Dear Jon Stewart: Yes, Dan Webster Really IS That Extreme!

[Shallah Kali]

http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/dear-jon-stewart-yes-dan-webster-real

Let's see. Jon Stewart was oh-so-holier-than-thou last night when, taking part in some "on the other hand" false equivalence that would have done any Villager proud, he denounced Alan Grayson's Taliban Dan ad as extreme, showing a clip that he says proves it was taken out of context. (Clearly, he was depending on the finding by Factcheck.org, a group bloggers know to double-check.) It's not really taken out of context when someone is associated with an extreme fundamentalist sect -- one that believes death by stoning should be the punishment for "sins" like astrology.

Via Digby: http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/daniel-websters-religious-mentor.html

So, while Gothard was categorically opposed to divorce, Rushdoony, a virulently racist Holocaust denier who espoused Geocentrism, was a little more liberal on divorce. In other words, the two men were otherwise in substantial agreement – except for the sticking point of divorce, they both agreed that Rushdoony’s vision for Biblical law should be imposed upon America.That vision included instituting stoning as a form of capital punishment for rape, kidnapping, murder, heresy, blasphemy, witchcraft, astrology, adultery, “sodomy or homosexuality,” incest, striking a parent, extreme juvenile delinquency, and “unchastity before marriage.”

Daniel Webster’s association with Bill Gothard’s Institute For Basic Life Training has continued into the present, and a speech Webster made at a Nashville IBLP conference in 2009 has now become a source of controversy due to a new Alan Grayson campaign ad. Grayson is currently taking a media drubbing because of a campaign ad that calls Grayson’s political opponent, Republican Daniel Webster, “Taliban Dan.”

An assessment from Factcheck.org, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, that a new Graysoncampaign ad attacking Grayson’s political opponent, Republican Daniel Webster, allegedly taking out of context statements Webster made in a speech at a 2009 conference of a religious organization called the “Institute of Basic Life Principles.”

Die-hard religious right researchers at ReligionDispatches.org are challenging Factcheck.org’s immediate charge, and Religion Dispatches editor Sarah Posner calls out Factcheck.org for blandly describing Bill Gothard’s IBLP as a ”non-denominational Christian organization that runs programs and training sessions.”

Did The "Taliban Dan" Ad "Backfire?"
Post by Sarah Posner
http://www.religiondispatches.org/dispatches/sarahposner/3434/did_the_%22taliban_dan%22_ad_%22backfire%22/

But {Kathryn} Joyce tells me Factcheck.org misunderstands Webster's statements, even in context:

While the Grayson campaign can be taken to task for taking Webster's comment out of context, in the larger context, they're correct. Grayson's campaign argued that Webster seemed to be supporting submission in his comments to an audience of conservative men, whom he directed to pray that they would better fulfill their biblical duty to love their wives, and leave prayers about women's submission to their wives. However, the emphasis of these remarks, as those familiar with Christian rhetoric could recognize, is not on the optional nature of wives' submission. Wifely submission is part of an often-unbalanced equation to Christians who subscribe to "complementarian" or "patriarchal" marriage roles, where men must "love" and women "obey." Saying that a woman should pray for God's guidance in submission, if she wants to, is not leniency, but rather standard evangelical language that emphasizes individuals must obey biblical mandates regardless of how others around them behave. So, Webster is saying, men must be accountable to God for their responsibility to love their wives regardless of whether she submits -- that they must pray to do right, even if she doesn't.

However, the much more relevant application of this principle on following God's orders despite your circumstances is on women. Submission is a contentious and tricky issue even within conservative evangelical churches. Most churches promoting submission make certain to couple demands for submissive wives with those for loving, servant-leader husbands. But at the end of the day, it's women who bear the brunt of the principle; their obligations are to God, not to a husband who may or may not keep his end of the contract. Accordingly, the message is impressed by countless women's ministries and leaders that women must continue submitting even when their husband doesn't show love, because they owe their obedience, above all, to God. In circles that take submission seriously -- as does any organization associated with Bill Gothard -- that's what wives' options really look like.

Gothard's teachings are not just to homeschoolers, though. As I reported in a 2008 article http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/09/18/palin_iacc for Salon, as mayor of Wasilla, Sarah Palin designated her home a "City of Character," after attending the supposedly (but not really) secular arm of Gothard's institute, the International Association of Character Cities. As I noted there, even Christianity Today, the flagship magazine of the evangelical world, has expressed http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2003/march/35.77.html dismay over the "alarming" nature of Gothard's teachings on authority, and allegations of physical and emotional abuse in his programs. (For the most comprehensive treatment of the IACC, see Silja J.A. Talvi's 2006 piece http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2450/ in In These Times.)

Dan Webster's Gothard-Speak
Post by Sarah Posner
http://www.religiondispatches.org/dispatches/sarahposner/3450/dan_webster%27s_gothard-speak/

At the IBLP website, Webster is listed as one of the "dynamic speakers" at the organization's 2010 regional conferences. His topic: "how 'one-accord power teams' of dads could be the best answer for the crisis that America faces today."

What is a "one-accord power team?" According to the "Commands of Christ Power Manual #1," written by Gothard (PDF here), "One accord takes place when two or more believers who love God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength meet to edify each other." And "one-accord power" is when believers are in covenant with God, united in spirit and soul, with the power to reproduce (here Gothard appears to be referring to discipling, not sex). The believers must have no "competing affections" with their love for God, because "if we have any competing affections, God describes us as adulterers and adulteresses."

That power is broken by, well, the devil, who else? "One-accord power is extremely difficult to achieve and even more challenging to maintain. Therefore, any one-accord group will become a special target of Satan."

The manual also discusses the need for not just "one accord" but "one mind" as well. "One accord," Gothard writes, is a prerequisite for being of "one mind." And to be of "one mind," everyone in the "one accord" group needs "must submit our mind to the authority of His Word and obey the commands that He has given to us through Christ. Pride is reserving to myself the right to make final decisions."

The Real Context Of The "Taliban Dan" Ad
Post by Julie Ingersoll

Still, contrary to both FactCheck.org and PolitiFact's assessments, Webster's 2009 talk is actually an excellent example of the point made in the Grayson ad: that Webster holds views that are outside the mainstream. He is unself-conscious about his sense that God is on his side and that God opposes his opponents. And he has aligned himself with organizations and individuals who advocate the application of biblical law to contemporary society, including wives submitting to their husbands.

It is true that Webster's emphasis in his 2009 talk to a male audience (I have watched a clip which is nearly eleven minutes long) was on the actions the men should take. He was telling them to focus on their own obligations rather than those of their wives. As Kathryn Joyce told Sarah this week, in this view, wives' obligation to submit to their husbands is actually a mandated obedience to God. When Webster says the "she should submit to me" verses are "in the Bible," and that women should pray them if they want to, he's saying they must do so in order to be obedient to God's word.

Webster only urged his male audience "not to use" the submission verse as their own prayers. Notice that in defending himself against the ad, Webster has not claimed that he does not believe that the appropriate relationship of wives to husbands is submission--only that that was not what he was talking about in the segment. Nor does he argue that the other views in the ad attributed to him are not his.

snip

ut even more than these quotes -- put entirely in context -- Webster has aligned himself with an organization that espouses an orientation to the Bible and its role in civil society that is certainly relevant to his campaign for public office, the Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP) and its affiliated Advance Training Institute International (ATI). He claims to pray for IBLP founder Bill Gothard "every day," has traveled with Gothard, has spoken at Gothard’s conferences (2009 and 2010 programs are online), and has contributed to "Wisdom Booklets" training materials that include David Barton and his Christian American history. These include The Light and the Glory, a Christian American history textbook popular in fundamentalist Christian schools and home schools. Webster's section itself cites Christian Reconstructionist Gary DeMar’s work in "Optional Resources."

Obey Thy Husband - Time Magazine 1974
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,944839,00.html

It is a metaphor that infuriates both liberated women and spirited youth. God holds in his hands a hammer (symbolizing a husband). The husband/hammer bangs a chisel (representing the obedient wife) that "chips away the rough edges" to turn a diamond in the rough (a teenager) into a gem.

God to husband to wife to child. That is "God's chain of command," the most controversial of the "universal, underlying, nonoptional principles" of family life that are being proclaimed by the Rev. Bill Gothard, 39, to mass audiences in two dozen cities from Seattle to Philadelphia. This year as many as 500,000 people, some via closed-circuit TV, will attend Gothard's traveling "Institute in Basic Youth Conflicts," which consists of 28 hours of lectures in a week's time (basic cost for the course: $45). These throngs hear about the lectures only by word of mouth; Gothard buys no advertising.

snip

Gothard's philosophy is that people should recognize the difficulties of life as part of God's plan and use them for their spiritual benefit. His opening lecture on self-acceptance closes with a prayer to "give God a vote of confidence for how he has made us so far." Next comes family life. Children must be totally obedient. A religious teenager, for example, should not attend a church college if atheistic parents order him not to. As for a man's wife, she "has to realize that God accomplishes his ultimate will through the decisions of the husband, even when the husband is wrong." Citing I Thessalonians 5:18 ("In every thing give thanks"), Gothard even advises a wife whose husband chastises her to say, "God, thank you for this beating." And Gothard adds to Christ's words from the cross: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. But you know what you are doing through them to build character in me."

Besides following the chain of command in the family, Christians should also be obedient to their employers and their government, Gothard asserts. Only if an order from a parent, the state or a boss conflicts with God's explicit commandments may it be disobeyed. But first the Christian is supposed to follow six complex steps, beginning with an examination of his own bad attitudes.