mirror ?] In 2012, after President Obama spoke in favor of marriage equality, Rodriguez said [32] the promotion of marriage equality is “an attempt to silence the church of Jesus Christ.” He believes there is a spiritual battle under way to “annihilate” the family and warns that Christians cannot sit out elections because “today’s complacency is tomorrow’s captivity.” [33]

In September, as part of the Religious Right operation My Faith Votes, Rodriguez warned a discouraged voter that “staying home may very well jeopardize my ability as a pastor to reach the people with the loving gospel of Jesus Christ.” He also said voters who don’t like either candidate should vote for “the party platform that best will protect your right to be a Christian and reach others with the loving, grace-filled message of Jesus Christ.”

Rodriguez also promotes right-wing positions on economics and government regulation. During the congressional battle to pass health care reform, Rodriguez took part in a Religious Right “prayercast” that asked God to defeat the legislation. He has signed onto declarations that oppose progressive taxation [34] and embraced right-wing rhetoric [35] about people being “enslaved” by government and “uber-entitlements.”He has promoted the Koch brothers’ LIBRE Initiative,which is meant to proselytize an anti-government gospel of economic libertarianism to Latinos, saying in a LIBRE video that it is anti-Christian and anti-American to “punish success”—right-wing speak for progressive taxation.

:{

}:

In his LIBRE video, Rodriguez embraced a prosperity gospel view of wealth [36]. “It’s anti-Christian to think that people that have been blessed…that they are wrong….Blessed people are a manifestation of scripture….In scripture there is an incredible amount of support for the idea that, yes, provision and abundance comes from God…”

:{

}:

Rodriguez made the stridently anti-LGBT Liberty Counsel the official policy arm of the NHCLC, which went international in 2014 when it merged with an evangelical coalition in Latin America. Last year Rodriguez hailed controversial preacher Cindy Jacobs as “a legitimate prophet of God” and “one of the most anointed voices, prophetic voices in the Kingdom of God.”

Timothy Dolan

New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan criticized [37] Trump’s nativist rhetoric in 2015, but more recently has praised Trump’s positions on abortion [38] and “religious liberty” and has said since the election he looks forward to the appointment of Supreme Court justices “who will reform the injustice and travesty of Roe v. Wade.”

Dolan hosted the meetings [39] at which the 2009 Manhattan Declaration was created, and he was among its original signers. The declaration is a manifesto for Christian conservatives who declare that when it comes to opposition to abortion and marriage equality, “no power on earth, be it cultural or political, will intimidate us into silence or acquiescence.” Regarding marriage specifically it says, “No one has a civil right to have a non-marital relationship treated as a marriage.” And it vows civil disobedience, saying:

Because we honor justice and the common good, we will not comply with any edict that purports to compel our institutions to participate in abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide and euthanasia, or any other anti-life act; nor will we bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriages or the equivalent, or refrain from proclaiming the truth, as we know it, about morality and immorality and marriage and the family. We will fully and ungrudgingly render to Caesar what is Caesar’s. But under no circumstances will we render to Caesar what is God’s.

When Dolan was chosen to be president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in 2010, The New York Times described it [39] as a “surprise move that reaffirmed the conservative direction of the Roman Catholic Church in America.” In 2011, Dolan wrote to President Obama both privately and publicly [40] complaining that the administration’s decision not to defend the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act would “escalate the threat to marriage and imperil the religious freedom of those who promote and defend marriage.”

In a joint statement with Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone in response [41] to the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision overturning part of the Defense of Marriage Act , Dolan called the ruling “a tragic day for marriage and our nation.” During an interview that year Dolan said gays and lesbians are “entitled to friendship” with each other but not “sexual love.”

When U.S. Religious Right groups gathered at the UN this year to partner with a group of the world’s most repressive regimes to resist international recognition for the human rights of LGBT people and their families, Bishop John O’Hara of the Archdiocese of New York assured the gathering that they had Dolan’s “enthusiastic support.”

Documents released in 2013 showed [42] that Dolan, when archbishop of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee in 2007, had asked for and received permission from the Vatican to, as The New York Times reported, “move nearly $57 million into a cemetery trust fund to protect the assets from victims of clergy sexual abuse who were demanding compensation.”

Peter Montgomery is a senior fellow at People For the American Way Foundation.

Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/meet-trumps-peculiar-collection-relgious-leaders-he-picked-speak-his-inauguration

Links:

[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/peter-montgomery

[2] http://www.rightwingwatch.org

[3] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/02/us/politics/trump-jackson-excerpts.html?_r=0

[4] http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/trump-meets-with-prosperity-gospel-preachers-who-can-cure-ebola-and-bring-chickens-back-from-the-dead/

[5] http://www.christianpost.com/news/prosperity-preacher-paula-white-billy-graham-donald-trump-prophetic-word-bible-159092/

[6] http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/12/28/shady-pastor-to-pray-with-trump-at-inauguration.html

[7] http://www.politico.com/story/2015/09/donald-trumps-evangelicals-televangelists-214250

[8] https://thinkprogress.org/trumps-pastor-friends-have-one-thing-in-common-they-re-all-rich-b1e7b8ca702#.otpvdhnro

[9] http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/donald-trump-god-blessed-me-with-a-brilliant-mind-to-handle-debt-and-business-issues/

[10] http://www.christianitytoday.com/gleanings/2011/january/grassley-investigation-ends-with-no-penalty-for.html

[11] http://religiondispatches.org/grassley-staff-memo-on-televangelists-makes-clear-religious-right-opposition-to-government-oversight/

[12] http://theresurgent.com/an-actual-trinity-denying-heretic-will-pray-at-trumps-inauguration/

[13] http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/franklin-graham-muslims-who-hate-israel-and-hate-christians-run-the-white-house/

[14] http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/franklin-graham-endorses-vladimir-putins-anti-gay-crackdown/

[15] http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/franklin-graham-praises-gay-propaganda-law-critizes-us-secularism-in-russia-visit/

[16] https://www.facebook.com/FranklinGraham/posts/1109373615785485

[17] http://www.politicalresearch.org/2016/01/07/franklin-graham-falwell-prodigy-putin-lover-and-trump-fan/#sthash.mrWYLGpg.dpbs

[18] http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/franklin-graham-the-end-is-coming-thanks-to-gays-obama/

[19] http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/franklin-graham-only-one-election-left-to-save-america-from-godless-secularists/

[20] http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/franklin-graham-were-going-to-lose-this-country-if-donald-trump-doesnt-win/

[21] http://www.charlotteobserver.com/living/religion/article48805250.html

[22] http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/paranoia-rama-sarah-palin-versus-science-franklin-grahams-warning-and-the-looming-gay-civil-war/

[23] http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/twisted-the-far-rights-disgraceful-reaction-to-the-sandy-hook-massacre/

[24] http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/franklin-graham-gays-and-lesbians-leading-a-wicked-evil-agenda-taking-america-down/

[25] http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/franklin-graham-us-in-trouble-for-embracing-godless-secularism/

[26] http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/rodriguez-civility-campaign-partners-with-worlds-most-uncivil-people/

[27] http://www.politicalresearch.org/2012/10/02/rev-samuel-rodriguez-not-so-moderate/#sthash.0GYLAZ9a.dpbs

[28] http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/meet-marco-rubios-religious-liberty-advisory-board/

[29] http://time.com/4342885/donald-trump-immigration-hispanic-evangelicals/

[30] http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/trump-offers-no-apologies-for-rhetoric-but-some-conservative-latinos-warming-to-him/

[31] http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/evangelical-leaders-warn-secular-totalitarianism-and-jail-us-christians

[32] http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/samuel-rodriguez-marriage-equality-assault-religious-freedom#sthash.0dHXtCPY.dpuf

[33] http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/rodriguez-christians-must-vote-because-todays-complacency-tomorrows-captivity

[34] http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/when-going-gets-tough-right-starts-new-group

[35] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UY0tM9VLRKU

[36] http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/koch-brothers-libre-initiative-pushes-free-market-gospel-to-latinos/

[37] http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/timothy-dolan-nativism-rears-big-haired-head-article-1.2307111

[38] http://www.catholicnews.com/services/englishnews/2016/what-the-pro-life-community-wants-from-the-trump-administration.cfm

[39] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/17/us/17bishops.html

[40] http://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/marriage-and-family/marriage/promotion-and-defense-of-marriage/upload/dolan-to-obama-doma-letter-sept-20-2011.pdf

[41] http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/religious-right-responds-to-doma-decision-absurd-profound-injustice-shameful-day-in-american-history-updated/

[42] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/02/us/dolan-sought-vatican-permission-to-shield-assets.html?hp&_r=3&

[43] mailto:corrections@alternet.org?Subject=Typo on Meet Trump's Peculiar Collection of Religious Leaders He Picked to Speak at His Inauguration

[44] http://www.alternet.org/

[45] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B

=

kpfaboost rev billy g for libertarianism kpfa 9/21/16 10 am

https://kpfa.org/episode/letters-and-politics-september-21-2016/

With Kevin M. Kruse, professor of History at Princeton University in New Jersey. He is the author or co-editor of several books, his latest is One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America.

About the book:

One Nation Under God tells the story of how in the middle of the 20th century, corporate titans and evangelical activists created the pervasive myth that America was, is, and always will be a fundamentally Christian nation.

As Kruse argues, thebelief that America is fundamentally and formally a Christian nation originated from corporate opposition to FDR’s New Deal in the 1930s.Corporations from General Motors to Hilton Hotels bankrolled conservative clergymen, encouraging them to attack the New Deal as a program of “pagan statism” that perverted the central principle of Christianity: the sanctity and salvation of the individual. Their campaign for “freedom under God” culminated in the election of their close ally Dwight Eisenhower in 1952.

In Eisenhower’s hands, a religious movement born in opposition to the government was transformed into one that fused faith and the federal government as never before. During the 1950s, Eisenhower revolutionized the role of religion in American political culture,inventing new traditions from inaugural prayers to the National Prayer Breakfast. Meanwhile, Congress added the phrase “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance and made “In God We Trust” the country’s first official motto. With private groups joining in,church membership soared to an all-time high of 69%.During this moment, Americans began to think of their country as an officially Christian nation.

But as Americans moved from broad generalities to the details of issues such as school prayer, cracks began to appear. Religious leaders began to reject this “lowest common denomination” public religion, leaving conservative political activists to champion it alone.In Richard Nixon’s hands, a politics that conflated piety and patriotism became sole property of the right.

Provocative and authoritative, One Nation Under God reveals how the unholy alliance of money, religion, and politics created a false origin story that continues to define and divide American politics to this day.

==

AlterNet [1] / By CJ Werleman [2]

How Rev. Billy Graham Taught the Republican Party to Sacrifice the Poor on the Altar of Big-Business

December 17, 2013 |

Since turning 95 last month, Reverend Billy Graham’s health has deteriorated, and judging by his family’s call for prayers, his life is nearing its end. Many things will be written about Graham's life by both disciples and his detractors, but if you want to know where the base of today’s Republican Party—the Christian Right—gets its mojo, look no further than this Southern Baptist preacher.

The genetic makeup of the GOP is one chromosome away from Graham’s DNA. Today’s Republican Party is a neo-Confederate pro-corporation movement, thanks to thesupposed life-long Democrat(when he wasn’t endorsing Mitt Romney)—the Reverend Billy Graham. A close friend of Richard Nixon's, it was Graham who helped the disgraced president articulate the “Southern Strategy,” which won Nixon the White House in 1968.

Steven P. Miller, author of Billy Graham and the Rise of the Republican South,writes that it was Graham’s public relationship with Southern Baptist ministers, and quips like, “Prejudice is not just a sectional problem” and “Criticism of the South is one of the most popular indoor sports of some Northerners these days,” that made him an much-loved figure among his fellow Southerners. Miller also says that Graham’s evangelical understanding of the sins of racism allowed many white Southerners to declare themselves absolved from past guilt.

Millennials can be forgiven for mistakenly thinking the Christian Right has been the main strain of the GOP since ad infinitum. It hasn’t. The Christian Right is still a relatively new dynamic on the American political landscape. Prior to the election of Jimmy Carter in 1976, no serious presidential candidate ever claimed to have been “born again,” and the emphasis of faith for a politician seeking high office was as rare then as a candidate declaring his atheism is today.

But something weird happened on the way to the forum.Religious fundamentalists banded together to oppose Jimmy Carter’s 1980 reelection campaign (Carter was a Southern Baptist), and in turn, put their support behind Ronald Reagan, who was a divorced Hollywood actor.This strange coalition on the right became a movement better known as the Moral Majority, and Billy Graham and Jerry Falwell were the tip of the sword.

The Moral Majority surprised nearly everyone by helping sweep Reagan into the White House. The Sarasota Journal wrote as much on Feb 9, 1981: “The merging of the political right with the religious right has taken the country by surprise.”

Until then, not even your most casual political observer believed that conservative Christians could or would play a pivotal role in shaping the outcome of elections. Screenplay writer Norman Lear said at the time, “The Moral Majority is neither the moral point of view, nor the majority.”

With help from the likes of Pat Robertson and a coalition of anti-gay, anti-Muslim, anti-feminist, and anti-ACLU networks, the Moral Majority became the Christian Right. While Graham publicly distanced himself from the Moral Majority, this was done purely for political optics. The media’s gullibility in falling for the “genteel, bipartisan, apolitical preacher” narrative gave Graham’s voice even more political clout.

Graham was a skillful orator, and he adeptly infused the teachings of Ayn Rand with those of Jesus Christ. In the Bible, Jesus says, “The meek shall inherit the earth,” and urges his followers, “To sell what you have and give to the poor.” But Graham, with the biggest Christian following in America during the '80s, helped turn the biblical Jesus into a supply side economist who wants us to be anti-government, anti-regulation, anti-healthcare, and anti-assistance for the poor Christians.

Where Bible Jesus feeds the masses with two loaves of bread, Ayn Randian Jesus says, “Bugger off, this bread is mine, you lazy moochers.” While Graham removed Southern Christians’ guilt over segregation, Ayn Rand removed the Christian Right’s guilt for being selfish and uncaring about anyone except themselves. Bruce E. Levine, author of *Get Up, Stand Up: Uniting Populists, Energizing the Defeated, and Battling the Corporate Elite* [3], wrote on AlterNet, “Not only did Rand make it 'moral' for the wealthy not to pay their fair share of taxes, she 'liberated' millions of other Americans from caring about the suffering of others, even the suffering of their own children.”

With the explosion of cable television, Graham turned his church into a mega money-making empire for himself. The self-proclaimed political non-partisan also turned his massive flock into a loyal legion of storm troopers for the Republican Party. Today, Graham’s son, Franklin, is the CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. He has continued his father’s legacy of being a shill and supporter of far-right pro-corporate causes while pulling down a $600,000 salary.

On the eve of the 2012 election, theyounger Graham bragged that it was his father’s appearance with George W. Bush at a rally in Florida which won the Texas governor the presidency in 2000.

In endorsing Mitt Romney, Billy Graham said, "I believe it is vitally important that we cast our ballots for candidates who base their decisions on biblical principles and support the nation of Israel. I urge you to vote for those who protect the sanctity of life and support the biblical definition of marriage between a man and a woman. Vote for biblical values this November 6, and pray with me that America will remain one nation under God."

Today, evangelism is synonymous with sacrificing the poor on the altar of big-business’ interests, and in becoming the most reliable and agitated voting bloc of the Republican Party since the election of Reagan, we can rightfully accuse the Christian Right in ushering in three decades of failed trickle down economics. The price we've paid for this approach is that America is now one of the most wealth-disparate of the developed countries. It’s the political descendants of Graham who shut down the government with their radical Jesus said replace every government-funded service with a for-profit corporation ideology.

Graham’s coalition of hate also put social issues front and square in the GOP primary process, and no one was more hateful than Graham. White House tapes recorded him openly telling President Nixon he believed that the Jews had a “stranglehold on the American media” and that “this Jewish stranglehold has got to be broken or the country’s going down the drain.”

The National Archive tapes reveal the nation’s best-known preacher in agreement with a stream of bigoted Nixon comments about Jews and their perceived influence on American life. “If you get elected a second time, then we might be able to do something. There also the ones putting out the pornographic stuff,” said Graham. To which Nixon replied, “the Jews are an irreligious, atheistic, immoral bunch of bastards.”

Repeatedly, Graham’s judgment was found wanting, yet politicians on both sides seek his and/or his family’s approval and photo-ops, which shows how far the Christian Right has pulled this country to the right since 1980.

Graham blames today’s economic doldrums on God punishing the nation for its growing secularization and what he perceives to be an increase in immorality. “I don’t see our country turning to God…Maybe he will have to bring this country down economically before we turn our hearts back to God. We need to repent.”

Come the 2016 campaign season, when the likes of Rand Paul, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, and Rick Santorum talk about how “Christianity is under attack” and how the “takers” are destroying America, it will be Billy Graham’s shadow you have to blame for that.

See more stories tagged with:

Billy Graham [4]

Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/how-rev-billy-graham-taught-republican-party-it-could-sacrifice-poor-altar-big

==

http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/christian-right-donald-trump

:{

}:

The so-called alt-right may have grabbed most of the attention since Donald Trump’s victory, but it’s the Christian right that got him over the line. And experts say they are much more likely to influence how he governs.

Frederick Clarkson, a senior fellow at Political Research Associates, has studied the Christian right for decades. He says that when it comes to their relationship with the morally erratic Trump, it’s all about the art of the deal.

“The Christian right has matured as a political movement. They recognize that you can’t always get political leaders who conform with your beliefs as consistently and wholly as you’d like.”

“Even though he doesn’t appear to be their guy, they can make deals with him that would make him into their guy in a way that no one else has ever been.”

Ralph Reed, chairman of the evangelical Faith and Freedom Coalition, appeared to confirm Clarkson’s analysis when he spoke to Fox News. “They were never under any illusions that Donald Trump was one of them,” he said [3] of his evangelical flock. “And by the way, they never asked him to be. All they asked was that he shared their issues agenda and that he would fight for it. He persuaded them on both of those points.”

A lot of post-election coverage (some of it unnecessarily fawning [4]) has considered the newer, shinier, openly white supremacist alt-right movement. And people are right to be concerned about the influence of its White House sympathizers like Steve Bannon [5]. But the fascist core of the movement likely numbers around 10,000 or less. Trump, ever the opportunist, has already cut loose some of the more outre leaders, like Richard Spencer [6]. Also, the wide variety of right-wing actors who lay claim to the alt-right tag are already riven by infighting.

The upsurge of hate crimes [7] around the country should be monitored and resisted, but it seems possible that the “hipster fascists” have already peaked in terms of their national political clout. Recent bizarre speeches[8] by Richard Spencer presage a future of increasing isolation.

The Christian right’s adherents, on the other hand, include tens of millions of the most disciplined voters in the country. And there’s a very good case to be made that they won Trump the election. Just look at the numbers.

In 2016, white evangelical Christians composed [9] 26 percent of the electorate—just as they did in 2012, 2008, and 2004.

And their quarter of the total vote in 2016 went 81-16 percent for the Republican. This gave Donald Trump a slightly bigger share of evangelicals than Mitt Romney, the pious Mormon, in 2012, or war hero John McCain in 2008. Trump even slightly outdid George W. Bush’s 2004 share, even though W identified as a born-again Christian. 

According to exit polls, these numbers and proportions meant that the evangelical vote alone almost entirely negated Clinton’s advantage among nonwhites. (Of the 29 percent of voters who were nonwhite, Clinton got 74 percent of the vote.)

And while there’s been a lot of talk about the “white working class” and its grievances, other figures suggest that the combination of race and religious identity may have been even more potent.

According to the Public Religion Research Institute [10], “the proportion of white Christians in each of the 50 states is more strongly correlated with support for Trump than is the proportion of white residents without a college degree in the state.” If we use education as a proxy for class, in the states that flipped Trump it mattered less than religion.

The places where Trump outperformed expectations to clinch the election—like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Iowa—all have white Christian majorities.

As the PRRI’s CEO Robert P. Jones points out, in 2016, when we measure the United States as a whole, white Christians (a category that includes white evangelicals, but is not limited to them) are only 43 percent of the population.

His recent book, *The End of White Christian America* [11], predicted that white Christians would, on the whole, decline in their demographic and electoral dominance. He stands by the overall argument, but admits 2016 didn’t exactly bear out his conclusions.

“Where I was wrong, where I was surprised, is that I said in the book that Mitt Romney’s campaign was the last one in which you could plausibly stack up enough white Christian voters to get you over the line.”

“I would say that what you are seeing is that last gasp of this particular group, rather than any reversal of major trends.”

The key this year was turnout. The Obama coalition, faced with an uninspiring Democratic candidate, stayed home in droves in key states. The Christian right—losing ground demographically and in the culture wars—came out to vote. While Clinton piled up redundant votes in safe states like California, evangelicals helped to pry loose the upper Midwest for Trump.

The fact that they did may seem puzzling. Trump is on his third wife, cheerfully admits to serial adultery and even sexual assault [12], and has been inconsistent over time on the kinds of moral issues—abortion, homosexuality—that exercise evangelicals. His own expressions of faith seemed pro forma; he generally gives the appearance of being the most godless candidate in living memory.

As a result, some evangelical leaders, like Russell Moore [13], were firmly in the #nevertrump camp, seeing the candidate’s moral flaws as disqualifying. (Moore declined the opportunity to comment on this story.)

Millions of evangelicals were able to get past this, in part, because of their fear and loathing of Hillary Clinton. Clarkson says they voted from similar sentiments to many other voting blocs, choosing, as they saw it, the lesser of two evils.

“One candidate was beyond the pale and another candidate was acceptable to them.”

Despite Trump’s apparent “lack of a serious religiosity,” and a very mixed record on abortion and homosexuality, Clinton was more feared on the grounds of policy.

“She was not just pro-choice but seen as pro-abortion, she was seen as pro-marriage equality, she was seen as pro-gay rights, she was seen as anti-family. She represented the kind of demonized feminism that has animated their movement for a couple of decades now. It’s hard for liberals to see how people are affected by those issues, but they are.”

Clinton has held her place as a bete noire of the Christian right for decades.

Carin Robinson, a political scientist who coauthored *Onward Christian Soldiers? The Christian Right in American Politics* [14] recalls that when she was studying the Christian right in the 1990s, “On numerous occasions I received mailings from these groups that said Hillary Clinton was going to take away my Bible. She has been used as a means of mobilizing, inspiring fear and getting evangelicals to vote.“

Having her appoint a Supreme Court justice was the worst propsect of all. Robinson says that “The evangelicals I have spoken to, it just came down to that Supreme Court nomination, and having that crystallized by the death of Scalia. It was all about that empty chair.”

But even with this hostility to Clinton as a baseline, how did they come to terms with Trump? How did they come to select him in the primary above candidates with other Christian candidates? Jones thinks it was because his campaign messages were not in fact at odds with evangelicals’ values—in fact he was speaking straight to them.

“It was really this bigger argument Trump was making about turning the clock back. If you’re a white evangelical your numbers are slipping due to immigration, and because your children and grandchildren are leaving the church. Trump’s rhetoric gave a sense of turning the clock back to a time when your values, your demographic had sway in the country.”

“He converted values voters into nostalgia voters.”

He says “the data doesn’t really support” the idea that these voters were holding their noses as they voted for Trump. In pre-election surveys, white evangelicals expressed opinions that chimed with Trump’s key messages. The evinced hostility to migrants, and a belief in pervasive “reverse” racism and a sense that the country is adrift.

“When you look at him on the stump, he was saying to evangelicals, ‘your numbers used to be increasing, now they’re decreasing. If you elect me, you’ll have a friend in the white house who will restore power to the Christian churches. I’m you’re last chance, folks.’

But Clarkson instead points to Trump’s concrete offerings.

“To some extent it didn’t matter who the non-Hillary candidate was. The question was, what kind of deal could they strike? This was the most openly transactional electorate for the Christian right we have ever seen. What did they get? We don’t know the answer exactly, but let’s look at the results so far.”

During the campaign, Clarkson said, Trump made all the right noises about easing Christians’ sense of persecution in an increasingly liberal cultural and legal climate. One key issue carried a particular weight. “He said he was going to be very forceful about religious liberty, and particularly the Johnson Amendment.”

This was a change President Johnson made to the tax code, preventing certain kinds of nonprofits, like churches, from endorsing or opposing political candidates. Trump has called for its repeal.

It’s not just the tax code that concerns them, though. “There’s a deeper agenda” for the big evangelical organizations, according to Clarkson.

“They don’t want to comply with civil rights and labor laws, or “complicit,” as they see it, with abortion in any way, or see taxes go into things they don’t support.”

These beliefs frame attitudes from everything from healthcare to gay marriage. Evangelical organizations and their adherents don’t want to participate in healthcare plans that fund birth control or abortion, any more than they want to bake cakes for gay couples or be forced to consider them for employment.

Religious liberty so defined “is a banner they are willing to follow. If he is prepared to appoint Supreme Court justices that support that view, cases like the Bob Jones decision would be vulnerable.”

That was the decision made back in 1983, where the Supreme Court ruled that the IRS could revoke Bob Jones University’s tax-exempt status for banning interracial relationships.

Trump’s promises on these issues have been taken very seriously by Christian right leaders.

Jim Daly, of Focus on the Family, wrote in a newsletter [15] the day after the election, “We are grateful for Mr. Trump’s pro-life pledge and look forward to his promise of a pro-life administration, which includes de-funding Planned Parenthood. We’re also optimistic about the president-elect’s pledge to champion pro-religious liberty policies and once again welcome faith in the public square.”

The elevation of Mike Pence as Trump’s running-mate was a big reassurance to leaders like Dobson, and his millions of followers. Pence identifies as an evangelical Christian, and according to Robinson, “has great credentials among Christian right leaders.” Clarkson says that during the campaign, Pence “personally reassured” evangelical voters. “He spoke to voters at the values voters summit and reassured of them of Trump’s bona fides. He told them that he is in favour of religious liberty. And he had the standing to say that.”

Trump has put Pence in charge of the transition team, giving him enormous power over determining the shape of Trump’s cabinet. His decisions have already pleased the faithful.

The Faith and Freedom Coalition has issued statements welcoming the appointment of Tom Price as Health and Human Services Secretary, anticipating [16] that, “he will lead the effort to repeal and replace Obamacare and its unconstitutional mandate.” Similarly, they welcomed [17] Jeff Sessions as someone who would “to make our country a better place and ensure that the concerns of people of faith are upheld at the highest level of our government.” (AlterNet reached out to the Faith and Freedom Coalition for further comments, but its spokesman did not respond to emails before the deadline for this story.)

As for Jerry Falwell Jr., who heads up the evangelical Liberty University, he says that the transition team offered him the Education Secretary gig, before handing it off to billionaire ideologue Betsy DeVos [18]. He was a strong backer of Trump during the campaign, and even censored anti-Trump material in the University’s newspaper.

But Pence may wind up with even more heft after Inauguration Day.

Reports that Trump offered John Kasich [19] a slew of hitherto presidential powers when he was wooing him as a potential running mate gives Frederick Clarkson pause. If Pence got the same offer, “that would make him the most powerful vice president in American history.”

Meanwhile, the things the administration doesn’t do might be as significant as its positive moves. For example, any relaxation of enforcement of the Voting Rights Act by a Sessions Department of Justice will only give white Christian voters greater relative sway. And refusing to fund Planned Parenthood will just make it harder for women to maintain control over their reproductive rights, especially in red states that aren’t inclined to make up the shortfalls.

Trump owes evangelicals, and the early signs are that he will deliver. He will need them again in 2020, and again they might be crucial to the election result.

While it’s true that America is no longer a majority white Christian country, and is grinding toward a minority-majority future, what counts in elections is voters. While Jones thinks that white Christian America is on the slide, Clarkson points to their resiliency, and the way that in spite of population changes, they are still able to make themselves a part of winning electoral coalitions.

“There is a certain wishful thinking that has attended the rise and continuation of the religious right.”

“Pentecostalism is the fastest-growing sector of American Christianity. It is a grouping of people who have gone from being the least political to the most political. They are organized.”

They may be a much more serious long-term danger than the outright fascists, because one of the things they are best at organizing is the vote.

Jason Wilson is a writer and photographer based in Portland, Oregon. His internationally published work has appeared in many outlets including The Guardian (where he is a columnist), AlterNet, The Atlantic, and Religion Dispatches.

==

wasn’t over on November 8.

Of course it wasn’t. This race, with its roiling of our electoral landscape, is the kind that leaves legacies—even if Trump had lost, the stain of what Trump has made possible would be with us.

Trump has reinvigorated white nationalism; his nomination of Steve Bannon as White House chief strategist makes that clear enough. While many across the political spectrum have reacted with horror at Trump’s bigotry, all too many Republicans and conservatives may instead be taking lessons from him on how to exploit the newly-invigorated “alt-right,” the trendy name given to people who are mostly unreconstructed white nationalists and neo-Nazis. (There’s even been a push to disavow this term altogether, for the way it obscures and normalizes the bigotry and hatred that fuels this “movement,” with media figures taking pledges to never use the term “alt-right” at all.)

For a party that has shown itself to be chronically allergic to expanding its base, finding ways to ratchet up the rage of angry white men may seem to be the only hope. Worse, the self-identified “alt-right’s” internet-savvy gloss provides Republicans with the illusory sense that young voters are turned on by this fundamentally paleoconservative message.

It could work, for a time at least. With Faustian grace, the Republicans have shown themselves to be adept at buying a moment’s vigor and wealth at the cost of their souls. The last time the GOP made such a deal was in the late 1970s, awakening the politically quietist constituency of Evangelical Christians and giving birth to the Religious Right—a force that would imbue the Republicans with immense power, even providing the margin of victory in the painfully tight 2004 presidential race. But it would also consume the party, drowning it in ever more stringent purity pledges, infighting, and indulgence of extremism—dragging the country in its undertow by saddling us with draconian abortion restrictions, bathroom bills, and other self-satirizing absurdities at every level of government.

The racists Trump has courted will destroy the Republican Party as we know it, but that slow, violent death will catch us all in its wake, with potentially devastating consequences for American democracy—and what may rise in its place should comfort no one.

We can glean a lot about what’s ahead by studying the legacy of the Religious Right.

http://www.alternet.org/right-wing/rise-alt-right-and-religious-right-are-chillingly-similar

==

:{

}:

9. Troy Newman: The president of Operation Rescue jumped aboard the Trump train this week. An anti-choice extremist, Newman even co-authored a book with a would-be domestic terrorist, Cheryl Sullenberger, who in 1988 was sentenced to three years in federal prison for conspiring to blow up an abortion clinic. In that 2003 book, Newman and Sullenberger argue, according to People for the American Way, “that the government has a responsibility to execute abortion providers.”

Time was when a presidential candidate who played footsie with segregationists and white supremacists would have banished to the fringes of the American political scene. But Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump has changed all that.

Oh sure, there have been plenty of codes telegraphed to the anti-black base of the GOP’s southern flank: Ronald Reagan’s choice of Philadelphia, Mississippi, as the place to make a “states’ rights” speech in his 1980 presidential campaign; Richard Nixon’s southern strategy and “Silent Majority” framing. But after the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, expressions of outright racism were frowned upon in presidential politics. And articulations of misogyny were generally doled out in the form of withering condescension.

I don’t need to recount for you Trump’s friendliness with the alt-right, the white nationalist movement that was given a platform at Breitbart News by Stephen K. Bannon, the man Trump hired as his campaign CEO. You don’t need to take my word for it; Bannon has boasted of this fact. And you surely know of Trump’s numerous retweets of posts and memes from white supremacist websites. And who can forget all of the lovely things he’s said about women, calling them fat pigs and demeaning them for having menstrual periods?

Just yesterday, Trump’s running mate, Indiana Governor Mike Pence, declined for a second time to say that former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke was “deplorable,” stating that he isn’t “in the name-calling business.” Isn’t it enough, Pence asked, that he and Trump have disavowed Duke’s endorsement?

Trump yesterday won the endorsement of Operation Rescue president Troy Newman, an anti-choice extremist who co-authored a 2003 book, according to People for the American Way, that “argued that the government has a responsibility to execute abortion providers.” In 1988, Newman’s co-author, Cheryl Sullenberger, was sentenced to three years in federal prison for conspiring to bomb an abortion clinic.

On Friday, Donald Trump appeared before evangelical Christians assembled at the Values Voter Summit, an annual confab convened by FRC Action, the political arm of the Family Research Council. The conference exhibit hall featured the booths of such co-sponsors as Tradition, Family and Property, a paleo-Catholic cult whose founder described the Spanish Inquisition as the church’s most glorious moment, and the conspiracy-theorist and segregationist John Birch Society, which William F. Buckley thought he had managed to purge from the conservative movement in 1962. This was the first time the JBS appeared in the Values Voter hall of sponsors. It could be said that the Trump candidacy helped pave the way, what with his embrace of the conspiracy theorist radio host Alex Jones, and his numerous winks to white nationalist extremists.

The following day, FRC President Tony Perkins, who has endorsed Trump, defended the alt-right when I asked him about the movement at a press conference. Its existence, he seemed to say, was the fault of President Barack Obama and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, for having “snuffed out” the voices of people who disagree with the administration’s policies.

To lay all of this at Trump’s feet would be to give him too much credit. As I’ve argued before, the misogynist, racist, nativist, anti-LGBT right wing that took over the GOP in 1980—of which Perkins himself is evidence—has much to answer for, not least of all, the rise of Donald Trump as the party’s standard-bearer. Trump may not have been the first choice of right-wing leaders, but they created the conditions that cleared his path to the nomination, and most have lined up behind him since he won it.

But mainstream media are also complicit in this normalization of hatred, allowing it to masquerade in the guise political positions. For decades, when reporting on the Christian right, for example, media have treated it as a religious movement, barely mentioning—if at all—the roots of movement positions in the segregationist backlash of the South. Instead, media executives allowed themselves to be cowed by the right wing’s outrage machine, every time it cranked up its conveyor belt of allegations of the anti-religion bent of reporters.

Today, the same tendency is evident in the false-equivalence reporting prevalent in the degrees to which media cover different stories. Questions about Clinton’s emails demand teams of reporters toiling for months; scandals involving Trump are too often written as one-off reports—so fearful are mainstream editors of fielding an accusation of liberal bias.

In the meantime, a monster has been allowed to grow in our midst. Bannon take an obscure fringe of the right and elevates it to a platform that garners tens of millions of pageviews per month. Trump hires Bannon. Media say, hey, that’s interesting, do one story, and say, “Next?”

Covering the Values Voter Summit this September 9 and 10 was downright depressing. Trump addressed the conference on Friday, and Pence on Saturday—meaning that the conference attendees represent a legitimized constituency of the GOP, as they have for 30 years. The founders of the religious right are passing onto their just rewards. Organizers Paul Weyrich and Howard Phillips died in 2008 and 2013, respectively; Phyllis Schlafly died on September 5 (but not before she took the opportunity to endorse Trump). The movement they founded, however, continues to wreak the havoc of hate on the American political landscape, and the media dare not call it by its name.

http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/normalization-evil-american-politics

==

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/gods-work-meet-the-woman-turning-evangelicals-into-environmentalists-20150615

:{

}:

:{

Among the victims of the organized campaign to discredit climate science and obstruct action are many of the country's 80 million evangelical Christians, who are bombarded with messages that climate change is a hoax and environmental regulation a cover for Big Government's agenda to convert the nation to a police state. Some evangelicals also interpret the burning, flooding Earth as a sign of the Rapture and the second coming of Christ. While 63 percent of all Americans think climate change is underway, only 51 percent percent of evangelicals do. An estimated 27 percent of evangelicals don't think the climate is changing at all.

Pope Francis: The Times They Are A-Changin'

Inside the Pope's gentle revolution

Those numbers might be disheartening to many environmentalists, but for an emerging class of activists, they represent an opportunity: to convert those believers into potent advocates for the planet. Among those activists is Anna Jane Joyner, who was featured last year in Showtime's Years of Living Dangerously debating her father, megachurch pastor and climate skeptic Rick Joyner.

Now a politically progressive Episcopalian who believes that preventing the wholesale meltdown of the planet lies at the core of Christianity, Joyner is helping revamp how global warming realities are communicated to evangelicals and other conservative Christians.

Among other things, Rolling Stone spoke to Joyner about Pope Francis' widely anticipated encyclical on the environment – expected in its final format later this week, after being leaked – during which the pope will make the moral case for not destroying the Earth, and argue that protecting the planet and its inhabitants is biblically mandated....

}:

:{

}:

===

http://www.euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3366/hls.2012.0044?journalCode=hls

:{

}:

Onward Christian Soldiers: American Dispensationalists, George W. Bush and the Middle East

:{

}:

Citation Information: Holy Land Studies, Volume 11 Issue 2, Page 175-204, ISSN 1474-9475 Available Online Oct 2012

(DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/hls.2012.0044)

Abstract

The goal of this paper is twofold. First, it attempts to explain why dispensationalist Christians were successful at influencing American foreign policy during the administration of George W. Bush, particularly towards the Middle East. Specifically, I connect this success to their ties to Washington neo-conservatives, the personal faith of Bush himself and his links to conservative Christians, and their broad cultural appeal and grassroots strength. Second, it will present two brief case studies on the influence that dispensationalism has had on US policy towards Israel and Iraq during the administration of George W. Bush.

...In the latter election, the 78 percent of white evangelicals who voted for Bush ... 2000 presidential race, Bush endeared himself to conservative evangelicals who shared ... His political advisor Karl Rove made it a point aggressively to reach out to .... Tim LaHaye (cofounder of the Moral Majority whose wife, Beverly LaHaye, ......

Evangelizing Foreign Policy: Bush, Dispensationalism and the Middle East

The integrating of politics into the novels should not be surprising given the political background of one of the authors. Rev. Tim LaHaye (cofounder of the Moral  Majority whose wife, Beverly LaHaye runs the conservative Christian organization

Concerned Women for America) has emerged as one of the preeminent leaders of the

Christian Right, joining the ranks of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and Billy Graham. He

even has a school of prophecy named after him at Falwell’s Liberty University.

In the 1980’s LaHaye was an important figure in the Christian Right in his roles as leader of

Californians for Biblical Morality, an organization instrumental in electing Ronald

Reagan as that state’s governor, and co-founder of the burgeoning Moral Majority. 43 Later, he was named a co-chair of Jack Kemp’s presidential campaign in 1988.

Recently,  he has established a Pre-Tribulation Research Center, which exists as “a ‘think tank’

committed to the study, proclamation, teaching and defending of the Pre-tribulational

Rapture (pre-70th week of Daniel) and related end-time prophecy.” 44 Some speculated a connection between the apocalyptic writings of LaHaye and the Manichean dualism and  controversial Middle East policies of George W. Bush. 

Pat Robertson’s 1991 best-selling novel The New World Order describes an elaborate conspiracy leading to the ascension of the antichrist to world power. The narrative, based on prophetic passages found in both the Old and New Testaments, 

presents an over 200-year-old plot to destroy the Christian faith. Individuals and

organizations involved (whether knowingly or unknowingly) are as diverse as the

Freemasons, the Illuminati, the United Nations, Karl Marx, Adolf Hitler, the Trilateral 

Commission, Henry Kissinger, and even the Council on Foreign Relations. As in the Left 

Behind novels, the backdrop for the ascent of the antichrist is the United Nations.

:{

}:

===

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/28/magazine/28Evangelicals-t.html?_r=0

:{

}:

...

“There was a time when evangelical churches were becoming largely and almost exclusively the Republican Party at prayer,” said Marvin Olasky, the editor of the evangelical magazine World and an informal adviser to George W. Bush when he was governor. “To some extent — we have to see how much — the Republicans have blown it. That opportunity to lock up that constituency has vanished. The ball now really is in the Democrats’ court.”

I covered the Christian conservative movement for The New York Times during the 2004 election, at the moment of its greatest triumph. To the bewilderment of many even in the upper reaches of his own party,Karl Rove bet President Bush’s re-electionon boosting the conservative Christian turnout, contending that Bush lost the popular vote in 2000 because four million of those voters stayed home. President Bush missed few opportunities to remind evangelicals that he was one of them — and they got the message.

I bowed my head in a good number of swing-state churches in 2004. I saw the passion Bush aroused among theologically orthodox Protestants. And I got to know many of the most influential conservative Christian leaders, most of whom threw themselves into urging their constituents to the polls.

Now, as the 2008 campaign heated up in the months before the first primaries, I wondered how the world was looking from the pulpits and pews. And so I went to Wichita, as close as any place to the heart of conservative Christian America. Wichita has a long history of religious crusades. A hundred years ago, Carrie Nation made her name smashing up Wichita’s bars. More recently, the presence of Dr. George Tiller, a specialist in late-term abortions, has kept anti-abortion passions high, attracting Operation Rescue to Wichita for the Summer of Mercy protests in 1991. Two years later, a lone activist shot and wounded Dr. Tiller. Evolution, the flash point that split mainline and evangelical Protestants in the early 20th century, is still hotly debated in Wichita. The Kansas school board has reversed itself on the subject again and again in recent years....

:{

}:

http://www.theocracywatch.org/bush2.htm

...

Anti-Science

Surgeon General Sees 4-Year Term as Compromised, *New York Times*, July 11, 2007

The administration, Dr. Carmona said, would not allow him to speak or issue reports about stem cells, emergency contraception, sex education, or prison, mental and global health issues.

Religion Running Roughshod Over Cancer Science, Truthdig, June 11, 2006

When Politics Defeats Science, Washington Post, March 1, 2006 -- The former FDA official asks: When did adult access to contraception become so controversial?

Political Appointees Pollute Waters at Ocean Agency, PEER, June 28, 2005

U.S. Pressure Weakens G-8 Climate Plan, Washington Post, June 17, 2005

New EPA Mercury Rule Omits Conflicting Data, Washington Post, March 22, 2005

Scientists feel stifled by Bush administration, CNN.Com, February 21, 2005

Ideology and AIDS, New York Times, February 26, 2005

From the Union of Concerned Scientists, (UCS) July 8, 2004:

Today, the Union of Concerned Scientists released new evidence that the Bush Administration continues to suppress and distort scientific knowledge and undermine scientific advisory panels.

The *Washington Post*, July 9, 2004 comments on the UCS report:

More than 4,000 scientists, including 48 Nobel laureates, have joined a call for "restoration of scientific integrity in federal policymaking," charging that the Bush administration is packing scientific advisory panels with ideologues and imposing controls on collaboration with foreign researchers, a scientists' group said yesterday.

Ihe*New York Times*, July 9, 2004 comments on the UCS report:

In a report released yesterday, a scientific advocacy group cited more instances of what it called the Bush administration's manipulation of science to fit its policy goals, including the questioning of nominees to scientific advisory panels about whether they had voted for President Bush.

Junking Science, a New York Times editorial, September 14:

The Bush administration has from time to time found it convenient to distort science to serve political ends. The result is a purposeful confusion of scientific protocols in which "sound science" becomes whatever the administration says it is. In the short run, this is a tactic to override basic environmental protections in favor of industry. In the long run, it undermines the authority of science itself.

James Wagoner, the president of Advocates for Youth was quoted in the *New York Times*, July 11, 2004 as saying about sex education, "For 20 years, it was about health and science, and now we have a political ideological approach."

The Bush administration is proposing that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) have final authority on

"scientific and technical evaluations - known as peer reviews - of all major government rules, plans, proposed regulations and pronouncements." (St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 1/11/04).

This enormous policy shift would also put the OMB in charge of how much information the public should be given regarding the "release of emergency declarations from the federal agencies responsible for public health, safety, and the environment."

The following article, "George W. Bush's War on Nature" warns of the danger of trusting ideology over science. "Republicans are pushing the most radical assault on the environment in modern times. But history warns of catastrophe for leaders who trust ideology over science." more

Physcian Felicia Stewart, co-director of the Center for Reproductive Health Research & Policyat the University of California, San Francisco, claims, theFood and Drug Administration's decision to refuse to make Plan B emergency contraceptive pills available over the counter manifests:

a pattern of disregard for science from the current administration. There is unprecedented support for over-the-counter access to emergency contraception among the medical community and the public. The medical evidence overwhelmingly shows Plan B is safe, effective and appropriate for OTC use by women of all ages.

Bush Aide Softened Greenhouse Gas Links to Global Warming,New York Times, June 8, 2005:

A White House official who once led the oil industry's fight against limits on greenhouse gases has repeatedly edited government climate reports in ways that play down links between such emissions and global warming, according to internal documents.

Republicans Accused of Witch-Hunt against Climate Change Scientists, UK Guardian, August 30, 2005

Science Ignored, Again, *New York Times*, October 14, 2006

Influence of Religious Right on Bush Administration Appointments

Scandal puts spotlight on Christian law school: Grads influential in Justice Dept., Boston Globe, April 8, 2007 -- Monica Goodling, who is at the center of the storm over the firing 

of US attorneys. Goodling, is a graduate of Pat Robertson's Regents University.

Bush Choice for Family-Planning Post Criticized, *Washington Post,* November 17, 2006

The Bush administration has appointed a new chief of family-planning programs at the Department of Health and Human Services who worked at a Christian pregnancy-counseling organization that regards the distribution of contraceptives as "demeaning to women."

Bush Nominates Anti-Regulatory Zealot to Head "Super-Powerful" Public Safety OfficeThinkProgress.org, July 6, 2006

New Bush policy adviser said he'd support jail for doctors who performed abortions, The Raw Story, June 16, 2006

A Disastrous Appointment, Salon, January 6, 2005

Political Screening for All Park Service Managers, PEER, October 13, 2005

Bush Cronyism Weakens Government Agencies, Bloomberg, September 30, 2005

Lobbying From Within, New York Times, June 17, 2005

Attorney General John Ashcroft was the first highly visible Bush nomination. Ashcroft, member of the Federalist Society and former member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, changed a custom followed by every President of the past fifty years, Republican and Democrat, when he stopped using the American Bar Association to review judicial nominations. Ashcroft's extreme religious beliefs and attacks on civil liberties are well known.

Morton Blackwell, a leader of the Religious Right, told U.S News and World Report that in the fall of 1999, a group of conservative leaders met with then-candidate Bush seeking a promise that if elected, he would appoint movement conservatives to his cabinet. Blackwell said, "He is keeping that promise" and "John Ashcroft is an example of that."

The most far-reaching impact will come from Bush's judicial nominations to the federal benches who will be serving lifetime appointments. He appointed two very controversial federal judges without Congressional approval, during Senate recess.

Bush has nominated W. David Hagerto the powerful Food and Drug Administration's panel on women's health policy. Hager believes women should turn to the Bible and Christ for healing and joined a Christian Medical Associate's drive calling on the FDA to reverse its approval of RU-486, the 'abortion pill.'

President Bush is allegedly considering J. Robert Brame III, board member of Reconstructionist group, American Vision, as a member of the National Labor Relations Board.

General William Boykin, appointed to a senior Defense Department post, has repeatedly explained that America's enemy was "a spiritual enemy ... called Satan." The enemy will only be defeated, according to General Boykin, "if we come against them in the name of Jesus."

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld just shrugs at Boykin's remarks. "We're a free people," Rumsfeld points out. Yes, we enjoy freedom of speech, but such inflammatory statements from the deputy undersecretary for intelligence -- a man in the highest uniform -- only serves to ignite the muslim world against us.

A Muslim rights group called for Boykin to be reassigned from his job, which includes evaluating and providing resources for the intelligence needs of military commanders. Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations said,

"Putting a man with such extremist views in a critical policy-making position sends entirely the wrong message to a Muslim world that is already skeptical about America's motives and intentions,"

Bush's hawks moving up -- or out? *Boston Globe*, March 23, 2005

Destroying the National Parks, New York Times, August 29, 2005: article about Bush's appointee, John Hoffman, to rewrite National Park guidelines.

Bush's Newest Crusader, TomPaine, December 1, 2005

Paul Bonicelli [has been appointed] to be deputy director of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which is in charge of all programs to promote democracy and good governance overseas.

Bonicelli is dean of academic affairs at tiny  Patrick Henry College in rural Virginia. The fundamentalist institution's motto is "For Christ and Liberty." It requires that all of its 300 students sign a 10-part "statement of faith" declaring, among other things, that they believe "Jesus Christ, born of a virgin, is God come in the flesh;" that "Jesus Christ literally rose bodily from the dead"; and that hell is a place where "all who die outside of Christ shall be confined in conscious torment for eternity."

Bush Nomination for Mine Overseer Decried,The NewStandard, July 25, 2006 -- see my post, A Culture of Life or Death? on Talk To Action, July 19, 2006

==

:{==

hmmn, more mainstream regligious right?

https://www.au.org/church-state/october-2008-church-state/featured/the-religious-right-top-ten

}:

The Religious Right Top Ten

Right-Wing Religious Forces Have Money, Influence And Power – And They’re Seeking More

October 2008

Featured

Editor’s Note: This is an expanded version of the article that appeared in the October 2008 print edition ofChurch & State magazine.

By Rob Boston

For the past two years, numerous media pundits have been all abuzz over the so-called “death” of the Religious Right. There is one problem, however: Someone forgot to tell the Religious Right.

A recent Americans United study of the finances and influence of the Religious Right shows a movement that is very much alive and kicking. Indeed, our research shows that the nation’s leading Religious Right organizations took in more than half a billion dollars over a recent 12-month period. Several of the organizations reported dramatic increases in their budgets; only a few showed a drop.

Financial information was not the only factor we took into account when compiling this list. We also attempted to determine the influence organizations have on the larger political scene. A group can have a modest budget and still cast a long shadow.

Many of these organizations are also well represented in Washington, D.C., and in state capitals. Their lobbyists troll the halls of Congress or state legislatures, in some cases actually helping draft legislation.

For budgetary data, Church & State relied on Internal Revenue Service Form 990, a document that most 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) tax-exempt groups are required to file. In most cases, the figures come from a period spanning the end of 2006 and the beginning of 2007.       

1. Christian Broadcasting Network

Founder and Chairman: The Rev. Pat Robertson

2006 Revenue: $246,986,289

Location: Virginia Beach, Va.

Web site: www.cbn.org

Overview: Television preacher M.G. “Pat” Robertson founded the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) in 1961, primarily as an instrument of Pentecostal preaching and evangelism. Over the years, the ministry took on a political cast and became a vehicle for the propagation of Robertson’s far-right views.

In 1988, Robertson ran unsuccessfully for president in the Republican primaries. He gathered millions of signatures from supporters during that campaign and later used them as the basis for an explicitly political group, the Christian Coalition. The Coalition did well during the 1990s but began to experience financial difficulties and leadership problems as the decade wound down. In 2001, Robertson withdrew from the organization completely. (It still limps along, based in South Carolina, with a budget of $1.4 million.)

Some today deride Robertson’s influence among conservative Christians, but no other Religious Right leader has the media and academic platform he has. During the presidential primary season, Mitt Romney and Rudolph Giuliani made personal appearances at Robertson’s Regent University and courted his support.

President George W. Bush has also labored to keep Robertson happy. At least 150 Regent graduates were placed in the Bush administration. Among them was Monica Goodling, who sparked a scandal by applying a “pro-God” political litmus test to non-political appointments at the Justice Department. Former Attorney General John Ashcroft is now a professor on the Regent campus, and a Robertson charity, Operation Blessing, has received $1.5 million in tax money under the Bush “faith-based” initiative.

CBN’s major project is production of the “700 Club,” Robertson’s talk/news program. The show, estimated to have about 800,000 viewers daily, is Robertson’s primary vehicle for spreading his political views, which include vociferous opposition to church-state separation, legal abortion and gay rights. Like the Fox News Channel, CBN gives right-wing members of Congress and authors friendly interviews and publicity.

Robertson frequently uses the program to espouse extremism. Over the years he has ranted that America should be a Christian nation, compared gay people to Nazis, blamed court decisions and civil liberties groups for the 9/11 attacks and asserted that God punishes communities that displease Him with hurricanes, tornados and possibly even meteors. One of Robertson’s most infamous observations is that Episcopalians, Methodists and Presbyterians reflect “the spirit of the Antichrist.”

Aside from Regent, Robertson’s empire includes the American Center for Law and Justice, a Religious Right legal group (see below); Operation Blessing, a charity that has been racked by scandal, and Regent University, a graduate-level school.

Now 78, Robertson has been increasingly shifting day-to-day responsibilities to his son, Gordon, who often appears alongside him on the “700 Club.” It has been reported that CBN has an endowment of at least $1 billion, meaning the ministry should be able to continue long after Robertson has retired.

Robertson Quote: “America wasn’t built on Hinduism. America wasn’t built on Islam. America wasn’t built on Buddhism. America and our democratic institutions were built on the Christian faith. There is no question about it.” (“700 Club,” July 30, 2007)

2. Focus on the Family

Founder and Chairman: James C. Dobson

2006 Revenue: $156,972,266

Location: Colorado Springs, Colo.

Web site: www.focusonthefamily.org

Overview: Child psychologist James C. Dobson formed Focus on the Family (FOF) in 1977. Dobson made his name by endorsing corporal punishment for children at a time when most experts on child rearing were moving away from it, views he outlined in his first book Dare to Discipline.

Dobson came to national prominence in the mid 1980s after serving on a presidential commission charged with studying the effects of pornography. He produced a number of other books, and FOF began publishing a variety of magazines. In 1988, FOF took control of a struggling Religious Right group in Washington, the Family Research Council (see below). Now technically separate, the groups today claim to be “spiritually one.”

Radio made Dobson famous. He began broadcasting in March of 1977, when his organization was based in Southern California. FOF experienced rapid growth and by 1981 had 34 employees. Within a few years, the staff had reached 1,200, and FOF branches were being opened overseas. The organization now has representation in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Indonesia, South Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia, Costa Rica, Singapore and Ireland.

Today, according to FOF’s Web site, the ministry’s broadcasts are heard on more than 5,000 stations in 155 countries, reaching 220 million people daily. The group’s budget (excluding its more political arm, FOF Action) is $142,279,843.

Many people view Dobson as a grandfatherly dispenser of homespun wisdom on how to raise kids and build strong marriages. In fact, his political views are quite extreme. He has attacked the concept of tolerance, asserting that it leads to the blurring of right and wrong. A fundamentalist raised in the strict Church of the Nazarene, Dobson embraces a literal interpretation of the Bible. He opposes legal abortion, often attacks public education, berates feminism – Dobson’s group has gone so far as to attack the Girl Scouts as a front for humanism and radical feminism – and sponsors programs to “convert” gays to heterosexuality. In recent years, FOF has taken the lead in opposing same-sex marriage in the states.

Dobson, 72, frequently issues personal endorsements of political candidates and in 2004 formed an overtly political arm called Focus on the Family Action. With a budget of nearly $14.7 million, FOF Action produces materials on political issues and sponsors “citizenship rallies” that, it says, “spotlight the positions of candidates for key offices.” This allows FOF Action to effectively endorse office seekers while maintaining the façade of nonpartisanship.

FOF is also affiliated with “family policy councils” that lobby legislatures in 35 states. FOF’s CitizenLink magazine frequently comments on national and state issues. The FOF Web site says of CitizenLink, “Our experts grapple with contemporary social issues and provide a biblical perspective on national and local news.”

Dobson Quote: “The separation of church and state is not in the Constitution. No, it’s not. That is not in the Constitution.... It’s not in the Bill of Rights. It’s not anywhere in a foundational document. The only place where the so-called ‘wall of separation’ was mentioned was in a letter written by Jefferson to a friend. That’s the only place. It has been picked up and made to be something it was never intended to be.” (“Larry King Live,” Nov. 22, 2006)

3. American Center for Law and Justice/Christian Advocates Serving Evangelism

Founders: Pat Robertson (ACLJ) and Jay Sekulow (CASE)

2007 Revenue: $42,658,159

Location:Virginia Beach, Va., Washington, D.C., and Atlanta, Ga.

Web site: www.aclj.org

Overview: Attorney Jay Sekulow, a Jewish convert to evangelical Christianity, came to national prominence in 1987, after successfully arguing a case before the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of Jews For Jesus, which protested a policy at Los Angeles International Airport banning all forms of solicitation.

Three years later, Sekulow, under the auspices of Christian Advocates Serving Evangelism (CASE), a group he founded, argued another case at the Supreme Court. This time he represented Bridget Mergens, a public high school student in Washington state who wanted to form a Bible club.

Sekulow’s successful litigation of the cases impressed TV preacher Pat Robertson, who hired Sekulow to run the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), an organization Robertson perceived as a fundamentalist Christian answer to the American Civil Liberties Union.

Robertson and Sekulow have used the ACLJ to chip away at the church-state wall, erode abortion rights, oppose gay rights and push other Religious Right social goals. Sekulow, 52, is also close to the Bush administration and helped vet Supreme Court nominees.

Sekulow has a considerable media presence. His daily radio show, “Jay Sekulow Live,” is heard on 850 stations, and his weekly television program “ACLJ This Week,” appears on several major Christian networks.

At first glance, the ACLJ’s funding appears to be slipping. In 2006, Church & State reported an annual budget of $14,485,514 for the group. The most recent 990 puts that figure at $10,433,987. That number is misleading, however. CASE still exists and operates in tandem with the ACLJ. CASE brought in $32.2 million last year, making the Sekulow operation’s income considerably higher than it appears to be.    

In recent years, the group has been dogged by allegations that Sekulow collects an enormous salary and that CASE has purchased several homes for him. This does not appear to have slowed down the group’s fundraising.

Sekulow Quote: “They have taken prayer out of schools…the Ten Commandments out of the courts…now they are trying to stop us from even mentioning God in public. This is an outrage.” (ACLJ fundraising letter, June 2006).

4. Alliance Defense Fund

President, CEO and General Counsel: Alan Sears

2007 Revenue: $31,674,124

Location: Scottsdale, Ariz.

Web site: www.alliancedefensefund.org

Overview: Founded in 1993 by a coalition of more than 30 Religious Right leaders, the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) has become the nation’s most prominent Religious Right legal group.

ADF founders, which included James Dobson, Donald Wildmon, the late Bill Bright and the late D. James Kennedy, originally conceived the organization as a funding pool that would finance legal cases brought by other groups that advanced the Religious Right’s view in the courts.

This strategy was employed for a few years, but the ADF now directly litigates cases itself and is headed by Alan Sears, formerly an anti-pornography crusader in the Edwin Meese-era Justice Department. The ADF is rigidly anti-gay and promotes its Christian fundamentalist vision in public schools and government institutions.

A flavor of Sears’ views can be found in the titles of the books he has coauthored: The Homosexual Agenda: Exposing the Principal Threat to Religious Freedom Today(2003) and The ACLU vs. America (2005). Sears, 52, is so concerned about the “homosexual agenda” that he once opined that SpongeBob SquarePants might be part of a gay plot to indoctrinate children.

The ADF has become one of the leading proponents of the “war on Christmas.” While it raises a lot of money fighting this “war,” actual litigation over the issue is rare. Other ADF cases seem to have been filed as ploys to raise cash. In 2005, the ADF sued a California public school after claiming that officials had ordered a teacher to stop using the Declaration of Independence in class. The claims were exposed as false, and the case quickly unraveled and was dropped – but not until the ADF had used the manufactured controversy to win media appearances and raise money.

The ADF has worked aggressively to lure churches into a right-wing political machine. This year, it announced plans to urge evangelical pastors to openly defy federal tax law by endorsing or opposing candidates from the pulpit. The drive sparked a backlash from a group of Ohio clergy and tax law experts, who asked the IRS to investigate ADF lawyers for urging churches to violate tax law.

Working with a network of pro bono attorneys nationwide, the ADF offers training for both established lawyers and law students. The latter are “equipped with a distinctly Christian worldview in every area of life, particularly in the areas of law and public policy,” boasts the ADF Web site.

Sears Quote: “Homosexual activists have noticed very astutely that the use of humor is a primary vehicle to help them reach their goal of cultural acceptance. Humor had been used by the entertainment industry in the past to stir up antiwar sentiment (the Marx brothers’ Duck Soup, M*A*S*H, Dr. Strangelove) and to promote feminism (Nine to Five) and cross-dressing (Some Like It Hot and Tootsie). Homosexual producers and directors readily admit that humor is their best weapon to soften up the American public for the future promotion of their agenda. If you can get people to laugh about something, you are then on the way to convincing them to accept the behavior as normal.” (The Homosexual Agenda: Exposing the Principal Threat to Religious Freedom Today, coauthored with Craig Osten, 2003).

5. American Family Association

Founder and Chairman: The Rev. Donald Wildmon

2007 Revenue: $22,547,087

Location: Tupelo, Miss.

Web site: www.afa.net

Overview: The American Family Association (AFA) was formed in 1977 under the name National Federal for Decency. The goal of its founder, the Rev. Donald Wildmon, was ambitious: clean up smut on television. Wildmon vowed to use boycotts to bring advertisers to their knees.

The original plan did not work out as well as Wildmon had hoped. Years went by, and risqué TV programs continued to proliferate. The rise of cable brought movies and shows featuring sexual themes right into American living rooms. Wildmon shifted gears, changing the name of the organization and adopting a host of Religious Right boilerplate issues, such as promoting religion in public schools, pushing the display of religious signs and symbols in government buildings and opposing gay rights.

Wildmon still promotes boycotts, but their effectiveness is disputed. A long-running Wildmon-sponsored boycott of the Disney Corporation didn’t affect the company’s bottom line. Wildmon claimed success for a boycott of Ford Motors, but auto analysts said the company’s drop in sales was due to other factors.

Most recently, Wildmon has called for a boycott of Hallmark, the greeting card company, which has been marketing a line of cards for same-sex marriages, and of fast-food giant McDonald’s, which Wildmon scored for joining the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce.

Wildmon was instrumental in forming the Arlington Group, a coalition of Religious Right organizations that meet regularly in a Washington, D.C., suburb to plot strategy. (Unlike the Coalition for National Policy – see below – the Arlington Group does not contain secular conservative organizations and sticks to “culture war” issues.)

Wildmon, 70, is a United Methodist minister. He does daily radio broadcasts over American Family Radio to more than 200 stations and distributes a daily round-up of right-wing news called OneNewsNow.

Wildmon Quote: “There is a deep-seated hatred of all things Christian in the entertainment industry. It is reflected in their products. They express this hatred by censoring all positive portrayals of Christianity. They think that the sooner they can drive this ‘God idea’ from society, the better society will be.” (American Family Association Journal, September 2005)

6. Family Research Council

President: Tony Perkins

2007 Revenue: $11,783,971

Location: Washington, D.C.

Web site: www.frc.org

Overview: The Family Research Council (FRC) is the Washington, D.C., beachhead of James Dobson’s Focus on the Family (FOF). Founded by Dobson in 1983, FRC is legally separate from FOF, but the two groups acknowledge they are “spiritually one.”

The FRC’s public profile was boosted dramatically with the decline of the Christian Coalition. FRC annually hosts a “Values Voter Summit,” an event attended by thousands that is nearly identical to the “Road to Victory” conferences the Christian Coalition used to sponsor. The group is well connected with the Republican leadership in the nation’s capital and often asks GOP lawmakers to speak at its events. In 2007, every major GOP presidential contender attended the Summit.

Tony Perkins, a former Louisiana state legislator, is the current president of the FRC. He took the job after an unsuccessful run for the U.S. Senate in 2002. During the run-up to the race, Perkins sparked controversy when he agreed to address the Council of Conservative Citizens, an outgrowth of an old racist group called the White Citizens Council. (In the primary, he received only 10 percent of the vote.) The Nation has reported that in 1996, Perkins, then managing a U.S. Senate campaign for Woody Jenkins, paid $82,000 for a mailing list owned by white supremacist David Duke.

Under Perkins’ tutelage, the FRC has become more aggressive in attacking same-sex marriage and gay rights generally. The FRC also opposes legal abortion, frequently assails public education and lambastes “judicial activism.”

And like other Religious Right groups, it sometimes ventures into unexpected territory. For example, Perkins has attacked Earth Day as “a calculated attack on the sanctity of human life,” and he joined with other anti-environmentalism religious activists to push the “We Get It” campaign to minimize concern about climate change.

The FRC now has a 501(c)(4) “action” arm and last month announced the formation of a political action committee to give money to candidates.

Perkins Quote: “We have broken our covenant with God, and if we want our courts to get it right, you and I must get it right by returning to covenant with Almighty God. Are you ready to return to a covenantal relationship with God where there is no other God over America but Jesus Christ?” (Speech to The Call prayer rally, Washington, D.C., Aug. 16, 2008)

7. Concerned Women for America

Founders: Tim and Beverly LaHaye

2007 Revenue: $10,640,810

Location: Washington, D.C.

Web site: www.cwfa.org

Overview: Founded to oppose feminism, Concerned Women for America (CWA) claims to be “the nation’s largest public policy women’s organization.” Its mission is to “bring Biblical principles into all levels of public policy.”

CWA was formed in 1979 by Tim LaHaye and his wife, Beverly. At the time, the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was gaining steam, and conservative activists sought a vehicle to oppose it that would – at least on the surface – be run by women. (Today, three out of five of the organization’s highest-paid positions are held by men.)

Rather than close shop after the ERA failed to pass, CWA moved on to other issues. In the 1980s, its leaders frequently attacked public schools for promoting “secular humanism.” The group also added opposition to abortion and gay rights to its plate. Today, its Web site lists “six core issues”: opposition to same-sex marriage, opposition to legal abortion, promoting vouchers and other forms of tax aid to private schools, opposition to pornography, “religious liberty” issues and national sovereignty. (This latter category includes opposition to the United Nations and demands for a crackdown on illegal immigration.)

Tim LaHaye, now 82, became famous in the 1990s after he coauthored several apocalyptic potboilers about the end of the world called the Left Behind series. The LaHayes live in semi-retirement and no longer run CWA on a daily basis. The group’s Web site lists Beverly LaHaye, 79, as “founder and chairman” of the group, and its current president is Wendy Wright.

Tim LaHaye Quote: “Although the left is determined to turn America into an amoral, socialist state similar to China or Cuba, it is not inevitable. We still have time to turn back the tide to traditional moral and spiritual values and to restore genuine individual freedom. But we must understand how the humanists have gained such mind control that 10 to 15 million of them can literally overpower a nation of more than 270 million people.” (Mind Siege: The Battle for Truth in the New Millennium – with David Noebel)

8. Jerry Falwell Ministries

Founder: The Rev. Jerry Falwell

2007 Revenue: $4,208,989

Location: Lynchburg, Va.

Web site: www.falwell.com

Overview: The Rev. Jerry Falwell is considered the godfather of the Religious Right, and the story of how the controversial televangelist was persuaded to lead the Moral Majority by a band of conservative strategists is well known.

Falwell died in May of 2007, leaving his fundamentalist Christian empire in the hands of his two sons, Jerry Jr. and Jonathan. Jerry Jr. serves as president of Liberty University, while Jonathan pastors Thomas Road Baptist Church, a congregation that claims over 24,000 members and oversees the television ministry.

Although the TV ministry is less prominent and takes in less money these days, other aspects of the Falwell empire are doing very well. USA Today reported in May that Thomas Road is growing and that Liberty University has topped 11,000 in enrollment. Reported the newspaper, “Liberty’s online distance learning program has reached 27,000 students, exceeding the elder Falwell’s goal of 25,000. Revenues grew from $147 million in 2006 to $232 million in 2007.”

Liberty’s budget now exceeds $203 million annually. Liberty Law School Dean Mat Staver operates Liberty Counsel, a Religious Right legal advocacy group, from Lynchburg. The creation of this university, and the waves of fundamentalist activists it unleashes on society every year, may turn out to be Falwell’s most lasting legacy.

Politically, the Falwell boys are on the same page as their father. Jonathan Falwell told Baptist Press in June that his father would have supported John McCain, in the belief that the Supreme Court might overturn legal abortion if another justice or two are replaced.

“We are so close…we are one vote away from a court that would be a strict constructionist court [and] not one that tries to legislate from the bench,” he said.

Jonathan Falwell Quote: “As our nation has turned away from (and even become hostile toward) the Ten Commandments and other biblical principles, we have seen our citizenry become progressively more dishonest and deceptive. Crime has risen, our schools have failed and our culture has become vulgar and crude. I believe it’s all related to the ouster of God from our schools, our media and our society….” (Newsmax.com, April 18, 2008)

9. Southern Baptist Convention/Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission

2007 Revenue: $205,716,834; ERLC Revenue: $3,394,327

Location: Nashville, Tenn., and Washington, D.C.

Web site: www.sbc.net

Overview: It may seem odd to list a religious denomination among the nation’s top Religious Right groups, but the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) has earned the distinction. The leadership of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination has been firmly aligned with the Religious Right for nearly three decades. SBC agencies often take public policy positions identical to that of other Religious Right organizations and joins with them in various coalition efforts and legal briefs at the Supreme Court.

The SBC’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission – a fancy name for a lobbying office – is headed by Richard Land, who openly meddles in Republican Party politics.

Last year, Land, who frequently visits the nation’s capital, spent an inordinate amount of time promoting the presidential candidacy of Fred Thompson. Land constantly sang Thompson’s praises in the media and publicly defended him on several occasions. Land gushed to one Washington newspaper, “Fred Thompson reminds me of a Southern-fried Reagan. To see Fred work a crowd must be what it was like to watch Rembrandt paint.”

Land does not even pretend to be non-partisan. In 1998, he told The New York Times that the Religious Right was tired of being taken for granted by the GOP. “The go-along, get-along strategy is dead,” Land said. “No more engagement. We want a wedding ring, we want a ceremony, we want a consummation of the marriage.”

During the 2008 primary season, Land compared U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton to Darth Vader and a witch (saying if she failed to be president, she would want to park her broom outside the Supreme Court for life). He has called George W. Bush “the greatest president of my lifetime,” and Land claims he recommended that John McCain put evangelical Christian Sarah Palin on the ticket.

Although McCain has not been a favorite of right-wing evangelicals, Land says the Arizona senator can be counted on.

“McCain knows if he wins this election, it is because evangelicals put him in the White House, and McCain is very loyal,” Land told an Oklahoma Baptist gathering in August.

Baptist churches are autonomous and somewhat difficult to corral, but SBC leaders dream of hammering them into a right-wing political machine. Land’s point man in Washington, Barrett Duke, sees the need to turn up the heat. He told the Christian Index in August of 2007, “There are 16 million Southern Baptists, and we should be able to shut down the congressional switchboard all by ourselves when there is a need to voice our convictions on a certain issue.”

In a 1997 sermon, Land insisted he does not favor theocracy – he just believes a majority should be able to impose its religious will on others.

“It’s our work to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ,” Land said. “But when we preach that Gospel, and God has blessed it and people’s hearts and minds have been changed, then they have the right as citizens to come forth in the public arena and say, ‘This is wrong, and we want it stopped.’ For example, abortion is the killing of innocent children, and we want laws to change it. When we convince a majority of Americans that we are right, that’s not called a theocracy, that’s called the democratic process.”

The SBC has taken some rather controversial positions over the years. It endorsed a boycott against the Disney empire, asserting that the company was promoting homosexuality. The boycott lasted eight years and ended with Disney altering none of its policies.

In 2005, attendees at the SBC’s annual meeting entertained a motion calling on all Southern Baptists to withdraw their children from public schools. The resolution was eventually watered down to denounce public schools for allegedly putting forth “offensive materials and programs” promoting homosexuality.

In 1998, the SBC approved a resolution calling on women to “graciously submit” to their husbands.

Land Quote: “We must confront those trying to keep us from the public square. [America] was founded by Christian men who believed Christians should use their faith to make public policy.” (Family Impact Summit, Tampa, Fla., September 2007)

10. Council for National Policy

Executive Director: Steve Baldwin

2007 Revenue: $1,680,914

Location: Washington, D.C.

Web site: None

Overview: The Council for National Policy (CNP) is a good example of how a small organization with a modest budget can have a big impact. Founded in 1981 by Tim LaHaye and other right-wing activists, the CNP undertakes just one task: convening meetings of the heads of various right-wing groups at posh hotels around the country to share ideas, plot strategy and vet GOP presidential hopefuls.

The CNP does not lobby or file lawsuits. Membership is by invitation only, and the group seeks no media attention. It doesn’t even have a Web site. As far as the CNP’s leadership is concerned, it would be better if you didn’t even know the group existed.

In 1999, the CNP attracted more attention than usual after it was reported that George W. Bush had addressed the group. Bush was pressed by reporters to give details about what went on during the closed-door meeting but refused.

In 2004, a New York Times reporter managed to attend a meeting of the group and even obtained its membership list. At that time, reported David Kirkpatrick, the CNP’s membership included Focus on the Family founder James C. Dobson, Paul Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation, Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association and Grover Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform.

The CNP’s most recent IRS filing sheds a little more light on the organization. Its address is listed as 1411 K St., N.W., Suite 601 in Washington. The form dryly reports that the CNP exists to provide “educational conferences and seminars for national leaders in the fields of business, government, religion and academia to explore national policy alternatives.” It adds that “weekly newsletters are distributed to members and a semi-annual journal is produced, consisting of speeches from meetings.”

The 2006 filing lists Steve Baldwin, a California Religious Right activist, as the group’s executive director. (Most recently, Baldwin – not to be confused with the actor of the same name – coauthored a book titled From Crayons to Condoms: The Ugly Truth About America’s Public Schools.)

T. Kenneth Cribb is president of the CNP board, while Heritage Foundation executive Becky Norton Dunlop serves as vice president and long-time right-wing activist Paul Weyrich acts as secretary/treasurer.

The CNP’s Board of Directors consists of direct mail guru Richard Viguerie; Family Research Council President Tony Perkins; anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist; Richard P. Bott Sr., president of Bott Radio Network; Elsa Prince Broekhuizen, a wealthy Michigan financier of right-wing causes; Stuart W. Epperson, chairman of Salem Radio; Robert Fischer; Kevin L. Gentry; J. Keet Lewis; Christopher Long; Eugene Meyer; Ken Raasch; Adam B. Ross and Stacy W. Taylor.

Others who have been affiliated with the CNP include TV preacher Pat Robertson, the late Jerry Falwell, longtime anti-feminist crusader Phyllis Schlafly, Iran-Contra figure turned right-wing talk radio host Oliver North, the late U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), wealthy Cali­fornia savings-and-loan heir Howard Ahmanson, former House Majority Leader Dick Army (R-Texas), former Attorney General John Ashcroft and Tommy Thompson, former secretary of the U.S. Depart­ment of Health and Human Services.

GOP presidential candidate John McCain addressed a New Orleans CNP gathering in March, where he stressed his opposition to legal abortion and same-sex marriage. News of Sarah Palin’s selection as McCain’s running mate reportedly was joyously received by the group at its meeting in Minneapolis just before the Republican National Convention.

Reflecting on the GOP ticket, Baldwin said members of his group are not crazy about McCain but will back him.

“The vast majority of conservatives are lining up behind him, despite their concerns, because Obama scares the daylights out of us,” Baldwin said.

• • •

There are plenty of other Religious Right groups, of course. The field is crowded with lesser lights. Former FRC operative Gary Bauer runs American Values, a group he describes as “committed to uniting the American people around the vision of our Founding Fathers.” In reality, it’s just a vehicle for Bauer to bash gay people, Muslims, legal abortion and church-state separation.

In California, the Rev. Lou Sheldon heads the Traditional Values Coalition, which claims to work with 40,000 churches nationwide, spreading mostly anti-gay propaganda. The group has a lobbying arm in Washington, headed by Sheldon’s daughter Andrea.          From Lufkin, Texas, Falwell acolyte the Rev. Rick Scarborough runs Vision America, a group with a modest budget struggling to find a niche for itself. In Aledo, Texas, David Barton peddles “Christian nation” propaganda from his WallBuilders organization.

Some organizations specialize. Seattle is home to the Discovery Institute, a group that spends most of its time promoting “intelligent design” creationism. The group’s budget was $4.1 million last year.

Other groups have small budgets but exercise great ideological influence. The Vallecito, Calif.-based Chalcedon Foundation had a budget of only $711,390 last year but remains influential. The “Christian Reconstructionist” writings of its founder, the late Rousas John Rushdoony, are cited by many Religious Right leaders as foundational to the Religious Right worldview that secular government is evil and Christian fundamentalism must reign supreme. (Gary DeMar’s Powder Springs, Ga.-based American Vision spreads the Reconstructionist viewpoint as well.)

All of this raises the question of how powerful these groups and the constituency they represent are. An answer to that is perhaps found in recent political developments. Republican presidential hopeful John McCain felt the need to placate the Religious Right with an evangelical Christian running mate who shares conservative views on social issues.

The New York Times reported that McCain wanted to put U.S. Sen. Joseph Liberman (I-Conn.) on the ticket but had to back down after his campaign received a series of outraged calls from Religious Right leaders. Scrambling, McCain latched onto Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, even though she had yet to be fully vetted by his staff.

And, despite all of the talk in the media about a new breed of evangelicals who are eager to move beyond culture war issues and take on global warming and the needs of the poor, polls don’t show the white evangelical vote up for grabs. They are backing McCain in numbers comparable to George W. Bush in 2004.

“The Religious Right is not dead,” said Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United. “AU’s new survey of its funding and power should help dispel the myth that the Religious Right is on the ropes. Forces determined to merge government with their narrow version of religion are alive and kicking, and it behooves us all to understand their goals and tactics.”

:{==

}:

Hustle's most revelatory chapter focuses on black churches. And it's illuminating precisely for how Spence connects the content of "prosperity gospel," a variant of evangelical Christianity, to the political imaginations of churchgoers. Rarely do academics—or journalists for that matter—look at what is presented in churches as political content, outside of how churchgoers impact elections. (For example, the emergence of the Christian right as a voting block in the 1970s.) Spence argues that what is said in church from the pulpit represents a neoliberalization of the black church.

The chapter opens with a brief discussion of two New York Times articles from the Detroit area following the 2008 economic crash that hit the automotive industry and the region hard. One, "Detroit Churches Pray for 'God's Bailout,'" was a report from the Greater Grace Temple, one of Detroit's many churches that, at the time, held special services to help its congregations through a difficult time. Spence notes that in the photo that ran with the article, three white luxury SUVs shared the stage with the church's leader, Bishop Charles H. Ellis III. The article reported that the vehicles were on loan from local dealerships and that Bishop Ellis, "urged worshipers to combat the region's woes by mixing hope with faith in God." Spence sees the vehicles as having two symbolic values. For those who worked in the automotive industry, it was a symbol of what they depended on to survive. For those who didn't work making automobiles, the SUVs were status symbols, reminders of what they could have if they would only hustle harder.

The following year, another Times reporter visited Pontiac, about 30 miles outside Detroit, to write about the automotive industry's role in creating a black middle class in that area, and how the industry's collapse was decimating those families. Titled "GM, Detroit, and the Fall of the Black Middle Class," the article told its story through a profile of Marvin Powell, a longtime autoworker, one of the 600 who still worked making trucks at General Motors' Pontiac Assembly Center. Powell worked the only shift the plant maintained after getting rid of nearly two-thirds of its workforce through buyouts, early retirement, and layoffs.

Prosperity gospel frames the problem of poor people as a problem of those who do not improve their human capital, not as something wrong with the system in which they must live.

During the reporting of the story, Powell learned that GM was planning on shutting down all of its factories for 10 weeks, which would leave him without his $900-per-week paycheck for that period. Powell said he might use the freed-up time to try and become a chef and start a catering company, adding that he had never intended to be a "GM lifer."

He attributed his positive outlook in trying circumstances to being a Greater Grace congregant, where he led a Sunday school class and was one of the church's armor bearers, an honorary position. His leadership role in Greater Grace had made him an esteemed figure at the auto plant, and his co-workers had encouraged him to run for a union leadership role. He demurred from that, but they sought him out for advice, nevertheless. What was he going to do when the plant closed? Powell told them that he couldn't control the plant's closing, so he didn't worry about it. He also said, "I tell them that God provides for his own, and I am one of his own."

That leapt out at Spence. Born and raised in Detroit as the son of a Ford autoworker, he was struck by Powell's resilience in the face of so much economic upheaval. But he was also taken aback by the way Powell conceptualized the situation. The autoworker didn't consider a union leadership position as providing him with an opportunity to fight for his and his co-workers' jobs. Instead, as Spence writes, "in Powell's opinion those who choose God will be saved from the worst of the economic crisis while those who don't, won't." Spence identifies this idea as part of the message spread by prosperity gospel, a doctrine that started in white churches in the 1950s and sprang to national attention through 1980s televangelism. It has taken strong root in black megachurches over the past two decades. Spence visited a black church in Baltimore County led by a charismatic prosperity gospel preacher who argued that everything associated with the economic crisis—debt, poverty, unemployment—was caused by a "poverty mindset." The minister reasoned that this mindset causes people to spend their money instead of saving it, causes "them to lay around when they should be hustling." And this mindset was the direct result of somebody having a bad relationship with God.

Spence writes: "Note the logic here. People are materially poor because they don't think right. Their inability to think right makes it impossible to receive God's blessings"—which can come in the form of spiritual or material reward. And the only way to right that bad personal relationship with God is for a person to change how he or she thinks—to improve their human capital through spiritual pursuits. These spiritual pursuits, it should be noted, often take the form of sermons and books that congregants can buy and workshops they can pay to attend, in addition to supporting the church by tithing.

For Spence, prosperity gospel, through prolific and celebrated pastors such as Creflo Dollar, founder of the mammoth World Changers Church International in Georgia, transforms "the Christian Bible into an economic self-help guide people can use to develop their human capital." It's a way to make questions about who lives comfortably and who lives in poverty a matter of which one spiritually deserves to do so. This notion, Spence writes, represents a neoliberalization of the black church—not only because the prosperity gospel frames the problem of poor people as a problem of those who do not improve their human capital (not as something wrong with the system in which they must live), but also in how the increasingly multi-millionaire leaders of black megachurches compete for their congregants' tithes and spiritual consumerism. Such a practice not only creates vast economic disparities between ministers and congregants—Spence notes an AtlantaBlackstar.com news website article that named eight black preachers who make more than 200 times what their churchgoers do—but it shapes parishioners' political imagination.

Fighting poverty, debt, and whatever economic adversity a congregant faces thus becomes only a spiritual matter for the individual, not the collective concern of a political organization. And getting people to see the political content in a church service is something Spence hopes readers will take away from the book. "What I want is for people to read it and see their world through new eyes," he says, adding that he hopes that by pointing out how prosperity gospel reproduces neoliberalism's disparities, readers might begin to seek other solutions to dealing with it.

:{==

}:

note rw wacko evangelical connection is israel: eg

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/apocalypse/readings/forcing.html

Forcing the end:

In the spring of 1989, a Pentecostal preacher named Clyde Lott was thumbing through the Bible, looking up all the references to cows. This wasn't so odd, given that Lott is one of the leading cattle breeders in the Southeast. At the time, he specialized in raising show cattle for youngsters involved in 4-H clubs and the Future Farmers of America. His office, in Canton, Mississippi, contains many ribbons, plaques, and trophies, including awards for two national championships in judging and showmanship. As it happens, the Old Testament is full of references to cows and cattle; it is, after all, a history of an agricultural people. When Lott turned to Numbers 19, he read one of the many conversations that God had with Moses and his brother Aaron as they led the Jews through the desert toward the Promised Land."Speak unto the children of Israel," the Lord commanded, "that they bring thee a red heifer without spot, wherein is no blemish, and upon which never came a yoke." The cow will be given to a priest to slay, the Lord continued, and burned on a pyre of cedar, hyssop, and a strand of scarlet thread. Then the ashes of the heifer will be mixed with water and used to purify those who have been exposed to death. Anyone who fails to be purified "shall be cut off from among the congregation, because he hath defiled the sanctuary of the Lord."

This is one of the most mysterious injunctions in the Bible. Even King Solomon, who was said to understand the meaning of all things, could not explain the reason for the red heifer. Clyde Lott didn't understand it, either. He also wondered where the children of Israel could have obtained a red cow. From his own reading, he had concluded that the Old Testament herd was descended from the cattle that Jacob, the son of Isaac, had received in wages from his uncle Laban. Those animals--as described in the King James Bible--were speckled, spotted, and brown. "Your speckled and spotted cattle basically are recognized as a purebred cow, like a holstein," Lott says. So where did the spotless red heifer come from? Genetically, it didn't add up. And yet the Lord had specified that this was the only way for the Israelites to cleanse themselves and participate in the worship of God. "I didn't realize then that God always sent to Israel, at the time she needed it, the man with the red heifer."...

http://grist.org/article/scherer-:{christian:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:/

... These politicians include some of the most powerful figures in the U.S. government, as well as key environmental decision makers: Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), Senate Majority Whip Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Senate Republican Conference Chair Rick Santorum (R-Penn.), Senate Republican Policy Chair Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, and quite possibly President Bush....

And the Cow Jumped Over the Moon

So weird have the attempts to hasten the End Time become that a group of ultra-Christian Texas ranchers recently helped fundamentalist Israeli Jews breed a pure red heifer, a genetically rare beast that must be sacrificed to fulfill an apocalyptic prophecy found in the biblical Book of Numbers. (The beast will be ready for sacrifice by 2005, according to *The National Review*.)....

:{

}:

===

:{

}:

Another longtime GOP ally, Leith Anderson, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, is also disturbed by the party’s shift toward science denial. Anderson, who is Tim Pawlenty’s pastor and worked with the former Minnesota governor on his state climate-change initiatives, in 2006 joined with other prominent evangelicals in sending a letter to President George W. Bush arguing that no legitimate scientific debate remained on the merits of climate science and that evangelicals had a moral obligation to solve a problem that threatens the world’s most vulnerable people.

:{

}:

:{

}: