A few years ago, Talk to Action led the way in breaking the news and extending the analysis of the video game based on Tim LaHaye's Left Behind series of novels. Set in New York, members of a Christian militia called the Tribulation Force, comprising people who had been "left behind" after the Rapture, battle it out in the streets of New York City against the forces of the Anti-Christ, who, as in the novels, is the Secretary General of the United Nations.

The plan was to market the game, Left Behind: Eternal Forces, to and through evangelical churches during the 2006 Christmas shopping season. Then on Christmas morning, the glowing faces of children gathered 'round the tree would be handed a game to prepare them for a religious war.  It was bad enough that the game taught children the ideology of end-times religious war, but for many the devil was in the gruesome details. Indeed, the game turned on a feature that was best described as "convert or be killed."  

Now Left Behind Games apparently hopes to revive sales of the game. But first they have to revise history, and their first score was the the business magazine Quartz -- as well as the News Editor of Salon.com who quoted from the Quartz story:

Almost immediately, game reviewers, the media and various religiously-affiliated non profits declared that the game rewarded players for killing characters who did not convert to Christianity. While widely reported, this turned out to not be true.

In fact, it was not only true, but was a critical aspect of the game. It was reported by Talk to Action and others at the time, although Quartz found one gamer, writing three years later who disagreed. End of story?

Let's set the record straight.

As barriers to equality for the LGBT community continue to fall, the Family Research Council (FRC), an influential Christian Right group that has been propagating anti-gay pseudo-science for decades, is broadening its message by adopting the language of the antigovernment "Patriot" movement.

As many of the pre-Reagan era Religious Right leaders retire and/or die off, beware of the new breed. Lou Engle is one of the new breed. Although Engle has been kicking around for more than a decade, it is only in the past few years that he and the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), the charismatic evangelical political and religious movement that he has come to personify, has made such a splash that it threatens to drown out the more traditional voices of the Christian Right.

In 2000, when the U.S. Supreme Court decided that George W. Bush would be president, Lou Engle saw it as the answer to his prayers. A few months before the election, Engle had held an all-day prayer event in Washington, D.C., that drew approximately 400,000.

Although Engle's prayer rally wasn't as magnetic or media buzz-worthy as when the Promise Keepers drew nearly one million to the nation's capital three years earlier, it could be seen as Engle's coming out party.

"Apparently there's been a series against me over at the Daily Kos by a left-liberal lawyer," neo-Confederate author Thomas E. Woods Jr. recently wrote in a blog post titled, "Left-Wingers Attack; I Yawn."

Before launching into his response to my series he claimed, "I no longer pay attention to left-wing attacks"  (Except, apparently, when he does).

This post is the first of three brief replies to Mr. Woods. In this initial offering I will explain why the term neo-Confederate to which he objects, suits him so well.

There's something rotten in the city of Springboro, Ohio. This community of about 17,000 in southwestern Ohio has suddenly become ground zero in a Religious Right-led culture war. What's happening there should be a cautionary tale to all of us.

In the wake of elections last year, a three-member Tea Party faction now controls the school board. They're up to no good.

Christian Right political operative David Lane based his recent call for Christian revolution largely on the work of Christian Reconstructionist author Peter Leithart. (Lane's provocative essay, published at World Net Daily in June was taken down without explanation after bloggers took notice.)  Lane opened with a quote from Leithart's book Between Babel and Beast:  

"Throughout Scripture, the only power that can overcome the seemingly invincible omnipotence of a Babel or a Beast is the power of martyrdom, the power of the witness to King Jesus to the point of loss and death."

 And speaking of America, which he equates with Babel, Leithart wrote:  

"If America is to be put in its place - put right - Christians must risk martyrdom and force Babel to the crux where it has to decide either to acknowledge Jesus an imperator and the church as God's imperium or to begin drinking holy blood."

Leithart published that just last year.  But in the wake of the recent Windsor decision of the Supreme Court that overturned the Defense of Marriage Act, he took to the blog at First Things and renewed his call for martyrs.

The mainstream press has been dutifully reporting on Brazil's recent massive anti-government demonstrations, protests that shocked the presidency of Dilma Rousseff; on the billions of dollars that have been spent on preparations to host both the 2014 World Cup and the Rio 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro; and Brazil's recent resounding defeat of Spain in the FIFA Confederations Cub final. Little attention, however, has been paid to the rising presence of the U.S. Christian Right in Brazil.

Enter the Brazilian Center for Law and Justice, an offshoot of Pat Robertson's legal outfit, the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ). According to The Public Eye's Jandira Queiroz, the ACLJ, "following the example of the Christian Right organization's [two] offices in Eastern Europe" and one in Kenya and one in Zimbabwe, has touched down in Brazil.

The theocratic intentions of Christian Right leaders sometimes surface in unexpected ways.  Most recently David Lane, a top Christian Right political operative and longtime behind-the-scenes "power broker" called for violent dominionist revolution in an essay published (and then taken down) by World Net Daily.

Lane has, among other things, been the national finance director for The Response, the 2011 prayer rally that served as the de facto launch of Texas Gov. Rick Perry's ill-fated run for president, as well as the organizer of the Texas Restoration Project, which had boosted Perry's political career.  He has worked with and for such GOP pols as Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee and Michelle Bachmann, and most recently, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY).  Lane currently leads the American Renewal Project of Don Wildmon's American Family Association which is targeting twelve states for political development towards the 2014 elections.  

Such nuts and bolts electoral work not withstanding, Lane called in his essay for Christians to "Wage war to restore a Christian America."   The depth and ferocity of Lane's vision is so remarkable that it cannot be explained away by the pundits of pooh pooh. Perhaps that is why it has gone unmentioned in the mainstream press. But Lane's words taken together; in the context of the politics of the moment as he understands it; and in set in the series of epochal historical and biblical moments he invokes -- his meaning is unambiguous.  

I've been monitoring the reaction of Religious Right groups to the Supreme Court's marriage equality rulings. It's not pleasant, but somebody has to do it.

I took special interest in the response of TV preacher Pat Robertson. As some of you may know, I've long had an interest in the ramblings of the eccentric Virginia televangelist and even wrote a book about him in 1996. (What can I say? A fellow needs a hobby.)

You could say that the American Family Association (AFA) isn't pleased about today's Supreme Court rulings on marriage equality.

By a 5-4 vote, the high court struck down the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), meaning that same-sex couples who are lawfully wed in states with marriage equality will have access to a range of federal benefits. This is a pretty big deal.

Over the past four-plus decades, it has become the largest Christian Evangelical University in the world. Despite its founder's life-long anti-government activism, it receives several hundred million dollars annually in federal financial aid money. It has also been involved in a number of political controversies over the years.

Since its founding in 1971, the Reverend Jerry Falwell's, Liberty University has weathered several serious financial storms: It was bailed out of near-financial collapse by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, who funneled lifeline funds to a non-profit Forest, Va.-based organization called Christian Heritage Foundation; and, Falwell's unexpected death in 2007, provided an insurance windfall that allowed the university to wiggle its way out of yet another financial headlock.

Now a new line of business is helping to grow and stabilize Liberty University. David Swanson's investigative reporting, posted on the Huntington News website, has revealed that Liberty has become one of the foremost national training grounds of "pilots who go up in planes and drone pilots who sit behind desks wearing pilot suits."

The recent book by Roger Griffin, named Terrorist's Creed and subtitled Fanatical Violence and the Human Need for Meaning, is a tirelessly researched book by this UK professor.