AlterNet has an illuminating interview by journalist Mandy Van Deven with Nancy L. Cohen, the author of Delirium: The Politics of Sex in America, just out in paperback.
Judging from the title, one might think that the book is just about gender issues and the war on women. I haven't read it yet, but I intend to, because I was surprised to find myself very much agreeing with her interview comments about both the rise of the Right and the failure of the crusty conservative liberal/left to adapt to political change, which as she says, is just as important as our understanding of the dynamics of the right. The interview offers some good reasons why the Religious Right is still strong, after all these years, and after (as some of us have discussed) so many premature, and utterly unfounded pronouncements of the movement's death.
This has been mentioned before, here at Talk To Action. But, to make the point incontrovertible, here is a conversation between Elijahlist publisher Steve Schultz and Bishop Harry Jackson (probably from 2003 or early to mid 2004, judging by the reference to the upcoming 2004 presidential election), in which the two greet each other as fellow prophets in C. Peter Wagner's Apostolic Council of Prophetic Elders.
It's not official policy, but with Internet access a 12-year old child anywhere in the Islamic world could construct, with relative ease, a plausible conspiracy theory claiming that the United States had invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, and was wielding its military, diplomatic, and soft-power in the Middle East and elsewhere, to combat Islam and advance a global Christian empire.
The continued use, per a breaking NBC story, of the infamous "jesus rifles" by U.S. troops in Afghanistan matters not only because it endangers U.S. troops by needlessly inflaming religious hatreds; for Muslims who suspect a Western war on Islam, it's yet another data point to plug in.
GOP Vice-Presidential nominee Paul Ryan has been playing up his Catholicism on issues such as abortion and stem cell research while seeming to throw his economic hero, Ayn Rand, under the bus.
His effort to be part-Randian, part-Catholic, while pretending not to be, has worn thinner and thinner as the election campaign has worn on.
If we compare the Ryan of 2005 when he more openly embraced Rand, to the Ryan of 2012, after his recent denunciation of the notorious atheist author it is clear that he still embraces much of her core economic outlook, which can be summarized, in her words, "This god, this one word: I."
Ray Flynn, the conservative Democrat, former Mayor of Boston and former U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican was for many years, also a leader of the Religious Right. He took a particularly authoritarian, theocratic Catholic approach to public life. In 2001 for example, Flynn was the featured speaker at the tenth anniversary celebration of the militant Priests for Life, headed by Fr. Frank Pavone. There, he went so far as to say:
"We Catholics don't know how to vote. We need someone to tell us how to vote."
This year, Ray Flynn is telling people to vote for a self described prochoice pol, Scott Brown for the U.S. Senate. And yet he claims Brown is prolife, when even prolife groups do not.
It is an extraordinary spectacle in public life when all things are fungible as seems to be the case with Ray Flynn. Let's have a look.
On Wednesday, September 19, 2012, the Washington Post published an op-ed from an Islam-bashing Christian pastor, John Hagee - founder of Christians United For Israel - who has repeatedly written in bestselling books, and broadcast around the world on evangelical networks (see Hagee statement 10:22 in this video), a claim also promoted by Adolf Hitler - that European Jewish bankers are manipulating the economy, to the detriment of common folk.
Christian Reconstruction by theory does not like anything that is connected to government. They despise government schools, public assistance and foreign policy. If they had their way the only local government agency would be a county sheriff. It is no surprise what the group thinks about what is now called "Obamacare."
My wife and I are fans of the Sunday New York Times, and yesterday as we were enjoying the paper over a leisurely breakfast, she nudged me to make note of a story on the front page. I looked and was a little taken aback. Glaring up at me was a photo of an old Americans United nemesis - Ralph Reed. The headline read, "An Evangelical Is Back From Exile, Lifting Romney."
Once again its that time of year when the Religious Right and their apologists will start whining that complaints about book censorship are a liberal plot. Fortunately,they will mostly be ignored.
And that's because every year, there are hundreds of documented efforts to restrict or outright ban books from school and public libraries. Many of those responsible for such efforts are groups and individuals affiliated with the Religious Right. The annual list of banned or challenged books have run a wide range, in recent years. Books that have accepting views of homosexuality are frequently targeted along with stories involving magic, such as Harry Potter books. These are banned alongside such perennial targets as To Kill a Mockingbird and Catcher in the Rye. This year, even The Hunger Games, the book that was the source for the popular film, made the top ten most challenged books list.
Some of the most important leaders in the conservative movement were on a marriage equality panel at the recent Values Voters Summit. But likely few of the conference participants had even heard of the panelists or the network of Family Policy Councils that makes them greater than the sum of their parts.
Panel moderator Cathi Herrod, president of the Arizona Center for Policy, is worried about the "Four states voting on whether marriage will be redefined in their states." Herrod said that proponents of marriage equality (no, she didn't really call them that) "see the fights in these states as the kickoff to reversing the victories in thirty-two states where the voters said `yes' to marriage being defined as between one man and one woman."
She sees any victories by her opponents as potentially a "game changer."
Like Chick-fil-A's president Dan Cathy, whose anti-same-sex marriage remarks set off a mid-summer kerfuffle, another very wealthy conservative Christian - also acting on what he says are his biblically-based principles -- has leaped into the battle over the Affordable Care Act's contraception mandate.
David Green, one of the world's richest men and the founder and chief executive of Hobby Lobby, the privately held arts and crafts supply business, recently filed a lawsuit - along with fellow plaintiffs David Green, Barbara Green, Steve Green, Mart Green and Darsee Lett -- in U.S. District Court in Oklahoma City "challenging a mandate in the nation's health care overhaul law that requires employers to provide coverage for the morning-after pill and similar drugs," the Associated Press recently reported.
The suit argues that the Affordable Care Act's birth control mandate would force "religiously-motivated business owners," such as themselves, to "violate their faith under threat of millions of dollars in fines." "The Green family believes they are obligated to run their businesses in accordance with their faith," the complaint states. "Commitment to Jesus Christ and to Biblical principles is what gives their business endeavors meaning and purpose."
After sustaining a series of self-inflicted political wounds - particularly, the GOP nominee's dismissal of 47% of the population -- the Romney Campaign is scrambling for something analogous from Obama. The best that they could dig up, courtesy of Matt Drudge, is a statement from 1998 in which then State Senator Obama said he believes in a limited form of redistribution. Romney supporters now are running around the country equating Obama's belief in liberal, New Deal-derived economics as either "Socialism" or "Marxism."
An absurd assertion indeed! Marxism, particularly the Soviet model, is a form of anti-liberalism. But perhaps what would be more surprising to GOP's would be Dynamic Duo is that the more accurate description would be "Good Catholic doctrine."
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