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May 15, 2008
More Phony Right-Wing Environmentalism
It seems as if the Right is finally realizing that they are losing the battle over the issue of the environment and have decided, rather than to change their tune, to instead adopt a posture of appearing to care about global warming and climate issues in order to push their own agendas.
For instance, a few weeks ago we wrote about the American Environmental Coalition, a group founded by right-wing stalwarts like Pat Robertson, Paul Weyrich, and Gary Bauer which was created to “bring balance to the debate” about climate change by essentially denying the existence of global warming and fighting against efforts to address it.
Right off the bat, they found a champion in militant global-warming skeptic Sen. Jim Inhofe … but apparently one phony right-wing environmental group just wasn’t getting the job done and now Inhofe is back with another:
Christian leaders have joined with pastors and legislators to put forth a new initiative on caring for the environment. Today marks the launch of www.WeGetIt.org, a website offering visitors the opportunity to sign up and be a part of an historic movement.
The reaction to climate change has reached deep into prevailing culture. Knee-jerk reactions with good intentions can harm more than help. The recent increase in the cost of food is one example of the consequence of diverting crops such as corn to the production of ethanol as a fuel source. The impact that steep corn price increases have had on food distribution to third-world countries has been profoundly negative. Keeping in mind this difficult lesson, the "We Get It" coalition offers recommendations by which we can honor and care for the environment along with the poor.
The "We Get It" campaign coalition includes Senator James Inhofe, Cornwall Alliance, Institute on Religion and Democracy, Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, and Wallbuilders. Janet Parshall, Joel Belz of World Magazine, Acton Institute and Dr. Richard Land have also joined this monumental movement.
That’ll fly, because when one thinks of those protecting the environment and assisting third-world countries, one automatically thinks of the tireless efforts historically put forth by the likes of the Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, Concerned Women for America, and Wallbuilders.
The effort appears to be designed to try and piggyback off of Al Gore's "We Can Solve It" campaign, with the notable exception that their position is that “our stewardship of creation must be based on Biblical principles” and the demand that any efforts to protect the environment must be guided by “principles of His Word to care for the poor and tend His creation.” As the video on their website explains, efforts to protect the environment and fight global warming will only end up making food more expensive and less available, which will ultimately hurt the poor in places like Africa and cause children to go hungry. As they see it, “contrary to popular belief, the science is not settled on whether the Earth’s recent, slightly warming was caused by man or nature.
If you didn’t know better, you might initially mistake this video for a plea for donations to help those suffering around the world, at least until right-wing icon Janet Parshall shows up and explains that “it won’t cost you a dime” because what will really help those in need is “faithful environmental stewardship” and a right-wing pledge to “rally together on behalf of our neighbors in poor and developing countries, to speak up for them and protect them from the effects of well-meaning, but flawed policies."
FRC's Tony Perkins says they are trying to show that you can be "green without being gullible," which is a distinct change from his earlier view that believers should welcome the consequences of climate change as a sign of the End Times.
Posted by Kyle at 4:15 PM | Permalink
September 11, 2007
Global AIDS Relief Official Reaches out to Religious Right
Kent Hill, an official with the U.S. Agency for International Development, recently appeared on Pat Robertson’s “700 Club” to tout the efforts made by the Bush Administration’s global AIDS initiative (called PEPFAR) to fund faith-based groups and abstinence outreach.
As we’ve noted, PEPFAR provided increased funding for AIDS relief, but also came with controversial restrictions seemingly keyed to ideology, most prominently a requirement that two-thirds of money for prevention of HIV transmission—including preexisting funding channels—go to programs dedicated exclusively to promoting abstinence-until-marriage and fidelity. This anti-condom measure was seen as a sop to the Religious Right, as were grants awarded to politically-connected faith-based groups. The Center for Public Integrity has a long report on the issue.
Although there was support among aid groups for the “ABC” strategy (“Abstinence, Being Faithful, and Condoms”) in principle, the requirements heavily favoring abstinence caused confusion and program cuts for condoms and mother-child transmission prevention. Hill, however, characterizes it as “a debate as to whether behavior change is possible” which has brought “some criticism from all sides.”
Hill, a history professor and former president of Eastern Nazarene College, served from 1986-1992 as head of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, a right-wing group founded to support President Reagan’s Cold War efforts in Central America, mainly by insinuating ties between the mainline National Council of Churches and communist groups or the KGB. IRD was known in the 1980s as “the official seminary of the White House” (Nation, 4/17/89, via MT).
(AP photo via Center for Public Integrity.)
Posted by Ezra at 5:13 PM | Permalink
July 12, 2007
FRC Falls Silent on Holsinger
As we noted a few weeks ago, whenever any of President Bush’s nominee’s come under fire for their controversial views, the Right’s primary response is to accuse those who raise such concerns of being anti-whatever-said-nominee- happens-to-be (i.e., anti-Latino, anti-woman, anti-Christian.)
And so it is no surprise that they would use this tactic to defend Dr. James Holsinger, President Bush's nominee for surgeon general who has exhibited an open hostility to homosexuals, by claiming that he is being targeted for his religious beliefs and is somehow the victim of an unconstitutional religious test.
In anticipation of his Senate confirmation hearing today, several right-wing groups issued press releases echoing this charge:
Americans for Truth: "Are we prepared to hang a sign on the doors of government that says, 'Christians Need Not Apply'?"
Concerned Women for America: Holsinger's nomination has become unfairly politicized due to both his medical findings on homosexual behavior and his religious beliefs …it is inappropriate and unconstitutional to subject Dr. Holsinger to a religious litmus test.
Institute for Religion and Democracy: These critics of Dr. Holsinger would seem to establish a new litmus test for public office--a test that would exclude any nominee who is an orthodox Christian with traditional beliefs about sexual ethics. This would appear to violate the spirit, if not the letter, of the provision in Article VI of the U.S. Constitution stipulating that "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.
What makes Holsinger’s nomination particularly interesting is the sudden silence of the Family Research Council which, just last month, issued a prayer alert regarding his nomination:
Dr. Holsinger's credentials are impeccable. He served as Kentucky's health secretary, chancellor of the University of Kentucky's medical center, has taught at several medical schools and spent over three decades in the Army Reserve, retiring in 1993 as a major general. Holsinger is being subjected to character assassination for doing precisely what a Surgeon General should do, bring health facts to light.
* Pray that Dr. Holsinger will receive an honest and fair hearing from the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.
Since then, FRC seems to have learned something that caused them to stop defending Holsinger. What possibly could it have been?
Tom McCluskey, vice president for government affairs at the Family Research Council, said that Dr. Holsinger spoke to a Kentucky state legislature committee in 2002 and "testified in support of loosening regulations around cloning and embryonic-stem-cell research."
"We're not supportive of his nomination right now," Mr. McCluskey said, adding that "we've been told he's come around on the issue, but the surgeon general is such a strong bully pulpit position that we want to be sure."
So when Holsinger was claiming that homosexuality was unnatural and dangerous, FRC defended him by hailing his impeccable credentials and willingness to tell the truth. But when they found out that his views on stem-cell research might not match their own, they grew concerned that he might use his “bully pulpit” to advocate for a position at odd with theirs and suddenly his supposed impeccable credentials and willingness to tell the truth weren’t so impressive.
Posted by Kyle at 3:21 PM | Permalink
March 26, 2007
GOP-Aligned Religious-Right Activists Seek to Marginalize NAE
In a column mulling the role of Evangelicals in the 2008 election, Bishop Harry Jackson claims that in recent years, they “voted their values” based on “gay marriage and pro-life concerns” – an assumption contradicted by the Center for American Values poll – but that now the Evangelical movement is undergoing a “political makeover.” One might guess that Jackson was referring to the dispute between the National Association of Evangelicals and religious-right activists (including Jackson) led by James Dobson over whether talking about climate change and torture distracts from the core mission of Christians. Instead, Jackson – who is a frequent Religious Right spokesman – sees that debate as part of a liberal conspiracy to undermine “the historic passion that the ‘moral majority’ has had for the issues of protection of life and guarding the traditional family”:
During this transformation from caterpillar to butterfly, a host of enemies are attempting to prevent an evangelical resurrection. A sophisticated, pincer strategy is being waged against them by two groups--–liberal Christians and the liberal press. Both groups fear that the sleeping giant will awaken with an attitude.
Of course, this concern by the Dobson group that outreach on alternate issues would distract from gay marriage, abortion, and abstinence education was not voiced during and after the last election, as the Religious Right’s definition of core issues of so-called “values voters” rapidly expanded to encompass most of the Republican Party platform, from the War on Terror to tax cuts and Social Security to a fear of “socialized medicine.”
So it is that the religious-right activists most closely aligned with partisan campaigns have made discrediting the National Association of Evangelicals a priority. One more example comes from Mark Tooley of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, a group founded in the early 1980s to counter criticism of Reagan Administration policies in Central America by the National Council of Churches and to create an ideological “renewal” in mainline protestant churches by painting the NCC as Communist sympathizers. Tooley invokes the IRD’s defining campaign against the National Council of Churches in describing the National Association of Evangelicals:
Curiously, NAE is now following the historical path that led to the NCC's demise. Rather than attempting to represent the consensus opinions of its constituency, the NAE, like the NCC for many decades, is speaking "prophetically" to its people. Rank and file evangelicals remain overwhelmingly conservative on almost every issue. But some evangelical elites, always embarrassed by their association in the public imagination with the Religious Right, are psychologically preoccupied with adopting liberal stances, if only to show their independence.
So unsurprisingly, the NAE board, while unwilling to challenge [NAE’s Richard] Cizik, also signed off on a resolution about "torture," by the U.S. military and intelligence agencies. The statement could just as easily have come from the National Council of Churches, and was crafted by a special committee dominated by activists and academics from the evangelical left. …For centuries, evangelicals in America have endured charlatan preachers, apocalyptic warnings, and dubious social reformers. ... Somehow, no doubt with divine forbearance, American evangelicals have survived the hysteria of passing causes, by remaining focused on the true Word. They hopefully will do so again.
In another commentary wondering the fate of the NAE “After Haggard” (Ted Haggard, the NAE president who stepped down last year amid drug and sex allegations), IRD Vice President Alan Wisdom also invokes NCC, tacitly threatening to carry on the same battle against NAE:
As the NAE decides on its future leadership, it will have to answer: Does it wish to go further down the same road after the NCC? Or can it reclaim a distinctly evangelical identity that reflects the priorities of the member denominations and the larger evangelical community? Will the NAE board set the direction, and will the staff be accountable to the board? In the end, will the NAE be about more than politics?
So, while a few religious-right activists, such as former Family Research Council President Ken Connor, see tackling issues beyond abortion and gay marriage as making their voices more credible, it seems that venturing past the confines of the GOP platform – to address climate, torture, or genocide, for example – is an apostasy that will consign a group like NAE to the “liberal” label and political enmity from most on the Right.
Posted by Ezra at 6:08 PM | Permalink
January 11, 2007
Right-Wing Religious Schism Group Attacks National Council of Churches
Over supposed political relations. Right-wing reports falsely assert PFAW funding.
Posted by Ezra at 11:59 PM | Permalink
December 20, 2006
Right Wing Groups Applaud Churches Quitting Episcopals over Gay Bishop
Issue of the day enough to break 270-year-old ties, they claim.
Posted by Ezra at 5:43 PM | Permalink