The Religious Right's annual "Values Voter Summit" (VVS) takes place this weekend. Americans United staffers Simon Brown, Sarah Jones and I will be there. (Barry Lynn usually pops in too, in case anyone wants to take a selfie with him.)

If you are a religious person, please pray for us. If you're not religious, please forward some recommendations for stress-relief strategies - favorite liquors, ice-cream brands, yoga positions, etc. - as I suspect we'll all need some way to unwind when this thing is over.

My latest post at Political Research Associates is about how this weekend's Values Voter Summit fits into the Christian Right's wider electoral strategy for 2014.

It is also about a new app to make it easy for pastors to run their church membership lists against voter registration lists -- and to encourage them to register and vote.  

The annual event typically draws several thousand Christian Right activists and features speeches by top GOP pols -- especially those with presidential aspirations.  This year is no different. Headliners include Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) and former Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-AR).

Meet Dr. Willie Parker. Chances are you've never met anyone like him.

He grew up dirt poor in Birmingham, Alabama; as a teenager he accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior, and was a "boy preacher in Baptist churches"; he was "the first black student body president of a mostly white high school"; he went to Harvard, became a college professor, and successful obstetrician "who delivered thousands of babies and refused to do abortions."

Dr. Willie Parker had what some might call a second "come to Jesus" moment, deciding "to give up his fancy career to become an abortion provider" -- for the poorest of the poor and the most needy -- at the only surviving abortion clinic in the state of Mississippi. These days, he travels a "circuit roughly similar ... to the one traveled by Dr. David Gunn before an anti-abortion fanatic assassinated him in 1993."

Dr. Parker's "name and home address have been published by an antiabortion Web site with the unmistakable intent of terrorizing doctors like him. ...[and] he receives threats that say, 'You've been warned.'"

Recently, government-encouraged outbreaks of mob violence against LGBT persons in countries from Uganda to Russia, and draconian new anti-gay legislation in those countries too, have gained growing media notice - some of which has focused on the role American evangelicals have played in inciting such hatred.

But the American culprits are not being funded from the margins. Tens of millions (possibly evens hundreds of millions) of dollars for that project is coming from the foundations whose representatives assemble yearly at an event known as The Gathering, where multimillionaire and billionaire evangelical funders of the culture wars from the families DeVos, Coors, Prince, Maclellan, Friess, Ahmanson, and others, and heads of the mammoth National Christian Foundation -  gather, dine, and strategize.

Yesterday conservative commentator Dinesh D'Souza was sentenced to five years of probation and a term of community service for violating federal campaign laws. He must also pay a fine of $30,000.

For many years, D'Souza was a garden-variety conservative who preached the standard libertarian line of small government and low taxes. At some point, he decided to climb aboard the Religious Right gravy train. In 2007 he penned a book titled What's So Great About Christianity. He spoke at the Values Voter Summit in 2012 and has appeared at other Religious Right gatherings - often collecting hefty speaking fees.

Banned Books Week is being celebrated this year from Sept. 21-27.  Yes its time for the annual celebration of the Freedom to Read, sponsored by the American Library Association and the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression as well as American Booksellers Association, American Society of Journalists and Authors, Association of American Publishers, Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, Freedom to Read Foundation, National Association of College Stores, National Coalition Against Censorship, National Council of Teachers of English, PEN American Center, and Project Censored. It is endorsed by the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress.  Click here to learn about ways to participate.

National Voter Registration Day is Tuesday, September 23. It is being organized by more than 1,900 groups in a coordinated field, technology and media effort to increase voter registration. Participants include the AFL-CIO, NAACP, National Organization for Women, Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, Rock the Vote and the YWCA.  See this report on Daily Kos for details and a useful list of ways to participate. For even more info, see this report from Best of the Left.

The Ice Bucket Challenge has been an outstanding success in raising both awareness and research money needed to find a cure for Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) . As of September 10, 2014 the ALS Association has raised $111.6 million in Ice Bucket Challenge donations. The wildly popular charity stunt captured the hearts of millions of people last summer bringing together former presidents, movie stars and ordinary citizens in an effort to create a greater awareness necessary to cure a hideous muscle disease. They did it by pouring ice water over themselves and then challenging friends and neighbors to do the same.

[note to readers: this is an excerpt from my first installment in a Twocare.org/Center Against Religious Extremism series that will examine extensive ties - both financial, organizational, and ideological - between the community of philanthropists, evangelical leaders, and Christian organizations that revolve around the event known as The Gathering and evangelical promotion of anti-gay hatred and anti-LGBT rights activism on a global scale, from Uganda to Russia. For Twocare.org's extensive coverage of the World Congress of Families, see here]

Christian-themed movies appear to be attracting large audiences these days. While none of the latest crop of religious-themed movies will come close to the box office numbers garnered by Mel Gibson's 2004 film, "The Passion of the Christ" - over $600 million combined domestically and worldwide -- nevertheless, these films are taking church goers out of the pews, and transporting them to local cineplexes across the country. A post-film-watching goal of the producers is to have patrons go home and click on the movie's website and order up a batch of merchandise.

Reading Edith Beer's book, The Nazi Officer's Wife, I ran across an interesting account of her fake marriage license.  She married a Nazi officer during World War II in Germany.  She was hiding out in what she called the "U-Boat" scene.  That is, hiding out amidst the enemy and no one knew they were there.  She goes for the license and the Nazi official asks the author several questions about her heritage.  She was asked if any of her parents were Jews.  Next the clerk wanted to know if any grandparents were Jews.  The focus of the authorization of marriage became the background check to see if there was any Jewish blood in the family.

The Neo-Confederate movement has been trying to jump start itself of late.  It has been an especially heady few months for the League of the South, a theocratic, White nationalist group based in Killen, Alabama

Some of its leading members have been running for office in Maryland.  And League president Michael Hill has gone so far as to call for the formation of paramilitary death squads. He now claims that he wasn't doing any such thing, but that if he were, we would just have to find out for ourselves. (We, being liberal "bedwetters.")

Bryan Fischer, the director of issues analysis for the American Family Association (AFA) is like a demented, right-wing geyser: You can count on him to pop off regularly.

Fischer's latest eruption is quite a doozy. In a Sept. 10 column provocatively titled, "No atheist should be permitted to serve in the U.S. military," Fischer argues that, well, no atheist should be permitted to serve in the U.S. military.