Science

Back in 2006, the Christian Coalition made news when its new president, Joel Hunter, resigned before even official taking office due to the organization's unwillingness to consider broadening its agenda beyond gays and abortion to include things like poverty and climate change:

The Central Florida pastor recently tapped to lead the Christian Coalition of America resigned his position in a dispute about conservative philosophy -- more than a month before he was to fully assume his post, he said Wednesday.

The Rev. Joel Hunter, of Longwood's Northland, A Church Distributed, said he quit as president-elect of the group founded by evangelist Pat Robertson because he realized he would be unable to broaden the organization's agenda beyond opposing abortion and gay marriage.

He hoped to include issues such as easing poverty and saving the environment.

"These are issues that Jesus would want us to care about," Hunter said.

The resignation took place Tuesday during an organization board meeting. Hunter said he was not asked to leave.

"They pretty much said, 'These issues are fine, but they're not our issues; that's not our base,' " Hunter said of his conversation with the group's leadership.

A statement issued by the coalition said Hunter resigned because of "differences in philosophy and vision." The board accepted his decision "unanimously," it states.

As Hunter explained at the time, his "attempt to broaden the agenda just didn't work. I thought maybe it would. They said they wanted to go into some of these other issues, but when it came time to do it, they were afraid of alienating their base."

Which makes this recent development all the more confusing:

To environmentalists, it must have seemed a sight as rare as an ivory-billed woodpecker nesting in a chainsaw factory: Roberta Combs addressing the annual gathering of the National Wildlife Federation?

Let's rephrase that: The president of the Christian Coalition, a staunch ally of right-wing Republicans, has befriended one of the country's most venerable environmental groups.

In a later phone interview with Pittsburgh City Paper, Combs confirmed it was her first public talk ever to an environmental group. And it happened right here in Pittsburgh, the latest development in a burgeoning partnership between Combs and NWF President Larry Schweiger.

"I feel at home here, with you guys, the National Wildlife Federation," Combs told some 250 staffers and volunteers from across the nation, at their May 1 gathering at Downtown's Omni William Penn.

Schweiger, a Pittsburgh native, told the audience that he and Combs have been quietly working Washington, D.C., together for some time. As a result, he said, "We're getting into places we've never gotten into before" -- like the offices of some Republican politicians.

The NWF has more than 4 million members and supporters. The Christian Coalition claims some 2 million supporters, a substantial pool of potential new allies in the fight against global warming and other ills.

For Combs, the chief motivator is energy policy. She said the alliance with the NWF dovetails with the Coalition's own America's Path to Progress initiative, which calls for ending our reliance on foreign oil to improve national security as well as to combat climate change. The urgency of those goals helped her see past a longstanding partisan divide.

"This is not a Republican issue. This is not a Democratic issue," said Combs, standing at the podium with her grandson Logan. "This is a family-values issue."

Energy efficiency and renewable energy, she added, are "the kind of progress that upholds our Christian values."

For the last several years, the Christian Coalition has been rather irrelevant, having all but lost every bit of the influence it once wielded within the Religious Right political power-structure.  And I suspect that this sort of heretical behavior will only serve to further lessen what little relevance it might still have had within the movement. 

After all, the Religious Right does not look kindly on those in its camp who try to make climate change part of the agenda, regardless of their motivation.

• Former McCain adviser Meg Whitman plans to run for Governor in California, while Joe Scarborough suggests he might be interested in running for the Senate from Florida.
• Elaine Donnelly says that if "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" is repealed, President Obama "will bear full responsibility for consequences that would devastate the volunteer force."
• Norm Coleman says God wants him to be in the US Senate.
• Phyllis Schlafly and Kay Bailey Hutchison are both scheduled to speak at the Denton County [Texas] Republican Party's annual Lincoln-Reagan dinner.
• You know what America needs now? A conservative answer to Doonesbury published by Richard Viguerie.
• Grover Norquist is angry that some Governors did not declare last Friday "Ronald Reagan Day" and is accusing them of putting "pusillanimous petty partisanship above patriotism."
• Finally, Richard Land responds to reports that President Obama will issue an executive order reversing President Bush's ban on federal funds for stem cell research, likening it to cannibalism:

Reduced to its basics, killing the tiniest human beings in their embryonic stage of development for the possible medical benefits of older and more developed human beings is quite simply high-tech cannibalism in which we devour our own young for the sole purpose of treating other human beings who are merely fortunate enough to be older and able to defend themselves in a way the tiniest human beings are not.

ABC News has an article about a sociologist at Rutgers University who questioned 157 scientists about "their work at the crux of a 2003 political clash between several members of Congress, a Christian lobbyist group called the Traditional Values Coalition and the National Institutes of Health" and found, not surprisingly, that TVC's rabble-rousing put enough pressure on them that "nearly a quarter of respondents said they either modified their studies to seem less controversial or abandoned controversial grant proposals."

I was particularly impressed by this statement by Andrea Lafferty, executive director of Traditional Values Coalition, who admits that she sees no "abuses of science" but plans to continue her crusade against science nonetheless: 

Andrea Lafferty, executive director of Traditional Values Coalition (TVC) in Washington, D.C., sees no "abuses of science" but agrees that with the new administration, the content of grant proposals is likely to expand.

"My main idea is the NIH ATM machine is going to re-open in 09," said Lafferty. "It's some guys in their jammies at universities drinking beer asking, 'hey, how can we study how prostitutes spread disease?' Then they take it to the NIH" ... "NIH has always been treated like a sacred cow ... scientists overall don't believe in God, and they don't want to be questioned," she said. "These people want to say it's just TVC but you take what we find is being studied, go to any grocery store and ask people what they think. Taxpayers would be outraged."

So the NIH is primarily just a slush fund for drunken, PJ-clad atheists looking for a way to consort with prostitutes? How come I didn't know about this? More importantly, how do I apply for a grant?

Should it be of concern if a candidate, particularly a vice presidential candidate, thinks that the Earth is only a few thousand years old despite overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary?

Not at all, says Tony Perkins, who happens to believe exactly that:

As Alaska governor, Sarah Palin endorsed the teaching of creationism alongside evolution in public schools. That would appear to put the Republican vice presidential nominee in the camp of those who endorse a literal interpretation of the Bible to explain life on earth.

On Wednesday, prominent evangelical leader Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council defended Palin and creationism at a breakfast in Washington with reporters.

Asked if candidates who “literally believe the world is 7 or 8,000 years old, which flies in contradiction of all scientific evidence” are qualified for the White House, Perkins replied: “I think so.” He went on to say: “I hold the same beliefs. And there’s a lot of Americans, especially in the faith community, that believe that God created the earth. And there are flaws in the evolutionary theory — and it is a theory … So, certainly doesn’t disqualify her in their minds.”

The fact that Palin is apparently a creationist and that her creationist belief “doesn’t disqualify her in [the] minds” of other creationists is not particularly surprising, nor is it particularly reassuring.