Gary Schneeberger

Last Friday we noted that Focus on the Family was facing another round of lay-offs, though it was unknown at the time just how many employees would lose their jobs

Today, it is being reported that another 110 employees have been let go, reducing the organization's size almost by half from it's peak in 2002:

Focus on the Family laid off 110 workers Friday, a 13 percent reduction in workforce.

While most of the positions eliminated were in service departments, more than 15 managerial jobs, including two senior executive positions, were also axed, Focus spokesman Gary Schneeberger said today.

With Friday's layoffs, Focus has let go 385 employees over the past two years. Since 2002, Focus' workforce has been trimmed almost in half, from 1,400 to 750.

"The economy continues to be in recession," said Schneeberger, explaining a reason for the layoffs. "And people who have given in the past are having financial difficulties of their own."

The ministry's fiscal 2010-11 budget is $105 million, a $27 million cut from last year's fiscal budget, Schneeberger said.

Focus' budget for fiscal 2008-09 was $160 million.

Back in 2004, CBS rejected an ad from the United Church of Christ, declaring that "it was against our policy of accepting advocacy advertising," which made CBS's decision to run Focus on the Family's anti-choice ad during the Super Bowl such a surprise.

But now we find out that it really shouldn't have come as much of a surprise at all, because the network had been working closely with Focus on the Family for months to help them craft that ad:

The major broadcast networks have avoided political advocacy ads for years, so CBS's decision to air the Tebow ad caught abortion rights advocates off guard. But Focus on the Family, the Colorado Springs-based conservative Christian group founded by Dr. James Dobson, says that it has actually been working closely with CBS executives for months on the ad's script.

"There were discussions about the specific wording of the spot," said Gary Schneeberger, spokesperson for Focus on the Family. "And we came to a compromise. To an agreement." Schneeberger declined to comment on CBS's input on the ad's message.

CBS has said that in the last year, in an acknowledgement of "industry norms," it loosened previous restrictions on advocacy advertisements, accepting ads that pushed for health reform and environmental activism.

But pro-choice advocates complain the network didn't publicize the policy change and hasn't applied it consistently, citing a rejected Super Bowl ad from gay dating Web site ManCrunch.com. According to Schneeberger, Focus on the Family was not aware of an explicit policy change inside the network, either. "It was only last week that they indicated that they changed any policy," he said.

"We've worked with [CBS] almost since the beginning," Schneeberger added. "Our senior vice presidents talked to CBS executives throughout the process. It was a very cordial, very professional, fruitful relationship."

As of the end of next February, James Dobson will no longer be hosting his flagship radio program:

James Dobson, the voice of conservative Christian group Focus on the Family since its inception, is leaving the organization's flagship daily radio broadcast.

Focus on the Family spokesman Gary Schneeberger says Dobson will go off the air at the end of February. He said Friday it was a mutual decision of Dobson and the board, and that more details are forthcoming.

Dobson, 73, a strong voice in conservative Christian politics, has taken on a reduced role at Focus on the Family as part of a succession plan. He resigned as president in 2003, and as board chairman in February.

The evangelical group recently laid off staff because of a decline in donations.

Earlier this year, when Dobson stepped down as Chairman of Focus on the Family, it was announced that he would continue to speak out on important political and cultural matters and that there were no plans for him to step away from the microphone as the voice of the daily radio program.

But this announcement suggests that Dobson's reign as the face and voice of Focus on the Family and, by extension, the Religious Right as a movement, is coming to an end.

Yesterday I wrote a post about the Religious Right blasting the Obama administration for abandoning the "tradition" of hosting an official National Day of Prayer event at the White House, despite the fact that said "tradition" was started and observed by exactly one president: George W. Bush.

So instead of an event at the White House, an event was held at the Capitol and James Dobson, whose wife Shirley heads the pseudo-official National Day of Prayer Task Force, criticized for White House for not only refusing to host an event itself but for not even sending a representative to the event held on the Hill:

Evangelical author and radio host James Dobson said that he is "disappointed" that for the first time in nearly two decades there was no representative from the White House during the National Day of Prayer event.

"I have not asked to meet with the president and certainly he has not asked to meet with me, but I would just like this country to remember its foundation, to remember its heritage and honor it, especially on the day set aside by George Washington in the beginning for prayer in this country," he said. "And I would hope that that would have occurred."

...

"The national day of prayer is important for people all across the country and I think the president missed a wonderful opportunity," he said. "...Not only did he not have any ceremony himself, he did not send any representatives from the White House to this event."

Well, according to Dan Gilgoff, it turns out that that was because Day of Prayer organizers "stipulated that the White House representative had to be opposed to abortion rights:"

"The administration's representative had to be pro-life," says the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "Nobody else was allowed to go."

National Day of Prayer Task Force Marketing and Media Manager Becky Armstrong declined to comment on the report. An E-mail message sent yesterday to Focus on the Family's vice president for media relations, Gary Schneeberger, went unreturned. The prayer day task force operates out of Focus's Colorado Springs headquarters and is chaired by Shirley Dobson, the wife of the Focus founder.

...

[T]he well-placed source said the only Obama cabinet secretary to receive an invite to yesterday's event was Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, an anti-abortion rights Republican. LaHood did not attend the event.

Earlier this week, the Family Research Council weighed in to criticize Obama for not hosting a White House event in a piece entitled "The National Day of Prayer Is Everyone's Day." 

Everyone, that is, except those who don't share the Religious Right's views, apparently.

It seems that leaders of the Religious Right are tired of being associated with the Religious Right because nobody likes the Religious Right.  Unfortunately for them, they are the Religious Right and that is what we are going to keep calling them, especially now that they are saying we should stop calling them that:

[S]everal politically conservative evangelicals said in interviews that they do not want to be identified with the "Religious Right," "Christian Right," "Moral Majority," or other phrases still thrown around in journalism and academia.

"There is an ongoing battle for the vocabulary of our debate," said Gary Bauer, president of American Values. "It amazes me how often in public discourse really pejorative phrases are used, like the 'American Taliban,' 'fundamentalists,' 'Christian fascists,' and 'extreme Religious Right.' "

...

Gary Schneeberger, vice president of media and public relations for Focus on the Family, said that when writers include terms like "Religious Right" and "fundamentalist," they can create negative impressions.

"Terms like 'Religious Right' have been traditionally used in a pejorative way to suggest extremism," Schneeberger said. "The phrase 'socially conservative evangelicals' is not very exciting, but that's certainly the way to do it."

...

[M]any groups would rather distance themselves from the Religious Right, even though they may agree on several political issues. Richard Land said he corrects numerous reporters who call him a leader of the Religious Right, explaining that he represents a group of Southern Baptists who would probably consider themselves conservative evangelicals.

"When the so-called 'Religious Right' agrees with us, we applaud their good taste and good judgment," said Land, who is president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission for the Southern Baptist Convention. Some phrases need to be eliminated from journalists' vocabulary entirely, he said. "Until Tony Perkins or Jim Dobson puts a pistol on the table and threatens to kill someone, they shouldn't be called ayatollah of the Right or the Jihadists of the Right."

...

Organizational leaders like Tony Perkins of Family Research Council want a term that includes other religious groups like Catholics, Jews, and Mormons so that they can see themselves as fighting for the same cause.

"It's not accurate to say that the Christian Right or the Religious Right is simply a narrow slice of evangelicals," Perkins said. "Will everyone identify themselves as part of the Religious Right? No, but they do share a portion of values."

If the phrase "Religious Right" has negative connotations, it probably stems primarily from the fact that the people who have traditionally represented the Religious Right have caused it to, you know, have negative connotations.  

When people like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson go on television and blame the 9/11 attacks on "pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, [and] all of them who have tried to secularize America," that is the sort of thing that tends to create negative impressions about the Religious Right. 

And even if they were called "socially conservative evangelicals," this type of rhetoric would still create negative impressions about the term "socially conservative evangelicals" ... and then "socially conservative evangelicals" would be telling everyone to stop calling them "socially conservative evangelicals."

You see, it is not the term that it is problem - it is the Religious Right's agenda and rhetoric.

Since we first wrote about Focus on the Family’s dystopian “Letter from 2012” a little over a week ago, it has generated a lot of publicity for FOF, most of it negative.  

For instance, it was mentioned in an AFP article on pre-election “dirty tricks,” listed by the New York Times as among the “season’s slimiest political messages,” been featured in a CNN report in which FOF was referred to as “religious extremists,” and generated a demand for an apology from Jim Wallis.

But just in case you thought that Focus might have been in any way embarrassed by the outrage they sparked, think again because it seems as if they are pretty proud of it and, more importantly, their supporters seem to have loved it:

The letter has been viewed more than 215,000 times, and CitizenLink has received about 1,500 e-mails. Most CitizenLink readers found it insightful, and many told us they had forwarded the letter to their friends.

"The letter has started a dialogue, and that was what we hoped when we published it," said Gary Schneeberger, vice president of media and public relations at Focus Action. "The intent was to motivate voters to think seriously about how they cast their ballots — by providing an informed, researched look at what the implications of this election could be.

"We hope and pray the scenarios discussed in the letter never come to pass, but it is certainly not outside the realm of possibility that many of them could."

Here's what some of our folks are saying:

"I hope it wakes some people up!"
— Martha

"You've done a good job painting a clear picture of an Obama administration. Sure makes one pause for thought."
— Jeff

"Thank you for printing the Obama letter. We have printed several copies for distribution. It gave me a broader perspective and more to 'discuss' with Obama supporters."
— Debb

"It made me realize how very important it is that I vote! As I read further, an overwhelming peace came over me because I know God is in control … so I will not fear."
— Lindsy

"I thought it was amazing. It is very scary to think about what could really happen with complete liberal control over all of the government. I sent it to everyone I know."
— David

"I only hope and pray on Election Day, people will listen to what the Holy Spirit tells them to do."
— Kevin

Focus on the Family continues with its attack on Barack Obama’s faith and understanding of Christianity, with FOF's Gary Schneeberger discussing it on Janet Folger's Faith 2 Action radio program while FOF Vice President Tom Minnery continues his three-part video criticism, claiming that Obama’s interpretation of the Bible is such a “sacrilege” that he “could cry”:

Trobee: Tom, [Obama] says he Christianity doesn’t have a monopoly when it comes to politics and yet, in the next clip, we’ll see what he really thinks about that. Obama: Which passages of Scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is ok and that eating shellfish is abomination? How about Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount - a passage that is so radical that it's doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application? So before we get carried away, let's read our bibles. Folks haven't been reading their bibles. Minnery: I could cry. I could cry. That’s a gross misunderstanding of Scripture. To compare the dietary laws that pertained to the Israelites with the New Testament, Kingdom of God theme of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount is a grotesque mischaracterization of what we believe as a Christian people today. He is mixing the Levitical law which applied to the Israelites as they were coming out of 400 years of slavery in Egypt at a time when God chose them to be his holy people; he was purifying them, everything he said then applied to them. Jesus opened to everyone the benefit of Heaven. It’s a new era, the New Testament era, and to willingly mix all this up is, to me, a sacrilege. Trobee: And it doesn’t stop there. Let’s watch this next one … Minnery: I hate to even think what’s on this next one. Obama: Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason. I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons, but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke God's will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all. Minnery: Well, hello Senator. Isn’t it evident that taking of innocent human life is killing, is murder, whether someone believes in faith or whether someone does not believe in faith? Is this not evident to all? He hides behind what he believes is some false notion of religion and yet those notions of religion underlie much of our Western civilization’s law. For example, thou shalt not murder – that’s a religious concept. It comes in the Old Testament, it was affirmed in the New Testament, and it’s a law. Because it’s religious, should it be erased from law? Of course not. There are good reasons why this religious principle works well in secular, civil law for everybody regardless of whether they buy into the religious origin of that law. Thou shalt not steal is another religious precept that makes a pretty good law for everybody. He’s mixing things up here and I hope he’s mistaken, I hope he’s not willful, but I don’t know.