Right Wing Watch

When Rick Perry announced that he would be holding a massive prayer rally in Houston this summer, conveniently timed to coincide with the launch of his presidential campaign, Right Wing Watch started chronicling the litany of extremists who were endorsing, organizing, bankrolling and speaking at the event. Prominent among these was Mike Bickle of the International House of Prayer, the church that lent its organizational muscle to The Response, who emceed the latter portion of the rally. Bickle, we reported, had previously claimed that Oprah Winfrey is the harbinger of the Antichrist and that gay marriage is literally from “the depths of Hell.”

At The Response, Bickle gave a rousing speech about how “in the name of tolerance, even in the name of love, we are redefining love that’s not on God’s term.” He also attacked non-Christian faiths — no surprise, since The Response also included a speaker who called for attendees to pray for Jews to convert to Christianity and for God to send a Christian revival to Israel.

Joining Bickle at The Response was controversial pastor John Hagee, whose endorsement Perry openly courted. John McCain was forced to reject Hagee’s endorsement in 2008 after the pastor’s statements that God sent Adolf Hitler to be a “hunter” of Jews came to light.

Now, Bruce Wilson of Talk to Action has compiled a video of excerpts of past Bickle sermons making similar claims about Hitler’s supposedly providential role as a “hunter.” In the sermons, Bickle alleges that by refusing “the chance to respond to the fishermen” and “grace” of God, the Jews were given up to a hunter—Hitler. Wilson’s video also includes Bickle’s prediction that, according to his interpretation of Scripture, the Jews will be persecuted in the End Times. In fact, as we’ve reported, IHOP has frequently called for Jews to convert to Christianity in order to fulfill the Second Coming.

As Perry has been silent about Hagee and the many other radical supporters of The Response, it is no surprise that Perry’s campaign refuses to comment on Bickle.

Robert Jeffress appeared on The Alan Colmes Show last night to explain his inflammatory statements about Catholicism, Mormonism and other non-Protestant religions. During the interview, Colmes asked Jeffress, who has said that Christian voters should vote for Rick Perry over his Mormon opponent Mitt Romney, about his view that the Roman Catholic faith represents “the genius of Satan” and that the Mormon religion is a “cult” that is “from the pit of Hell.”

Jeffress appeared to deny his past statements about Catholicism and Mormonism, but defended the content of the statements he claims he didn’t make:

Colmes cited Right Wing Watch, which first reported Jeffress’ claims. We are happy to remind Jeffress that he did in fact contend in a sermon last year that Catholicism originated from a “Babylonian mystery religion” and is tied to Satan:

Moreover, Jeffress said in a Trinity Broadcasting Network interview last year that Mormonism, along with Islam, is a “heresy from the pit of hell”:

Listen to Colmes’ entire interview with Jeffress here.

On AFA Today with Buster Wilson this morning, Bryan Fischer said he was stunned that Mitt Romney rebuked him, albeit not by name, for having crossed a line in civil debate and using “poisonous language.” As Kyle points out, Fischer has been playing the victim and defended himself during the same interview, saying, “Jesus used far more incendiary and inflammatory language than I have ever used.”

Fischer told Wilson that he was on Romney’s “hit list” since the 2008 campaign and “didn’t anticipate that he would go after me” at the Religious Right gathering. He also expressed bewilderment that Romney would characterize his language as “poisonous,” saying he has “no idea” what Romney was talking about. Fischer and Wilson went on to name People For the American Way’s Right Wing Watch for pressuring Romney to call out Fischer and his unremitting bigotry:

Fischer has a point, as RWW has documented and exposed Fischer’s ultraconservative, intolerant, and discriminatory bombast for years, or as Fischer puts it, waged a “jihad” and “holy war” against him. We have repeatedly asked Republican presidential candidates, congressmen and senators who appear on his radio show and the presidential candidates, Romney in particular, who were sharing a stage with him at the Values Voter Summit to denounce him.

Since Fischer seems to have “no idea” what in his rhetoric could have forced Romney to condemn him, we put together this video to remind Fischer that the word “poisonous” may actually be an understatement:

Here at Right Wing Watch we have been tracking right-wing activist and radio show host Linda Harvey of Mission America, who without fail attacks gays and lesbians in irate, crude, virulent and bizarre outbursts. In fact, she denies that gays and lesbians even exist.

Yesterday on her radio show, Harvey had on as her guest Laurie Higgins of the ultraconservative Illinois Family Institute. Higgins and Harvey agreed that homosexuality is in fact a choice, and that “homosexual activists” are dishonestly covering up that fact. Harvey went on to chastise “evil bloggers” for highlighting her statements, which she says is all part of a plot to lie about the science on homosexuality:

Higgins: Homosexual activists are deceptive in terms of concealing information. They know full well that Queer Theory, which emerges from the homosexual community, says homosexuality is not fixed, it’s not hereditary, and it’s mutable, and it’s flexible, particularly among women. So not only can they not marshal in the evidence to prove the ‘born that way’ theory there’s a lot of at least anecdotal evidence to suggest it’s not fixed and it’s not immutable and certainly there’s no genetic or biological research proving that they are ‘born that way.’ So they’re not even honest about that, they know what I’ve just said. The problem is, the mainstream public doesn’t know.

Harvey: Well and the mainstream, homosexual person on the internet who believes these evil bloggers, they are evil, these people are evil and they are purposefully deceptive. I get my comments edited all the time. These folks will believe a smidgen here and a smidgen there and think, ‘oh it’s been settled,’ it hasn’t been settled, check it out! That science is not at all settled and in fact there’s tons of evidence that people are not born that way.

Last night Rachel Maddow discussed Cindy Jacobs’s prophetic word that while the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell triggered mass bird deaths, Rick Perry’s The Response prayer rally literally healed the land of Texas from the curse of Native American cannibals. Jacobs was an official endorser of The Response and her protégé Pam Olsen now co-chairs Perry’s Presidency 5 leadership team in Florida. As Maddow points out, the severe drought in Texas has only intensified since Rick Perry called for statewide prayer for rain and organized The Response.

“With all due respect, since Rick Perry’s stadium prayer event in Houston, Texas has been quite literally on fire,” Maddow said, noting that “Texas has not only been burning but it’s still locked in it’s terrible, historic drought.” After playing the two videos of Jacobs from Right Wing Watch, Maddow said, “But if Cindy Jacobs really thinks that Governor Perry’s prayer event has led to the land in Texas rejoicing along with the cannibal spirits, I protest, along with the puppy in the drought crack.”

Watch:

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It seems that Liberty Counsel's Matt Barber is none-too-pleased with the coverage that dominionism and its influence and role within the Religious Right movement has been receiving in the media and on blogs like Right Wing Watch and so he has dedicated his more recent column to attacking and mocking those -including me, by name - who have been writing about it:

There has been great gnashing of teeth in “progressive” circles of late over “Christian Dominionist Theology.”

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow has warned that much of the Republican presidential field embraces this startling, seditious sect of extreme fundamentalism. She’s breathlessly warned that Christian Dominionists “believe they have a direct line to God” and intend to “clear the way for the [end of the world]…by infiltrating and taking over government.”

The Daily Beast/Newsweek chimes the tocsin with a hard-hitting, brilliantly penned – though deeply disturbing to all who love freedom – investigative piece headlined: “A Christian Plot for Domination?”

Author Michelle Goldberg warns that Mrs. Bachmann and Mr. Perry are deeply entrenched in a “little-known movement of radical Christians” who are preparing “an army of God” to “commandeer civilian government.”

But it gets worse. It’s much bigger than all that.

Kyle Mantyla with the atheist group “People for the American Way” has been warning for months now that this organized craze of underground Christians plan “to take dominion over, literally, seven specific facets of modern life in order to wrest control away from Satan and his demonic spirits so that Christians can put them to use in bringing about God’s kingdom on Earth.”

Now, you may laugh. You may think these anti-Christian “Dominioners” like Maddow, Goldberg and Mantyla – these fearless progressives risking all to sound the alarm on the rising threat of Christian Dominionism – are just a bunch of liberal, tinfoil hat-wearing kooks.

You might believe they’re merely a left-wing gaggle of tattooed, body-pierced pot-brownie pies in pajamas, no different than 9/11-truthers, global-warmers or Holocaust-deniers.

Oh, you may suppose these liberal Dominioners – daring beyond measure – are simply a batty band of anti-Christian bigots and Daily-Kos-, MSNBC-types looking to smear Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann and other GOP presidential hopefuls as a bunch of clandestine theocrats bent on Christian world domination.

Barber goes on to facetiously reveal that there really is a secret plan to take control of "the Seven Mountains of Influence," as well as as well as the "6 Pyramids of Supremacy" and the "32 Molehills of Utter Despotism."

Of course, as we have said before, we are not the ones writing books and holding conferences about gaining dominion through taking control of the Seven Mountains ... people like Peter Wagner are:

In the 2000s, he began to move strongly in promoting the Dominion Mandate for social transformation, adopting the template of the Seven Mountains or the 7-M Mandate for practical implementation.

We have been writing about how Wagner and his New Apostolic Reformation have been working their way into the "mainstream" Religious Right as demonstrated by the fact that people like Lou Engle, Cindy Jacobs and Rick Joyner have all been speakers at "The Awakening" conferences organized by Liberty Counsel and held at Liberty University. 

So considering that that Barber works for both of those organizations and spoke at the events personally, you would think that he might be aware of that. 

But then again, this is the same man who continues to insist that there is no such thing as dominionism despite the fact that his employer just last year sponsored the "2010 Sovereignty and Dominion conference - Biblical Blueprints for Victory!":

The Bible tells us in Genesis 1:28 that God created us to multiply, fill the earth, and take dominion of His creation for His Glory. When Jesus came to earth, He gave his disciples the Great Commission and told them to make disciples of all nations, Baptize them, and teach them to obey all that he had commanded (Matthew 28:18-20). These two mandates form the basis for why Christ’s Church exists on this planet. Every square inch of this world belongs to King Jesus. It is our privilege to serve Him by exercising servanthood dominion in every area of life.

You know, it takes a special sort of ignorant dishonesty to work for an organization that directly sponsors a dominionism conference organized by a bona fide Christian Reconstruction group that advocates the death penalty for homosexuality and then, when people start to point that out, respond by attacking your opponents as a bunch of kooks and comparing them to Holocaust-deniers.

Americans for Legal Immigration PAC’s William Gheen is out in force after we at People For the American Way’s Right Wing Watch reported on an interview with Janet Mefferd in which he said that “extra-political activities” that he described as “illegal and violent” might be the only way for people to stop the "Dictator Barack Obama." Gheen told Mefferd that the Obama administration is “putting out videos and propaganda telegraphing what I believe to be a conflict with White America they’re preparing for after they get another 10 or 15 million people in the country to back them up.” He went on to say that his group is now referring to the president as “Dictator Barack Obama” and said, “If you’re looking for a peaceful, political recourse there really isn’t one that we can think of, and I’m really not sure what to tell people out there than I guess they need to make decisions soon to just accept whatever comes next or some type of extra-political activities that I can’t really talk about because they’re all illegal and violent.”

Gheen has since released a “clarification” of his comments. “I have made it very clear that I disavow any form of violence on many occasions,” Gheen said, “I cannot delve into the options Barack Obama is forcing on Americans that are concerned about the illegal alien invasion of America.” He blames Obama for forcing people “into a decision between submission or more revolutionary means” and added that he is considering “ending efforts to influence elections or Congress because I feel that such measures will not be enough to change the course of America.”

Later, Gheen appeared on Alan Colmes’s radio show, and continued to deny that he mentioned “illegal and violent” activities even when Colmes played to him his own words, and tried to explain that he was not endorsing the possible use of “illegal and violent” activities because he is personally non-violent and that is why he couldn't talk about them. He attacked Colmes’s “exploitation” of his remarks and told him that because he advocates non-violence on his website he doesn’t need to do the same on-air, saying, “I should’ve prepared my comments a little bit better so they wouldn’t be exploited by the opposition” (Watch the interview below the fold).

Now that Gheen is furiously backtracking from his comments, we thought it would be a good time to post another segment of his interview with Mefferd, in which he says that options beyond impeaching Obama to “remove him from office” must be on the table, adding that there is talk “about the military coming in or somebody just coming in taking this guy into some form of arrest.” Gheen also warns against marching in Washington D.C. because of the city’s black and Latino population’s support for Obama:

Gheen: Once again this isn’t just Obama, this is a group of people, we’ve been reading about them for five or ten years now about how they plan to integrate the economies of North America and to do so in a way to do so that bypasses the legislatures, that’s been in all the materials that we’ve read and here it is in front of us. They’re integrating the workforce of North America and the populations of North America and they did just bypass the legislatures. The same cabal has such influence with the media and the Associated Press, I’ll give you example and I haven’t totally muttered this on the air before, right after Obama did this I got a call from an Associated Press writer out of Washington, D.C., she’s like ‘what’s your initial reaction’ and I said, ‘this is, Obama has just exceeded his constitutional authority and acted in a dictatorial manner which we believe removes all legitimacy for his presidency and that we’re gonna be calling on the Republican to remove this man from office as soon as possible.’

And I didn’t say just impeachment. I said remove him from office because some people are also leaning to the words ‘treason’ and talking about the military coming in or somebody just coming in taking this guy into some form of arrest if we’re doing this. I mean what do you do here? What does a nation do when this happens? We may have to try to have to gather in the streets and demand that Obama step down. But you know when you talk about doing that, you’re gonna gather in the streets of Washington D.C. which where Obama has a support rate of 88% of the blacks and Hispanics who live there.

Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council and Rev. Barry Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State appeared on Hardball with Chris Matthews on Friday to discuss The Response. During the show, Matthews played a number of videos, first posted on Right Wing Watch, of Response organizers Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association, Mike Bickle of the International House of Prayer, John Hagee of the Cornerstone Church, and John Benefiel of the Heartland Apostolic Prayer Network.

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Lynn said Perry’s links to such extreme figures don’t represent “guilt by association” but “guilt by construction.” Perkins, on the other hand, tried to distance the import of Bryan Fischer, saying, “Look, he has a talk show on the American Family Association.”

While Perkins may be trying to downplay Fischer’s role at the AFA, he knows full well that Fischer isn’t just some radio talk show host but is in fact the public face of the American Family Association. In fact, his official bio lists him as the “spokesman for AFA.” He represented the AFA at Perkins’ Values Voters Summit and had a prime speaking slot, although as Kyle notes Fischer is not a listed speaker this year. Fischer is the group’s Director of Issues Analysis for Government and Public Policy, hosts AFA’s flagship radio program Focal Point and is the go-to voice of the AFA for inquiring journalists. Perkins himself co-hosted Today’s Issues with Fischer on AFA radio.

Perkins acknowledged that he knew the background of Fischer and other organizers, commenting, “Look, I don’t, as I said before, not everybody that’s on that platform agrees with what others have said or what they hold to believe.”

But no one has suggested that Rick Perry agrees with Bryan Fischer’s argument that gays and lesbians should be banned from holding public office, Mike Bickle’s claim that Oprah is the harbinger of the Antichrist or John Benefiel’s belief that the Statue of Liberty is a demonic idol. The problem is that a sitting governor and likely presidential candidate is effectively endorsing and promoting individuals and organizations with such far-right and extreme views in an exclusively fundamentalist Christian prayer rally.

While Perkins attempted to give Perry cover about the extreme views of the prayer rally organizers, The Response represented the extent Republican leaders and Religious Right groups will go to jockey for the support of even the most fringe figures and elevate their voices.

Today during Faith and Freedom, Matt Barber of Liberty Counsel said that liberalism is a “rebellion and a hatred toward God.” Barber will find himself in good company in the conservative movement, as Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO) similarly declared that “at the heart of liberalism is really a hatred for God” and the American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer argued that “liberals hate God.” While Barber tried to explain that he was only referring to liberal beliefs rather than liberals themselves, he went on to say that “their hearts are hardened, their hearts are blackened, and frankly I just feel sorry for them.”

Towards the end of the program, Barber called People For the American Way a “silly organization” and again labeled Right Wing Watch “cyberstalkers” who are “always good for a laugh.”