Religious Right

Shortly after Gov. Rick Perry's giant prayer rally in August, organizers started emailing those who had registered for the event, urging them to get active in a new Religious Right voter mobilization effort called Champion The Vote.

It turns out that this registration and mobilization effort is being backed by millions of dollars from Rick Perry supporters who are dedicated to doing what they can to register tens of millions of Christian voters in the coming years in an effort to take back America.

Yesterday, Champion The Vote's Bill Dallas was a guest on The Janet Mefferd Show where he provided the first concrete details regarding just how the organization intends to go about accomplishing this "nonpartisan" goal:

Mefferd: So what is the strategy? I know you have this website, ChampionTheVote.com. How are you compiling the database, how are you identifying these Christians, and how are you utilizing regular Christians who are registered to vote to help you out?

Dallas: So currently we have a database that has over 120 million names in it and through a lot of crashing lists against other lists - another term is called data-mining - we've been able to determine through characteristics people that are very pro-life, traditional marriage, the magazines they subscribe to - these are all things you go out and rent,. We spent a lot of money determining the characteristics of that 120 million and we've been able to find a sub-set of that that are very committed Christians based on lifestyle habits and other things that we can track and trend. We compare it to a registered voter database and if your name is not on there, we know that you're a committed Christian and you're not registered.

Then what we do is we match champions. People that are listening to your program right now, people who say "boy, that's a shame, what can I do?" Well, we ask you to go to ChampionTheVote.com and what we will do is we will sign you up and you will become one of our local activists - we call them champions, a local ambassador. And we give you the technology tools that you will then engage in your local neighborhood to get those 50-60 people that are currently not registered, over a 10-12 month period of time, to get them registered and then you will help message to them to make sure that they show up and have a biblical worldview on the candidates they choose.

We are nonpartisan and, as I say all the time - I'm quoting a friend of mine, Sam Rodriguez - we're not blue, we're not red, we're not about the donkey, we're not about the elephant, we're simply about the agenda of the lamb. And so we help you, as a Champion, help train people in your communities what a biblical worldview is, make sure they're registered, and then they go to the ballot voting with that biblical worldview.

"Biblical worldview," of course, means the standard Religious Right agenda of prompting religion while opposing abortion and gay marriage:

Dallas: Ultimately the heroes of this is not United in Purpose, the umbrella organization, its all of these champions changing our country back to where people raise their hands and vote with a biblical worldview. The fragrance of our nation could smell so differently two, four, six, eight, ten years from now if we got engaged, and that’s what we’re about.

Mefferd: What would you say are the top issues right now that Christians really ought to be concerned about, I know there are plenty of them but how would you rank them right now?

Dallas: Well for me my hot button is religious liberty. We got to make sure that we do not keep trying to strip God out of everything and trying to keep everybody quiet. It seems like there’s a segment over society that’s trying to keep God out of things and keeping God quiet. So I think religious liberty for me personally is number one. And the other two issues is obviously life and marriage. Those to us are the three core issues that everything rests upon.

Religious Right leaders are coming together to form yet another law school to train future lawyers of the conservative movement. The right-wing Alliance Defense Fund is helping Louisiana College, a Southern Baptist institution, start the Paul Pressler School of Law, which will join Liberty University, Regent University and others in providing politicized training to the next generation of Religious Right lawyers.

Pressler’s ties to the Alliance Defense Fund will be similar to the Liberty University School of Law’s partnership with Liberty Counsel and the Regent University School of Law’s (originally Oral Roberts University’s Coburn School of Law) alliance with the American Center for Law and Justice. As Sarah Posner notes, such law schools intend to “teach the ‘biblical’ foundations of the law” and create “lawyers unafraid to inject their particular Christian beliefs, not only into the public square, but quite deliberately into legislation, policy, and jurisprudence.”

According to the National Law Journal, the new law school “is named for Paul Pressler III, a former Texas Court of Appeals judge who helped lead the conservative takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention during the 1970s.”

The founding dean of the Pressler law school, J. Michael Johnson, was previously senior counsel of the ADF and, according to his Townhall.com bio, has “provided legal representation to organizations such as Focus on the Family, Concerned Women for America, Toward Tradition, the American Family Association, and Coral Ridge Ministries, and numerous family policy councils and crisis pregnancy centers.” In 2005, Johnson won the “Faith, Family and Freedom” award from Family Research Council president Tony Perkins for his work defending the Louisiana Marriage Protection Amendment, which placed a ban on same-sex marriage in the state’s constitution.

Yesterday on Today’s Issues, Perkins, who is a member of Pressler’s board of reference, spoke to Johnson about the new law school. Johnson said the law school would be “not unlike what our colleagues are doing at the Liberty University School of Law and the Regent University School of Law.” Perkins said, “This law school’s not going to be pumping out ambulance chasers, this is going to be pumping out liberal chasers, I mean we’re gonna track them down, wherever they are and we’re gonna defeat them, and if we can’t defeat them in the policy realm we’re gonna defeat them in the courts.” He added, “This law school is gonna be pumping out God-fearing, American-loving, family-defending attorneys”:

The choice of Louisiana College is no surprise. The school claims it “seeks to view all areas of knowledge from a distinctively Christian perspective and integrate Biblical truth thoroughly with each academic discipline” and believes “academic freedom of a Christian professor is limited by the preeminence of Jesus Christ, the authoritative nature of the Holy Scriptures, and the mission of the institution.”

In 2008 the school barred members of the Christian LGBT group Soul Force from appearing on campus. In his decision to bar the group, the college’s president cited a fake James Madison quote propagated by David Barton, which states that the U.S. government was based on “the Ten Commandments.”

Now David Barton is serving on the board of the law school.

Along with Perkins and Barton, Religious Right leaders on the board include Alan Sears of the Alliance Defense Fund, Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention, Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, Michael Farris of the Home School Legal Defense Association, Alveda King of Priests for Life, Religious Right luminary Tim LaHaye and his wife Beverly LaHaye of Concerned Women for America, Kelly Shackleford of the Liberty Institute and Reagan’s Attorney General Edwin Meese. Republican politicians including Reps. Rodney Alexander and John Fleming, former congressman Bob McEwen, and senatorial candidate and Texas Solicitor General Ted Cruz are also on the board.

Lou Engle traveled to Columbus, Ohio last week to join Janet Porter, Wendy Wright, Jim Garlow, Bob McKeown, Dutch Sheets and other Religious Right leaders at Faith 2 Action’s rally promoting Porter’s Heartbeat Bill, which would criminalize abortion in the vast majority of cases. The legislation has passed the state House, but the Republican leadership in the Senate has been reluctant to hold a vote on the bill, which is so extreme and clearly unconstitutional that it’s even opposed by the Ohio Right to Life Society.

In a speech at the rally, Engle repeated his assertions that the Joplin tornado was God’s judgment for abortion and that President Barack Obama should issue a new “emancipation proclamation” to ban abortion. But he also told the story of how his daughter fractured her head after falling in a Walmart parking lot in Toledo: “I didn’t understand it,” Engle said while holding his daughter, “until just this moment that that’s how God feels for every baby.” He went on to discuss an email he read about a girl who said that the LIFE wristband she lost in a Walmart parking lot convinced a woman not to have an abortion. He concluded, “God has something to say to us in Walmart parking lots, prayer is moving this nation!”

Watch:

This November a coalition of anti-Muslim and Religious Right groups are hosting “The Constitution or Sharia—Preserving Freedom Conference” in Nashville, Tennessee, dubbed “the first national conference on Sharia and the Islamization of America.” The location does not seem to be coincidental: the Tennessee legislature recently weighed a bill that would make it a felony to follow Sharia law and the town of Murfreesboro, just south of Nashville, has witnessed vicious anti-Muslim attacks and arson against a planned mosque. A lawsuit against the mosque declared that Islam is not a religion and therefore Muslims do not deserve First Amendment protections. Presidential candidate Herman Cain went to Murfreesboro to condemn the planned mosque as an “abuse of our freedom of religion,” before declaring that municipalities have a right to ban mosques.

The summit features panels on issues such as “Fighting Islamist Propaganda in the Media,” “Grassroots Organizing Against Sharia and Rabats (including Mega-Mosques),” and “Defending Liberty In Legislatures.” The chief sponsor of the event is the extremist media outlet WorldNetDaily and speakers include a mix of the usual anti-Muslim activists including Robert Spencer, Frank Gaffney and Pamela Geller, along with Religious Right leaders who have consistently attacked the rights of Muslims such as Jay Sekulow, Mat Staver, Andrea and Jim Lafferty, E.W. Jackson and William Murray. Michele Bachmann is listed an invited speaker but has not been confirmed:

• Pamela Geller of Stop Islamization of America and Atlas Shrugs
• Robert Spencer of Stop Islamization of America and Jihad Watch
• Jay Sekulow of American Center for Law and Justice
• Mathew Staver of Liberty Counsel
• William J. Murray of Religious Freedom Coalition and No 911 Mosque
• Frank Gaffney of Center for Security Policy
• Christopher Holton of Center for Security Policy
• Lou Ann Zelenik of Tennessee Freedom Coaltion
• Andrea Lafferty of Traditional Values Coalition
• James Lafferty of Virginia Anti-Sharia Task Force
• Barrister Paul Diamond, United Kingdom
• Father Keith Roderick
• Bishop Earl W. Jackson
• Fred Grandy - Actor and former congressman
• Wafa Sultan
• Rev. Dr. Mark Durie, Australia

Lou Ann Zelenik is best known for the malicious anti-Muslim themes in her unsuccessful campaign for Congress last year, which focused on stopping the Murfreesboro mosque development. E.W. Jackson is currently relying heavily on anti-Muslim rhetoric in his bid for U.S. Senate in Virginia.

This won’t be the first time Religious Right leaders and anti-Muslim activists have come together at a major event, and anti-Muslim activists have started appearing frequently on Christian conservative radio outlets.

With another gathering set to demonize Muslims and hype fears of “creeping Sharia,” the Religious Right’s ostensible commitment to religious freedom yet again doesn’t translate into freedom for non-Christian faiths.

For example, notice the involvement of “William J. Murray of Religious Freedom Coalition and No 911 Mosque.” As Kyle noted last year in a post about Murray, the Religious Freedom Coalition is “dedicated to the equality of all mankind and the freedom of religious expression” but is also running a campaign determined to stop Muslims from having those same rights by trying to block the construction of the Park 51 Islamic Community Center. The center opened last week without protests, and so far, Lower Manhattan is not under the rule of Sharia law.

Earlier this week, Janet Porter organized a rally to press for passage her radical "Heartbeat Bill" which has been endorsed by everyone from James Dobson and Roy Moore to Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry.

For the event, Porter brought in Religious Right activists like Rick Scarborough and Wendy Wright, as well as "prophets" and "apostles" like Lou Engle and Rick Joyner.  And, just as she did when her bill was being debated in the Ohio state house, she brought an ultrasound of a fetus to "speak" on behalf of the legislation.

The woman in the video is Ducia Hamm of the Ashland Care Center who explains that "Anna" is "screaming to you 'I'm alive'" ... and also waving hello to the crowd:

Last month we noted that Rena Lindevaldsen, the attorney for Lisa Miller, had written a book all about Miller's saga ... or, at least most of it, since there is barely any mention of the fact that Miller ultimately kidnapped her daughter and fled the country, which is odd considering that Lindevaldsen is reportedly teaching young lawyers at Liberty University to recommend just this sort of "civil disobedience" to clients they believe are being ordered to violate "God's law."

The book itself was predictable and, frankly, rather dull but that didn't stop Mat Staver, Wendy Wright, Mike Huckabee, and Peter Sprigg from glowingly endorsing it ... and now we can add Tony Perkins to the list of those endorsing the book:

Every parent's nightmare is losing a child--and Lisa Miller couldn't face the prospect of losing hers. Hello, I'm Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C. Lisa Miller's child wasn't at risk from a dreaded disease. Or from violence. Or even from kidnapping. No, believe it or not, Lisa faced the prospect of losing her biological daughter because the courts ordered her to turn the child over to another woman. Why? Because she and the other woman were lesbian partners in Vermont when Lisa's daughter was born. The women are no longer together, and their civil union was dissolved. In fact, Lisa's now an ex-lesbian, who's renounced homosexuality and accepted Christ. So instead of giving up her daughter, she disappeared. Rena Lindevaldsen of Liberty Counsel was Lisa's lawyer through all the court battles--but she also became her friend. She's telling Lisa's story in a new book called, Only One Mommy. Anyone concerned about parental rights, the homosexual agenda, and religious liberty should read this book--Only One Mommy, available on Amazon.com.

It is amazing that Perkins says that it is every parent's nightmare to lose a child and then actually mentions the threat of kidnapping in an effort to portray Miller as the victim when it was Miller who literally kidnapped her daughter and fled the country in order to defy multiple court orders and escape law enforcement. 

I guess we probably should not hold our breath waiting for any Religious Right leader to actually step up and suggest that maybe Miller ought to have obeyed the law or, at this point, turn herself in to authorities.

Two of the most malicious anti-gay activists in the Religious Right came together on Saturday to smear gay rights advocates for supposedly promoting pedophilia. Matt Barber of Liberty Counsel joined Mission America’s Linda Harvey on her radio show to attack the anti-bullying group GLSEN, the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, and its founder Kevin Jennings. Such claims are nothing new from Barber, who said that “GLSEN tacitly advocates sexual abuse,” and Harvey, who wants to ban gay teachers and once likened GLSEN to the Hitler Youth. Listen as Barber argues that GLSEN glorifies pedophilia and Harvey claim that GLSEN encourages minors to have sex with adults:

Barber: Now let me be very clear for those leftists and sexual anarchists who monitor your program, and you know they do, who are going to try to grossly misrepresent what we’re saying here.

Harvey: Of course they are.

Barber: Are we saying that all homosexuals are pedophiles, of course not.

Harvey: No.

Barber: Are we saying the GLSEN, the Gay, Lesbian, Straight, Education Network, is a pedophile, pro-pedophile movement? Well, yes and no. And here’s what I mean by that, look who the founder is, Kevin Jennings, look who his mentor was, Harry Hay, a pedophile activist. Now GLSEN, I have said the terminology that Harry Hay used was that parents and families and friends of gays should be running interference for pedophiles because the best thing for a kid, for young boys was to have sex with an adult man, this is according to Harry Hay.

Now GLSEN is in keeping with that mentality, they have tacitly as you know all too well Linda, they have tacitly advocated adult-child sex through their recommended reading list for kids in the past that portray in very favorable terms and in a favorable light the idea of boys having sex with men, as you mentioned as part of the empowerment and coming to terms with their in-born sexuality. So again, the left, guys you’re without excuse here if you misrepresent what we’re saying here, but GLSEN cannot get away from the fact that they have recommended reading that portrays in a positive light pedophilia.

Harvey: Right, they could not be, like you said, if they weren’t working hand and glove with these folks, and I don’t know that they are.

Barber: Well they have in the past, not GLSEN necessarily but the homosexual activists have worked hand and glove with the pro-pedophile movement for decades before it became detrimental and it was no longer politically expedient to do so.

Harvey: Well I have called GLSEN a child corruption group and I stand by that because when you look at what they recommend, and the fact that they want to cut parents out of the equation, they want to bypass parents and schools and directly interact with even eleven and twelve year old kids and convince them to go for it, go into homosexuality. This is child corruption and if that child has joined the homosexual club, talked confidentially in a safe space to the homosexual teacher or counselor at school, and then is approached by the, ok let’s not make it the dark, trench coated forty-five year old, let’s say it’s a twenty-two year old, but that’s still an adult with a twelve year old. This is perfectly acceptable, it’s all over the homosexual community, and tell me it’s not, it is absolutely out there.

Ever since Rick Perry help his public prayer rally in August, we have been noting how organizers of that event have been hard at work promoting something called "Champion The Vote" which is a Religious Right voter mobilization effort designed to get "5 million unregistered conservative Christians to register and vote according to the Biblical worldview in 2012."

The Champion The Vote effort is of project of a group called United in Purpose, which is an organization that seeks to "mobilize 40 million out of the estimated 60 million evangelicals in the United States to vote" over the next decade.

United In Purpose was the group responsible for the Rediscover God In America conference in Iowa earlier this year which was organized by David Lane ... who also so happened to also serve as the National Finance Chairman for Perry's prayer rally.

Now United In Purpose/Champion The Vote is organizing an event called "One Nation Under God" to be held in November:

We’ve lost sight of our great heritage as a nation founded on Biblical truth, and the consequences are dire: schools are failing, the divorce rate is climbing, and our society is rife with scandal and corruption. It’s time to reclaim our Biblical heritage and bring God back to the center of American life. Where do we start?

On Saturday, November 12, United in Purpose presents One Nation Under God – a national, three-hour premiere event featuring top American thinkers and political leaders who will bring the truth about God and America to people gathered in homes and churches across the nation.

And you will, no doubt, be surprised to learn that Rick Perry is listed among the speakers:

Organizers are promoting the event with this video:

Recently we have been seeing more and more Religious Right activists like David Barton asserting that the government should play no role in assisting those in poverty.  We had been chalking that idea up to the general right-wing hatred of the government and desire to drastically reduce its size and influence.

But on today's broadcast of "Wallbuilders Live," the American Center for Law and Justice's David French explained that the primary reason the Religious Right opposes government assistance to the poor is that it means those in poverty do not need to rely on churches for help:

French: The fact of the matter is that in many circumstances, particularly in this country, poverty is the result of an awful lot of bad choices. A lot of our poverty is the result of behaviors that often require heart-level repentance to change.

Medicare, Medicaid , and food stamps are not going to get you to turn away from behaviors that are destroying your life, but the Gospel will.

Rick Green: Doesn't it make them more dependent on government, which makes them less likely to come to the church that used to be the epicenter of the community where people would come and meet?

French: That's exactly right. It used to be that if you were hungry, if you needed help, you would go to the church and as the church was feeding you, as the church was providing you with the physical sustenance that you needed, it was providing you also with the much more important spiritual sustenance.

And right now what we're doing is we're saying you're going to be able to have the television, all the food you need, the roof over your head, everything that you need without any intervention from the church at all.