June 2008

With the GOP’s Congressional electoral prospects looking increasingly dim and John McCain trailing by double-digits in current polls, it looks like right-wing activists see the writing on the wall and have started to deemphasize the importance of having ideological allies control the levers of political power: 

Jim Daly, Focus on the Family's president and chief executive officer, downplays the Bush administration's significance to the Christian right.

"Our advocacy for pro-family policies, at the federal and state level, has never been dependent upon who holds what office," Daly said. "We advocated for the sanctity of human life, the value of traditional marriage and other issues that affect the family before President Bush was in the White House, and we'll continue to do so after he leaves it."

Of course, this line of argument might be more convincing if Focus on the Family and its head, James Dobson, hadn’t played a key role in getting President Bush elected in 2000 and 2004 and gone all out to help the GOP retain control of Congress in 2006.  It would be even more convincing if Daly had not said this just days after Dobson and FOF spent an entire week attacking Barack Obama and John McCain was not currently clamoring for a chance to meet with Dobson and try to win his support.

As we noted yesterday, John McCain was scheduled to meet with a handful of right-wing activists in Ohio who were not particularly excited about the prospect of supporting his campaign.  At the meeting, McCain reportedly “took detailed notes and listened intently” but apparently didn’t quite win them over:

He spoke for more than an hour but never mentioned issues that social conservatives skeptical of McCain want to hear about: his opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage, or appointing conservative judges to the Supreme Court.

Conservative activists say that's a big problem.

"John McCain needs to talk about life more often, he needs to talk about marriage," activist Phil Burress said. "If the senator thinks he is going to run the campaign appealing to the middle by avoiding to talk about the social issues, he is going to lose Ohio."

But what do you know?  One day later, it looks like the message these activists delivered has sunk in, leading McCain to suddenly come out in support of the California Marriage Amendment:

United States Senator John McCain today announced his support for the California Protection of Marriage initiative on the state's November ballot, leaders of the ProtectMarriage.com campaign announced. In an email received by the ProtectMarriage.com campaign, Senator McCain issued the following statement:

"I support the efforts of the people of California to recognize marriage as a unique institution between a man and a woman, just as we did in my home state of Arizona. I do not believe judges should be making these decisions."

Despite the fact that James Dobson has repeatedly attacked John McCain and made it abundantly clear that he will not, under any circumstances, vote for him, it looks like McCain is still grovelling for a meeting.

According to the Los Angeles Times, at the recent meeting with right-wing activists in Ohio that we wrote about yesterday, McCain told participants that he's still trying to win Dobson over:

McCain told the activists Thursday that he also hoped to meet with James C. Dobson, founder of the influential group Focus on the Family, who has said he would not vote for McCain. "The senator spoke fondly of him, but believes there's probably room for some bridge-building," said Mike Gonidakis, head of Ohio Right to Life.

Participants said McCain took detailed notes and listened intently. McCain's aides said they were satisfied with the meeting, and one called it "successful."

John McCain’s messy break-up with televangelist Rod Parsley had the potential to hurt him most in Ohio, a swing state necessary for McCain and the place where Parsley built a network of electorally-charged “Patriot Pastors” in 2004 and 2006. Now McCain is making amends by delving deeper into the state’s Religious Right.

Ken Blackwell, the former Ohio secretary of state who helped Bush win there in 2004, is a close ally of Parsley; the two campaigned heavily together during Blackwell’s losing bid for governor in 2006. In an AP story today, Blackwell was critical of McCain’s ham-handed efforts to enlist the Religious Right:

"He has never identified with the evangelical and Christian movement and therefore he can, at times, misread or misinterpret certain activities in the political field of play or certain comments that are offered," said Blackwell, now at the Family Research Council, a conservative think tank. "I personally would like for John to get to the point of comfort with some of our issues and policy positions, through understanding and genuine acceptance."

Despite these warnings, Blackwell is a Republican politician at heart and is supporting McCain (who endorsed Blackwell in 2006)—he even recorded a robo-call for the Arizona senator before the Ohio GOP primary in February. But other activists are even more cagey about how much they’ll work for McCain.

In the same AP article, Chris Long of the Ohio Christian Alliance (which broke away from the Christian Coalition when it got too soft) warned, “There’s certainly a little reservation about Mr. McCain.”

Phil Burress, a leader of Ohio’s Religious Right, has been skeptical of McCain’s judges promises and emphasized in March that McCain had a lot more sucking up to do:

Burress, who heads Cincinnati-based Citizens for Community Values, says although he would vote for McCain in the general election, the Arizona lawmaker has thus far failed to energize the bloc Burress refers to as "values voters."

"They are not mobilized right now -- and in fact, they're just going to be sitting back waiting to hear what he has to say to try to get these people to engage in his campaign," explains Burress.

Burress contends McCain needs to apologize to evangelical Christians and values voters for the way he has treated them over the years. He says because the senator is not likely to make that apology, he must strengthen his pledge to appoint strict constructionist judges to the Supreme Court.

Jack Willke, the former National Right to Life leader who has been called the “grandfather” of the anti-abortion movement, also made “clear” to McCain the unhappiness of the Right, as the Wall Street Journal reported last month.

Nevertheless, Willke, like the others, is supporting McCain. But McCain is still worried enough to set up a meeting today with Burress, Wilke, Long, and others, as Jake Tapper reports.

Lori Viars, executive director of the Family First PAC … told the Dayton Daily News that her fellow conservatives "would probably hold our nose and vote for McCain."

Apparently before said mass nose-holding can transpire, this meeting was required.

Peter LaBarbera worries about the potential effects of a Congressional hearing on “Discrimination Against Transgender Americans in the Workplace": "What Americans have to realize is that, if you get the federal government behind this perversion of civil rights, it will have a cascading effect throughout the whole American society. Small businesses could be forced to hire people embracing gender confusion. You have people in jobs that face the public such as a maitre d' in a restaurant – a man decides that he is really a woman and he is going to start dressing as a woman." LaBarbera is optimistic, though, because “when most people see ‘big bulky men in dresses’ they immediately ‘recoil.’”

If any Religious Right commentators were still bashful in knocking Barack Obama’s Christianity, James Dobson’s decision to attack Barack Obama on theological grounds is like a permission slip for them to come out of the woodwork.

“When you enter into that conversation, you open your theology and your policies up to scrutiny,” claimed Family Research Council President Tony Perkins. “And that's what Dr. Dobson did.” Rick Scarborough—who is revamping his “Patriot Pastor” church rallies—said he “was appalled by the Senator's remarks … [T]he presumptive Democratic nominee is no friend of Bible-believing Christians.”

Mike Huckabee, who once came to the defense of Jeremiah Wright but now is working for both Fox News and John McCain, also joined the amen corner, accusing Obama of “reinterpret[ing]” religion and claiming that “what Barack Obama has done is to drive his campaign into a sink hole by saying some things regarding religion that I think will make people who are religious very uncomfortable.”

And Baptist Press, the media outlet of the Southern Baptist Convention, also promoted Dobson’s attack. BP’s executive editor Will Hall wrote that the senator “disrespected a portion of the Word of God simply because it does not fit his worldview” on the issue of homosexuality. “Obama's misappropriation of Scripture to fit his political perspective is more grave than its implications for a presidential election,” he added, calling the supposed scandal “biblical in proportion.”

Published next to the report on Dobson’s comments and Hall’s piling-on, Baptist Press also featured the words of Richard Land, the Southern Baptist Convention’s political spokesman:

"I think to go into the particular beliefs of a particular faith and to try to grill a candidate on that is an intrusion into his personal faith," Land said. "I think what we want to know in a campaign is how that person's faith impacts them.

Wait a minute—it sounds like Land is defending Obama and repudiating the “intrusion” of James Dobson! Indeed, Land said it was fine for candidates to talk about faith and their values, but that “they shouldn't either be asked to be or volunteer to be a spokesperson for their faith tradition, in other words talking about the particulars of their faith.”

Of course, there’s a catch: Land was speaking nearly three weeks before Dobson made his comments.

When Dobson attacked Land’s favored presidential candidate Fred Thompson—even saying he didn’t “think he’s a Christian”—Land called Dobson’s words “harsh and unwarranted.” Will Land hold Dobson to the “intrusion” standard this time?

And what about Obama’s statement that the U.S. is “no longer just a Christian nation,” which Dobson and his lieutenant also attacked? Land said at the above event that he “was, as a Baptist, somewhat appalled by John McCain’s assertion that the Constitution created America as a Christian nation.” Will he say he’s “appalled” by the Focus on the Family version?

Well, we’re not going to hold our breath. Land has been trying to rally the Right to John McCain, even as some complain about McCain’s faith talk. "I'd rather have a third-rate fireman than a first-class arsonist,” Land said recently of the two candidates.

Janet Folger, convinced that Colorado’s SB 200, the infamous ”restroom bill,” makes her anti-gay book illegal, knows just what message she wants to send: “A week from today I'm flying to Denver and attending a press conference with Colorado pastors and state leaders to … break the law. We are handing out my book, ‘The Criminalization of Christianity,’ and waiting for arrest. It may be that next week's column will be written from a jail cell.”

After generating a wave of coverage with his nearly unprecedented attack on Barack Obama and his understanding of his own Christian faith in yesterday’s radio broadcast, James Dobson has returned to his standard program format for the time being with a program about “Recapturing the Joy.”  But that doesn’t mean that Focus on the Family is about to let the story go or about to back of its incessant attacks against Obama and his faith.  

Today, FOF unveiled the first installment of a three-part video series in which host Kim Trobee and Focus' Vice President of Public Policy Tom Minnery criticize Obama’s 2006 Call to Renewal Keynote Address.  In it, Minnery claims that Obama still has a long way to go in his “journey of faith” because he’s no where “close to our understanding of what the Christian faith is.” Minnery also gets unnecessarily worked-up about the fact that Obama sought to “compare James Dobson with Rev. Al Sharpton,” when, in fact, Obama wasn’t comparing them at all; he was contrasting them – a key distinction apparently lost on Minnery, Dobson, and the people at Focus on the Family:

Kim Trobee: Tom, Obama explains that he was not raised in a particularly religious household. He talks about his Dad being a Muslim and then becoming an atheist and he says that his mother grew up with a healthy skepticism of organized religion. What does that tell us with regard to his own views on religion?

Tom Minnery: It tells us that he’s on a journey of faith, and that’s a good thing because we think people out to journey toward faith. But from what he says about the Christian faith, who knows where he is? He’s not close to our understanding of what the Christian faith is, by any means.

Trobee: Let’s go ahead and show this first clip of the video.

Barack Obama: Moreover, given the increasing diversity of America's population, the dangers of sectarianism have never been greater. Whatever we once were, we are no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers.

Trobee: Is that true?

Minnery: No, it’s not true. It’s not even close. Senator, we are not an atheist nation. Senator, we are not a Hindu nation. We are not a Buddhist nation. 76% of the people, according to last year’s Pew Center on Religion survey, people identify themselves as Christian. Now, all of them are not practicing, yet 40% still go to church once a week and, by and large, it’s Christian denominations they’re going to. We are, along among the world, a nation still with a strong Judeo-Christian heritage and he is trying to erase that. And he does so at his own peril.

Trobee: In the next clip, he takes aim at Dr. Dobson and that’s something that, up until now, we were unaware had happened. Let’s take a look at it.

Obama: And even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools? Would we go with James Dobson's, or Al Sharpton's?

Minnery: Wow. For someone on a journey of faith to compare James Dobson with Rev. Al Sharpton is breathtaking. Many viewers will know that Al Sharpton achieved his notoriety as a polarizing, racist figure in American life, a black racist figure. That’s strong language, but that is who he was and who he is and you can find numerous stories about his run-ins with racial incidents in the past, from the Tawana Brawley hoax to the Central Park jogger issue in which he entered the fracas on the side of black racism. And to compare that with Dr. James Dobson, a child psychologist – not even a Reverend – is a fierce misunderstanding of Christianity.

For months now, Religious Right activists have been quietly attacking Barack Obama’s Christian faith.  For years, the Right had routinely accused anyone who dared to criticize any Republican or right-wing political candidate for their political views of engaging in an unconstitutional religious test or exhibiting religious bigotry.

But the ascent of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, coupled with his open discussion of his personal faith, has forced the Right to not only jettison its long-held position that attacking a political candidate because of his or her faith was off limits, but to go a step further to include outright attacks on the fundamental tenets of Obama’s Christianity. 

For months, activists like Rob Schenck have been declaring “Obama's Christianity woefully deficient” and demanding that Obama explain, in detail, the basic tenets of his faith so that the Right can judge just “how profound is the religious commitment that Barack Obama has made.”  Others have echoed that point, saying that Obama is not a “true Christian,”  that “there is a clear requirement for one to qualify as a Christian and Obama doesn’t meet that requirement,” and that Obama’s faith “tramples on the historic teachings of Christianity and the Bible.”

Until now, those attacks had been more or less relegated to the right-wing fringe, but it looks like they are about to become mainstream talking points, as James Dobson attacked Obama’s understanding of Christianity on today’s broadcast, as the Associated Press reported: 

Dobson and Minnery accused Obama of wrongly equating Old Testament texts and dietary codes that no longer apply to Jesus' teachings in the New Testament.

"I think he's deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own worldview, his own confused theology," Dobson said.

"... He is dragging biblical understanding through the gutter."

…

He said Obama, who supports abortion rights, is trying to govern by the "lowest common denominator of morality," labeling it "a fruitcake interpretation of the Constitution."

Listen to Dobson and Minnery discuss Obama and his faith:

The FCC has levied an indecency charge against ABC for an NYPD Blue scene that “briefly showed a woman’s bare buttocks.” In response, Fox and NBC filed a joint brief urging dismissal. Apparently, "all of the complaints the FCC received in this case were from complaints drafted by the American Family Association…in the absence of complaints from real viewers, the networks argued, the FCC shouldn’t act.”

According to Fortune, McCain, who voted against Bush’s tax cuts twice, is more or less back in the fold with Americans for Tax Relief and other economic conservatives: “Now when Norquist convenes his weekly Wednesday strategy meeting at ATR headquarters in Washington, there's always a McCain campaign representative at the table. Apparently all is forgiven.”

For years, Kevin McCullough was little more than a fringe right-wing activist who hosted a radio program called “MuscleHead Revolution” heard sporadically throughout the northeast United States, blogging at Townhall and penning columns for WorldNetDaily – columns where he claimed, for instance, that “Radical homosexual activists hate marriage because fundamentally they hate God, and the guilt of both drives them to extremes”:

No longer satisfied with practicing the unspeakable perverse sexual pleasures that their hearts seek in private bedrooms, they wish to be able to do so in public. They are also suffering from such immense guilt over their sexual behaviors, because they know inherently that the actions they perform are in fact unhealthy, that they will go to any means necessary to try and shut down the voices in their heads that tell them it is wrong.

They wrongfully believe that the guilty voice within them is an echo of a prudish state that seeks to limit their freedoms. They wrongfully believe that the judgment they feel is emanating from "Bible thumpers." And what they fail to admit is that the voice that condemns them the loudest is never a human voice – but in fact the voice of their own conscience informed by the truth of the God who created them.

There are attributes of marriage that same-sex couples will never achieve. But in the minds of radical activists, getting the label and a piece of paper saying so will be close enough.

For instance, a woman who engages in lesbianism will never know the joy of lovemaking that creates within her the product of that union – an actual human life. She will never know the security of a true man protecting her from the dragons of the world and providing for her an environment where she can nurture and give love to that little life once it arrives, or the stamp of approval that God puts on such an experience. And because she and her partner know this, they must defy reason, biology and sexual function to create children and experiences that serve as faulty substitutes for that God-ordained picture.

Likewise, a man who seeks his perverse kicks by depositing the seed of life in, shall we say, non-life-giving cavities, may know orgasm, but never complete union, as he uses anatomy in ways for which the Creator did not create it.

Apparently, Family Research Council leaders were so impressed by McCullough’s insights such as HIV doesn’t threaten “people who behave as God intended when it comes to sexual expression” that they decided to bring him on board:

On this week's edition of Washington Watch Radio: We go LIVE to California for the very latest on the court's decision to redefine marriage to include alternate sexual unions. FRC had eyes and ears on the ground in San Francisco, Sacramento, San Jose, Santa Barbara, Ventura, West Hollywood, Los Angeles, and San Diego. Kevin McCullough, nationally syndicated columnist, former New York City based talk show host, and author of the book, The Kind of Man Every Man Should Be joins Tony live from California.

McCullough not only joined FRC’s Tony Perkins for the radio program, but for an extended discussion of the issue that FRC posted on YouTube where Perkins referred to him as “the voice of FRC news.” In the past, McCullough has participated in FRC events, such as the Blogs for Life Conference and has recently begun contributing to the FRC’s institutional blog.

McCullough’s bio says he has “been called the heir apparent to Dobson and Falwell, by America's most prolific faith-based writers,” which seems like a shameless exaggeration – but if he continues to receive validation and credibility from “mainstream” right-wing groups such as FRC, it seems entirely possible that he might actually manage to transition from the right-wing fringe where he currently resides out into the broader Religious Right political network.

Nearly a year after Rick Scarborough began his ambitious “70 Weeks to Save America” to sign up thousands of “Patriot Pastors” and voters at church rallies across America, only to have it peter out due to money, mechanical problems, slim turnout, and Alan Keyes, and nearly three months since announcing the project’s triumphant comeback, Scarborough is finally holding a “Patriot Pastor” rally in Nashville, Tennessee, featuring disgruntled ex-chaplain Gordon Klingenschmitt, “National Statesman/Evangelist Dr. Rick Scarborough,” and a singer billed as the “Pavarotti of gospel.”

This “One-Day Crusade” will be held at Two Rivers Baptist Church, home of Rev. Jerry Sutton, who is no stranger to church-based politicking. In 2005, he hosted a rally in support of President Bush’s controversial judicial nominees (including future Chief Justice John Roberts). Billed as a protest against “activist judges” supposedly trying to “silence” people of faith, “Justice Sunday II” brought together some of the biggest names on the Religious Right, such as Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, and then-National Evangelical Association President Ted Haggard, along with Robert Bork, Bill Donohue of the Catholic League, Bishop Harry Jackson, and then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay.

Sutton himself boiled down the message he hoped the audience would take home:

Number one, it's a new day.

Number two, liberalism is dead.

Number three, the majority of Americans are conservative.

Number four, you can count on us showing up and speaking out.

And number five, let the church rise.

Sutton, who is a research fellow with Richard Land’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission and ran for president of the Southern Baptist Convention in 2006, has been involved in an imbroglio at his own church recently, when 71 members sued the church over financial mismanagement (along with Sutton’s “lavish lifestyle” and “authoritarian” leadership).

According to the LA Times, anti-gay marriage activists had a “low-key” presence Tuesday, concluding that “acrimony would probably detract from their November ballot measure to change the state Constitution to outlaw the practice.” Rosalyn Strode, head of Bakersfield Citizens Opposed to Obscenity and Lewdness, explained, "We are silent today, but we're just biding our time. We'll have our say in November."

In a Reuters article, Mike Huckabee explains that "the vice presidency is not a job that a person seeks. It's a job that seeks the person, largely dependent upon how the President is going to feel in terms of comfort level." As for his chances with McCain, Huckabee says, “I’m not sure if I’m the right fit for him…It would be a real surprise if I got the call.”

The Hill reports that the Club for Growth “might sit out the 2008 presidential election and focus on congressional races.” The decision may be made based on McCain’s VP choice, which President Pat Toomey called “an important signal, indicating whether he wants to help consolidate the Republican coalition and energize the base of the party or not.” The Club has had an “antagonistic relationship” with McCain in the past, including an attempt “to recruit Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) to run in a primary against McCain in 2004, but Flake declined.”

Pat Robertson commented yesterday on legal same-sex marriages in California:

Sodomy. In all history, as far as I can tell, any nation that embraces this so-called lifestyle, and that legalizes it, celebrates it, protects it, is on the ash-can of history. …

Whew. What does it say? You’ve sown the wind, you’ve reaped the whirlwind?

John Hagee, recognizing that “in the heat of a campaign season, some have attempted to use my words to divide us,” sends a letter to the Anti-Defamation League to “clarify my views on Jews, the Holocaust and the state of Israel.” He writes: “I have devoted much of my adult life to combating anti-Semitism and supporting the state of Israel. My commitment to eradicating anti-Semitism, including its historic antecedents in the Christian community, has been central to my ministry.” Investigating the “purpose of this letter,” David Brody “was told that Hagee wanted to make sure there were no hurt feelings or pains in the Jewish community.”

Newsweek interviews the late Jerry Falwell’s wife, “a sheltered, Christian beauty named Macel.” Mrs. Falwell partly attributes the “foundering” of her husband’s movement to his death: “Jerry spoke about and said things that he believed, and he had a gathering around him that thought the same way he did. Today they don't have a leader that would go out on a limb … If he were here, it would be different.” Although she doesn’t understand why people called her husband an “agent of intolerance,” she does plan to support John McCain, and thinks that he “would be Jerry’s choice as well.”

Over the last several months, one of the ways John McCain has been working to sell himself to the GOP’s skeptical right-wing base has to repeatedly promise them that, if elected, he will appoint justices like John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court – an effort that has recently been paying dividends.  

But over the weekend, McCain sought to woo supporters of Hillary Clinton and, according to press reports, seemed to be trying to downplay that promise.  As Politico reported:

Bower said he'd liked McCain's answer on judges, in which he "pointed out that he supported Bill Clinton with both Ginsberg and Breyer."

For its part, the New York Times reported something similar:

Mr. McCain, who opposes abortion rights, also promised he would not perform a litmus test on potential judges.

Not surprisingly, the Barack Obama campaign responded to McCain’s apparent back-tracking by highlighting this 2005 statement from long-time McCain supporter Gary Bauer claiming that the reason he supported McCain over George Bush in 2000 was McCain’s explicit promise that he would indeed have a pro-life litmus test for his nominees:

Somewhat surprisingly, McCain had the support of Gary Bauer, the social conservative, who had dropped out of the race by that time. “I wanted a commitment from either George Bush or John McCain that if elected he would appoint pro-life judges to the Supreme Court,” Bauer told me. “Bush said he had no litmus test, and his judges would be strict constructionists. But McCain, in private, assured me he would appoint pro-life judges.”

In an attempt to clear up the matter, CBN’s David Brody contacted Bauer, who is now trying to spin the discrepancy in a way that suggests that Obama is “the one with a credibility problem”:  

"When I met privately with Senator McCain in 2000 he did not tell me that he would have a pro-life "litmus test" for judges. Instead he described the type of judicial philosophy he would require in his judicial appointments. I interpreted that judicial philosophy to be one that would reject judicial activism.

"Senator Obama is the one with a credibility problem, not Senator McCain. Senator Obama says he wants a compassionate American where the 'little guy' is protected. Instead he proudly supports partial birth abortion, and abortions in the last months of pregnancy. He abandons the littlest guy of all - our unborn children."

So Bauer would have us believe that the reason he didn’t support Bush in 2000 was that Bush wouldn’t promise a litmus test while McCain would, but that, now that he thinks about it, said litmus test really wasn’t a litmus test at all, it was really just a vague statement about judicial philosophy - a statement about philosophy that Bush was apparently unwilling to make to Bauer despite the fact he was regularly making exactly that sort of statement in public settings, such as the first debate with Al Gore when he said “I don't believe in liberal activist judges. I believe in strict constructionists. Those are the kind of judges I will appoint."

If anybody had a “credibility problem” here, it’s Bauer.

Peter LaBarbera, fresh off his campaign against luxury hotels, accused a Chicago PBS station of “using taxpayer monies to celebrate homosexuality and worse, air programs that displays flagrant anti-religious bigotry during ‘Gay Pride Month’"—in the form of a show about a men’s chorus.

Deal Hudson reports that John McCain “met privately” with Rev. Frank Pavone, the Priests for Life head most famous for calling Michael Schiavo a murderer, before a Catholic-outreach meeting in Philadelphia. McCain has been holding events with supporter Sen. Sam Brownback, whose brief presidential run attracted a lot of attention from social conservatives, and who promised to court the Religious Right activists such as Pavone on McCain’s behalf.

Pavone has come a long way since 2005, when he denounced McCain for joining the so-called “Gang of 14” compromise over extreme judicial nominees. “It is unfortunate that Senator McCain has joined those senators who are trying to prevent godly men and women nominated by their president and supported by a majority of senators from serving on our nation's courts,” Pavone said. “There is not going to be a church in America that is not going to know exactly who those senators are.”

Indeed, Pavone was a typical advocate of the notion that opponents of extreme nominees were somehow anti-Christian bigots. When John Roberts was nominated to the Supreme Court, Pavone warned Democrats that “If they again attempt to attack a nominee's faith or pro-life convictions,” they would be “held accountable.”

At the same time, Pavone is a vocal advocate of involving the church in politics, whether urging priests to tell their congregations to vote based only on abortion or supporting bishops who make pro-choice politicians’ communion into a political football.

Pavone is planning a conference call on June 25th to “inspire and equip pro-life citizens to make a difference in this year’s national elections, and to awaken the conscience of Americans about abortion.”

Cal Thomas’s syndicated column, which is printed in hundreds of newspapers, seldom strays from the right-wing line. There is one subject, though, where Thomas has been critical of the Right: The columnist, who helped establish the modern Religious Right as a lieutenant for Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority, has since denounced such “cynical harvesting” of conservative Christians’ votes. There was a “perception that the church had become an appendage to the Republican Party,” he wrote, adding that “little was accomplished in the political arena and much was lost in the spiritual realm, as many came to believe that to be a Christian meant you also must be ‘converted’ to the Republican Party and adopt the GOP agenda and its tactics.”

But if Thomas is nominally a critic of the Religious Right, he is still unable to resist employing its most crass and shameless tactic: attacking the faith of his political opponents. Reacting to Barack Obama’s outreach to young Christians, Thomas attempts to disqualify Obama from the religion.

Obama has declared himself a committed Christian. He can call himself anything he likes, but there are certain markers among the evangelicals he is courting that one must meet in order to qualify for that label.

Thomas offers an interpretation of media reports on the particulars of Obama’s faith—what the candidate says about hell, for example—and pronounces a verdict: Not only is what is supposedly in Obama’s heart “contrary to what Evangelicals and most Catholics believe,” Thomas claims, but he is not even a Christian. Instead, according to the columnist, Obama is a “false prophet.”

Here’s Obama again: “I don’t presume to have knowledge of what happens after I die. When I tuck in my daughters at night and I feel like I’ve been a good father to them, and I see that I am transferring values that I got from my mother and that they’re kind people and that they’re honest people, and they’re curious people, that’s a little piece of heaven.”

Any first-year seminary student could deconstruct such “works salvation” and wishful thinking. Obama either hasn’t read the Bible, or if he has, doesn’t believe it if he embraces such thin theological wisps.

Obama can call himself anything he likes, but there is a clear requirement for one to qualify as a Christian and Obama doesn’t meet that requirement. One cannot deny central tenets of the Christian faith, including the deity and uniqueness of Christ as the sole mediator between God and Man and be a Christian. Such people do have a label applied to them in Scripture. They are called “false prophets.”

This kind of perverse attack is nothing new—indeed, WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah offered a similar column a couple weeks ago on his far-right website. And in practicing this kind of politics, Thomas is merely joining alongside marginal groups who assert that only those with certain political views can be “true Christians,” and more broadly, rejoining the Religious Right effort to merge religion and partisan politics.

But while the rumors casting aspersions on Obama’s faith continue to swirl aimlessly in e-mail forwards, on disreputable websites, and among fringe groups, today they are being uncritically promoted in hundreds of newspapers. Thomas—even as he denounces in name the Religious Right, and even as he promotes a book against political polarization—is doing his part to legitimize religious inquisition as a campaign strategy.

Ralph Reed came on the “700 Club” Thursday to talk to his former Christian Coalition boss, Pat Robertson, about his new political thriller “Dark Horse.” Naturally, the topic turned to the non-fiction election, and Reed predicted that Religious Right issues such as abortion and gay marriage would maintain hold upon the electorate. But given how many similarities Reed sees between his novel and the 2008 campaign, it must be difficult to keep the fantasy straight from the reality. Here’s a clip:

Reed also praised John McCain for reaching out to the Religious Right on judges, and emphasized the importance of his vice-presidential pick.

Shortly after Sen. John McCain publicly rejected the endorsements of John Hagee and Rod Parsley, Parsley released his own statement rescinding his endorsement and then sort of disappeared from sight.  Sometime since then, Parsley apparently decided that he had a bit more to get off his chest and so he released a video on his Center for Moral Clarity website in which he reiterated many of the points he made in his initial statement but added some attacks on what he claimed were the "politically vicious and misguided" hit-squads who exposed his radical views, claiming that his views on Islam are “very much in the mainstream” and insisting that he made a “clear distinction between Muslim terrorists and the vast majority of peaceful Muslims.” 

Of course, Parsley is on record having told his congregation and massive TV audience that "America was founded in part with the intention of seeing this false religion [Islam] destroyed" and "Islam is an anti-Christ religion that intends through violence to conquer the world," as well as writing that so-called "Muslim extremists" are really "mainstream believers who are drawing from the well at the very heart of Islam."

Video and transcript:

I’d like to take a few moments and respond to the recent media reports regarding my statements in the book “Silent No More” about Islam.  It doesn’t surprise me that, as I continue to engage the culture with a thoroughly Biblical worldview that political hit-squads have begun to describe some of my views in the most ominous and extreme terms. I expected that opponents of that worldview would try to make a connection between myself and the extreme views of other ministers such as the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. This is what we’ve seen play out over the past few days. Certainly, I’m disappointed with those in the media who have misrepresented my views for political gain and who have lied in pursuit of political power.  It’s a sad moment in American politics; one of the many in the recent election cycle.   

My views on Islam, which have come under such scrutiny and misrepresentation, are very much in the mainstream.  Anyone who has read the entire chapter on Islam in my book “Silent No More” understands that what I have said is echoed from the White House to the State Department, from leading universities to the pulpits of our nation. I believe that radical Islam is one of the greatest threats to Western civilization and that conflict has roots in our American history.  I have always, and I will continue, to make a clear distinction between Muslim terrorists and the vast majority of peaceful Muslims who are appalled at the bloody results of suicide bombers and mass murders. Once again, I unapologetically denounce those who spread death in the name of Allah while I continue to believe peace-loving Muslims need the full of all Christians, and Christians must provide understanding, cooperation, and friendship to peace-loving Muslims throughout the world who share our desire for democracy and peace.

I understand that the raw truth of the pulpit cannot survive untempered in the political sphere. Still, I believe that clergy of all faiths should be able to speak into the lives of our political leaders without every doctrine and statement of those religious leaders being transformed into political weapons by the politically vicious and misguided.

“Did you know the birth control pill can cause chemical abortions?” Jill Stanek does. That’s why she’s designated June 7 as “The Pill Kills Day,” in honor of the Supreme Court’s 1965 decision in Griswold v. Connecticut. “But radical pro-aborts don't want you to know. And they call us the Neanderthals.” Apparently, this information has been suppressed, because “if women knew, some would feel morally obligated to refuse that contraceptive option. And that would mess up lucrative birth control pill sales, which nets pro-aborts hundreds of millions of dollars a year, as well as abortion sales from failed birth control pills.” And they call us the ones with the conspiracy theories.

Like Good as You, we'd like to know just what Tivo is doing partnering up with Focus on the Family for its "SuperDad" contest.

The Southern Poverty Law Center reports that right-wing groups are pulling a fast one in their opposition to H.R. 1592, which would expand the federal definition of a hate crime to include crimes motivated by gender, sexual orientation, and disability. “It would criminalize negative comments concerning homosexuality, such as calling the practice of homosexuality a sin from the pulpit, a 'hate crime' punishable by a hefty fine and time in prison," the American Family Association claims. “We must stop it before they send your grandma, your pastor, or you to jail for sharing your faith," says Janet Folger. Never mind the fact that this is completely untrue. In fact, “the bill only applies in cases where a victim was physically attacked or the subject of an attempted attack.”

A few days ago, a high school wrestling coach in Dearborn, Michigan was let go due to concerns that he had been allowing an assistant coach, a local clergyman, to try to convert Muslim students to Christianity:

A veteran wrestling coach at Fordson High School lost his job amid concerns that his one-time assistant, who is a local minister and parent of a wrestler, attempts to convert local Muslim youths to Christianity.

The decision not to renew the contract of Jerry Marszalek, a coach for 35 years at Fordson, sparked a firestorm of controversy, with 200-300 parents packing a Board of Education meeting Tuesday night to support the decision of the school's principal, Imad Fadlallah.

…

According to Marszalek, parents and community leaders, Fadlallah and other parents have long been concerned about contacts between the wrestling team and a local clergyman, the Rev. Trey Hancock of the Dearborn Assembly of God.

Hancock, who helped Marszalek with the team for 10 years, and whose son, Paul, is now a member, confirmed that he attempts to convert Muslim youths to Christianity and that he baptized a 15-year-old Muslim student in Port Huron a few years ago.

…

Hancock insisted that he never attempted a conversion as part of his work with the wrestling team, or on school grounds. But when asked if he understood the concerns of Muslim parents, he said, "I consider it my work to pastor to anyone who is within my reach. So I can imagine they would be concerned. But is the Dearborn Public Schools going to be dictating what every pastor can or cannot do within his congregation?"

Obviously, the problem was not what Hancock was doing “within his congregation” but rather what Marszalek was allowing him to do in his capacity as a coach.  Imagine, for a moment, if the roles here had been reversed and a Muslim coach had been trying to convert Christian students – the Right would have gone absolutely ballistic.  But instead of acknowledging that these coaches clearly overstepped their bounds, the Right has done was it always does in such situations: play the victim

The controversial incident at Fordson reflects a growing hostility towards Christianity throughout the country, and not just among members of the growing Muslim population. In recent years, Christian persecution has taken on a variety of forms in the United States—from a rising intolerance for proselytizing to the eradication of nearly all historical Christian references in public school textbooks. Although the magnitude of persecution in the U.S. is hardly comparable with that typically experienced in countries such as China, Burma, and Sudan—where persecution is so severe that thousands of believers are often martyred for their faith—the anti-Christian perception in American schools, media, and mainstream society is proving to be a cause for concern for Christians in the United States.

The McCain campaign not-so-subtly selectively edits an AP article, posting it on its website under the headline "McCain to . . . Claim Mantle of Change" when the original AP article headline was "McCain to Try to Claim Mantle of Change." The version posted on the McCain site also strangely cuts off the end of the article, right after the line "Against McCain's voluminous record, Obama's Senate record is thin ..."

Back when we first started writing about John Hagee back in 2006, we took issue with Kathleen Parker’s claim that people like Hagee were not very influential because nobody at the White House took them seriously.  As we noted at the time, that argument would have been more effective had Hagee and others from his Christians United for Israel not regularly been invited to the White House and had President Bush not been sending messages to their annual gatherings.  

As it turns out, Hagee did indeed have significant influence at the White House, as Scott McClellan confirmed yesterday in an interview on NPR’s “Fresh Air” – from the transcript:

GROSS: My guest is Scott McClellan. He was the White House press secretary from July '03 to May of '06. And his new memoir about those years is called "What Happened."

I've got a John Hagee question for you. You devote some of your memoir "What Happened" to social conservatives and their influence on policy in the Bush administration. And I know when John Hagee, who's been so much in the news lately, ever since his endorsement of McCain, which that's a bond that's been broken.

Mr. McCLELLAN: Yes.

GROSS: When he had his first summit for the Christian Zionist group that he founded, Christians United for Israel, President Bush sent a recorded greeting to Hagee and to the conference. Did Hagee have much sway within the Bush administration?

Mr. McCLELLAN: Well, he was one of a number of evangelical pastors, social conservative ones that were certainly part of our outreach at the White House. We had a person and a public liaison that was specifically tasked with reaching out to social conservative leaders. And so those leaders, yes, had a heavy influence on some of the White House policies. And I think that was one of the things that also hurt the president was that, at times it looked like his emphasis was on some of these issues that were important to social conservatives, like Terry Schiavo, like the constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, and stem cell research. I think a lot of people were wondering, `Why are you spending so much time focusing on these issues when, you know, there are issues on energy and health care and the economy that need to be addressed?'

GROSS: So Pastor Hagee was influential within the Bush administration?

Mr. McCLELLAN: I'd say he was one of a number that certainly had some influence and was able to quickly get someone on the phone at the White House. So yes.

Speaking of Hagee, it looks like all the negative press he has received in recent weeks is not dampening his standing in the community, as Joe Lieberman and Gary Bauer continue to stand by him, some Jewish leaders continue to praise his pro-Israel views, and some churches still want him to address their conferences:

After three whole weeks in DC, Cassy Loseke, an intern at the conservative National Journalism Center, has discovered she’s not in Nebraska anymore. While riding “On a Crowded Train of Isolation,” she apparently has also figured out what ails the nation’s capital: “It was almost as if these people were looking for answers to life problems by reading a newspaper or listening to blaring iPods. Perhaps they were looking for something bigger and better than themselves and searching for it through their careers… That's why the men and women never make eye contact on the train, refuse to practice patience and always seem in a hurry to get to their next destination…. The people of DC are not what I thought they'd be. They definitely don't know how to maintain great personal relationships. Yes, they excel at professional relationships, but make up for it by lacking in their private lives… Maybe I won't find my husband here - I'm OK with that.”

Impugning the religious faith of others based on their political views is one of the basic themes of the Religious Right, but it’s still refreshing to hear it as openly stated as this simple test: a “True Christian” is one who opposes abortion and same-sex marriage.

That’s the message of “True Christian VP,” a petition drive from Gary Cass’s “Christian Anti-Defamation Commission,” which is “calling for each candidate to select a true Christian as a running mate for the all important 2008 elections.” And in case there might be any confusion, the group has narrowed down the definition of “true Christian” to two criteria:

What qualifications are embodied in a truly Christian candidate for the Vice Presidency? Quite simply, the candidate will demonstrate actions and hold the beliefs personified by all of us who proclaim the name of Jesus Christ as Savior: the need to be re-born in Christ and the affirmation of historic Christianity, having a demonstrable and proven record of support for traditional Christian morality.

A life of dedicated Christian service to the public is demonstrated by the following:

Support for traditional marriage. As a Christian, the candidate for Vice President must affirm that marriage is an institution created by God and defined as a union between one man and one woman. …

Support for the Right to Life, proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence, without exception.

The group also clarifies that, for example, the two Democratic candidates for president would not qualify as “real Christians”:

Who is the real Christian seeking the Presidency of the United States?

The three major presidential candidates, Democrats Barrack [sic] Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Republican John McCain have presented Christian voters with a vexing problem for Christians.  Both Mr. Obama and Ms. Clinton have declared they are Christians, yet based on their votes, both have consistently demonstrated a failure to support the values and policy positions important to Christians. While Mr. McCain proclaims support for traditional Christian values and morality, he has chosen to not discuss his own religious beliefs.

Since founding his group last year, Cass has concentrated on promoting two ideas: one, that Christianity is being persecuted (or “bashed”), and two, that other people’s faith is fair game. In particular, Cass attacked Mormon candidate Mitt Romney for his religion’s supposed “secret rituals” and “hostility to Christianity.” Presumably Cass isn’t happy that Romney is being floated as a potential running mate for McCain.

This counterintuitive notion—that Christianity is to be defended from persecution in public culture by attacking others’ faith—is apparently shared by the so-called Christian Defense Coalition, which attacked Obama over the weekend for resigning from his church after public disagreements. “[I]f his church membership was truly spiritual -- then this action shows a fundamental lack of integrity,” declared Patrick Mahoney, who has attacked Obama’s religious credentials for some time. “Obama's resignation of membership in Trinity United Church demonstrates that he will trade even on his faith for political advantage.”