A vast gay/atheist conspiracy against America ?... that's the sort of thing one hears quite often from right wing televangelists but it's not so common for candidates running for the US Senate to have engaged in promoting such crackpot conspiracy theory. And, it's a bit unusual for a Senate candidate to have belonged for a half-decade to a political party that claims the US was founded on "Biblical law."
Meet Sharron Angle.
While one could cast Sharron Angle's stated opposition to legalized alcohol and marijuana, and her leadership of a Nevada PAC that suggested pornography should be illegal, as just an excessively prudish approach to lifestyle decisions, Angle has also targeted whole societal groups, gays in particular.
So far, the mass media have not yet noticed the existence of the NAR as a distinct movement. Many of the NAR's leaders are well-known as individuals, but they are usually portrayed, in the mass media, as just "evangelicals," or occasionally as "charismatics" or "Pentecostals." In fact, they are a very distinct religious movement, regarded as heretical by many evangelicals and fundamentalists.
When I tell people about the NAR, a common response I get is: Why should we publicize the NAR's existence? Aren't we just helping them by giving them free publicity?
Last week Zeek magazine posted a survey inviting readers to weigh in on whether or not they should continue to feature articles on Christian Zionism on their site.
Today Zeek has posted the results of their survey here.
In their post they say:
"Expect, then, to see more stories on Christian Zionism in the future. And yes, for those of you who asked, we will ask Rachel Tabachnick to write for us again."
Parenthetically, they also pledge to upgrade the interactive capabilities of their site--to whit, focusing on introducing a 'robust commenting system'. Of course, Zeek is not alone in needing to focus on this aspect of their site. For any site seeking to develop a community around the exchange of ideas the technical issue of providing or not providing a comments section is an obvious first step. Actually stimulating and encouraging vibrant conversations is an altogether different but equally important part of the challenge.
I live in Arkansas, and there is an Air Force base near Little Rock, with a strong National Guard presence. I was snacking at the food court in McCain Mall near the base, and heard an interesting conversation in the booth behind me. An NCO from the Guard was talking about the "Patriot Academy", a new initiative the Guard has for helping motivated high school dropouts get their diplomas and join the Guard. "Nice recruiting tactic," I thought, being a former Army recruiter, myself.
The NCO went on about this place being sort of a "military academy" with military training as well as academic training leading to a high school diploma - not "just" a GED. He really got my attention when he mentioned that the diploma came from Liberty University! So I came home and did a little research.
There's an effort underway by a group of San Diego-area fundies to stage a coup by ballot in, of all places, the county Superior Court.
A group of conservative attorneys say they are on a mission from God to unseat four California judges in a rare challenge that is turning a traditionally snooze-button election into what both sides call a battle for the integrity of U.S. courts.
Vowing to be God's ambassadors on the bench, the four San Diego Superior Court candidates are backed by pastors, gun enthusiasts, and opponents of abortion and same-sex marriages.
"We believe our country is under assault and needs Christian values," said Craig Candelore, a family law attorney who is one of the group's candidates. "Unfortunately, God has called upon us to do this only with the judiciary."
The four fundie candidates are backed by an organization called "Better Courts Now." Its Website looks innocuous enough, but in reality, this is a textbook stealth campaign to get hard-right judicial activists (oops, that's "sound jurisprudence" in Freeperspeak) on the San Diego bench.
"It is unconscionable in our view to tie political courage to partisan activities... Democrats are not the only ones who demonstrate political courage," wrote a furious Joe and Valerie Wilson on Friday, returning their "Political Courage" awards to the influential Pacific Palisades Democratic Club of California. In 2003 the two were victims of Republican partisan revenge. Now, in an apparent act of Democratic partisan revenge that actor and celebrity Ed Asner has called a "circular firing squad," the club has just withdrawn its "Political Courage" award offer from Military Religious Freedom Foundation head Mikey Weinstein, who has led the fight against efforts by radical evangelical Christian groups to take over the United States military.
Readers of talk2action who follow Rachel Tabachnick's work on Christian Zionism may have caught the fact that recently she was asked by Zeek--'A Jewish Journal of Thought and Culture' to (perhaps temporarily) discontinue writing about Christian Zionism.
So who would be stoned under the theocratic regime Gary North envisions ? Here's a partial list:
women who have had abortions, and those who have advised them to do so
women who have had intercourse before marriage
adulterers
Homosexuals
Children who strike their parents
The stoning list also includes heresy, blasphemy, astrology, idolatry, and apostasy.
Gary North is one of the leading Christian Reconstructionist theologians, and so it's both fascinating, startling, and alarming all at once to encounter a Gary North political column posted on a heavily trafficked liberal website, Reddit.com : not because North's work shouldn't be posted on liberal sites. If it's within site policy, fine. But this is striking because Gary North and the Christian Reconstructionist movement is still to this day astonishingly obscure - especially given that it's tied to a GOP candidate running in 2010 for a United States Senate seat.
Like many Christian Reconstructionists, Gary North has advocated re-imposing stoning as a method of capital punishment. But why stoning ? - As journalist Frederick Clarkson describes it in his 1997 book Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy, Gary North likes stoning "because, among other things, stones are cheap, plentiful, and convenient."
Over the past week I've been writing on some rather unusual Republican Party candidates in the 2010 election, for example the much discussed Kentucky GOP senate candidate Rand Paul who, as it happens, gave an April 2009 keynote address at a rally for the theocratic Constitution Party that wants to impose Biblical law on America and whose ideological guiding light R. J. Rushdoony wanted to impose stoning as a method of execution and thought the Sun revolves around the Earth.
Then came Arthur Robinson, running for Congress in Oregon's 4th District, who, among other things, has proposed dumping oil and nuclear waste at sea and claimed ocean life was "starved" for crude oil. With Robinson I thought the eccentricity meter had red-lined. But I was wrong.
Now comes Tim D'Annunzio, a Tea-Partying congressional candidate vying to be the GOP's nominee in North Carolina's 8th District. The Republican Party is so impressed with D'Annunzio's credentials that they're preemptively releasing dirt about him. Here's some of it:
A frightening story in yesterday's NYT profiles Helen Ukpabio, a Pentecostal evangelist from Nigeria who specializes in hunting down witches. She is one of several preachers in rural Nigeria whose teachings have resulted in children being horribly tortured and/or abandoned.
Their fellow villagers have often seen DVDs of "End of the Wicked," Ms. Ukpabio’s bloody 1999 movie purporting to show how the devil captures children’s souls. And some have read her book "Unveiling the Mysteries of Witchcraft," where she confidently writes that "if a child under the age of 2 screams in the night, cries and is always feverish with deteriorating health, he or she is a servant of Satan."
In what world is this not child abuse? Apparently not in the world of Glorious Praise Ministries in Houston, which recently invited this woman to preach at a service. When the NYT interviewed her, Ukpabio claimed that people are only ganging up on her because she's African. Oblivious, in denial, dangerous.
Meet Rand Paul, the "human torpedo" in "the revolution."
Here's a partial transcript from KY Republican Senate candidate Rand Paul's appearance, July 23, 2009, on the Alex Jones Show.
Alex Jones - Yeah, a lot of people said, `Oh look - Ron Paul lost - what a waste.' And I said, `wait a minute! - revolutions always take time. The number one movement on campuses, starting to overshadow the phony liberals and phony conservatives, is the libertarian Ron Paul patriot movement. He was just a focal point in that. All this investment and time and energy, uh, is, is, just going to continue to grow and now everybody has seen that and are more heartened than ever and have learned the lesson that this isn't going to be instant gratification.
This is like planting crops. A lot of work comoes into it but before you know you're bringing in that harvest. And it's going to be the same with your senate campaign and I pray, just like we pushed your dad to run for president.
I pray, uh, that you will, uh, after you're done exploring this, do it, uh, because it's so important to just launch more torpedoes at the enemy and I see you as a very important torpedo. Not just because of your father's name but because of your great education, your patriotic stance, your activities in Kentucky, your history of liberty, uh, I think you're the man for the job and you're a weapon I think we need to use against the New World Order.
Rand Paul - Well, the amazing thing about my father's loss, and I was very involved with the campaign, and I heard some of the dissatisfaction from people - but I try to convince people that the amazing thing about the loss is that he is routinely on the mainstream media now.
Our viewpoint finally, probably for the first time in 30 years, we have a spokesman. And they may not be listening to him all the time in Washington. But, we have someone who presents our point of view to a large audience on a national basis and he bcame a national leader. And there's something quirky about the media in the sense that you can be a regional person, a congressional candidate or congressman, but when you take that next step up to the national level all the sudden eveybody wants to know your opinion.
Bruce Wilson's recent Talk To Action post, Rand Paul Was The Featured Speaker At Theocratic Constitution Party 2009 Rally, Thu May 20, 2010, references Bruce Wilson's own earlier AlterNet post Copernicus Was Wrong?: The Flat Earth Temptation, February 16, 2007. In the AlterNet post, he reported that a Texas Republican Party politician, Warren Chisum, a representative in the Texas State House, is an advocate of geocentrism -- the idea that the Earth is at the center of the universe and does not move.
In the above AlterNet post and in some 2007 TalkToAction posts, Bruce Wilson discusses the geocentrist views of some creationists, including some Christian Reconstructionists. This is certainly worth knowing about, given how dangerous the Christian Reconstructionists are. (See More From The Biblical Stoning & Legalized Slavery Movement by Bruce Wilson, Talk To Action, Fri Jan 25, 2008.) Thanks to Bruce Wilson for calling attention to the geocentrism of Chalcedon Foundation founder Rousas John (R.J.) Rushdoony, among other people who have been highly influential in the religious right wing.
But it seems to me that Bruce Wilson, together with several other bloggers whom he has linked to, might be mistaken regarding Warren Chisum in particular. Digging into the sources of this story, I've found clear evidence that Chisum is a creationist and that he has been influenced by some fellow creationists who happen to be geocentrists as well as creationists. But I have not yet found any clear, unambiguous evidence that Chisum himself is a believer in or advocate of geocentrism. For the latter claim, I've found only one piece of evidence, whose significance is disputed by Chisum himself.
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