Based on the information I've garnered over the past week or so, it would not be fair to characterize Archbishop Jorge Mario Bergoglio - now Pope Francis - as having been complicit with the military dictatorship's imprisonment, torture and murder of more than 30,000 Argentinians during that country's "Dirty War." It would be a lot closer to the truth, however, to see him as a man of inaction; one who, for whatever political, religious and/or personal reasons, chose to remain silent.

While it may be understandable that Bergoglio was unwilling to risk his life during the "Dirty War," which would have been threatened had he vigorously spoken out against the military dictatorship's human rights abuses, it is far less understandable why, for the longest time, he has remained virtually indifferent to those who suffered at the hands of  sexually abusive clergy in Argentina.

How does a regressive and theocratic-minded movement market itself with progressive-sounding jargon? The gubernatorial campaign of Max Myers is a textbook example.  Myers has spent the last six years leading the Global School of Supernatural Ministry under Randy Clark's Apostolic Network of Global Awakening, part of the Revival Alliance network that "commissioned" Todd Bentley and includes aggressively anti-abortion and anti-gay activist Lou Engle.  Myers is running for governor as a Democrat and kicked off a two-day media campaign at an LGBT community center in Philadelphia on Monday. At his next stop, at the state capitol in Harrisburg, Myers told reporters that "he has a strategy to bring transformation to Pennsylvania," although he would not reveal the details.  Transformation is a buzzword that resonates with people across the nation who have embraced the teachings of the apostles and prophets of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR).

Kicks Off His Campaign at Philly LGBT Center

Max Myers spent the last six years as the head of the Global School of Supernatural Ministry (GSSM) of the Apostolic Network of Global Awakening (ANGA). ANGA is led by internationally known apostle, Randy Clark, and includes the regional Wagner Leadership Institute (WLI) and GSSM housed in the Apostolic Resource Center in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, a few miles from the state capitol.  

Required reading for some of the ANGA programs describes homosexuality as caused by demons. GSSM requires students to confess any homosexual sex on their application forms.  Nevertheless, Myers is running as a Democrat in the 2014 gubernatorial race and kicked off a two-day media campaign on Monday morning at Philadelphia's William Way LGBT Community Center.

As I glance out my office window today at the snowflakes drifting down from the leaden gray skies of Washington, D.C., I have to keep reminding myself that spring will be here soon - on Wednesday, actually.

But, of course, that doesn't mean it's too early to start thinking about Christmas - especially if you're Sarah Palin.

In this week's feature story in As The Right Turns, Blogger Slacktivist, reminds us that evangelicals did not always believe that life begins at conception.

In 1979, McDonald's introduced the Happy Meal.

    Sometime after that, it was decided that the Bible teaches that human life begins at conception.

    Ask any American evangelical, today, what the Bible says about abortion and they will insist that this is what it says....

    That's new. If you had asked American evangelicals that same question the year I was born you would not have gotten the same answer.

By the time of the 1988 elections, everyone in American evangelicalism was wholly opposed to legal abortion and everyone in American evangelicalism was pretending that this had always been the case

And in other news:  Jandira Queiroz, Research Fellow at Political Research Associates has the story of the American Christian Right making moves on Brazil. She also has the story of the political rise of the virulently anti-gay  "Marco Feliciano, a right-wing Pentecostal pastor from the country's Social Christian Party."  And in the U.S., Christian Right Latinos (both Catholic and Protestant) are lining up with the Catholic Bishops to say that any mention of LGTB civil rights in immigration reform is a "deal breaker."  Among the leaders this nay to gay coalition is Samuel Rodriguez, leader of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, which wants to sound a lot like the Southern Christian Leadership Conference once headed by Martin Luther King...

April 8, 2013 could be a day to welcome immigrants and people from other nations. My colleague and friend Dr. Mohammad Mahallati, at Oberlin College, wants Congress to declare April 8 International Friendship Day. Mahallati, from a family with generations of Imams, says “difference is a blessing.” He has his hands full at Oberlin due to a rash of recent racial incidents, but he is an optimist. Indeed, we all should be optimists and activists.

Why? One big reason is that our country is facing an unrelenting campaign to demonize immigrants, especially those from Mexico, South and Central America, and the Middle East. This in part is based on fears of the changing demographic backgrounds of the people who make up our society. Fear of new immigrants is nothing new, nor is bigotry, racial strife, or other aspects of anti-immigrant xenophobia. These days there is also an entire industry devoted to spreading false and malicious claims about Muslims.

Xenophobia is one of those words few of us think about; but it just means fear of the stranger or anything we find strange or unfamiliar. We are told by social scientists that as a species we are programmed to face the stranger with a “fight or flight” response.

They leave out the third “F” for friendship. It’s not just a utopian dream; the future of our nation depends on teaching about difference and friendship among people from diverse backgrounds as a practical national policy.

Hat tip to Ulyankee for the recent Talk2action post.

Fox News recently featured  Steve Doocy interviewing Stephen McDowell in the role of Thomas Jefferson. McDowell is the co-author of the popular homeschooling textbook America's Providential History. This textbook includes quotes claiming that there is no shortage of natural resources - all the people on earth could live in Texas in single family homes and live on food produced in the U.S. alone, for example. Authors McDowell and Mark Beliles provide a list of "Christ Guidelines for Resistance to Tyranny" and warn, "There may come a time when we must resist lawful tyranny." (1991 edition, p. 31) It would be hard to find a better example than this textbook, first published in 1989, of the Christian Dominionist worldview behind much of today's paranoid, anti-government politics. Quotes from the text follow after the fold.

Kentucky legislators have passed a law they say protects "religious freedom" and have forwarded it to Gov. Steve Beshear.

This morning, Americans United joined other groups in the state asking Beshear to veto the bill.

This week we have an abbreviated and belated version of As the Right Turns.

President Obama has appointed the first woman to head the perennially scandal plagued U.S. Air Force Academy.  Perhaps Maj. Gen. Michelle Johnson can lead the Academy out of the era of anti-democratic religious supremacism and bigotry.  The latest such unfortunate episode involves the Academy's promotion of a homophobic web site, JewFAQ, operated by an Orthodox Jewish layman.  The site declares among other things, that

"The sin of sexual relations between men is punishable by death (Lev. 20:13), as are the sins of adultery and incest."

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) has demanded that the Academy remove the link.  MRFF wrote:  

Additionally, it includes a speciously hideous comparison of the originating cause of homosexuality to that of kleptomania. This disgrace is an open slap in the face to all lesbian, gay, and bisexual USAFA cadets, faculty, and staff. Additionally, the website contains the absurd and perverse notion that males who masturbate should have their hands chopped off."

Additionally, the website states that women's social status under Judaism is that they are "separate but equal," a statement that typically stipulates the polar opposite of any modern, democratic conception of "equality."

George Weigel, who has frequently appeared on the NBC Nightly News as a "Vatican analyst" in the run up to the Conclave of Cardinals that will select the next pope, has served as a  consultant on Catholic issues to NBC since 1999.  But what NBC does not tell us -- is that Weigel is no ordinary expert.  He is one of the leaders of today's Catholic Right.

Sixty-five years ago today, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down one of its most important church-state decisions.

The 8-1 ruling in McCollum v. Board of Education ended a practice in the Champaign, Ill., public schools of allowing ministers to come onto the campus during the day to offer sectarian instruction.

The decision is important because it marked the first time the high court ruled that the public schools could not be in the business of promoting religion to students. It paved the way for the 1962 and '63 rulings striking down official school prayer and Bible reading.

In several recent posts, I've sought to highlight a few points about the theocratic dominionist movement in the U.S.  In The Next Denialism about Dominionism, I discussed the campaign of denialism and the smearing of those of us who have written about dominionism. In that post I wrote that "denial about dominionism" is in its way, "as preposterous and pernicious as denial about climate change."