Republican speaker urges pastors to get out the voter

[mumon]

http://www.kgw.com/sharedcontent/APStories/stories/D83VDMH01.html


Pastors need to use hot-button issues like same-sex marriage to get out the vote among evangelical Christians, a Republican National Committee-sponsored lecturer told more than 100 ministers gathered in Eugene.

David Barton, the second-highest ranking GOP official in President Bush's home state of Texas, also urged the pastors to become more politically active and push their parishioners to register to vote, according to pastors who attended the event.

Barton heads a national group called WallBusters, dedicated to restoring "the constitutional, moral and religious foundation on which America was built."


Now, this is of interest because David Barton has a history...

Perhaps most alarming, Barton also has had a relationship with the racist and anti-Semitic fringes of the far right. According to Skipp Porteous of the Massachusetts-based Institute for First Amendment Studies, Barton was listed in promotional literature as a "new and special speaker" at a 1991 summer retreat in Colorado sponsored by Scriptures for America, a far-right ministry headed by Pastor Pete Peters. Peters' organization, which is virulently anti-Semitic and racist, spreads hysteria about Jews and homosexuals and has been linked to neo-Nazi groups. (The organization distributes a booklet called Death Penalty For Homosexuals.)

Peters' church is part of the racist "Christian Identity" movement. and three members of The Order, a violent neo-Nazi organization, formerly attended Peters' small congregation in LaPorte, Cole. After members of The Order murdered Denver radio talk show host Alan Berg in the mid 1980s, critics of Peters' ministry in Colorado charged that his hate-filled sermons had spurred the assassination.

Who is David Barton? Why does he dislike separation of church and state so intensely? From the video, an observer might conclude that Barton is simply a hyperactive history student. The 1990 tape depicts him bounding about what appears to be a rec room, pulling frail-looking history books from shelves and speaking breathlessly into the camera about what he has learned. The 1992 version features Barton in the same energetic form, only with a better backdrop and much improved graphics.


These are today's Republicans, folks.

[rfkrocks]

1. This should scare the heck out of people

Peters is a vile hateful person-this is face of the gop in texas-shame shame on them-who would Jesus hate?

[mumon]

3. It's scary that people like Barton

are welcomed with open arms by the Repuglicans

[Massacure]

2. Churches should be taxed.

[Citizen Daryl]

4. As soon as I read "Scriptures For America", I knew.

I remember those guys.

Get your passports renewed, folks. This is the next generation of "mainstream GOP".

[struggle4progress]

5. kick

:kick: