LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY britzkrieg)

A time traveler from the civil rights era would have been flabbergasted at Justice Sunday III last night. The third annual rally to proclaim God's support for Bush's judicial nominees, sponsored by the Family Research Council, was held at Greater Exodus Baptist Church, an African-American congregation in downtown Philadelphia. The nationally televised event roared with full-throated gospel and foot-stomping enthusiasm. Martin Luther King Jr. was invoked over and over -- his niece, Alveda King, a frequent presence at religious right confabs, summoned the memory of Rosa Parks and sang a yearning version of "We Shall Overcome."

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The entire evening had a surreal, upside-down quality, as if history had been caught in a whirlpool and come back all jumbled. Appearing via video, David Barton, a theocratic revisionist historian, invoked the words of Thomas Jefferson to argue that the founders intended for religion and government to be intertwined. ("I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just," he quoted, not bothering to mention that Jefferson was talking about the sin of slavery, not secularism.) A cast of white conservatives, several with past links to racist groups, presented themselves as heirs to the preachers who led the fight against segregation. The moral authority of the black church was invoked against the judges who have most fervently defended civil rights.

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