This Week in the Religious Right.

[Joanne98]

1. The Chickens Come Home to Roost -- But Not for the GOP
In the mad, mad world of politicians competing to out-Jesus each other, the chickens come home to roost -- but only for those without the Jesus Shield. The architects of the Republican Party's 30-year project to consolidate the conservative evangelical vote have been the country's most outlandish conservative (and hypocritical) figures, but in our flag-lapel-pin-wearing, my-walk-with-Jesus-immunizes-me-from-criticism environment, they are given a free pass.

Sen. Barack Obama could not have been so naïve to think that a black presidential candidate who took a spiritual sojourn with a black liberation theologian would not be placed under a right-wing media microscope. Perhaps when he was running for statewide office in Illinois, and needed to have what Tulane University sociologist Shayne Lee, in an interview a couple of weeks ago, described as the "tremendous cachet" of being connected to the popular Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama didn't give it a second thought. For a national campaign, though, it's nothing but political trouble -- even though Wright performed the magic act that all politicians crave these days: he brought Obama to Jesus. But Wright could never give Obama the Jesus Shield.

This year, even the Republican nominee isn't evangelical -- although Sen. John McCain shed his Episcopalian skin and joined a Baptist church in Phoenix -- and both parties are intent on capturing the votes of evangelicals, who are looking for a new political home in the post-Bush era. But with the scramble to add Jesus to the list of campaign advisers reaching an obscenely calculated apex this year, the right -- which has controlled the Jesus Shield to date -- shows that it remains the dominant arbiter of who really knows Jesus, and who might be a closet traitor.

Obama realized, perhaps too late, that Wright could prove controversial, and sought to appease white and black evangelicals alike last year by naming T.D. Jakes and Rick Warren as his Christian role models. Both pastors are the face of the acceptable kind of megachurch, black and white, and are seen as this generation's standard-bearers for the evangelical movement. Jakes is the enormously popular black prosperity televangelist whose personal rags-to-riches tale is intended to demonstrate the power of faith to overcome poverty. In a way, this narrative makes Jakes the anti-Wright: No questioning of the powers that be; a higher power provides all. And Warren, despite his conventional portrayal as a compassionate moderate, joined hands earlier this year with some of the country's most reactionary moral crusaders to try to torpedo the global AIDS reauthorization because it was insufficiently fixated on abstinence and -- gasp! -- proposed offering HIV/AIDS treatment and contraception at the same clinic.

Continued>>>
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_fundamentalist_032608

[Warpy]

1. I was tempted to post this elsewhere, It's an informative look

about all aspects of what the old guard of the religious right are concerned about: For the Religious Right, "The Times They Are A-Changin'"

The old guard is wondering if 'the younger generation will heed the call' while the young Turks have other things on their minds besides abortion and same-sex marriage.

http://www.mediatransparency.org/story.php?storyID=232

I'm not posting excerpts because this is a long article and the four measly paragraphs wouldn't do it justice. Anyone who is concerned with the political clout exercised by the religious right needs to read this one. It's one of the best I've seen on the possible directions the movement could take from now on, as the old guard die off.