Dr. Ergun Caner, the disgraced former Dean of Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary (affiliated with Liberty University, founded by Jerry Falwell), has sicked his lawyer on a blogger in an effort to hide a truth that has already been revealed.  

Investigative blogger Jason Smathers originally got the goods and broke the story of how Caner was a prominent member of the fake ex-Muslim terrorist industry which has so infected our public life.  (Other notable fake ex-Muslim terrorists who have been promoted by the Christian Right and who have been presented as authentic experts before military and law enforcement audiences, include Walid Shoebat and Kamal Saleem.)

Caner's lawyer is now trying to get You Tube to scrub videos Smathers obtained from the U.S. Marines. Smathers points out that Caner has no legitimate claim of ownership of material in a video produced by the federal government.

Over the past few months a number of posts have addressed the growing movement advocating the nullification of federal laws and even secession of states from the union. Below is an anthology, in chronological order, of our coverage so far.  I will update it from time-to-time. -- FC

In the last several posts we have examined an element of the Catholic Right  comprised of neo-Confederate apologists who openly advocate both the state nullification of federal court decisions and statutes as well as secession.  The name that most commonly comes up when conservative Catholics discuss these things is Thomas E. Woods, Jr., who may be the leading modern confederate, intending to win what Jefferson Davis lost.  But a major difference today is that certain Catholic Right players would use the neo-confederate disruption of popular government to impose theocracy-even at the expense of national unity.  

Whenever I hear someone - especially a politician - say that the First Amendment protects freedom of religion, not freedom from religion, I just want to start screaming.

As I've pointed out many times on this blog and in other forums, that statement is inane and shows great ignorance of our founding principles. Religious Right figures started using it a few years ago, apparently believing they had stumbled onto something clever. In fact, they are simply spouting puerile nonsense.

Author Michelle Goldberg one of the early regular contributors to Talk to Action, posted an announcement and preview of her excellent book, Kingdom Coming here on on May 11, 2006. I am reposting it today as a reminder of how little has changed since then. David Barton is still an influential Christian Right and Republican leader, and Christian nationalism continues to inform the worldview of millions of conservative Christians. -- FC

I've just published a book called "Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism," and since it appeared, I've been asked several times what Christian nationalism is, and how it differs from Christian fundamentalism. It's an important concept to understand, because the threat to a pluralistic society does not come from those who simply believe in a very conservative interpretation of Christianity. It comes from those who adhere to a political ideology that posits a Christian right to rule.

The Rev. Dr. Albert Mohler, the president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary has fired another salvo in the war of attrition that has been waged by a loose coalition of conservative evangelicals and neoconservative Catholics against the mainline Protestant churches for for more than a generation.  This time, Mohler has declared that the the mainline Lutheran church, called the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, (ELCA) is "not a church."

The reason for this charge is that the Lutherans in Southern California have elected a gay man, a well respected pastor and professor of theology, R. Guy Erwin, as bishop.  The ELCA had already accepted gay people as members and as clergy, so it is no surprise that someone was eventually elected as a church leader.  

By the end of the month, the courthouse in Bradford County, Fla., will be home to a large granite bench covered with quotes from famous skeptics and atheists.

How did this happen? Is Bradford County some sort of hotbed of atheism?

Across the U.S., religious healthcare corporations, called "healthcare ministries" by the Catholic Church, are absorbing once secular and independent hospitals. In the process they are imposing religious restrictions that pit standard medical practice against theology. Read the bishops in their own words.

When it comes to matters of individual conscience, Washington State voters have a don't-mess-with-us attitude that makes Texans look like cattle--and it goes way back.

In 2012 Washington voters flexed their muscle by legalizing recreational marijuana use and marriage for same-sex couples. In 2008, death with dignity passed some counties by as much as seventy-five percent. In 2006, Washington lawmakers outlawed discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. In 1991 a citizen initiative established that "every individual has the fundamental right to choose or refuse birth control" and "every woman has the fundamental right to choose or refuse abortion." It also guaranteed an absolute right to privacy around mental health and reproductive issues for teens aged 13 and up. Washington State's constitution includes an Equal Rights Amendment and (from the get-go) a stronger wall of separation between church and state than the U.S. Constitution.

With a career spanning three decades, Sen. Frank Lautenberg will be remembered by many different people for many different reasons. Upon hearing of his passing on Monday morning, the one thing that immediately came to mind for me was the day in 2005 when he took a stand on the Senate floor against pseudo-historian David Barton.

What Sen. Lautenberg said that day went far beyond some mere criticism of Barton's revisionism of American history or even the obvious political agenda behind this revisionism. Sen. Lautenberg made it clear that he thoroughly understood the serious danger posed by Barton and the frightening extent to which the real goals of his historical revisionism go.

Last year I was honored to write a story for The Islamic Monthly, a magazine operated by American Muslim writers and scholars.  I see that my piece is now online in a non-PDF form, and so I offer it here in its entirety.  -- FC

Thomas Jefferson's Twilight Reminder About Religious Equality

When he was in the twilight of his life, Thomas Jefferson authored a short autobiography. Written when he was 77 years old, he sought, among other things, to cast in sharp relief the meaning of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom - one of three things for which he wished to be most remembered. (The other two were the Declaration of Independence and the founding of the University of Virginia.) It is worth taking note of Jefferson's final thought on this in light of our current political climate, in which leaders of the Christian Right and politicians seeking their support insist that America was founded as a Christian nation; that this legacy has been taken from us; must somehow be restored; and that American Muslims are somehow an affront to this divine mandate and the intentions of the Founding Fathers.

Jefferson's twilight clarification provides an authoritative rebuttal, which came at the end of the contentious era that gave us the definitions of religious freedom that we use today, even as the arguments against them remain largely unchanged. During this presidential campaign season, which seems likely to be marked by inflammatory rhetoric about religious identity and religious matters, it may be helpful to take a deep breath or two, and take in some historical perspective.

The recent smear of prominent Christian journalist Cynthia Astle by a staffer at the nefarious Institute on Religion and Democracy was a stark reminder that the war of attrition against the historic mainline Protestant churches, continues. It was also a reminder that there is more to the story than the culture war and other controversies at summer meetings of The Episcopal Church, the United Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church USA, and the United Church of Christ.  

For example, Rev. Jim Tonkowich -- who had never even been a member of one of the churches IRD trollishly claims that it wants to "renew" -- nevertheless served as the organization's president from 2006-2009.  Tonkowich, then a member of a schismatic evangelical Presbyterian sect -- who ran covert and not so covert campaigns to foment division and discord in the mainline churches which he characterized at the time as marked by "division, polarization, and discord" -- has now become a Catholic. What's more, he now says that the best way for Protestant Churches to solve their problems is to also become Catholic.  (Unsurprisingly, IRD still promotes Tonkowich as an "expert" to the media.)  

In this series we have been discussing the emerging influence of Thomas E. Woods and other Catholic Right neo-Confederates, who are advocating that states nullify federal statutes and court rulings with which they disagree. Some are calling for outright secession.  The next installment explained why nullification matters and how it can lead to localized tyranny and theocracy. Then we discussed the historical argument against nullification and by extension, secession.

Now we are taking the obvious next step:  The Constitutional arguments against nullification.

We are honored to welcome Cynthia B. Astle as a guest front pager. She is project coordinator for United Methodist Insight, where this post first appeared. Astle was the first woman to be named Editor of the church's national newspaper, United Methodist Reporter, and went on to edit The Progressive Christian magazine. She is a certified spiritual director and a member of the United Methodist-founded monastic association, the Order of Saint Luke. -- FC

I often find myself uncertain of how to balance my twin vocations of spiritual director and journalist. For example, right now I'm struggling with the best way to deal with a bully -- in this case, the Institute for Religion and Democracy, known by its initials IRD.

Here's the scoop: On May 25, John Lomperis of the "Methodist Program" of IRD published a commentary on the demise of UMR Communications and the United Methodist Reporter. In said commentary, he saw fit to cast aspersions on two prior Reporter editors by name: my esteemed successor Robin Russell, and me.

Lomperis tied his critique of Robin directly to an article she had written about a documentary, "Renewal or Ruin," produced by the Rev. Steven Martin about the IRD's effect on The United Methodist Church. However, his critique of me comprises a toxic mix of unfair generalities and false assumptions.

As many of you know, the U.S. Supreme Court decided last week that it will hear an appeal of an Americans United case challenging Christian prayers before meetings of the Greece, N.Y., Town Board.

The high court's decision to hear the dispute during its fall term has led some news reporters to look at practices in the communities they cover. This story from the Panama City (Fla.) News Herald is a typical effort to put a local spin on a national story.

In a recent post, I discussed the apparent lack of sufficient seriousness with which the Southern Baptist Convention and the Catholic Bishops still treat the matter of child sex abuse by clergy. The Associated Baptist Press picked-up on that post and added that while the SBC insists there is nothing it can do, it has nevertheless added a resource page on its national web site for local churches to deal with the matter.  Its not much, but its a start.  

But the scandal of the Louisville, KY-based Sovereign Grace Ministries, which began as a national network of  charismatic evangelical churches but eventually adapted a Reformed theology -- suggests that the problem of child sex abuse and the seemingly inevitable cover-up in conservative churches -- is a pattern that is deep and wide.  And part of that pattern is that too many leaders enable the abusers with their silence, their refusal to consider that the accusations might be true, and/or their efforts to silence the victims.  Child abuse investigator Boz Tchividjian thinks the silence of Evangelical leaders regarding child sex abuse in evangelical churches is not only "deafening" but speaks "volumes".

Indeed. It speaks volumes about the character and moral vision of the leaders of the conservative denominations that comprise the base of the Christian Right.