Missouri Constitutional Amendment 2, advertised by supporters as the Right to Pray Amendment, will allow students to refuse to "participate in academic assignments or educational presentations that violate his or her religious beliefs." Obviously, this could impact science instruction that includes evolution or any reference to the age of the earth, but the "biblical worldview" embraced by growing numbers of Americans also requires significant alterations in the teaching of history, economics, and even mathematics. As stated in a New York Times op-ed, this amendment "would almost certainly lead to litigation about who controls curriculum in public schools."
David Barton, president of the Christian conservative WallBuilders organization and a frequent guest on Glenn Beck's broadcasts, has for years been getting away with historicide. Criticism of Barton's politically motivated and tenuous grasp of history, once the sole province of liberal scholars, church-state separationists, and left wing political activists and bloggers, is now spreading beyond liberal enclaves, as several Christian scholars are criticizing Barton for just plain making stuff up.
In a recent World magazine article titled "The David Barton controversy", Thomas Kidd reported that "some conservative Christian scholars are publicly questioning Barton's work."
Ray Flynn, who along with four other former U.S. Ambassadors to the Vatican endorsed Mitt Romney way back in January, is now appearing in a television ad for Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA). Flynn, a former mayor of Boston, who is described as a Democrat in the ad, has not endorsed a Democratic candidate for president since Bill Clinton, and endorsed Scott Brown for the late Ted Kennedy's U.S. Senate seat over Democrat Martha Coakley.
But there is much more to Ray Flynn's political involvements than his Republican endorsements. He would probably rather we forget, but he has also been a leader of the Religious Right.
As election season heats up, we're sure to see an increase in the number of houses of worship intervening in partisan politics by endorsing or opposing candidates.
Churches are tax-exempt nonprofits, and most pastors know this is illegal and inappropriate. But a small percentage - often prodded and provoked by Religious Right legal groups - is determined to violate federal tax law and drag partisanship into the pulpit.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, "The man who allegedly murdered six people at a Sikh temple in suburban Milwaukee" on Sunday (identified in media reports as Wade Michael Page) "was a frustrated neo-Nazi who had been the leader of a racist white-power band."
The SPLC issued a bulletin revealing that "In 2010, Page, then the leader of the band End Apathy, gave an interview to the white supremacist website Label 56. He said that when he started the band in 2005, its name reflected his wish to 'figure out how to end people's apathetic ways' and start 'moving forward.' 'I was willing to point out some of my faults on how I was holding myself back,' Page said."
This is an updated version of a post from last month that I will probably revise and update from time to time as I discover, or remember, relevant resources. -- FC
One of the challenges in writing about the Religious Right and what to do about it -- on this site and elsewhere -- is the matter of terms and definitions.
From the earliest days of Talk to Action, we have often written about how unfair labels and terms of demonization are not only inaccurate and opposed to basic standards of scholarship and journalism; but are also unrelated to the basic values of people of good will -- and are often politically counterproductive to boot.
The purpose of this post is not to go over all that again. I want to point to some useful resources on basic definitions and usage for those who are interested in trying to get it right.
Journalist Greg Metzger thinks I've got up and coming evangelical and Christian Right leader Eric Metaxas wrong. In a recent essay at Religion Dispatches I had written that Metaxas had, in a bookstore presentation in March, called on conservative Christians to consider revolutionary violence in light of the Obama administration's plans to require employers to include contraception in the insurance packages offered to their employees.
Greg, (whose discussion of Metaxas' unsupported claim that the Obama administration's policies were analogous to the early Nazi era, first brought this matter to my attention) thought Metaxas was engaging in a political metaphor when he talked about "firing all of our bullets" in the "fight" and being prepared "to die on this hill." Greg says he chose to give Metaxas the benefit of the doubt.
Recently Talk to Action's Fred Clarkson authored a very important essay for Religion Dispatches concerning the growing alliance between conservative Evangelical Protestants and some traditionalist Catholics. He focused on Eric Metaxas, the revisionist biographer of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Opus Dei priest to the powerful, C. John McCloskey.
In his essay, Fred discussed McCloskey's literary vision for the Catholic Church in the year 2030. But while his story appeared to be about a smaller and more strident Church, it also appears to be a broadside against birth control - and by extension, Keynesian economics.
Starting today, a number of provisions in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that affect primarily women's health begin taking effect. One of them is a mandate that most employers contract with an insurance firm that provides no-cost birth control.
Americans United works to defend church-state separation and took no stand on the ACA. But when the controversy erupted over access to birth control, we made a couple of points that are worth reiterating as these new provisions take effect.
No matter how many gaffes Mitt Romney and his advisors may have committed during their trip to Great Britain, Israel and Poland, and despite not having much love for the Republican Party's presumptive presidential candidate, conservative Christian evangelicals will turn out in November in droves to vote against President Barack Obama.
A question I raised in an April piece titled "Will They or Won't They? Romney and the Evangelicals," was: Will conservative Christian activists became active member of Romney's electoral army? My answer at the time was that he might not need them.
I concluded that piece with this observation: "Picture this: Come August, cities and towns across the state of Utah begin to resemble ghost towns, as armies of Mormons spread out across the swing states to work for Romney."
The haze of summer has not quite obscured my recent essay at Religion Dispatches about the insurrectionist visions of up-and-coming Christian Right leader Eric Metaxas and Fr. C. John McCloskey -- Opus Dei evangelist to the rich and powerful.
Bloggers digby and DownWithTyranny have discussed it and I am sure there will be others. Meanwhile, Metaxas may be coming to a venue near you. And if he does, he may say something like this:
U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann's efforts to stir up an anti-Muslim witch hunt have sparked a bit of a pushback, to put it mildly.
As you might recall, Bachmann (R-Minn.) and four other House members (Trent Franks of Arizona, Louie Gohmert of Texas, Thomas J. Rooney of Florida and Lynn A. Westmoreland of Georgia) sent letters to the inspector general offices of the State, Justice and Homeland Security departments, demanding an investigation into the infiltration of our government by the Muslim Brotherhood.
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Recently Talk to Action's Fred Clarkson authored