Jerry Boykin

For a number of weeks, the Family Research Council has been shamelessly pushing a myth, concocted by Fox News contributor Todd Starnes, that the Obama administration is conducting a “Christian cleansing” of the military. Never mind that the “cleansing” story is totally untrue -- and that even Glenn Beck’s The Blaze has thoroughly debunked it – in a fundraising email today, FRC’s Jerry Boykin claims that it is part of a “shocking anti-Christian movement that is threatening the future of America.”

The military’s longstanding policy, which applies to members of all faiths, is that "service members can share their faith (evangelize), but must not force unwanted, intrusive attempts to convert others of any faith or no faith to one's beliefs (proselytization).” But according to Boykin, this means that Christians “could be prosecuted as enemies of the state” and that it will “destroy military recruiting across the services as Americans realize that their faith will be suppressed by joining the military.”

Tony has asked me, as a 36-year veteran of military service, to add my perspective to the shocking anti-Christian movement that is threatening the future of America.

Here is the situation: The very troops who defend our religious freedom are at risk of having their own taken away. Less than a month ago, anti-Christian and left-wing activists met at the Pentagon with military leaders. What issues would be of such importance to gain such a high-level hearing?

According to these far-left activists, religion is one of the chief problems plaguing our troops. As the Washington Post reported, some are saying that "religious proselytizing" is at the top of the list of problems in the armed forces--even on par with sexual assault.

As a result of such complaints from the Left, the Air Force has--according to the Post--published, but not yet distributed, a new document with the directive that leaders of all levels (including chaplains) may not "promote their personal religious beliefs to their subordinates or to extend preferential treatment for any religion."

The penalty these secularists are seeking for those who don't comply with their view of religious speech is court-martial.

If this policy goes forward, Christians within the military who speak of their faith could be prosecuted as enemies of the state. This has the potential to destroy military recruiting across the services as Americans realize that their faith will be suppressed by joining the military.

The Family Research Council’s Watchmen on the Wall conference is an annual gathering for pastors and other church leaders to hear from a panoply of right-wing speakers and get motivated to “transform America.” Our coverage of last year’s event highlights speakers’ attacks on evolution, secularism, Islam, LGBT people, and other tools of Satan.

This year’s conference, which takes place in Washington DC May 22-24, has been promoted by FRC for months.  In April, FRC sent an excited alert that Sen. Ted Cruz, a Tea Party and Religious Right favorite who is reportedly mulling a 2016 presidential bid, had confirmed.

Based on other confirmed speakers, it seems likely that there will be two major themes to this year’s gathering: 1) religious liberty in America is under attack by Obama and his gay allies; and 2) only the church – led by uncompromising fired up pastors – can save freedom and America.

A notable addition to the cast of conservative evangelicals is William Lori, Archbishop of the Diocese of Baltimore and chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty. Lori has led the bishops’ attack on the Obama administration’s proposed regulations requiring insurance coverage of contraception.  Lori, who believes that “aggressive secularity” is “becoming the established ‘religion’ in our country today,” will be right at home with his friends at the Family Research Council. A typical FRC Action mailing from Tony Perkins earlier this year said President Obama is out to “crush freedom.” The same letter warns about “death panels” under Obamacare, which Perkins calls “the tip of the tyranny-iceberg.”

Also entertaining the Watchmen will be Rep. James Lankford, who earlier this year blamed gun violence on “welfare moms” overmedicating their kids with psychiatric drugs because they “want to get additional benefits.”  At FRC’s Values Voter Summit in September, Lankford said of the dispute over contraception coverage, “this is not a war on women, this is a war on people of faith.” 

Also confirmed is Ergun Caner, who lost his position at Liberty University after Muslim and Christian bloggers, and then journalists, began to expose the falsehoods in the Jihadi-to-Jesus life story that Caner had used to make a name for himself in the post-9/11 evangelical universe. Caner will probably echo his remarks at the 2009 Values Voter Summit, where his message to Christians who were not being outspoken enough on the issues of the day: “You need to preach, teach, and reach, or just shut up and get out of our way.”

Anti-gay activist Harry Jackson is quick to invoke Satan and other demonic powers as the forces behind the gay rights movement, which he portrays as an enemy of religious freedom. He has charged that a “radical” gay element is trying to “close down every church in America.” In fact, one of his columns was titled,” Why do Gays Hate Religious Freedom?”  Jackson’s apocalyptic anti-Obama rhetoric did not convince many Black Christians to vote against Obama, but Jackson thinks they’ll be sorry. God, he says, will “take out” those who chose “race over grace.” Jackson is a long-time FRC ally; he and Perkins co-authored Personal Faith, Public Policy, which calls Supreme Court rulings on church-state issues “assaults” on Christianity.

Jim Garlow, a California pastor who led church backing for Prop 8 in California and was then tapped by Newt Gingrich to run one of his political groups, had warned before the election that an Obama reelection would destroy the country.  During an FRC post-election special Garlow said that Christians should expect massive persecution from the government.  At last year’s Watchmen on the Wall conference, Garlow spoke at a press conference attacking President Obama’s use of religious language to describe his support for marriage equality. Evoking the words of a colonial preacher, Garlow said, “if necessary, here we die.” In an FRC DVD promoting Watchmen on the Wall, Garlow says an FRC-produced video was crucial to the Prop 8 win.

Richard Land is retiring in October after 25 years as head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty commission; he was dogged by controversy during the past year over plagiarism charges and racially inflammatory remarks he made regarding the Trayvon Martin killing.  Land has charged that the only reason the Obama administration proposed regulations on contraception coverage was to "set the precedent of ramming this down our throats and forcing us to surrender our First amendment freedom of religion." Land says God will unleash judgment on America for the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.

Watchmen will also hear from Jacob Aranza, whose 1983 book Backward Masking Unmasked warned that rock music was encoded with satanic messages that would entice teens into drug use and abnormal sexual behavior. Aranza says he burned “hundreds of thousands” of albums in those days. More recently, Aranza was an endorser of Rick Perry’s “Awakening” and participated in Religious Right strategy sessions convened by James Robison to try to prevent Obama’s re-election. In 2011, Aranza and Perkins appeared together on Robison’s television show, and Aranza gushed about Perkin’s work to mobilize pastors:

Tony Perkins is one of the great heroes in America today. He is a hero because it is unseen. He is uniting and equipping the most important people in America, and that's the pastors in America. If the local church is the hope of the world then pastors are the hope of the local church. Tony Perkins exists to encourage them and to equip them and to empower them. He's taking regular pastors -- the average church in America, James, as you know is less than 200 people; 80% of the churches in America are 200 or less -- and he is taking men like that and he is turning them into absolute heroes, just like pastors in Maine who are literally changing the moral fiber of an entire state because he has equipped them and empowered them and told them they're the people that are supposed to be the hedge of builders, and he is encouraging them to do just that.…I believe that as you speak you are literally trumpeting a sound that is encouraging pastors across America and families across America that are Christians to unite together to see God once again bring spiritual awakening to our nation.

JC Church is one of FRC’s pastor leaders “networking churches in Ohio to answer the call on moral issues.”  His 3 Cord Alliance, which is affiliated with FRC, teaches pastors “how to bring sound scripturally based influence and change to your community.” Church has been praised by Phil Burress of Citizens for Community Values: “I believe that if all the pastors in Ohio were like Pastor Church, we would have an army that Satan could not stop. He understands that America is led by the pulpit and we count on him to unite fellow pastors and their congregations to be the salt and light we so desperately need in the world today.”

Jack Hibbs is a California-based preacher who also pushed Prop 8; in 2011 he helped lead an unsuccessful effort to overturn the state’s SB 48, which he charged would lead to public schools indoctrinating students.  In a video urging pastors to get involved, he said it is not enough to teach and preach the word of God, pastors needed to be “culture changers for Christ.” Leading into the 2012 election Hibbs was outspoken about the fact that Christians should vote for Romney over Obama. In a radio show the day after the 2012 elections, He says he was on the phone with Tony Perkins on election night and they had both believed that the outcome was up to the church: “The answer wouldn’t be determined in the White House or the statehouse….the answer for righteousness or unrighteousness, for light or for darkness, for liberty or tyranny, would be decided by the pastors.” Given the way things turned out, Hibbs says “I believe the responsibility, the outcome, and the fallout falls into the hands of the pulpits of America’s pastors who did not speak up….” Hibbs also echoes Mitt Romney’s infamous “47 percent” remarks: “those who are looking for handouts, they don’t want to work, they want the government to give things to them, overwhelmingly voted for Barack Obama.” Hibbs said he was disappointed but not discouraged, because “God’s on the throne” and therefore “God has appointed him to be our president for God’s purposes – OK that means God has got some pretty gnarly purposes coming for America.”

There’s a special role at the conference for FRC’s executive vice president, retired Lt. Gen. William “Jerry” Boykin.  Boykin retired from the military after being reprimanded by then-President Bush for making speeches depicting the war on terrorism as a Christian holy war against Islam. FRC hired Boykin last year after he was disinvited from speaking at West Point after faculty and cadets objected.  Boykin and his Religious Right allies portrayed his mythical martyrdom as an attack on freedom of speech and religion. At last year’s Values Voter Summit, Boykin invoked Marx, Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler in denouncing what he said is an effort to move Americans away from belief in a sovereign God.  He says everything President Obama is doing is right out of the” Communist Manifesto.”

Perkins seems to be counting on Boykin to strong-arm pastors at the conference into making a concrete commitment to political activism. In an insert in a packet mailed to pastors, Perkins says Boykin will offer the “concluding challenge” – and he insists that pastors book their flights home no earlier than 4pm so that they can stay.  “During the Briefing, we will share details of the strategic plan the Lord is using to bring revival and renewal in communities around the nation through the engagement of pastors. At the end, we have a ‘call to decision’ or ‘invitation’ sort of like many of you do in a worship service. Just as you want those attending your worship service to stay and respond, we would respectfully ask the same of you.” Perkins has some leverage – FRC picks up most of the tab for one pastor from each church.

FRC launched Watchmen on the Wall in 2004. A 2010 promotional DVD said the group was up to 14,000 pastors; it said Perkins’ goal was to have 40,000 Watchmen pastors by 2015. Pastors who sign up get access to regular briefings, model sermons, and other toolkits for mobilizing their congregations and communities.  The same promotional video contains a clip of “historian” David Barton quoting 19th Century preacher Charles Finney saying, in effect, that if the country is going to hell, it’s pastors’ fault.  The notion that America can only be saved by more aggressive preachers is a recurring theme at Religious Right gatherings, including Liberty Counsel’s recent Awakening conference.

The Family Research Council believes the military is preparing to court martial Christians based on an Air Force memo which reminds officers and supervisors to “avoid the actual or apparent use of their position to promote their personal religious beliefs to their subordinates or to extend preferential treatment for any religion.”

FRC vice president Jerry Boykin appeared yesterday on The Janet Mefferd Show to warn that the memo is part of a “liberal-Marxist agenda” that seeks to destroy the military in order to remove “traditional American values” and “take God out of society so that people become dependent upon government.”

This is all about a very liberal-Marxist agenda. This nation was founded on a totally new concept called unalienable rights, God-given rights. If you look at every Marxist movement there’s always been an effort to take God out of the society so that people become dependent upon the government and I think that’s exactly what we’re seeing here. If you go after the military, you go after really what I think is the bedrock of America because the organization and the institution in America that has maintained American values more than any other has been our military and there has been an incremental erosion of our military. Changes that are being proposed and changes that are being enacted in our military are eroding the military in terms of its prestige, in terms of its ability to maintain traditional American values. You change the values in this society by going after the bedrock and I think that’s why the military has been targeted for this.

Boykin called the move a “direct assault on Christianity” engineered by people who are “deliberately trying to destroy not only the chaplaincy” but also “trying to destroy our military.”

Boykin: If you look at this situation Janet you ask yourself, are they deliberately trying to destroy not only the chaplaincy but are they trying to destroy our military? This and a series of other things, as you’ve said the assaults on religious liberty, but it’s the other things too. To include this latest announcement that they’re going to allow women to serve in certain frontline combat units which in no way is that supported by the average male or female that have ever been in those units but also it does not enhance readiness. So you ask yourself, what are they trying to do with our military?

Mefferd: Well they sure have paid a lot of attention to it but it hasn’t been to enhance the ability of the military to do its job. They are defunding it, they are doing these other sorts of policies. It certainly would be a question we would have to ask.

Boykin: This has got to be one that wakes America up. There is a large faith component in our society today and the majority of the people do identify with Christianity and this is a direct assault on Christianity.

On Tuesday's Washington Watch, Family Research Council leaders Tony Perkins and Jerry Boykin argued that the Obama administration is trying to undermine the military. After Perkins said that the administration is “damaging national security” and shows a “total disregard for the future well-being of our national security and the military,” Boykin maintained that Obama’s holds anti-military views are because “he has not served” and “has shown disdain for the military culture.”

He even argued that Secretary of State John Kerry, who received a Silver Star, Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts for his service in Vietnam, “has a rather abysmal record when he was in the military” and added that Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, who also served in Vietnam, “has not been particularly strong on national defense.”

Both Boykin and Perkins have repeatedly claimed that the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and the lifting of the ban on women in combat positions were grave threats to the military. Boykin earlier insisted that Obama is attempting to weaken military values in order to change the larger culture and establish a paramilitary force that is similar to the Brownshirts. 

Perkins: This administration uses the military and I think disregards the military principles that in the long run could be very serious in terms of damaging national security, there’s a total disregard for the future well-being of our national security and the military.

Boykin: Well you’re absolutely right. You see a lot of things happening to our military today that are really changing the culture of the military and consequently changing the readiness of the military at a time when our enemies are growing stronger. I think if you look at the fact that we now have a President who not only has not served but you could even make the case has shown disdain for the military culture. And you have a Secretary of State that has a rather abysmal record when he was in the military and a Secretary of Defense who has not been particularly strong on national defense. What you see is leadership now at the highest levels that really want to change the military culture, change the ethos of the military into something that more supports their agenda and I think we all have a pretty good idea of what their agenda is.

Janet Parshall hosted a panel on Islam with Family Research Council vice president Jerry Boykin and phony ex-terrorist Kamal Saleem during February’s National Religious Broadcasters convention, where Saleem described how he instantly healed his sister of a stomach hernia and headaches:

Boykin cited a report from Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy that claims that judges in fifty court cases have used Islamic law in making their decisions and that Sharia “has been insinuated into our legal system.”

However, as the ACLU points out, “the CSP report consists mostly of 50 judicial opinions, which the authors copied and pasted word-for-word simply because they mention Islam or involve claims brought by Muslims, contending that these cases serve as evidence of the so-called ‘Sharia threat.’” The report doesn’t even attempt to prove that Sharia law is being used in courts, but merely finds that there are some court cases which “happen to involve Islam or Muslims.”

Boykin went on to cite Oklahoma’s unconstitutional Sharia ban and insisted that the media is refusing to reveal “the true nature of Islam.”

Later, Boykin called for people to support Michele Bachmann, Louie Gohmert and Trent Franks over their role in leading the witch hunt against Muslim-Americans serving in government, which he said proves that they are “standing on the word of God” and “their belief in Christ.”

We need to understand that one of the fundamentals of Islam is Sharia, Islamic law. It has been insinuated into our legal system and we did a study that showed fifty court cases, twenty-three states judges used Sharia. Right now there are efforts in over twenty states to prevent that from happening with legislation at the state level called ‘American Laws for American Courts.’ Initially Oklahoma passed it and it was immediately challenged by Eric Holder and the Justice Department but there are other states that have passed it and still more that are working on it. So protect us from Sharia. Those are prudent laws that would protect us from judges being able to practice Sharia and violate Article VI of our Constitution by doing so. Second thing is; everything needs to get informed on this. If you are tied to the mainstream media you will never know anything about the true nature of Islam.

…

There’s a lack of leadership in America today. Leaders are intimidated, they’re afraid and they will not confront the Muslim Brotherhood; they will not face up to what is really happening in America. Those who will are people that are standing on the word of God. Start with Michele Bachmann, Louie Gohmert, Trent Franks; they are a very small number who are standing on God’s word and because they have the spirit of God they see this for what it is. They need our help. We need to lite up Washington in support of these people that are the only ones that are unafraid because of their dependence upon God’s word, they are unafraid to confront this; yet they get pilloried from everybody across the country because they have stood up to the realities of the Muslim Brotherhood. We need to stand with them, we need to pray for them and we need to stand with them as they stand for us because of their belief in Christ.

The Family Research Council's Jerry Boykin was the guest on "WallBuilders Live" today for a discussion of the Pentagon's recent decision to lift the ban on women serving in combat.  Not surprisingly, Boykin opposes the idea, wondering why the Obama Administration would approve this change even as Congress was working to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act, claiming "there is such an inconsistency here":

The Congress, the Senate at least, passed the Violence Against Women Act which was designed to protect our women. Now it had some flaws in it, so we don't support it ... but it's violence against women, protect our women.

Now with this decision by Leon Panetta and the President, what we're doing is we're saying 'now you ladies, fix your bayonets, we're going to send you right into hand-to-hand combat with these men that are physically more capable than you in most cases and they're going to try to kill you.'  There is such an inconsistency here.

Family Research Council vice president Jerry Boykin has joined the right-wing smear campaign against John Brennan and Chuck Hagel, President Obama’s nominees to lead the CIA and the Department of Defense, respectively.

In an interview with fellow anti-Muslim activist Frank Gaffney, Boykin said that Hagel “has demonstrated some rather anti-Semitic tendencies in not being willing to stand with Israel” and that Brennan is “very sympathetic to the jihadist cause.”

Boykin added that Brennan “personally brought in a number of very subversive elements and individuals into our government” and “helped to place them in positions of great influence within our government, including the White House.”

Boykin: He also I believe has demonstrated some rather anti-Semitic tendencies in not being willing to stand with Israel. So I’m very concerned, that’s the best that we can do as a nation? If you look at his hearing it was probably the worst showing for any nominee in my lifetime so I’m very concerned.

Gaffney: I think rightly so. Let me ask you about one of the other nominations, John Brennan. I imagine you crossed paths with him during your time in the United States government including your service as the deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence, what do you make of his, well, I think most charitably it’s described as willful blindness about that threat, that enemy posed in the form of an existential threat I think not just to Israel but I think to all of us in the form of Islamism.

Boykin: Yeah I’m very concerned about Brennan, I’m more concerned about Brennan than I am Hagel. I’m concerned about both of them but Brennan’s track record of not being willing to acknowledge that Al Qaeda is actually executing Islamic theology, is motivated by fundamental Islamic theology. Brennan is a guy who has A) not been willing to acknowledge that this is what motivates them but B) he has personally brought in a number of very subversive elements and individuals into our government, he has helped to place them in positions of great influence within our government, including the White House. Brennan has been very sympathetic to the jihadist cause.

Gary Bauer of the Campaign for Working Families appeared on the End Times show, Understanding the Times with Jan Markell, to warn that Obama’s nominees are further proof of his “affection for and affinity for the Islamic world.”

A lot of the things we see the President doing, his appointments, his speeches, the events he has at the White House that are often pro-Islamic events, all these things taken together is just a reflection of the fact that this is the first President in modern times that has been so overt in his hostility to Israel and so clear about his affection for and affinity for the Islamic world.

Bauer argued that if “men and women of faith walk away and leave the battlefield to our opponents” then Obama and his appointees will continue to show “softness towards radical Islam” and wage an “assault on normal marriage.”

They want us to run away from the fight and to give up so then they can make the country into something quite different than the kind of America that we want it to be. So whether it’s Israel or bad appointments like Chuck Hagel, government getting bigger, taxes going up, the deficit out of control, softness towards radical Islam, all these issues are all incredibly important, the assault on normal marriage. The last thing America can survive right now is if men and women of faith walk away and leave the battlefield to our opponents.

For decades, the Right has attempted to discredit Hillary Clinton with attacks ranging from the disturbing (killing people) to the bizarre (killing cats). But after serving four years as Secretary of State, Clinton is leaving office with sky-high approval ratings. Before she steps down on Friday, we decided to look back on some of the most extreme and befuddling accusations she has faced from the far-right during her term as the nation’s top diplomat.

1. Clinton Engineered Benghazi Cover-Up

While the official report on the U.S. mission in Benghazi found multiple security and management breakdowns that Clinton had already taken responsibility for, many on the right claimed that she actually was behind a massive cover-up. Several Republican politicians and conservative commentators said that the Obama administration withheld military assistance while watching a live feed of the attack. The State Department’s Accountability Review Board report debunked the right-wing conspiracy theories, but that didn’t stop Fox News and conservative talk show hosts from reporting them as fact and arguing that the administration used the attack in Benghazi to pass blasphemy laws protecting Islam.

As the Right’s claims about Benghazi continued to unravel, they shifted to baselessly asserting that the administration manufactured the Petraeus affair in order to preserve the alleged cover-up and that Clinton faked a concussion and blood clot to get out of testifying about the incident. When she did testify, she faced redundant and ill-informed questions from Republicans like Wisconsin senator Ron Johnson, who skipped a classified briefing on the incident, and Kentucky senator Rand Paul, who admitted he had no proof to back up his claim that the Benghazi mission was used to send arms to Syrian rebels.

2. Clinton Supports the Muslim Brotherhood

Latching onto rumors that emerged on the far-right fringe, Rep. Michele Bachmann sought to spark a McCarthyite investigation that accused Clinton’s deputy chief of staff of acting as a Muslim Brotherhood spy. Bachmann insisted that “there has been deep penetration in the halls of our United States government by the Muslim Brotherhood,” and along with a handful of Republican colleagues, made allegations that Clinton aide Huma Abedin was working on behalf of the group.

Of course, Bachmann couldn’t substantiate her claims and literally ran away from a reporter when asked about them. Even Republican leaders criticized Bachmann for starting the witch hunt. But her unfounded claims took off in the conservative media, which was more than happy to paint Clinton and Obama as secret Islamist sympathizers, and eventually caused trouble overseas .

3. Clinton Loves Sharia

Anti-Clinton conspiracy theorists claim that her supposed Muslim Brotherhood sympathies have turned her into a covert advocate of Sharia law. Bachmann said that Clinton was working “to take away the free speech rights of the American people” and “our right of free speech and expression, religious practice, freedom of assembly, freedom of the printing press” in order to “empower the Islamists.”

Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy claimed that Clinton had accepted “submission to the stealthy Islamist effort to enforce in this country the supremacist doctrine known as shariah” and the Family Research Council’s Jerry Boykin said the administration had shown “support for the infiltration of the Muslim Brotherhood into our government.” Rick Joyner, the televangelist who has worked closely with Gaffney and Boykin, was left wondering why Clinton was “advocating” Sharia:

4. LGBT Rights Advocacy Will Destroy America

While the Right’s Benghazi, Muslim Brotherhood and Sharia law claims didn’t hold water, they at least got one thing right: Clinton acted as a champion for LGBT equality while leading the State Department. The Religious Right fumed at her work on behalf of gay rights and exploded in anger following a speech in Geneva in which she defended the rights of LGBT people and called for the decriminalization of LGBT status.

Liberty University’s Mat Staver warned that Clinton was backing a “radical sexual anarchist agenda” while Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention said that Clinton’s support of “sexual paganization” would bring about God’s judgment on America. Pat Robertson reacted to Clinton’s speech by warning that God may destroy the U.S.

5. Clinton Opposes Religious Freedom

All of the conspiracy theories and accusations seem to come together in an attempt to smear Clinton as an enemy of religious freedom. Conservatives argued that she was using both gay rights and Sharia law to undercut Christianity and religious freedoms. Focus on the Family founder James Dobson and Family Research Council president Tony Perkins maintained that Clinton was trying to subvert the freedom of religion by using the term “freedom of worship,” even though the Obama administration frequently uses the phrase “freedom of religion” and President Bush talked about the “freedom of worship” without receiving a similar outcry from social conservatives.

At the Values Voters Summit, phony “ex-terrorist” Kamal Saleem even warned that Clinton was planning to “shut down” churches and synagogues this month. Since Clinton serves just one more day at the job, she better speed up with her diabolical plans!

The conservative Christian magazine WORLD profiled Jerry Boykin, the former general turned conservative activist. Boykin left the military shortly after he was reprimanded by President Bush for making speeches, while in uniform, that depicted the “war on terrorism” as a holy war against Islam. In the article, Boykin describes his new post at the Family Research Council as a continuation of his old job at the Pentagon in fighting terrorism, telling WORLD, “Staying in the battle is the right thing to do.”

Even before becoming executive vice president of the FRC last July, Boykin was touting all sorts of bizarre, anti-Muslim and right-wing conspiracy theories and working with groups like the Oak Initiative, a project of televangelist Rick Joyner.

Boykin said that after turning down multiple offers from Tony Perkins to join the FRC, he finally decided to accept Perkins’s proposal because he “learned not to tell God you wouldn’t so something because before long that is the very thing He will have you do.”

“Boykin hopes to apply the strategies he learned in the Special Forces,” WORLD’s Edward Lee Pitts reports, and Boykin warned that there is an attempt to “remove God from society” and replace God with “evil.”

Last year, Boykin, 64, became the new executive vice president of the Family Research Council (FRC), the D.C.-based group that has been promoting a Christian worldview in the public policy arena since 1983. It’s a task made more warlike as the nation’s capital becomes enemy territory for social conservatives.

Boykin handles day-to-day operations as the organization’s second-in-command, interacting with lawmakers, managing interviews with the press, and serving as a public face. Going into an environment where his group is considered an outcast is not a new task for Boykin, an original member who became commander of the Army’s elite counterterrorism group Delta Force.

It also isn’t Boykin’s first time patrolling Washington politics. As a deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence under then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Boykin endured a year under the political microscope. Memories of what turned into an ordeal a decade ago led Boykin to turn down the job offer from FRC President Tony Perkins initially. But God had other plans.

…

Retiring from the Army in June 2007, the New Bern, N.C., native vowed to reembrace rural life and never to return to Washington. When Perkins first offered Boykin the chance to join the FRC, Boykin refused, saying he felt emotionally unprepared for a return to the city. For a year and a half Perkins kept asking and Boykin kept saying no.

But family and friends unanimously told him he should reconsider. “I’ve learned not to tell God you wouldn’t do something because before long that is the very thing He will have you do,” said Boykin. “Staying in the battle is the right thing to do.”

Now, Boykin says he believes the controversy over his talks to churches is being used to prepare him to be able to fight the country’s culture battles: “The movement needs some grizzled old people not easily frightened by what the opposition does. Once you’ve been kicked around a bit it doesn’t hurt so much.”

Boykin hopes to apply the strategies he learned in the Special Forces, starting with having an appreciation and understanding of the opposition: “I give a great deal of credit to liberal progressive organizations in this country for message unity.” Too many social conservatives, he said, have become apathetic, expecting that someone else will defend their beliefs.

“Not enough of us are out there fighting,” said Boykin, who attributed that to the stream of media ridicule often faced by outspoken social conservatives.

Boykin, who on a recent mid-January day was preparing to visit House Speaker John Boehner’s office on Capitol Hill, described the country he’s fought for as “almost rudderless,” where a whole generation has failed to learn about the nation’s religious roots. He plans to focus this year on the nation’s debt, its growing addiction to entitlements, the integrity of the family, and the sanctity of life.

“When you remove God from society,” he said, “that void is filled with something else, and in most cases that something else is evil.”