LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

This Guardian article explains how big businesses who support anti-discrimination laws are under pressure from the Religious Right:

David Teather explains how US companies supporting anti-discriminatory legislation are under pressure from the religious right

David Teather
Wednesday May 4, 2005

Guardian Unlimited
Last week, Microsoft unwittingly found itself caught in the crosshairs of America's culture wars.

The software company is widely regarded as a progressive employer, and has offered benefits to the partners of its gay and lesbian workers since 1993. Earlier this year, it toughened up its anti-discrimination policy still further to cover "gender identity or expression", including transsexuals and transvestites.

It took Wal-Mart, the biggest employer in the US, until 2003 to even include a clause covering gays and lesbians in its anti-discrimination rules, although this was a welcome enough move from what is an otherwise deeply conservative company.

But in a widely reported decision, Microsoft recently withdrew its support for a bill that would have made it illegal to discriminate against gays and lesbians in its home state of Washington.

The company had supported a similar bill a year earlier, and its decision to take a "neutral" position caused uproar and drew accusations that it had bowed to the demands of religious conservatives.( Read more... )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

This article was originally published in the Calcutta, India Telegraph, but is no longer available. I am reproducing it here from atheism.

THE TROUBLE WITH RELIGION

Wherever religions get into society's driving seat, tyranny results
Salman Rushdie

I never thought of myself as a writer about religion until a religion came after me. Religion was a part of my subject, of course — for a novelist from the Indian subcontinent, how could it not have been? But in my opinion I also had many other, larger, tastier fish to fry. Nevertheless, when the attack came, I had to confront what was confronting me, and to decide what I wanted to stand up for in the face of what so vociferously, repressively and violently stood against me.

Now, 16 years later, religion is coming after us all and, even though most of us probably feel, as I once did, that we have other, more important concerns, we are all going to have to confront the challenge. If we fail, this particular fish may end up frying us.( Read more... )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

Here's the BBC's take on the evangelical takeover of the US government:

Conservative conspiracy?

With President George W Bush in the White House and a Republican dominated Congress, the time seems right for Mr Farris and Patrick Henry College.

His students already have a level of access to Washington politics that few universities in the US can match.

Also, some 22 conservative members of Congress have employed interns from Patrick Henry over the past few years.

Critics see the college's very close connections to Mr Bush's White House as evidence of a conservative conspiracy to take over the institutions of power.

But Mark Rozell, professor of public policy at Washington DC's George Mason University, sees it differently:

"What Michael Farris is doing with Patrick Henry College is a perfectly legitimate part of the political landscape," he said.

"If other people feel threatened by it, they've got to get out there and mobilise their folks to be well-trained, serving internships, getting to Washington and so forth."

Democrat response

It is a message that is beginning to be heard.

Since November's election, leading Democrats such as Hilary Clinton are looking at how they can also engage in the language of God.

Jim Wallis, one of America's leading evangelical preachers, said it was time to end the Republican stranglehold on faith-based politics:

"Somehow Jesus has become pro-rich, pro-war and only pro-America," he said.

"How did this ever happen? Our faith has been stolen and it's time to take it back.

"There's a growing progressive evangelical movement in the US which cares about poverty and the environment and we're talking about what it means to apply faith to our politics."

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

Media Transparency, who watches, among other things, 'faith-based movements' published a very interesting article about Christian broadcasting and its players. 'Christian persecution' was the main theme.

An excerpt:

...Plummer wasn't opposed to having religious extremists subvert a greater society. His critique of Islam, couched in the language of spiritual warfare, was only meant to cast it as Christianity's most dangerous competitor. The Christian Right's dominionist intentions, a theme of the convention, were particularly in evidence at a seminar called, "Taking Over Cities For Christ: The Thousand Day Plan."

The seminar was led by Raul Justiniano, the Bolivian president of the Confederation of Ibero-American Communicators (COICOM), NRB's Latin American counterpart. Like a counter-revolutionary version of Che Guevara, the goateed Justiniano laid out his three-year plan to "invade" Latin American cities one by one by establishing cells in local churches and spreading outwards to "take possession of all parts of the city."

In the past decade, Justiniano has plastered Latin American cities with apparently non-religious billboard advertisements soliciting people to evangelization centers, saturated local media with Christian-themed commercials and films, and hosted stadium-sized revivals across the sub-continent. All in all, he claims to have won millions of souls through 61 "invasions" in six countries.

"Christian media is the air force and the church gives us people on the ground to mobilize our troops," Justiniano explained. "People will take notice and those are your targets. Everyone will be networked in eventually."

Like Justiniano, Olivia Gans was fluent in the language of cultural counter-revolution. A chipper, middle-aged woman leaning against an orthopedic cane, Gans manned the booth of America's oldest and largest anti-abortion group, the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC - website). While the much of the Christian Right's leadership uncompromisingly demands a reversal of Roe v. Wade, NRLC has quietly shifted its focus from overturning Roe to what Gans calls, "changing the culture."

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY hummingwolf)

On religionnewsblo today is an item about The World Council of Churches (WCC), the main global body uniting non-Catholic Christians, accusing the US of violating international law in its treatment of detainees at Guantanamo. What interests me isn't so much the political points, or even the fact that a major collection of Christian denominations is criticizing the overtly Christian USA (there is surely some Jack Chick comic telling you that the WCC is a tool of antichrist anyway), but the sidebar with the links to other Religion News Blog articles about American double standards. Many of you may be heartened by the page stating Why Apologetics Index Addresses U.S. Human Rights Issues, including the bit about the country's "Special Relationship with God."

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY thedemonprist)

A short op-piece by a BBC reporter talks about what is seen as an increasingly widening gap between Euro-American relations. Choice quotes: "America is fast becoming a nation of faith not fact. A nation where the unpleasant aspects of human existence are simply airbrushed away...Of course, we all know how much more religious Americans are, but the crucial point, it seems to me, is that the kind of religious beliefs on the march in America tend to be those stressed in the book of revelation rather than the sermon on the mount." ( Full article in here... )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY thedemonprist)

Brief clip here

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

Sometimes the folks at atheism find the most interesting stuff...

U.S. a nation of faith filled with religious illiterates

( Read more... )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY kalibex)

'The fascism of Nazi Germany belongs to a world so horrendous it often seems to defy the possibility of repetition or analogy. But Dr. Stern, 78, the author of books like "The Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology" and university professor emeritus at Columbia University, has devoted a lifetime to analyzing how the Nazi barbarity became possible. He stops short of calling the Christian right fascist but his decision to draw parallels, especially in the uses of propaganda, was controversial.

'"When I saw the speech my eyes lit up," said John R. MacArthur, whose book "Second Front" examines wartime propaganda. "The comparison between the propagandistic manipulation and uses of Christianity, then and now, is hidden in plain sight. No one will talk about it. No one wants to look at it."'

From: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/06/nyregion/06profile.html?oref=login

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY autumnalshadow)

well, i'm new here, and posting the obligatory intro post. i'll keep it as short as possible. having grown up in thailand (my parents are missionaries) i am often incredibly disgusted by the insular attitudes, closed minds, and judgmentalism that so often come from americans in general and from the religious right in particular. thus, i was drawn to this website. i hope to be a reasonably productive member.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

This BBC report talks about the 'Christianization' of the US government:

I had come to Lancaster to gauge Republican political views, but left convinced that it is, in fact, the raging debate about Christian values that may well decide the future path of America, very much.

As the debate between extremist and moderate Muslims is likely to set the tone for the future of the Islamic world.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

The author of the Guardian article below is George Monbiot, who has also written some other interesting -and chilling- articles about the slow slide of the US into religious Dark Ages.

The articles are located in the "Religion" section of the site. Some excerpts:

-From "America is a Religion"

(from a July 29, 2003 column)...The United States is no longer just a nation. It is now a religion. Its soldiers have entered Iraq to liberate its people not only from their dictator, their oil and their sovereignty, but also from their darkness. As George Bush told his troops on the day he announced victory, "wherever you go, you carry a message of hope - a message that is ancient and ever new. In the words of the prophet Isaiah, "To the captives, 'come out,' and to those in darkness, 'be free.'"2


So American soldiers are no longer merely terrestrial combatants; they have become missionaries. They are no longer simply killing enemies; they are casting out demons. The people who reconstructed the faces of Uday and Qusay Hussein carelessly forgot to restore the pair of little horns on each brow, but the understanding that these were opponents from a different realm was transmitted nonetheless. Like all those who send missionaries abroad, the high priests of America cannot conceive that the infidels might resist through their own free will; if they refuse to convert, it is the work of the devil, in his current guise as the former dictator of Iraq.


As Clifford Longley shows in his fascinating book Chosen People, published last year, the founding fathers of the USA, though they sometimes professed otherwise, sensed that they were guided by a divine purpose.3 Thomas Jefferson argued that the Great Seal of the United States should depict the Israelites, "led by a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night".4 George Washington claimed, in his inaugural address, that every step towards independence was "distinguished by some token of providential agency".5 Longley argues that the formation of the American identity was part of a process of "supersession". The Catholic Church claimed that it had supplanted the Jews as the elect, as the Jews had been repudiated by God. The English Protestants accused the Catholics of breaking faith, and claimed that THEY had become the beloved of God. The American revolutionaries believed that the English, in turn, had broken their covenant: the Americans had now become the chosen people, with a divine duty to deliver the world to God's dominion. Six weeks ago, as if to show that this belief persists, George Bush recalled a remark of Woodrow Wilson's. "America," he quoted, "has a spiritual energy in her which no other nation can contribute to the liberation of mankind."6

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

The UK newspaper "The Guardian" has a very interesting and chilling article about the beliefs of certain fundementalists, and how they affect world stability:

Their beliefs are bonkers, but they are at the heart of power ( Read more... )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

Religious Divide Cited for US, European Political Differences

While faith-based organizations play a significant role in American politics, the experts said, similar organizations in Europe are far less influential. The political influence of American faith-based groups also appears connected to the importance individual Americans place on religion.

According to recent findings by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, sponsored by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, 59 percent of Americans identified religion as an important part of their lives. In contrast, 11 percent of the French, 14 percent of Russians and 33 percent of Britons said religion was important to them.

"Europe is decidedly a post-Christian society," said Dr. Richard Lessner, executive director of the Family Research Council's American Renewal Project. "Faith is far less important in the daily lives of Europeans. Their institutions are not rooted in a particular faith point-of-view. They are thoroughly secular societies, with a very different national history from the national history of America."

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

Interesting editorial commentary from the Guardian about how Evangelicals have become their own worst enemy.

Evangelicals Have Become This Century's Witch Burners

Evangelicals define themselves by a love of the Bible. It is thus a tragedy for all Christians that they are now seen as the nasty party. Indeed, some moderate evangelical churches have become so concerned about the association between "evangelical" and a narrow theological chauvinism that they are thinking of dropping the word. They are right to be worried, for in recent years a virulent form of rightwing Christian fundamentalism has infiltrated the evangelical movement. And they are obsessed with gay sex.