« National Association of Evangelicals
February 20, 2008
Define 'Freedom' ...
In his state of the union address, President Bush called for a permanent extension of “charitable choice”—no doubt including efforts by his administration to allow faith-based groups receiving federal funding to discriminate in hiring. Reporting on the effort in Congress, the Washington Times quotes an organization taking up Bush’s charge:
A coalition of multidenominational religious groups is fighting to save the language, and the scuffle is complicating efforts in the Senate to renew the SAMHSA [Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration] law. SAMHSA funds and administers a slew of outreach and intervention programs, doling out grants to social service groups that help fight mental illness and addiction. …
"Asking faith-based organizations to ignore religion in making staffing decisions is like asking senators to disregard party affiliation and political ideology in choosing their staff, or requiring the Sierra Club or the Human Rights Campaign to ignore the political and philosophical commitments of potential staff," argued the Coalition to Preserve Religious Freedom in a letter to Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Enzi.
The “Coalition to Preserve Religious Freedom” might sound like an organization that would be outraged when a government-funded program openly refused to hire, say, Catholics or Baptists. After all, the Religious Test clause of the Constitution prohibits the government from requiring officials to be of a certain faith, and civil rights laws protect people from religious employment discrimination at all but private religious institutions. But this group apparently defines “religious freedom” not as an individual liberty but as the right of faith-based groups to discriminate while receiving federal dollars.
In fact, this coalition’s name sounds a lot like that of the Coalition to Preserve Religious Liberty, a group of 50 religious, civil rights, and educational organizations (including PFAW) that formed in the 1990s to oppose efforts to establish state-sponsored prayer and public funding of sectarian schools—quite the opposite of the Coalition to Preserve Religious Freedom.
CPRF is hosted by a group called the Center for Public Justice, and its members include (as of this 2004 document) the National Association of Evangelicals and the Christian Legal Society.
Posted by Ezra at 3:22 PM | Permalink
April 17, 2007
Easter Press Release Occasion to Invoke 'War on Christians'
In a brief press release, Democratic National Committee chair Howard Dean commemorated Easter by saying, “During this time Christians are called to remember who they are as people of faith, and that even the greatest of evils will not have the last word.” He also said that “peace, redemption and renewal” is a “theme which brings hope to people of all faiths.” The latter sentiment is driving some commentators to read all kinds of meaning into the press release – Richard Cizik of the National Association of Evangelicals claims that the lack of specific use of the name of Jesus is “a sad reflection of a 'lowest common denominator' religious outreach of the Democratic party” which “will not pass the smell test of any evangelical.”
More partisan activists on the Religious Right, however, go as far as accusing Dean of heresy-by-press-release by “redefining” Easter. He’s “taking Easter and making it into a nondescript, universal, nonexclusive religious celebration for all religions,” warns Don Wildmon of the American Family Association. According to Rob Schenck of the National Clergy Council, Dean’s press release proves that “the Democratic leadership is in fact secularist by philosophy and worldview” – and it’s part of a larger conspiracy against faith:
"And we see it here in Washington, where I'm located," Schenck adds, "that there is a growing hostility towards religious faith in the public arena, and this is more indication of that." Dean has attempted to redefine the meaning of Easter, the Christian spokesman contends, by "dumbing it down to a universal, New Age spirituality."
In addition to ascribing devious motives to a one-paragraph press release, Schenck also offers his discernment on Dean’s own belief:
However, since Howard Dean is not a theologian or a student of the Bible, Schenck says the politician is not in a position to redefine the meaning of Easter. In fact, after talking with Dean personally and observing him in many public settings, the National Clergy Council spokesman says he has seen nothing that would indicate the DNC chairman has any "overriding religious sensibilities."
Posted by Ezra at 10:57 AM | 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
March 19, 2007
SBC 'Ethicist' Declares NAE Anti-Torture Stance 'Irrational'
A “moral travesty,” according to Heimbach. Critics accuse NAE of “move to liberalism.” Meanwhile: “Is your baby gay?” asks Southern Baptist leader Mohler, advocating medical intervention.
Posted by Ezra at 11:59 PM | Permalink
March 12, 2007
National Association of Evangelicals Rebuffs Dobson
As we noted last week, various right-wing leaders such as James Dobson and Tony Perkins had taken it upon themselves to directly attack the National Association of Evangelicals for its concerns over global warming, going so far as to call for the resignation of the NAE’s Vice President for Governmental Affairs, Richard Cizik.
The NAE’s board of directors met last week and not only did it refuse to cave under the pressure brought by the Dobson gang, it went so far as to reaffirm its support for its own "For the Health of the Nation" document (PDF) which stated:
As we embrace our responsibility to care for God’s earth, we reaffirm the important truth that we worship only the Creator and not the creation. God gave the care of his earth and its species to our first parents. That responsibility has passed into our hands. We affirm that God-given dominion is a sacred responsibility to steward the earth and not a license to abuse the creation of which we are a part. We are not the owners of creation, but its stewards, summoned by God to “watch over and care for it” (Gen. 2:15). This implies the principle of sustainability: our uses of the Earth must be designed to conserve and renew the Earth rather than to deplete or destroy it.
As if that wasn’t itself enough to infuriate Dobson and his ilk, the board also endorsed “An Evangelical Declaration Against Torture: Protecting Human Rights in An Age of Terror," (PDF) which states:
(a) We renounce the use of torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment by any branch of our government (or any other government)—even in the current circumstance of a war between the United States and various radical terrorist groups.
(b) We call for the extension of basic human rights and procedural protections to all persons held in United States custody now or in the future, wherever and by whomever they are held.
(c) We call for every agency of the United States government to join with the United States military and to state publicly its commitment to the terms of the Geneva Conventions related to the treatment of prisoners, especially Common Article 3.
(d) We call for the legislative or judicial reversal of those executive and legislative provisions that violate the moral and legal standards articulated in this declaration.
Undoubtedly, this will only serve to further agitate Dobson and his right-wing allies who are desperately seeking to maintain their political influence in the evangelical community by keeping it focused on their own narrow anti-gay, anti-choice agenda.
Posted by Kyle at 3:12 PM | Permalink
March 6, 2007
The (Political) Threat of Global Warming
It seems as if James Dobson and his cronies are suddenly getting very concerned about the threat of global warming - not the threat it poses to the environment and humanity, mind you, but the threat it poses to their own political empire.
So concerned are the likes of Dobson, Tony Perkins, Don Wildmon, Gary Bauer, Rick Scarborough, Paul Weyrich, Harry Jackson, and others that they have taken it upon themselves to write a letter (PDF) to the National Association of Evangelicals demanding that it fire its own Vice President for Governmental Affairs, Richard Cizik, and cease and desist caring about global warming:
Although we, the undersigned, are not members of the National Association of Evangelicals, our organizations interface with it regularly and consider it to be an important Christian institution in today’s culture. From that perspective, we are writing the Board of Directors to call attention to what we perceive as a threat to the unity and integrity of the Association.
Despite the fact that not one of the signers is even a member of the NAE, they still feel justified in complaining about NEA’s work on global warming. Why? Because they fear it is undermining their own anti-choice, anti-gay agenda:
More importantly, we have observed that Cizik and others are using the global warming controversy to shift the emphasis away from the great moral issues of our time, notably the sanctity of human life, the integrity of marriage and the teaching of sexual abstinence and morality to our children.
Because of this audacious offense, Dobson and his ilk have decreed that Cizik must go:
We implore the NAE board to ensure that Mr. Cizik faithfully represents the policies and commitments of the organization, including its defense of traditional values. If he cannot be trusted to articulate the views of American evangelicals on environmental issues, then we respectfully suggest that he be encouraged to resign his position with the NAE.
Maybe this was the sort of thing Dick Armey had in mind a few months ago when he said “Dobson and his gang of thugs are real nasty bullies.”
Posted by Kyle at 3:34 PM | Permalink