LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

Falwell fighting for holy holiday
He threatens to sue, boycott groups that subvert Christmas
- Joe Garofoli, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, November 20, 2005

Evangelical Christian pastor Jerry Falwell has a message for Americans when it comes to celebrating Christmas this year: You're either with us, or you're against us.

Falwell has put the power of his 24,000-member congregation behind the "Friend or Foe Christmas Campaign," an effort led by the conservative legal organization Liberty Counsel. The group promises to file suit against anyone who spreads what it sees as misinformation about how Christmas can be celebrated in schools and public spaces.

The 8,000 members of the Christian Educators Association International will be the campaign's "eyes and ears" in the nation's public schools. They'll be reporting to 750 Liberty Counsel lawyers who are ready to pounce if, for example, a teacher is muzzled from leading the third-graders in "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing."( Read more... )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

This Tom Paine article is interesting:

With God On Our Side?
Paul Waldman
September 19, 2005

Paul Waldman is a senior fellow with Media Matters for America and a senior contributor to The Gadflyer.

The anti-Americans in our midst are out in force again, saying everything that goes wrong is America’s fault. They just won’t stop running down this country, their hatred never far from the surface.

I’m speaking, of course, about conservatives.

A certain brand of conservative, anyway. Seeing the misery caused by Hurricane Katrina, some on the right knew what was going on: God hates America. Or at the very least, he’s really, really angry with us. And you don’t have to go to the maniacal Rev. Fred Phelps of “God Hates Fags” fame, whose latest project is www.godhatesamerica.com, to find this kind of rhetoric. It comes from people with strong ties to the Republican party.( Read more... )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

A religious supremacist group says that Katrina is "God's punishment for LA having 10 abortion clinics".

The War Room on Salon has this quote:

We knew this was coming.

Two days after 9/11, Jerry Falwell took to the airwaves to proclaim that God had allowed the United States to be attacked because "the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians" had tried to transform America into a secular society. Just this weekend, wingnuts from the Westboro Baptist Church turned out at the funerals of two fallen soldiers to say that God is punishing the United States in Iraq for its tolerance of homosexuality back home.

So when Hurricane Katrina hit land yesterday, we knew it was only a matter of time before we'd be hearing from the lunatic fringe again. And now, here it is. In an e-mail message we just received, a group calling itself Columbia Christians for Life alerts us to the fact that a satellite image of Hurricane Katrina as it hit the Gulf Coast Monday looks just like a six-week-old fetus.

"The image of the hurricane ... with its eye already ashore at 12:32 p.m. Monday, August 29, looks like a fetus (unborn human baby) facing to the left (west) in the womb, in the early weeks of gestation (approx. 6 weeks)," the e-mail message says. "Even the orange color of the image is reminiscent of a commonly used pro-life picture of early prenatal development."

And in case you're not getting the point, the e-mail message spells it out in black and white: "Louisiana has 10 child-murder-by-abortion centers," the groups says, and "five are in New Orleans."

But why would God single out Louisiana? Other states have many more abortion clinics, and Louisiana and the other states hit hardest by Katrina all voted for the pro-life president of the United States. It didn't add up for us at first, but the Columbia Christians for Life have an answer for everything. God has already punished California with earthquakes, forest fires and mudslides; New York with 9/11; and Florida with Hurricanes Bonnie, Charley, Frances, Ivan, Jeanne and the early version of Katrina.

-- T.G.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

From the Toronto Star:

Rapture politics

HENRY A. GIROUX
SPECIAL TO THE STAR

"Unique among nations, America recognized the source of our character as being godly and eternal, not being civic and temporal. And because we have understood that our source is eternal, America has been different. We have no king but Jesus."

— John Ashcroft, former U.S. attorney general

Since the re-election of George W. Bush last November, religious fundamentalists have been in overdrive in their effort to define American politics through a reductive and fanatical moralism.

This kind of religious zealotry has a long tradition in American history, extending from the arrival of Puritanism in the 17th century to the current spread of Pentecostalism. This often ignored history, imbued with theocratic certainty and absolute moralism, has been powerful in providing religious justification to the likes of the Ku Klux Klan, the parlance of the Robber Barons, the patriarchal discourse of "family values," the National Association of Evangelicals' declared war on "the bias of aggressive secularism," and the current attack on a judiciary that is allegedly waging war on people of faith.

But American religious fundamentalism in its most recent incarnation extends far beyond the parameters of extremist sects or the isolated comments of radical Christian politicians, evangelical leaders and pundits; it is now operative in the highest reaches of government and "more radical and far-reaching than in the past," according to the conservative commentator Andrew Sullivan.

The fundamentalist tendencies of President Bush are now commonplace and can be seen in his official recognition of "Jesus Day" while governor of Texas, his ongoing faith-based initiatives and his endless use of religious references and imagery in his speeches.( Read more... )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

This Religious Right Watch article has links to emails and other interesting goodies.

Christian readers of RRW might very well find an advocate in the new org, Christian Alliance for Progress (CAP). They were recently attacked by Jerry Falwell, so they must be doing something right. Christian or non-, if you want a great example of the Christian Right's understanding of "faith" (i.e., the Christian Right is really about [conservative] politics, not faith), the below reprinted e-mail from CAP is interesting. (The emphasis is not in the original.)

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

An op-ed column asks whether or not the religious right is confusing temporal power with the spread of God's Kingdom:

The First Amendment protects political involvement based on religious faith. Anyone who suggests otherwise - that religious people acting on their convictions in the political arena somehow violates the Constitution - turns the First Amendment on its head.

But increasingly these days many religious people - and especially some well-known conservative Christian leaders- confuse their own temporal power and influence with the spread of God's kingdom.

The political pronouncements from the pulpit become increasingly more brazen and bold. At the Southern Baptist Convention recently, the Rev. Jerry Falwell told pastors that conservative Christians had re-elected George Bush and that their next task was keeping Hillary Clinton from election in 2008.

Leaving aside the extraordinary departure from Baptist tradition such partisan political talk represents, the marshaling of Christian legions in overtly political wars confuses political triumphalism with advancing the cause of Christ.( Read more... )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

firepie asked for a list of Religious Right websites. I found a nice collection of them. Here they are:

American Family Association

Fallwell's Moral Majority Coalition

The 700 Club

James Dobson's Focus on the Family

Breakthrough- Rod Parsley's World Harvest Church

The 10/40 window (world conversion site)

FORCE Ministries (Warning- noisy intro.)

Campus Crusade for Christ

Liberty University

Bob Jones University

That ought to get you started. Anyone else, feel free to add to the list.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY ellid)

From the Southern Poverty Law Center's web site:

http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=522

A particularly relevant quote from the first page:

"The Rev. Mel White (see also A Thorn in Their Side), an evangelical writer and filmmaker who ghostwrote Falwell's autobiography, says Falwell was led to politics in part by Dr. Francis Schaeffer, a rebellious fundamentalist who had begun spreading the word about "dominion theology" and who many see as the father of the anti-abortion movement.

"Dubbed the "Guru of Fundamentalists" by Newsweek in 1982, Schaeffer believed that Christians are called to rule the U.S. — and the world — using biblical law. That meant winning elections.

"Dr. Schaeffer," says White, "convinced Jerry there was no biblical mandate against joining with 'nonbelievers' in a political cause." "




Yes, word is starting to get out. Finally.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY meta4life)

God, I hope this isn't inappropriate...

Anyway, I'm currently researching and writing an article (series!) on the influences of the ultra-religious right wing on modern American culture. What I've got so far is both byzantine and dismaying -- and I know I've only scratched the surface.

I've got lots of quotes and sources for other areas, but where I'm lacking is material that links Dobson, Perkins, Falwell et. al. to religious intolerance. I've got Robertson's stupidity from just this month, but what I really need is stuff that links other popular leaders of this movement to religious hate statements, or the equivalent.

Can anyone help me? You can leave your links in the Comments, if I don't get whacked for an inappropriate post (I hope not -- this community is the best-informed I know for this kind of thing).

Thanks loads!

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

Rigorous Intuition talks about "Heavenly Deception" in this interesting post:

There was a thoughtful and rather uncomfortable piece by Bill Moyers that appeared a couple of weeks ago, one I'm sure he never expected to write, entitled "There is No Tomorrow":

One of the biggest changes in politics in my lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the Oval Office and in Congress. For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington.
...
I've reported on these people, following some of them from Texas to the West Bank. They are sincere, serious and polite as they tell you they feel called to help bring the rapture on as fulfillment of biblical prophecy.... The last time I Googled it, the rapture index stood at 144 -- just one point below the critical threshold when the whole thing will blow, the son of God will return, the righteous will enter Heaven and sinners will be condemned to eternal hellfire.( Read more... )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

Christopher Hitchens talks about the Religious Right:

Why I'm Rooting Against the Religious Right
Save the Republic from shallow, demagogic sectarians.

BY CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS
Thursday, May 5, 2005 12:01 a.m.

I hope and believe that, by identifying itself with "faith" in general and the Ten Commandments in particular, a runaway element in the Republican leadership has made a career-ending mistake. In support of this, let me quote two authorities:

* The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position 100%. If you disagree with these religious groups on a particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of money or votes or both. . . . Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me? And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some god-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of "conservatism."( Read more... )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

This article talks about the desire of the Religious Right to use the judiciary to dissolve the wall between church and state:

Religious right seeks judiciary that dissolves church-state separation

BY DICK POLMAN
Knight Ridder Newspapers

PHILADELPHIA - (KRT) - Religious conservatives, emboldened by President Bush's re-election and confident of their political clout, are not interested in merely overhauling the judiciary. Ideally, they are seeking a judiciary that would remove the wall of separation between church and state.

This ambition is stated clearly in numerous legal briefs currently on file at the U.S. Supreme Court in connection with a pending case; they seek removal of "a Berlin wall" that is "out of step with this nation's religious heritage." In fact, their leaders argue in interviews that the church-state barrier is a "myth" invented by the high court in 1947, thanks to a twisted interpretation of our founding documents.( Read more... )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY thedemonprist)

( An article and some amusing pics )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

This article talks about the very serious consequences of Dominionist rule of the government:

There are times when what we journalists see and intend to write about dispassionately sends a shiver down the spine, shaking us from our neutrality. This has been happening to me frequently of late as one story after another drives home the fact that the delusional is no longer marginal but has come in from the fringe to influence the seats of power. We are witnessing today a coupling of ideology and theology that threatens our ability to meet the growing ecological crisis. Theology asserts propositions that need not be proven true, while ideologues hold stoutly to a world view despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. The combination can make it impossible for a democracy to fashion real-world solutions to otherwise intractable challenges.

In the just-concluded election cycle, as Mark Silk writes in Religion in the News,

the assiduous cultivation of religious constituencies by the Bush apparat, and the undisguised intrusion of evangelical leaders and some conservative Catholic hierarchs into the presidential campaign, demonstrated that the old rule of maintaining a decent respect for the nonpartisanship of religion can now be broken with impunity.

The result is what the Italian scholar Emilio Gentile, quoted in Silk's newsletter, calls "political religion"—religion as an instrument of political combat. On gay marriage and abortion— the most conspicuous of the "non-negotiable" items in a widely distributed Catholic voter's guide—no one should be surprised what this political religion portends. The agenda has been foreshadowed for years, ever since Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and other right-wing Protestants set out to turn white evangelicals into a solid Republican voting bloc and reached out to make allies of their former antagonists, conservative Catholics.

What has been less apparent is the impact of the new political religion on environmental policy. Evangelical Christians have been divided. Some were indifferent. The majority of conservative evangelicals, on the other hand, have long hooked their view to the account in the first book of the Bible:

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth."

There are widely varying interpretations of this text, but it is safe to say that all presume human beings have inherited the earth to be used as they see fit. For many, God's gift to Adam and Eve of "dominion" over the earth and all its creatures has been taken as the right to unlimited exploitation. But as Blaine Harden reported recently in The Washington Post, some evangelicals are beginning to "go for the green." Last October the National Association of Evangelicals adopted an "Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility," affirming that "God-given dominion is a sacred responsibility to steward the earth and not a license to abuse the creation of which we are a part." The declaration acknowledged that for the sake of clean air, clean water, and adequate resources, the government "has an obligation to protect its citizens from the effects of environmental degradation."

But even for green activists in evangelical circles, Harden wrote, "there are landmines."

Welcome to the Rapture!

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY seshen)

Invigorated by what he calls the "greatest victory" in the history of the religious right, Rev. Jerry Falwell says he is going to resurrect the Moral Majority — the movement he started in the 1970s that some say led to the march of Christian soldiers to Washington.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

adoka found this little jewel. It's a list of actual linked quotes from some of the more rabid members of the Christian Right.

I really feel sympathy for the moderate Christians who get lumped in with these people.

Sunfell

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY hummingwolf)

I wasn't sure whether to post this one or not, considering how utterly unsurprising it is these days. "WASHINGTON — The Rev. Jerry Falwell boasted Friday that evangelical Christians, after nearly 25 years of increasing political activism, now control the Republican Party and the fate of President Bush in the November election."

In the comments over on Christdot, someone pointed to a story reporting that George W. Bush told a group of Old Order Amish: "I trust God speaks through me. Without that, I couldn't do my job."

It would make sense sense for a Christian president to believe that he had his job because it was God's will for him to be there, and it would make sense for a Christian president to pray for and seek the Lord's guidance in all that he does. Heck, those are things even an unelected, ordinary Christian can believe and do without being ridiculous. But does Dubya honestly believe he's a prophet? That does sound like what he's saying here. Then again, maybe he just thinks he's a Pope.