If you have not yet had a chance to hear Jeff Sharlet  discuss his book The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, you can listen to Francesca Rheannon's interview on her weekly show, Writer's Voice.

The program airs on August 22nd  (that's a Friday) at 5:00 pm on WMUA 91.1 FM at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and several other stations (including WNNZ- 640 AM in Westfield, MA at 3pm on August 31st.)

If you miss the show, it is also archived and podcast.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State opposes "faith-based" initiatives because we believe that pouring millions of taxpayer dollars into the coffers of religious groups is unconstitutional.

But there are other reasons to be wary of the approach. It may not work, for example.

Rick Warren has in the past used his position as pastor to endorse George Bush for president.  He now claims to be neutral and does not believe in endorsing candidates.

Hullabaloo: Digby follows-up on my post
 on Ray Flynn.  She says:  

"...some of the progressive members of the Religion Industrial Complex are really social conservatives in liberal clothing... [and]... that the deal they are proposing is to give up women's reproductive freedom in exchange for votes."

Street Prophets: Pastordan answers a volley of criticism and adds:

And I'm not convinced that a movement that understands "fundamental change" to mean "Democrats welcoming social conservatives by compromising on their issues" is really working toward the same ends that I am.

Progressive Revival: Ed Kilgore is skeptical that any change in Obama's position on abortion will attract white evangelicals -- particularly younger white evangelicals -- to the Democratic Party.

Operation Rescue and related antiabortion groups plan to do what they can to disrupt the Democratic National Convention in Denver.

Daily Kos: I do a version of my Ray Flynn post to ask the question, "Can Religious Right Leaders be Described as Progressive?"

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Below is a timely repost from last summer. My column will resume next week.

Last week I discussed the Vatican's recent decisions that will take the Catholic Church in entirely different direction from the tolerant spirit of Vatican II.  The objective observer must ask what is the ultimate goal?

I'll hazard a guess: the neo-orthodox Catholic version of Christian unity.

There has been quite a flap going on ever since pastordan  took the new blog site Progressive Revival to task about a few things over at Street Prophets.

The new blog, a project of BeliefNet, is owned by conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch of Fox News fame. The site says of itself that although coming from different traditions, the writers "all are dedicated to the revival of religious progressivism and its influence in American politics." Pastordan says, among other things, that it is far more centrist than it is progressive. But whatever else the site may be, it also now home to a man who as a nominal Democrat, has in recent years headed organizations of the religious right and supported George W. Bush over Al Gore in 2000.  Among the featured writers is none other than Ray Flynn, best known as the former mayor of Boston and U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican under president Clinton.  But if you did not know about Flynn's involvements with the Religious Right, that is just the way he wants it. He leaves that part of his history out of his long Progressive Revival personal bio.  On the flip is some of what Flynn would rather you not know.

California's Proposition 8 draws big-buck supporters, while Wildmon declares that outcome of 'culture wars' depends on turning back gay marriage

On July 31, CNS reported that Donald Wildmon's American Family Association is donating half-a-million dollars to ProjectMarriage.com, the organization sponsoring Proposition 8, the anti-same-sex marriage initiative on the California's November  ballot. An American Family Association spokesperson said that the $500,000 comes from "years of savings."

Two different -- yet ultimately linked - projects relating to the "homosexual agenda" are agitating the folks at the Tupelo, Mississippi-based headquarters of Donald Wildmon's American Family Association (AFA) these days. One is your basic AFA-sponsored boycott; the other, according to Wildmon, will determine the final outcome of America's "culture wars."

Wildmon is simultaneously leading an effort to boycott the fast food giant McDonald's, and marshaling the troops in support of Proposition 8, a California ballot initiative that would reverse the state's Supreme Court recent decision in support of gay marriage.

Ethics Daily: Religious right leader Richard Land "has repeatedly offered false claims about the environmental devastation of oil wells in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina."

Street Prophets: Pastordan wonders why the ostensibly liberal group Faith in Public Life is sponsoring an event with McCain and Obama at the church of religious rightist Rick Warren?

Institute on Relgion and Democracy is publically confused. IRD claims that the legal right for same sex couples to marry in CA "can cause a tension between the policies of the State and the policies of the churches."  IRD doesn't get that just because sex couples have the right to be married, doesn't mean that churches are required to perform the service. Duh. Meanwhile, the Religious Institute for Sexual Morality, Justice and Healing is seeking 1,000 clergy to sign onto an Open Letter to Religious Leaders in Support of Marriage Equality.

Truthdig: A parting gift from Bush to the Religious Right.

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The Religious Right is once again flexing its political muscle.

It's odd. Some media analysts say this movement is dead or dying - but the leadership of the Religious Right apparently hasn't gotten the word yet.

In 2006 the British SPCK (Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, founded 1698) sold off its chain of Christian bookshops to a Texas-based Orthodox Christian organisation called St Stephen the Great Charitable Trust. While traditionally the SPCK bookshops have been known for their wide range of intellectually-serious theology and Biblical scholarship, the new owners had a decidedly more right-wing agenda, which it quickly made clear by instructing shop managers that copies of the Koran should not be stocked. At the time, the SSG website featured warnings about "the explosion of Islam" in England and against Catholicism, declaring the Orthodox Church to be the sole path to salvation.

Over the past two years there have been increasing claims of mismanagement, and in June a bookshop manager who had been made redundant committed suicide. The SSG is now attempting to go into liquidation - and a British blogger who has been consistently critical of the organisation over a long period has just received an all-American SLAPP, resulting in posts being taken down to avoid the possibility of a libel action.

The Catholic Right, Part Sixty-five
What does McCain's use of Catholic Right icon Deal Hudson as a campaign advisor and surrogate tell us about the presumptive GOP nominee's view of American Catholics?  Simple: just like President George W. Bush, his Catholic constituency is not the rank and file faithful, but a small reactionary faction in the hierarchy here and in the Vatican.

This is significant for many reasons, not the least is that it signals a disregard for one of American Catholicism's most recent painful episodes.

Every year, we have asked our friend Jerry Sloan to tell us once again, the story of his memorable and heartening battle with the late Jerry Falwell -- and the victory that made national news -- not so long ago, and not so far away, in Sacramento. -- FC

Although it happened over 20 years ago almost everywhere I go people still ask me to tell them about my confrontation and lawsuit with my former Baptist Bible College schoolmate, Jerry Falwell.

Falwell, in the height of his Moral Majority days, was in San Francisco the week prior to the 1984 Democratic National Convention, to harass the Democrats and the fairies of San Francisco.

On Friday, July 13, he flew up to Sacramento to appear on a local live morning show, "Look Who's Talking." The producer, knew I had gone to Baptist Bible College with Falwell invited me to be in the audience and gave me a bunch of tickets for my friends.

In a news release dated July 23, 2008, Americans United for Separation of Church and State announced that it has asked the Department of Defense (DoD) to investigate the "Free Day Away" program at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri.

In its letter to acting DoD Inspector General Gordon Heddell, Americans United (AU) notes a previous investigation of "Free Day Away," conducted by the Fort Leonard Wood Inspector General. That Inspector General determined that this clearly coercive and, according to reports from numerous soldiers, unavoidable religious program was voluntary and did not violate the rights of the soldiers. Obviously, as AU points out in its letter, the base Inspector General investigating a program that is not only condoned, but promoted, by the same base commander he reports to raises objectivity concerns, which is why AU is asking for an investigation by the presumably more objective DoD Inspector General.

In light of Rick Warren's upcoming conversations with John McCain and Barack Obama at his Saddleback Church, and Pastordan's discussion over at Street Prophets, this post from earlier this year, is once again, timely. -- FC

The purpose driven man and his 'PEACE' mission marches forward with a goatee and Hawaiian shirt

In two recent Talk2Action posts, Richard Bartholomew and Fred Clarkson talk about Rick Warren, the popular and passionate pastor of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., widely considered one of the more important mega-churches in the country.

While Bartholomew cites a speech Warren gave in Uganda in which he basically claimed that homosexulaity is not a human right, Clarkson raised important questions about so-called moderate evangelicals in general and Warren in particular.  

In December 2006, Warren hosted both Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. Sam Brownback at his annual AIDS conference. "Right wing, left wing. I'm for the whole bird," said Warren.

"You have to have two wings to fly. When I thought of all the men I knew in Congress and the Senate, and believe me there were more who wanted to come [to the conference], I thought of Sen. Obama and Sen. Brownback for three specific reasons," Warren said, citing "their integrity, their civility even when they disagree and their openness to learning and listening."

Warren appears to be close with U2's Bono, eschews being labeled part of the Christian Right, and is seen by some as a man for all seasons; perhaps even the 21st century's Billy Graham.

In March 2006, I wrote a lengthy piece about the Hawaiian short-wearing pastor who has sold millions of books and has grand plans for Africa.

Sinclair Lewis wrote the novel, IT CAN'T HAPPEN HERE.  The classic was a story based on the life of Elizabeth Dilling.  Ms. Dilling was one of the most colorful, outspoken and symbolic leaders of a movement that left the groundwork for the modern religious right.  When Roy Carlson wrote his award-winning book, UNDER COVER, exposing the secretive effort in the nation to undermind the war effort against Nazi Germany, there was one woman who occupied much of the print.  The woman was Elizabeth Dilling.  Just about every investigation into Nazi connections had a link to Ms. Dilling, who supplied the recruits with her own books or THE PROTOCOLS OF ZION.  THE PROTOCOLS is a play from Russia claiming to be accurate history naming a secret order of Jews who have run the world for the past few centuries.  Ms. Dilling was a big player in the anti-Semitic effort in America and still is heralded as an expert on Jewish religion and power plays by the right.

J-Street:  Who is Pastor John Hagee?

New York Times: Lieberman Sings Hagee's Praises. (Here is the full text.)

TFN Insider: Religious Right Takes Aim at Kansas State Board of Education.

American Fundamentalists:  Joel Pelleteir's painting is on display in Belgium.

Daily Kos:  The blogosphere is abuzz in response to a bizarre comic book in which an Oklahoma County Commissioner depicts his public work as a battle against Satan.

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The Washington Times:  Iowa Christian Alliance (formerly the Christian Coalition) has taken over the executive committee of the Iowa GOP.

Ethics Daily: Al Mohler is "alarmed" about Obama.

The Washington Post:  Lieberman can't shake the controversy over Hagee. But he is the headliner tonight at Hagee's Christians United for Israel conference in Washington, DC.

KTRE - TV in Luskin, Texas Religious right leader Rick Scarborough says he and former Speaker of the House Tom DeLay agree:  "Every time I walk into a polling booth I'm mixing church and state because I am the church and I am the state. Whenever I drive down the highway I'm mixing church and driving. This morning earlier, you can thank God for this, I mixed church and showering but I can't separate that part of me."

Wall of Separation:  When Pat Robertson says something outrageous, be sure to blame Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the Associated Press!

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A few months ago, Dogemperor and some others noted the links between the Walid Shoebat Foundation and Top Executive Media, a former greetings-card company run by Shoebat's agent, Keith Davies. Shoebat responded to this on his website:

...the media wants you to focus more on our finances by claiming that we are not a charitable organization. In fact F.F.M.U (Foundation For Middle East Understanding) was set up as a 501C3 to receive donations, yet the media opts to include only the business aspect of our firm (Top Executive Media) that deals with our book sales and speaking fees. It is not a crime to collect pay for speaking fees and book sales. Voluntary activism in our opinion is less effective.

The FFMU - actually the "Forum for Middle East Understanding" - is a low-profile outfit based in Philadelphia, and it is linked to a couple of other organisations. One of these has some well-known right-wing activists on board, including Jack Wheeler and Foster Friess.

McCain receives unenthusiastic endorsement from conservative Christian evangelical leaders  

Over the course of the past few months, Senator John McCain, the Republican Party's presumptive presidential nominee, accepted and then rejected the endorsements of the controversial pastors Rod Parsley and John Hagee, after media reports about Parsley's vitriol toward Islam and Hagee's views that the Holocaust was part of God's biblical plan for the Jews to move to Israel.

He also met with the venerated Reverend Billy Graham and his son Franklin at the family's North Carolina retreat, courted conservative Catholic leaders, and got together with a bunch of religious right leaders in Ohio.

In early July, McCain -- who eight years ago had called the Rev. Jerry Falwell and the Rev. Pat Robertson "agents of intolerance" -- finally received the endorsement of a batch of national conservative religious leaders.

And the endorsement of Focus on the Family's Dr. James Dobson may be coming down the pike.

South Jerusalem: Religion v. Secularism? Let's Skip This Fight. (My two cents on the same subject.)

Jewish Telegraph Agency:  Christians United for Israel conference opens in Washington, DC.

The Rev. Katherine Hancock Ragsdale: Explains the sectors of the American right to Europeans.

New York Times:  Rick Warren to interview McCain and Obama at his California megachurch on August 16th.

Netroots Nation:  Pittsburgh, Aug. 13-16, 2009. Lowest rate registration now open.

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It was not so long ago, that John Hagee was at the pinnacle of his power.  Last year Sen. Joe Lieberman publicly compared him to Moses at the annual  conference of his Christians United for Israel (CUFI); and John McCain was in the middle of his long courtship of Hagee's support for his presidential campaign. McCain eventually secured Hagee's endorsement, but it only took a few months for the the relationship to end in a mutual renunciation that sent shock waves throughout American public life.

Since then, bloggers, reporters and interest groups have been taking a closer look at the world according to Hagee. And as Bruce Wilson (whose video showing that Hagee says God sent Hitler to drive the Jews to Israel, sparking McCain's disavowal of Hagee) among others have shown, Hagee's fanatical views and demagoguery have been out in the open in his books and sermons for all to see for a long time.  It has too often been the case, that leaders of the Religious Right have not received the scrutiny they merit over the course of their careers. But times have changed a bit.  There are now more reporters, bloggers and interest groups who are paying attention than ever before.  And the entire Hagee episode is an excellent case example that merits more detailed study.

But for today, let's just consider Hagee's hasty retreat from the outer limits of the rhetoric of apocalyptic end times warfare (backed up by his own lobbying aparatus and a significant national constituency) --  to his scramble to recover the mainsream legitimacy that he and his organization have so stunningly lost in recent months.

Daily Kos:  Darksyde reviews The Devil in Dover.

TFN Insider:  Texas State Board of Education Throws School Districts Under the Bus.

Dallas Morning News: "Democrats taking on the religious right via blogs." (Pastordan comments.)

Arizona Republic: Three movement conservatives assess the state of the movement -- including the role of the Religious Right.

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The New York Jewish Week has a report on the financial scandals currently enveloping Ehud Olmert, and noting the significant discrepancy in the amount of money which US evangelist Mike Evans is now claiming that he raised for for Olmert's New Jerusalem Foundation in 2002, when the two of them travelled around evangelical churches in the American South:

In Irving, a suburb of Dallas, The Jerusalem Post reported, Rev. Evans exulted that the evening raised some $400,000. The Dallas Jewish Week, citing Rev. Evans and Raviv, reported a take of at least $326,000. Anyone donating $350 or more received a copy of Rev. Evans' book, "Jerusalem Betrayed," the Dallas weekly noted. In it, Rev. Evans predicts an imminent End Time that will see a war in Israel so terrible that blood "will flow down the Jordan River Valley, down the length of the Dead Sea, and thence . . . the entire length of the Negev to Eilat."

Today, Rev. Evans claims to have raised only $65,000 for the foundation in 2002, notwithstanding his statements to the press at the time. In a brief e-mail exchange via his secretary, Rev. Evans ignored a question asking if he received a share of the money raised for his work on the tour and, if so, how much. He adamantly denied that contributions were collected in cash.

But the senior staff member of Mount Paran Church North wrote in an e-mail to The Jewish Week: "Mike Evans cannot support his claims as regarding checks only at this venue, nor his total [$65,000] estimate for the tour -- unless he received nothing at the other locations, which is very, very doubtful!"

I noticed this discrepancy here.

From a press release:

Former PLO terrorist, Walid Shoebat will join Counter-Terrorism experts from Israel in a Changing World Symposium: Preparing Law Enforcement Executives for the Future, a homeland security conference, being held in Austin, Texas at the Renaissance Austin Hotel (9721 Arboretum Boulevard) on July 21-22, 2008. Attending will be some 300 senior law enforcement officials from across Texas...Over the past decade, Shoebat has been on a mission of peace, traveling the country educating students, the public and law enforcement agencies on the mind set and dangers of Fundamentalist Islam.

The conference is being co-sponsored by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott and is organised by JINSA, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs.

Shoebat's "message of peace", of course, is anything but: as I noted in June, Shoebat's website also includes a video produced by his son Theodore that expresses absolute hatred of Islam and science (Charles Darwin, naturally), and his belief that militarized Christianity is the answer to both. The Jerusalem Post, among others, has also raised questions about Shoebat's supposed past.

The Catholic Right, Part Sixty-four
On July 16, 2008 Catholics United sent the McCain campaign a a letter calling on the Arizona senator to remove the controversial Catholic Right mover and shaker Deal Hudson from the Catholics for McCain National Steering Committee. Hudson, a Catholic Right activist who was forced to resign from a similar position in President Bush's 2004 presidential campaign when The National Catholic Reporter broke a story about sexual harassment on Hudson's part while teaching at Fordham University.

So, who would be brazen enough to defend such a man from a similar firing?  The Catholic League's Bill Donohue, of course.

Introduction: One-time evangelist, pastor and now activist, Rick Scarborough, has a vision for what he expects of the nation.  He is setting out to change the nation because of an experience he had in a school his daughter attended.  Rick went to see for himself as a woman explained to students how to put on a condom.  Scarborough was so enraged by what he saw that he was determined to mobilize his congregation, First Baptist of Pearland, Texas, to change the course of the school and the region.  Rick now travels around the nation telling this story with the zeal he once held in his heart as an evangelist. He is certainly the key preacher with the deaths of Jerry Falwell and James Kennedy.  Falwell's son has mellowed apparently, and his journal is now more of an alumni sheet for Liberty U.  With Hagee and Parsley's link to Pentecostal extremes, this leaves Rick in place to be the pastor to the religious right. Historically, pastors have led the movement and Rick seems to fit the profile and is set to leave a legacy of activism.

We are pleased to welcome Daniel Dickson-LaPrade as a guest front pager. He is an adjunct technical writing instructor with the University of Oklahoma, from which he earned a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and a Masters in English. His story of the rout of religious right Intelligent Design proponent William Dembski is an enouraging model for action. It is slightly adapted from the web site of the National Center for Science Education. -- FC

I first heard that William Dembski was going to visit the University of Oklahoma quite by accident from one of my technical writing students. I was astonished. People still pay the honoraria of "intelligent design" (ID) advocates even after Kitzmiller v Dover? Apparently they do, and after two phone calls I found out who was doing the paying: Trinity Baptist Church. On a "Note from the Elders" on its website, I read that they viewed the expense as a "gospel investment" -- part of their attempt "to penetrate the university campus with the gospel," especially the science departments. "In case you are wondering, these departments and their teachings are not friends of Christianity."

I quickly contacted every faculty member in our zoology and botany/microbiology departments with news of Dembski's upcoming visit on September 17, 2007. Several of these faculty members -- many of them affiliated with the group Oklahomans for Excellence in Science Education -- worked with me to put together a game plan.

Chuck Freeman of KOOP-FM in Austin, Texas interviews me Thursday, July 17th, from 3:30 - 4pm, Eastern time (2:30 Central). The broadcast is also web-streamed (click on the "listen now" link on the top left of the home page) and will be available later as a podcast.

Texas Freedom Network -- has a brand new blog, where you can find out which panels TFN's Ryan Valentine will be speaking on at Netroots Nation.

Church & State: United Methodist Church says religious right's "intelligent design" is not science.

The Public Eye: Have you seen our own Frank Cocozzelli's piece "How Roman Catholic Neocons Peddle Natural Law into Debates about Life and Death," yet?

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As reported last week by the Wall Street Journal and many other news outlets: "CNN Segment Convinces Majority of Non-Christians that Army Discriminates: Nearly Half of Christians Agree."

In a study conducted by MediaCurves, over 200 Christians and over 100 non-Christians were asked a series of questions both before and after viewing the CNN segment, which can be viewed here in its entirety.

In early July 2008 Senate Republicans voted, with astounding conformity, in favor of the controversial electronic surveillance FISA bill update that was condemned by American civil liberties advocates across a wide range of the US political spectrum; two GOP Senators, John McCain and Jeff Sessions, abstained from voting and so 95.9 % of Republicans voted "aye" on FISA. But there was one specialized subgroup within the Democratic Party that voted with almost as much uniformity in favor of the FISA bill - Senate Democrats who belonged both to the DLC and who were members or "friends" of a shadowy fundamentalist group that's been burrowing, since the Eisenhower years, into the Washington power establishment: The Family.

This is the first in a series which will explore, building off Jeff Sharlet's new book The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at The Heart Of American Power (excerpt from book and a review), recent influence of The Family within American politics and especially within the Democratic Party. Future installments in this series will cover: (1) the birth of the DLC and the ties of key DLC founders to The Family, (2) treatments of specific DLC members with extensive Family associations (3) possible Family influence in the 2000 US Presidential election (4) methods by which The Family has advanced its ideological agenda, through  legislation, supported by Republican-DLC coalitions, designed to attack New Deal and social welfare programs, attack church-state separation and advance other long-term Family goals.