Harry Jackson, the New Apostolic Reformation "apostle" leading the effort to roll back gay marriage in DC, published a revealing column in Charisma magazine. He argued that in order to launch a second Great Awakening, he and his fellow fundies must form a "fifth column" within society in order to fight back against attempts to roll back "Christian influence in our nation."
For the church to regain its effective presence in society, we must focus on four major components of political action. First, we need every Christian to become politically active with the party of their choice. For this engagement to work, local churches must accept their role to equip their people to understand a theological frame of reference, so they may interpret the issues facing their nation and local communities from a biblical perspective.
While there are no specific Bible verses that speak to issues like federal funding for embryonic stem cell research or a local proposal to reroute a sewer line through a particular field, well-informed Christians can effectively reason through such issues if they understand what the Bible teaches about human dignity, private property and the role of civil government in a free society. What the church in America needs is a fifth column of believers. The term “fifth column” originated during the Spanish Civil War.
Emilio Mola used the term during his 1936 radio address as he announced there were four columns advancing on the city of Madrid. But they would be joined by a fifth column of supporters inside the city who would undermine the resistance from within. We need to work inside all spheres of our culture to act in fifth-column style, changing our culture from within.
As chilling as this suggestion is on its face, it's even more so when you consider that Jackson is a prominent leader in the NAR. Jackson's call for a "fifth column" is as clear an expression as I've seen of the "Seven Mountains" strategy, the philosophy that calls for Christians to infiltrate the seven areas that influence culture--business, media, arts and entertainment, education, family, religion and especially government.
Invisible Children's KONY 2012 video, viewed over 80 million times, now appears to be blocked on Youtube, accompanied by an attached message that says, "This video contains content from DigiSay Limited and Scripps Local News, one or more of whom have blocked it on copyright grounds".
Since the naked public meltdown of Invisible Children cofounder and leading creative force Jason Russell, controversy over Invisible Children has only grown. Will the new copyright controversy help IC, or will it propel the troubled nonprofit further towards the rocks?
Positioning Invisible Children as a victim of copyright enforcement excess would probably help IC in the court of public opinion, and blocking IC's breakout video will only tend to spawn a whole new spate of cookie-cutter news stories that will in the end tend to float Invisible Children's marque even higher.
Meanwhile, it's also likely that media will continue to neglect Invisible Children's religious roots.
From KONY 2012's suspicious origins - propelled on social media sites from right wing enclaves across America, and IC's evangelical nature (1, 2), to the nonprofit's financing from the hard Christian right, and its extensive social and institutional ties to an evangelical network behind Uganda's "kill the gays bill", a mountain of evidence points to the conclusion that Invisible Children is a "stealth ministry" -- a possibility underlined by IC cofounder Jason Russell's identification of Invisible Children as a "Trojan Horse" effort.
Will mainstream media notice any of that? I'm not holding my breath.
From at least 1996 until this past week, CBN had a teaching paper on its Website that suggested that if you're a victim of child abuse and molestation, you could feel guilty about what happened because you can somehow "consent" to incest or "allow yourself to be molested." That paper was taken down late Wednesday afternoon, at least in part due to a stink raised by fellow Kossacks and Tree Climbers Roxine and SwedishJewfish. There's still a link to it on this section of CBN's Website, though it goes to a 404 page.
Now why would CBN cave so quickly in response to a protest by a bunch of God-hating libruls? Well, I suspect it may have something to do with this advice to anyone who has discovered abuse has taken place, which was in that paper more or less unchanged for 16 years:
Before you do anything, seek the counsel of a minister. Ask for confidentiality if you desire. And act only when you are sure of God's leading. Be sure you understand the consequences of any action you decide to take. Whatever the Lord shows you to do, remember you can and should intercede in prayer for everyone concerned. Remember that it is not vengeance, but help that is needed.
Anyone who followed this advice would have opened themselves up to a world of legal trouble. In just about every state, certain professionals are required to report suspected child abuse to the child protection agency or the police--no ifs, ands or buts. In 26 of those states, that list includes clergy. And in my state of North Carolina and 19 other states, anyone who suspects abuse is required to report it. If anyone seriously believes that the First Amendment would protect someone who doesn't report child abuse because a minister advised them not to do so, there's a bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell you.
This isn't a case of "better late than never" on CBN's part. This teaching paper was online well after people became aware of how traumatic abuse can be. And somebody in Virginia Beach just now figured out that this was a lawsuit waiting to happen? Together with the suggestion that this is somehow the victim's fault, this paper is several times worse than any of the many outrages we've seen from Pat Robertson in the last half century.
Just confirmed--that horrible teaching paper has indeed been taken down. It's only a start, though--CBN needs to issue a full apology for putting this out for so long. Keep calling, keep the pressure on. My original post appears below.
Yesterday, I was horrified to find out that CBN has a "teaching paper" on its Website with some shocking advice for victims of sexual abuse and incest. According to this paper, victims of sexual abuse can actually "consent" to incest or "allow yourself to be molested." Roxine and SwedishJewfish both wrote about it yesterday at Daily Kos. Pat Robertson's history is known well enough to most of us that it needs no rehashing. However, this teaching paper is outrageous even by CBN's standards. In fact, I'm running out of adjectives to describe just how hurtful, disgusting, and flat-out wrong this is.
However, the thing you have to wonder about in this case isn't how in the world even a troglodyte like Robertson can put this out. Nope, the real $64,000 question in this case is "How long has he been putting it out?" The answer, according to the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine: at least since 1996, when CBN first went online. It's entirely possible that he's been teaching this well before that, given that CBN was founded in 1961--back in the days when child abuse wasn't considered everyone's business. But it's clear at the very least that this paper has been out there for at least the entire Internet era, well after people became more aware of how traumatic child abuse can be. And Marion Gordon's got a lot of explaining to do.
What makes this all the more dangerous is that a large number of CBN's followers come from the segment of hardcore fundies who basically cut themselves off from the outside world. In their world of homeschooling or private/Christian school, filtered Internet service, and Christian radio, CBN's site is one of the first places many of them turn for advice--something Robertson knows full well. It's all the more reason to burn up CBN's main switchboard. Drop them a line at 757-226-7000 and tell them this garbage has to be taken down and repudiated--now.
Having come from a background in the Religious Right, I have a lot of friends who still hold to that worldview. I want to educate them, but I'm not always sure of what to say.
If there was any doubt that there was something fishy about Invisible Children, the outfit behind the "Kony 2012" video, those doubts have been wiped out by People for the American Way's Josh Glasstetter. Earlier today, he happened upon a video that appears to show links between Invisible Children and Ugandan pastor Martin Ssempa, one of the main proponents of a law that would make homosexuality punishable by death.
Back in 2005, a group from Invisible Children visited Grove City College in Pennsylvania and showed them a video about child soldiers in the Ugandan civil war. The students weren't sure how to help until Ssempa arrived on campus a few days later. According to the students, Ssempa gave them "the vision" to put together a large humanitarian relief package and send it to Uganda. Watch it here.
However, Ssempa's real agenda is much more odious. According to this extensive 2010 piece by NPR, Ssempa drums up support for the "kill the gays" bill by showing lurid gay porn at conferences. This law, for those who don't know, would make gay sex punishable by up to life in prison for the first offense and death for the second. It seems pretty hard to believe that Ssempa just happened to show up at Grove City so soon after Invisible Children left campus.
This may be old hat to Talk2Action folks but are you following the attacks on Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke for having a Jewish boyfriend who, to the conspiracy-minded, is part of a wealthy elite socialistic lineage? Apparently conservatives are linking to the attack from some otherwise marginal blogger.
Can patients with advanced stomach cancer be cured by punching them in the gut, especially if the blow comes, in the name of God, from a faith healing pastor?
According to Newt Gingrich's Faith Coalition Leader Dutch Sheets, the answer is yes.
As a new story in The Nation by journalist Mariah Blake, Christian Dominionists Go Gingrich, describes, Dutch Sheets is one of a number of New Apostolic Reformation leaders who are now backing the presidential campaign of Newt Gingrich.
Follwing Gingrich's upset win in the 2012 North Carolina Republican primary, Sheets endorsed the Gingrich effort and then joined Gingrich's hastily scrambled Faith Leaders Coalition, which is dominated by C. Peter Wagner's NAR.
Speaking at The Ramp ministry in Hamilton, Alabama, on November 20, 2010, Sheets described being present onstage in the 1970s when his father, a charismatic pastor, healed a woman with an advanced stomach tumor, by hitting her in the gut, "as hard as he could", with a stage microphone.
As Dutch Sheets told his audience, the woman's stomach, which made her look "seven months pregnant", then deflated to normal size.
The form of faith healing, through violent physical assault, that Sheets described was a common occurrence at the 2008 Lakeland, Florida revival headed by evangelist Todd Bentley, the subject of a 2008 Southern Poverty Law Center report.
Bentley's violent "faith healing" can seen in this footage, broadcast on God TV, in which Todd Bentley kicks in the stomach a man who is advertised as having Metastatic Stage 4 Colon Cancer.
The cancer patient doubles over from the kick and falls to his knees. Bentley tells him, "I had to be obedient to the Lord, sir, but I believe that colon cancer is coming right out of your body, in the name of Jesus." Bentley goes on, "Now, you're probably feeling a little more pain now. Look, when we're dealing with cancer, sometimes, it's a spirit. We're going to draw it out."
While Dutch Sheets, notably, did not endorse the ministry of Todd Bentley, who became heavily controversial among evangelicals for his violent faith healing tactics and unusual theological claims, Bentley was endorsed (see footage of the public event) by a broad coalition that included International Coalition of Apostles head C. Peter Wagner and other top NAR leaders including Rick Joyner, Randy Clark, Che Ahn (now Chancellor of the Wagner Leadership Institute), Bill Johnson, John Arnott, and Stacey Campbell.
In a February 19, 2009 podcast Dutch Sheets detailed an ambitious Internet-driven plan to "infect" one million young Americans per year with the dominionist Seven Mountains ideological imperative - that believers should infiltrate and take places of influence in key sectors of society and culture. The 7 Mountains are: business and finance, religion, the family, education, media, arts and entertainment, and government. (see here, for extended story)
A lot of you may remember James Robison as one of the more prominent religious right leaders from the early 1980s. He pulled back later in the decade, saying that he didn't like the person that his demanding schedule was making him. In the process, he mellowed quite a bit, turning his focus to church unity and chucking his Southern Baptist roots in favor of the charismatic movement.
Well, so much for that. It turns out that Robison has returned to the culture wars. He recently co-authored a book called Indivisible: Restoring Faith, Family and Freedom Before It's Too Late with the Discovery Institute's Jay Richards. He's spent this week promoting the book on his show, Life Today. Yesterday, he declared that he would not allow those who believe in "secular theocracy" the freedom to keep preaching it. Watch the whole thing here, if you can stand it.
I have to say that this is truly saddening to me. Robison was one of the few televangelists I liked. But I've done some digging since finding this video on PFAW's Right Wing Watch, and it turns out that he's been active on the religious right front for some time. For instance, in November 2010 he hosted a meeting in Dallas at which plans were laid to replace Obama with a social conservative.
Late Sunday, a group of fundie leaders announced plans to hold a prayer rally at Philadelphia's Independence Mall on September 28 and 29 under the moniker "America for Jesus 2012." It looks innocuous on the surface--it's billed as "a solemn assembly to summon together the whole body of Christ to pray for the church and our nation" and intercede against "the symptoms of widespread moral depravity and economic meltdown."
But then one gets a glimpse at the national leadership team. It includes a who's-who of fundie leaders--including Jim Garlow, Ron Luce, Cindy Jacobs, Lou Engle and Harry Jackson. The presence of Luce, Jacobs and Engle is a pretty clear indication that this "solemn gathering" has the backing of the New Apostolic Reformation, the fascist movement that thinks it can actually bring about the Second Coming by taking over the world. In a major understatement, People for the American Way calls this gathering "nonpolitical in name only." It isn't exactly a coincidence that this is taking place 40 days before the election.
Further evidence of this gathering's right-wing underpinnings--the group's national chairwoman, Anne Gimenez, is the wife of John Gimenez, the guy who put together the infamous Washington for Jesus rally in 1980. In fact, the rally is sponsored by the Gimenezes' organization, "One Nation Under God, Inc."
Don't let the dorky sweater vest fool you. Beneath that benign-looking garment beats the heart of an extremist, a radical more akin to the Islamic fundamentalists of the Taliban and the ultra-orthodox Jews of Israel than to mainstream Americans. If Rick Santorum and his fundamentalist fans ran this country, we'd have a Bible-based theocracy thrust upon us, a dictatorship of the most divisive, judgmental and intolerant among us.
If you haven't noticed, the religious right has operated in a rather consistent cycle since the 1980s. Get a little bit of power, overreach, get smacked down, climb back up in a few years. Well, there's yet another sign that the overreach is underway. Brian Barcelona, a fundie activist in the Sacramento area, has recently launched One Voice, a movement dedicated to restoring government-mandated prayer in the public schools. And it turns out that Barcelona has close ties to Lou Engle, the so-called prophet behind TheCall.
Barcelona claims that nothing less than a miracle has happened since he started a prayer group at Elk Grove High School in Elk Grove, a Sacramento suburb, back in 2009. Since then, he's started similar prayer groups at eight other high schools in the Sacramento area. He's trotted out the usual shopworn lies about all that's happened since Engel v. Vitale,, Abington School District v. Schempp and Murray v. Curlett ended government-mandated prayer, arguing that those decisions meant that students can't pray at all. However, as People for the American Way points out, the mere fact it's even spread this far proves he's blowing smoke.
He's formally launching his push with a rally in Sacramento on March 31. The location hasn't been determined yet, but odds are it will probably be at either Hornet Stadium or Hughes Stadium (Power Balance Pavillion is hosting a Kings game that night). According to his schedule, further rallies are planned in Hayward, Bakersfield and San Diego--and he's also partnering with Engle in TheCall Southern California on September 1.
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