LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY wyldraven)

Americans United: Of Presidents & Piety: Americans Oppose Bible-Based Governmental Policies

Americans oppose secular government and want to see more religion in politics and public life, right?
( Excerpt. Click Headline for full story. )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY navytron89) Fromamericablog
 

http://www.americablog.com/2007/05/more-on-religious-right-terrorist.html

Campbell County authorities arrested a Liberty University student for having several homemade bombs in his car.

The student, 19-year-old Mark D. Uhl of Amissville, Va., reportedly told authorities that he was making the bombs to stop protesters from disrupting the funeral service.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

It's a small thing, but still significant. The Miami Herald reports that the "Center for Reclaiming America" has closed its doors.

Bringing an end to ambitious goals that included raising $2 million to launch a Capitol Hill lobbying arm, opening a dozen regional offices and recruiting activists in all 435 congressional districts, the Fort Lauderdale-based Center for Reclaiming America has shut its doors.

The conservative organization, part of the Rev. James D. Kennedy's Coral Ridge Ministries, let its eight employees go last week. Coral Ridge also closed its Capitol Hill-based Center for Christian Statesmanship, founded in 1995 to convert lawmakers to evangelical Christianity.

Brian Fisher, executive vice president at Coral Ridge Ministries, said the closings are part of a larger effort to redefine the ministry's mission.

''We believe that by streamlining the operations we will be able to return to our core focus,'' he said.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY amethyst_hunter)

A long post, but late-night/early-early morning surfing brings these bits of interest:

( Jim Wallis: Era of the Religious Right Over? )

( The New Grassroots Abortion Fields (long article but relevant because it deals with potentially misleading pregnancy crisis centers, which I believe has been mentioned here as one of the recruiting tools used by RRers) )

( YouTube: A new spiritual battlefield? )

( U.S. Beliefs in Pseudoscience Cause for Worry )

( Poll shows interesting findings about people's beliefs in the future of the secular world's and the Islamic world's ties )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY jenk)

David Kuo (the deputy director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives from 2001 to 2003, and the author of “Tempting Faith”) has an op-ed in today's New York Times. He quotes John W. Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute:

Modern Christianity, having lost sight of Christ’s teachings, has been co-opted by legalism, materialism and politics. Simply put, it has lost its spirituality. [...] Whereas Christianity was once synonymous with charity, compassion and love for one’s neighbor, today it is more often equated with partisan politics, anti-homosexual rhetoric and affluent mega-churches.

Evangelicals are beginning to see the effect of their political involvement on those with whom they hope to share Jesus’ eternal message: non-evangelicals. Tellingly, Beliefnet’s poll showed that nearly 60 percent of non-evangelicals have a more negative view of Jesus because of Christian political involvement; almost 40 percent believe that George W. Bush’s faith has had a negative impact on his presidency.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

For those of you here with a more than passing interest in Texas politics and the Religious Right's influence in said state, here's an interesting report from the Texas Freedom Network:

State of the Religious Right

This is a PDF file. You'll need Adobe Reader to read it. It's worth the time.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY kalibex)

The War on Christians and the values voter in 2006
March 27 -28, at the Omni Shoreham Hotel, Washington, DC

Confirmed Speakers Include:

Senator Sam Brownback
Senator John Cornyn
Congressman Tom DeLay
Congressman Todd Akin
Congressman Louis Gohmert

Rick Scarborough
Phyllis Schlafly
Alan Keyes
Gary Bauer
Janet Parshall

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY kalibex)

Paul Weyrich, widely considered one of the founding fathers of the modern conservative movement, is looking North these days with hopes that Prime Minister Stephen Harper's newly elected conservative government will transform the social and political landscape of Canada.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY vanar_en_daeor)

Found this article in my surfing and thought it might be of interest.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/feb2006/broo-f11.shtml

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY cheap_laugh)

and, your religious liberty among others. debating for christ:

Feb. 6, 2006 issue - When you believe the end of the world is coming, you learn to talk fast. On a Friday afternoon the debate team from Liberty University, Jerry Falwell's fundamentalist Baptist college, is madly rehearsing for the tournament about to begin. This year's topic: should the United States increase diplomatic and economic pressure on China. They may just be practicing, but you wouldn't know it from the menacing mosquito-buzz rising as all 20 debaters read their speeches at once, as fast as they can. Policy debate on the college level has become a rapid-fire verbal assault, an arguments-per-minute game, that sounds more like the guy at the end of the car commercial than an eloquent Oxford intellectual. There is tension and more than a little spittle in the air. The Liberty team is currently ranked No. 1 in the country, above Harvard (14th) and all the other big names. But for the evangelicals, there's a lot more at stake than a trophy. Falwell and the religious right figure that if they can raise a generation that knows how to argue, they can stem the tide of sin in the country. Seventy-five percent of Liberty's debaters go on to be lawyers with an eye toward transforming society. "I think I can make an impact in the field of law on abortion and gay rights, to get back to Americans' godly heritage," says freshman debater Cole Bender.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY lasarina)

What are the Religious Reich calling themselves these days? I'm looking for terms that the dominionist/AoG etc. would use to describe themselves/their movement. Not the terms which we know them (Dominionist, Theocratic, etc.)

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY kalibex)

Christian Coalition's 2006 Agenda

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY cheap_laugh)

Poor Dobson. The Khristian Right's Agenda hasn't borne fruit:
From Media Matters
,blockquote>Dobson: Republican majority has "very little" to show for "pro-family, pro-moral" agenda; Santorum pushed marriage amendment in response
Summary: On his radio program, James Dobson complained that the Republican Party has "very little ... to show for it" in terms of accomplishing the goals of "the pro-family agenda, the pro-moral agenda, [and] the sanctity of life." In response, Sen. Rick Santorum expressed his desire for Congress to vote on the Federal Marriage Amendment, describing the amendment's purpose as "protecting marriage ... between one man and one woman."</blockquote>

Poor babies. That's what they get for selling their soul(s) for the Whole World - It profited them not a whit. Oh,and thier is audio.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY navytron89)

Another Dominionist/Religious Reich lackey is back (from the grave) ready to lead us down another road to hell.

This week's U.S. NEWS & World Report has the lastest from Newt Gingrich and the whisperings of  his running for the Oval Office in 2008.

For the record this is the same moron that had the Office of Technological Assessment shut down as supposed part of cutting governmental spending (which is was actual as part of the Fundamentalist movement to put a leash on science and evolution). 

Science and evolution are the things that Religious Reich and Dominionist despise as it challenges/questions biblical ideology and intelligent free-thinking is needed to pursue science which is contridictory to simple-mindness/blind obedience of the masses.

I find bitter irony in Gingrich's statement:

• With America's economic dominance threatened, Newt Gingrich, the brainy former speaker of the House of Representatives, argues, "science and technology are at the heart of our survival." President Bush's No Child Left Behind Act, Gingrich continues, is "nutty." Instead, he says, kids should be paid cold, hard cash for excelling in math and science; prescription drugs, meanwhile, should be available on websites like Travelocity.com, where shoppers can compare prices before they buy.

Ok, with all due respect Mr. (Former) Speaker of the House,  Aren't you the same idiot that shut down the OTA?

While he is currently pandering to the masses and middle America, especially those hurt by the economic impacts that Shrub has caused after going off to an illegal and unjust war. I'll  note that if the OTA had not been shut down and been still running for the last 10 years, as an independent group of scientists and a bipartisan panel, Shrub would have found it ten-twenty times harder to justify the Iraqi War as the WMDs and yellow-cake urianium was never real to begin with.

Reading futher on I see thru alot of his bullshit ideological values which are suppose to make for an appealing presidental canidate, especially after all the problems Bush 2.0 and his thugs have inflicted on the America sheeple and the rest of the planet.

•   Gingrich has plenty of ideas in his current role as consultant and policy wonk. Winning the Future focuses on issues that Gingrich believes threaten America's dominance. Like what, you ask? Liberal secularism, terrorism, inefficient bureaucracy, and poor math and science education. Gingrich's goal is nothing less than "creating a 21st-century, intelligent, effective government."

After looking this statement over I see his attempt to please the Religious Reich crowd with this paragraph, Liberal Secularism.

Excuse me! Professor if you read history as you have the damn degree in the United State was founded on secularism.  Moron!

Additionally he talks about creating an intelligent government, the government is already intelligent. The problem is there is no common sense among the college educated retards that are running the country into the ground, instead they are kissing the collective asses of the big businesses (like Wally-Mart, the Oil Baronies and other Mega Corpses) which is bleeding the populace dry of there life and money.   

While he was the  South Republican Poster Boy back in the 80s-90s,  it amazes me that his head is so far up his asshole that he can see the real world thru the shit-stained lenses of  his.

If you look back at his track record of screw ups and sell outs its amazing that we aren't farther along the road to Dominonist rule.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY kalibex)

Excellent Metaphor.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

Senator Gary Hart talks about God and Caesar in America:

The revelation that a senior White House official "cleared" the since-failed nomination of Harriet Meyers to the Supreme Court with Focus on the Family founder James Dobson reminded me of the huge controversy caused by John Kennedy's campaign for president in 1960. Then it was the religious conservatives who were up in arms about the separation of church and state and about preventing "the Pope from taking over the White House."
Can you imagine their reaction if, in 1961 when President Kennedy nominated Byron White to the Supreme Court, Ted Sorenson had placed a call to the Pope to seek his approval of the White nomination?
Reflections such as this in the context of today's political rhetoric of "faith" and "values", and the high-jacking of the Republican party by the religious right, together with my own evangelical background and divinity school studies of theology, caused me to write God and Caesar in America: And Essay on Religion and Politics.

The full agenda of religious right "values"--laissez-faire economics, antigovernment biases, neo-conservative foreign policies, and rightist orthodoxy--requires a judiciary compliant with it. It does no good to convert a Jeffersonian public school system into private parochial schools, to make churches the instruments of the state by transferring public funds from social programs to them, to pass laws restricting reproductive rights, to expand law enforcement's intrusive reach in the name of security, or to torture or indefinitely detain terror suspects if a judge or court from the pre-revivalist past overturns those actions on constitutional grounds. The full religious revolution cannot be realized without a federal judiciary, up to and including at least five members of the Supreme Court, that shares those ideals and goals.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY kalibex)

"...he points out, religious fundamentalism, which by its nature discourages any questioning of the status quo, has become an ally of corporate greed and political repression. This has resulted in disastrous wars undertaken on false pretenses, a social safety net that is under attack, and laws that increasingly encroach upon people’s right to speak and live in accordance with their own consciences. If Americans are to restore democracy, they must put their faith—whether in the god of profit or in the God of the Bible—to the test, demanding religion that is open, engaged, compassionate and humane..."

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY gairid)

I have some questions--I don't want anyone to think I am being disingenuous here, I really want opinions and, if possible, links to anything that might shed light upon my questions.

dogemperor, you have been so very helpful as well as forthcoming regarding your upbringing and what you had to endure, as have others on this extremely informative and erudite group.

Anyway, here goes--these leaders of dominionist groups, Jim Dobson, Ted Haggerd, Jerry Falwell, etc.--what's the real story on them personally? Do they really believe what they are selling or are they in it for the power/money? Are there sources for first hand accounts of what these people are really like?

What about the pastors or whatever they call themselves that some of you are personally acquainted with?

(more behind the cut, so as to not clog up the page!)

( Read more... )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY hummingwolf)

"The politics of faith: Can Democrats get it right?"

But imagining that red-state voters will turn blue if only Democrats talk more about faith misunderstands the role of conservative evangelical Christianity in American politics. Conservative evangelical churches played a big role in delivering voters for George W. Bush in 2004 — but neither that nor Kaine's victory prove that red-state voters are simply hungry for "religion" and will reward whichever candidate speaks most convincingly about his or her personal faith.

Conservative evangelical churches were able to deliver voters for Bush in much the same way, and for much the same reasons, that labor unions and political machines like New York's Tammany Hall were once able to deliver votes for the Democrats: They offer material benefits to people with nowhere else to turn, and that is easily parlayed into votes at election time.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY thornewilder)

I was just perusing Wikipedia. (I am unable to leave the FGBMFI group because of its wealth and power, and clearly stealth theocratic ambitions) and went to the latter rain movement founder William Branham. He ends up being considered an important influence in the FGBMFI group. But I noticed the Branham prophecies and thought they were interesting:

1. "Franklin D. Roosevelt will run four terms and take America into a second world war.
2. "The dictator that's now arising in Italy will come into power, Ethiopia will fall. He'll come to a shameful end.
3. "The women has been permitted to vote. And in voting, someday they'll elect the wrong man.
4. "Our war will be with Germany, and they will build a great big concrete place and fortify themselves in there, and the Americans will take a horrible beating.
5. "Science will progress in such a way until they will make a car that will not have to be guided by a steering wheel, and the cars will continue to be shaped like an egg until the consummation
6. "I saw a great woman stand up, beautiful looking, dressed in real highly royals like purple, and I got little parenthesis down here, 'She was a great ruler in the United States, perhaps the Catholic church'
7. "I saw this United States burning like a smolder; rocks had been blowed up. And it was burning like a--a heap of fire in logs or something that just set it afire; and looked as far as I could see and she'd been blown up.[2]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Branham

What I find fascinating is #6 in relation to the Supreme Court. I have been trying to figure why - given the open and bigoted anti-catholic statements made by the RR-

Romanism is a pagan counterfeit of the Christian religion, ancient paganism and idolatry, claiming to be the church which Christ founded…The Roman Church is not another Chirsitian denomination. It is a satanic counterfeit…”
Bob Jones Jr., referring to the Catholic Church, FAITH for the Family, 1991, Bob Jones University

-the RR is rabidly pro-Alito.

Does anyone have more info on this? Or is this flaky. ;-0

Also did Branham have any known associations with racist groups?