Those wacky Fundies are at it again. - Long Read

[Freedom_from_Chains]

E-mail I received from TheocracyWatch detailing stories and links to the various sites describing what all the religious right is up too in attempting to destroy America.

Dear Friends of TheocracyWatch,

As the midterm elections approach, things are heating up around the country. Is the Christian right going to lose its hold on Congress? What kinds of desperate measures might those in power take? The New York Times (10/17/06) reports that Ken Blackwell, Ohio Secretary of State who is running for Governor and supported by the Patriot Pastors - a theocratic group in Ohio - is behind by double digits and is, in his desperation, trying to disqualify his opponent, Ted Strickland on very strange grounds.
(http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/17/opinion/17tues1.html?_r=2&hp=&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print)
Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and author Chris Hedges sees war with Iran looming on the not-too-distant horizon. Meanwhile, the scandals and revelations just will not go away.

Yours for democracy,
Joan and the staff at TheocracyWatch

note: thanks to the generosity of TheocracyWatch supporters, we have reopened our free DVD offer:
http://www.theocracywatch.org/dvd_order.htm


**********************************


SECTION 1 MIXING RELIGION AND POLITICS

----Bush Faith-Based Initiative was used for GOP Campaigns, Former White House Official Charges in new book, Americans United, October 12, 2006

White House Faith-Based Office is deplorable sham and should be shut down, says AU Director Lynn

A new book by a former staffer in the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives details how the much-ballyhooed Bush faith-based initiative was cynically manipulated by Republican operatives to help GOP candidates locked in close races.

http://www.au.org/site/News2?abbr=pr&page=NewsArticle&id=8621&JServSessionIdr007=zc0z20ryx2.app7b


-----Former White House Staffers Charges of Politicization of Faith-Based Initiative is Supported By Americans United Research, Americans United, October 16, 2006

A key assertion by former White House staffer David Kuo — his claim that the faith-based initiative was used for partisan purposes — is supported by information in the new book, Piety & Politics: The Right-Wing Assault on Religious Freedom Americans, by United Executive Director Barry W. Lynn.

In the book, which was published Oct. 3, Lynn writes: James Towey, until recently the head of the White House faith-based office, denies there is a political dimension to the initiative. Unfortunately for Towey, there is and he is up to his neck in it. In 2002 and 2004 Towey made a series of campaign appearances alongside Republican congressional and gubernatorial candidates whom polls showed were locked in tight races. (End quote)

Lynn based his information in part on a story that ran in the AU Church & State magazine in October of 2002. That piece, Faith-Based Flimflam, detailed how the White House was using the initiative to sway religious voters in a series of close House and Senate races.

http://www.au.org/site/News2?abbr=pr&page=NewsArticle&id=8623&JServSessionIdr007=0vwf4bnj22.app5b


-----On Tempting Faith: Seductive Distractions from Fact? Talk To Action, October 13, 2006

On March 25, 2005 in a New York Times op ed, Maureen Dowd wrote: Oh my God, we really are in a theocracy (end quote), and liberals turned in dread towards the mysterious religious right that apparently came from nowhere to dominate the US federal government. Time passed.... Now, the widely touted new book, Tempting Faith, by David Kuo, as described in ongoing series by Keith Olberman, seems to assure us that it was all a dream, that Republicans are not of the religious right and hold evangelicals in contempt , milking them like cattle for votes (according to Kuo, evangelicals got little more in return from George W. Bush than hugs, conference calls, the National Day Of Prayer, and cufflinks, pens, and pads of paper). Tom Frank, in What is The matter With Kansas, used a very similar argument. It has been previously tested and found eminently marketable: Kuo is no fool. But, is the perception accurate? Some hope that the current scandal-fest will make evangelicals dispirited a!
nd they will stop voting - and so the GOP will be hounded from office and the religious right will dissolve under the dashed water of Foley\'s smutty emails like the witch in The Wizard Of Oz: I\'m melting! I\'m melting!

http://www.talk2action.org/story/2006/10/13/15050/437


-----Four-Part Series in Boston Globe investigates influence of Christian Right on Bush administration foreign policy

This story is the first of four parts. It was reported and written by Farah Stockman, Michael Kranish, and Peter S. Canellos of the Globe Staff, and Globe correspondent Kevin Baron.

LAKARTINYA, Kenya -- The herders of this remote mountain village know little about America, but have learned from those who run a US-funded aid program about the American God. -- A Christian God. -- The US government has given $10.9 million to Food for the Hungry, a faith-based development organization, to reach deep into the arid mountains of northern Kenya to provide training in hygiene, childhood illnesses, and clean water. The group has brought all that, and something else that increasingly accompanies US-funded aid programs: regular church service and prayer.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2006/10/08/bush_brings_faith_to_foreign_aid/


-----David Barton -- New Stealth Campaign for the GOP, Talk To Action, October 10, 2006

David Barton, the notorious Christian historical revisionist and longtime Texas GOP activist, is once again barnstorming the nation on the payroll of the Republican National Committee. As he did in 2004, Barton is now speaking in churches on behalf of GOP candidates…

Barton maintains his main contention is that the separation of church and state was never intended by the founders of our nation; he says it was created by the Supreme Court in the 20th Century. The back cover of his 1989 book, The Myth of Separation, proclaims: This book proves that separation of church and state is a myth.(end quote) Barton is also on the board of advisers of the Providence Foundation, a Christian Reconstructionist group that advocates America as a Christian nation. Barton may find his contention about the IRS rules were, like his claims about American history, wrong, and if churches follow his interpretation, they may put their tax status in jeopardy.

http://www.talk2action.org/story/2006/10/10/19281/863


----- Faith-Based Profits, New York Times, October 16, 2006 Mary Rosati, a novice training to be a nun in Toledo, Ohio, says that after she received a diagnosis of breast cancer, her mother superior dismissed her. If Ms. Rosati had had a nonreligious job, she might have won a lawsuit against her diocese (which denies the charge). But a federal judge dismissed her suit under the Americans With Disabilities Act, declining to second-guess the ecclesiastical decision– of the church.

This story of Ms. Rosati is one of many that Diana Henriques told in a recent Times series examining the fast-changing legal status of churches and religious-affiliated institutions. The series showed that the wall between church and state is being replaced by a platform that raises religious organizations to a higher legal plane than their secular counterparts.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/16/opinion/16mon1.html?_r=2&th&emc=th&oref=slogin&oref=slogin



SECTION 2 A CULTURE OF DEATH AND ARMAGEDDEN

----- The Bush Nuclear Apocalypse, Chris Hedges, Truthdig, October 9, 2006

Note of the Editor: The former Middle East bureau chief for The New York Times and author of the bestseller _War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning_ reports on the Bush plan for Iran, and how a callous war, conceived by zealots, will lead to a disaster of biblical proportions.

The aircraft carrier Eisenhower, accompanied by the guided-missile cruiser USS Anzio, guided-missile destroyer USS Ramage, guided-missile destroyer USS Mason and the fast-attack submarine USS Newport News, is, as I write, making its way to the Straits of Hormuz off Iran. The ships will be in place to strike Iran by the end of the month. It may be a bluff. It may be a feint. It may be a simple show of American power. But I doubt it.

War with Iran—a war that would unleash an apocalyptic scenario in the Middle East—is probable by the end of the Bush administration. It could begin in as little as three weeks.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/200601009_bushs_nuclear_apocalypse/


-----Apocalypse Sooner Or Later? Bush, Iran, & the End-Times Lobby, Talk To Action, October 10, 2006

Is the Bush Administration intent on provoking the End Times via an attack on Iran? That is impossible to know, and former US House Majority leader Dick Armey denied it in a 2002 BBC interview, but why would The Bush Administration court the Pastor John Hagee new apocalypse-lobby, CUFI , and -by extension- the End Times voters Hagee reaches? Sara Posner muses, in The American Prospect : Could it be that the central requirement for their breathlessly anticipated Armageddon -- that the United States confront Iran -- happens to dovetail so nicely with the neoconservative war agenda? (End quote)

http://www.talk2action.org/story/2006/10/10/132848/48



SECTION 3 VOTER GUIDES

-----Barry Lynn on Politics and the Pulpit, Talk To Action, October 14, 2006

Barry Lynn on Politics and the Pulpit discusses voter guides, a tool used by the Christian Coalition to encourage members of evangelical churches to vote Republican while the guides maintain the appearance of being nonpartisan.

http://www.talk2action.org/story/2006/10/13/134933/68



SECTION 4 CONGRESS

HR 810 STEM CELL RESEARCH ENHANCEMENT ACT OF 2005

-----Neoconservatism, the Catholic Church and Stem Cells, Talk To Action, October 15, 2006

But for this one week I will focus upon the issue of Stem Cell Research, by reviewing the current book by Eve Herold, Stem Cell Wars (in which my personal story is discussed). the Catholic Church (to which I belong) and the growing alliance among those on the Catholic Right with neoconservatives...

Over the past few weeks two significant events concerning the research have occurred; the first being required reading for those who want to understand the stem cell debate. Coming on the heels of the veto of the bi-partisan supported HR810 by President Bush, (this legislation would have significantly increased the number of available hESC lines available for research), a book for which I was profiled was released, Stem Cell Wars. The book lays bare much of the dissembling by the Religious Right on this important issue.

http://www.talk2action.org/story/2006/10/15/151651/45


CANDIDATES AND CAMPAIGNS

-----Ken Blackwell - Campaign Tour With Larry Pratt (a Christian Reconstructionist), Talk To Action, October 6, 2006

The Akron Beacon-Journal coverage of the planned campaign tour of GOP gubernatorial candidate Ken Blackwell with Larry Pratt raises the profile of questions concerning his possible connection to Christian Reconstructionist ideology, his alleged ties to the Council For National Policy, and his real association with Larry Pratt, head of Gun Owners Of America (Gun Owners Of America has its own radio show, and you can listen, via RealPlayer, to a recent show featuring Pratt talking up and making a donations pitch for the Ken Blackwell Gubernatorial campaign).

http://www.talk2action.org/story/2006/10/6/142946/80


SCANDALS

-----Foley Follies: Religious Right Blames The Left For Page Scandal, Wall of Separation, October 10, 2006

Days after the scandal broke, the Dobson Focus on the Family Action issued a press release – and found not only a way to exonerate House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) but to blame the entire sorry incident on liberals who supposedly celebrate obscenity.

The Dobson release reads: Those truly interested in protecting children from online predators should spend less time calling for Speaker Hastert to step down, and more time demanding that the Justice Department enforce existing laws that would limit the proliferation of the kind of filth that leads grown men to think it is perfectly OK to send lurid e-mails to 16-year-old boys... If any lasting cultural good could come out of this awful incident, it would be Americans discarding the politically correct notion fed to us by those on the left that obscenity is just another form of free speech. (End quote)

http://blog.au.org/2006/10/foley_follies_r.html


-----The Religious Right Crusade for Decency, AlterNet, October 11, 2006

The Christian right has done its best to keep America obsessed with clean, friendly family values. But what constitutes decency -- and where does the Foley scandal fit in?

First-amendment specialist Frederick S. Lane explains all of this -- which he dubs the decency wars in his latest book, The Decency Wars: The Campaign to Cleanse American Culture. This highly comprehensive history book chronicles the advancement of the moralistic influence of the Religious Right and evangelical on American public policy. I talked with Lane shortly after the unveiling of the Foley-pages sex scandal.

http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/42779/



SECTION 5 EDUCATION

-----AASA on Religion in Schools, Talk To Action, October 15, 2006 The American Association of School Administrators has devoted an entire issue of The School Administrator to the issue of what is and isn\'t allowed in terms of religion and public schools. They have invited folks like Charles Haynes to write articles on the subject which contains much good advice:

When school leaders ask how they should handle religion in public schools, religious liberty attorney Oliver Thomas begins his answer with this advice: The time to buy the fire truck is before the fire.(end quote)

http://www.talk2action.org/story/2006/10/15/235121/07


-----Evangelizing Good News Clubs quietly proliferate in public elementary schools, JewsOnFirst.org, October 9, 2006

The Christian Right believes in getting them while they are young. Last year, religious right groups embarked on a five-year campaign to implant after-school _Good News Club_ in every public elementary school in the United States. Mathew Staver, a leader of the club initiative and President of Liberty Counsel, wrote: Classrooms are full of unchurched children waiting to hear about a Savior who loves them and forgives sin... (Good News Clubs are) high-powered Sunday school which can now be established in the public schools immediately after School.(end quote)

http://www.jewsonfirst.org/goodnewsclubs.php



SECTION 6 TO BE A WOMAN, JEWISH, MUSLIN, GAY, WICCAN, MINORITY...

-----Liberty Sunday: Gay Bashing for Republican Victory, Talk To Action, October 16, 2006

The Liberty Sunday rally on October 15, 2006 continued the orchestrated campaign of gay bashing for Republican victory in the midterm elections.

Tony Perkins, leader of the Family Research Council which staged the event, told the audience, especially the viewers in other states, to vote their values, especially in states where gay marriage is on the ballot. And if they live in one of those states... they should call ten people on election day. Perkins said that for gay rights activists, tolerance is a one way street, and that the protestors want to silence the voice of the church, even to the point of intimidating voters.

Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney strode onstage live accompanied by his wife Ann. He had been scheduled to appear by video.

http://www.talk2action.org/story/2006/10/16/10925/259


-----Key Architect Said Religious Right Born In Racist Opposition To Civil Rights Act, Talk To Action, October 13, 2006

In 1990 Randall Balmer, author of the new book Thy Kingdom Come: An Evangelical Lament, was invited (inexplicably, he says) to meeting of key religious right leaders and was suprised to hear key architect of the religious right during the 1970s Paul Weyrich emphatically state that what really started the movement going on there in the 1970s was not outrage against Roe v. Wade but, rather, outrage over a move by the Carter Administration justice dept. to enforce the Civil Rights Act by rescinding the tax exempt status of Bob Jones University for its rules against interracial dating.

http://www.talk2action.org/story/2006/10/13/95114/284


-----The Coming Gay Republican Purge, Max Blumenthal, The Nation, October 12, 2006

Immediately after the Mark Foley scandal broke, some anti-Republican gay-rights activists composed a memo containing the names of closeted gay Republican Congressional staffers and sent it to leading Christian-right advocacy groups. The founder and chairman of one of those groups, the Rev. Don Wildmon of the American Family Association, told me he has received that memo, which he referred to simply as The List.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20061030/blumenthal


-----A video from Equality Ohio: Which Vision for Ohio?

...division, intolerance, persecution, theocracy or love, inclusion, fairness, Democracy

http://www.equalityohio.org/twovisions.htm


-----Plan B and Plan B, Truthout, October 10, 2006

Just as women have finally won a concession from the Bush FDA that makes the emergency contraceptive known as Plan B available without a prescription, new reports abound that fundamentalist Christians are mounting an effort to end the use of all contraceptives.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/101006R.shtml



SETION 7 ENVIRONMENT

-----Texans Pray for Halt to Power Plants, Truthout, October 12, 2006

Texans are grappling with the issue of building nineteen new coal burning power plants. They are not the first state to be struggling with foul air, but they are the first to go to the Lord in prayer about it. On October 19, a variety of people in Texas will come together to pray. Some will be prayer veterans, while others may be praying for the first time in many years ... or ever. The people who care about God\'s earth no longer fit into convenient stereotypes - Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal. What they share is a common concern for their neighbors.

http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/101206EA.shtml


-----Must see!!! Moyers on America: Is God Green?

A new holy war is growing within the conservative evangelical community, with implications for both the global environment and American politics. For years liberal Christians and others have made protection of the environment a moral commitment. Now a number of conservative evangelicals are joining the fight, arguing that man\'s stewardship of the planet is a biblical imperative and calling for action to stop global warming.

But they are being met head-on by opposition from their traditional evangelical brethren who adamantly support the Bush administration in downplaying the threat of global warming and other environmental perils. The political stakes are high: Three out of every four white evangelical voters chose George W. Bush in 2004. Is God Green? explores how a serious split among conservative evangelicals over the environment and global warming could reshape American politics.

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/moyersonamerica/green/


-----Believers Preach Gospel of Green, Los Angeles Times , October 10, 2006

In Hollywood, the white knight in the fight against global warming is Al Gore, whose film, An Inconvenient Truth, was received with great media hoopla when it arrived in theaters earlier this year. But in much of the rest of America, the man spearheading the battle against catastrophic climate change is someone you would never see at the Ivy, hobnobbing with the Bush-hating, abortion-allowing, carbon footprint calculating nabobs of Hollywood elitism.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/101106O.shtml



SECTION 8 REPUBLICANS AND CHRISTIANS AGAINST THIS ADMINISTRATION

-----Mr. President, We Christians are not Nuts, Dailykos, October 15, 2006

You will have to excuse my short time and fuse this afternoon, as I just came in from worship and am on my way to meet with a group of pastors concerned about the direction of this great nation, but I did want all my rowdy friends here to know one thing in spite of what the current leadership in Washington may say and think.

We Christians are not *nuts* Mr. President. We are not *goofy* Mr. Rove. We do not deserve your ridicule . And we will not be pawns in your power hungry political games…

I encourage everyone, especially God fearing people of faith, to watch 60 Minutes tonight as David Kuo, the former No. 2 official in the faith-based initiatives program, pulls back the veils of deception from this administration. Then I encourage us all to join together and take our country back.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/10/15/133957/57



SECTION 9 JESUS CAMP CONTINUED

-----Jesus Camp -- youth pastor directly linked to fascist brand of charismatic movement, Dailykos, October 7, 2006

I just bought tickets to see Jesus Camp, the documentary film about a charismatic Christian kids camp run by youth pastor Becky Fischer. Fischer, already in spin control mode, has an FAQ on the Web site of her ministry, Kids in Ministry International, in which she basically accuses the film of being a hatchet job.

However, my journalist instinct got the better of me, so I decided to delve a little more into what makes this ministry tick-- and the links I have found are disturbing. Especially from my unique perspective as a charismatic ( i.e., tongue-talking) Christian who is a Democrat. Although she does not advertise it, Fischer has direct ties to a brand of charismatic Christianity that is nothing more than fascism in Christian dress.

There is a good reason that Fischer does not advertise her links to this group. The gist of it is that Jesus cannot come back until a *revived* church takes over the world and everything in it. God has supposedly been looking for a *covenant people* since losing control of the world to Satan in the Garden of Eden. These people, under submission to restored apostles and prophets, will be his *extension* in the world to take back authority from the devil. Christians are *little gods* with all of the authority of Jesus. The church thus has the responsibility to take over the world and put down all opposition to it. Anyone who rebels against the church, along with other *evildoers* must convert or be punished. Once the church has purged all evil from the world, Jesus can come back.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/10/7/13262/6542



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[pacalo]

1. I'm bookmarking this for reading later

& I'm adding the link to my favorites. I have a cousin that was like a sister to me growing up but has turned into a fundie robot, & theocracywatch.org may give me some insight into la-la land.

Another good link for countering fundiespeak is Sojourners, in case you don't know about it already. :)

[Freedom_from_Chains]

2. I am familiar with Sojourners but thanks for the link

it's the thought that counts and any help is greatly appreciated.

FFC