Taking the Long View in the Dog Days
Bill Berkowitz writing at Buzzflash observes: Right-wing Christian evangelicals and conservative Catholic leaders had been down this road before. In 1995, Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition, under the direction of executive director Ralph Reed, was riding high as the most important and influential Religious Right group in the country. Reed wasn't satisfied sitting on his laurels. Always thinking of ways to increase the Coalition's political power, he came up with a diversification plan: go after minority and Jewish voters, and, perhaps more significantly, convince Catholics they had a place in the Christian Right's big tent... but the Catholic Bishops opposed the Christian Coalition's co-optation of the word Catholic and The Catholic Alliance never became the powerhouse Robertson and Reed had hoped. Rob Boston writing on the Wall of Separation agrees that the emerging Catholic/evangelical alliance is troubling. He should know. He attended the press conference announcing The Manhattan Declaration and recalls "being struck by its openly theocratic overtones." Paul Rosenberg writing at Crooks & Liars is interested in my take on the long view in light of the recent set backs for the Christian Right in the area of marriage equality. I wrote: "It is easy to forget that much of Christianity is still emerging from the fog of religious war and the smoldering tensions of the Protestant Reformation." That's not exactly how most political observers -- even on the left -- approach trying to understand the Religious Right, and it's exactly why they all should be paying more attention to Clarkson, and the developments he tracks -- central to which is an unprecedented degree of cooperation between Protestant evangelicals and the Catholic Church. William Lindsey writing at Bilgrimage observes ...it's not in the least accidental that the mantra the U.S. bishops began to chant as the 2012 elections approached was precisely this three-part mantra about abortion, gay marriage, and religious liberty as intrinsically connected issues, issues on which the church stands or falls today and where it has a political obligation to impose its will on the culture at large, if Christianity is to retain any influence at all in secular culture at this point in time. This was a primary theme of the U.S. Catholic bishops' "Fortnight for Freedom" in the 2012 election cycle, and the "religious freedom" guru of the bishops, Archbishop William Lori, made it explicit in a homily entitled "Godless Secularism Assaults Life and Liberty" on the eve of the elections.Scott Isebrand writing at Religious Right Watch calls my essay "almost certainly prophetic." That is, of course, something I would almost certainly it rather not be.
Taking the Long View in the Dog Days | 2 comments (2 topical, 0 hidden)
Taking the Long View in the Dog Days | 2 comments (2 topical, 0 hidden)
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