Much of the discussion about abortion and public policy in Washington this past year has been dominated by those who advocate for, or say that they have found, "common ground" on abortion.  While this approach and its results have been in considerable dispute, particularly as prochoice progressive religious voices have been largely marginalized during this period, I am pleased to report that prochoice religious progressives have found their collective voice and are seeking to get heard -- the Gatekeepers of the various Conventional Wisdoms be damned.

This is significant in part because, popular misconceptions aside, vast numbers of American religious individuals and major institutions are and have been prochoice for decades. Listed in the Open Letter to Religious Leaders on Abortion as Moral Decision (below) are some of the major American religious insitutions that are officially prochoice as well as other data indicating the magnitude of religious prochoice sentiment. It is also significant, because too often, religious identity in general and Christian identity in particular, has been equated with antiabortionism, and allowed to be defined by the Religious Right. This is now, and has always been false; and allowing the Religious Right and antiabortionism to define the breadth and depth of the religious views on this and related matters has been an error of historic proportions.

Banned Books Week is the annual celebration of the freedom to read, sponsored primarily by the American Library Association. I think it is one of our very best, and perhaps least appreciated events that we embrace as a culture.  This year, it is being celebrated September 26−October 3, 2009. This year, the ALA has, among other things, posted an interactive map of incidents of book censorship around the country; and the interactive map , and action ideas, and the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression has a cool organizing handbook and downloadable graphics.  

Banned Books Week always generates lots of press, (See for example The Christian Science Monitor.)

It is usually the case that the Religious Right is the source of most incidents of censorship and attempted censorship, and their reasons usually have something to do with hot button issues of the culture wars (that certain Beltway Insiders assure us are over, or just about to be.)

A new survey about religion in America has the Religious Right all worked up.

Researchers at Trinity College in Hartford noted a sharp rise in the number of Americans who, when asked to state their religious preference, replied "none." According to some polls, this bloc of Americans now accounts for about 15 percent, and Trinity researchers say it may rise to 20 percent by 2030.

As described in a story at Wired Magazine, an enterprising team from the Geography Department at Kansas State University has created a series of United States maps that purport to show incidence of the seven deadly sins mentioned in the Bible: greed, envy, wrath, sloth, gluttony, lust, and pride. Now, there are some methodological questions in terms of what proxy data the team chose as representing incidence of deadly sins. For example, the proxy data for "sloth" are "Expenditures on art, entertainment, and recreation compared with employment." And, do STD rates really correlate with lust ? But the maps are certainly intriguing.

Daily Kos:  Republican candidate for Gov. of Virginia, Bob McDowell is a proud graduate of Pat Robertson's Regent University.  He also opposes birth control.

Daily Kos: Actor and creationism proponent Kirk Cameron says that Hitler has an "undeniable connection" to the theory of evolution.

Religion Dispatches: Sarah Posner reports on the Values Voters Summit.

Wall of Separation: Sandhya Bathija reports on the Values Voters Summit.

The Public Eye: Pam Chamerlain profiles Religious Right leader Janice Shaw Crouse

In an interview on NBC today, reports Politico.com, "Meet The Press" interviewer David Gregory asked Former US President Bill Clinton, "Your wife famously talked about the vast right wing conspiracy targeting you. As you look at this opposition on the right to President Obama, is it still there?"

Clinton answered in the affirmative; "Oh, you bet. Sure it is. It's not as strong as it was, because America has changed demographically. But it's as virulent as it was. I mean, they're saying things about him. You know, it's like when they accused me of murder, and all that stuff they did... Their agenda seems to be wanting him to fail."

Bill Clinton's mention of the political import of demographic changes likely referred to an analysis, popular in liberal think-tank circles, which projects that because much the GOP's base has been rooted among white European-Americans, Democratic Party fortunes will rise in coming decades as non-European minority groups, which historically have tended to vote for Democratic Party candidates, come to constitute an ever-larger share of the voting electorate.

This past September 17th, "neoconservative godfather" Irving Kristol passed away at age 89.  While his passing demands condolences for his family, his philosophical legacy does not, especially when it comes to matters of faith.

Reading stories about the religious right often led me to questions as to how organizations in the group came up with so much money.  I ran across several reports about ministers like Gerald Smith being hired as a union buster.  Business men like Henry Ford saw unions as a threat to their fortunes.  During this period some anti-union sentiments were connected to fears of Communist infiltration.  Growing up in Oklahoma and living in a white collar town meant I received a two fold indoctrination on the evils of unions.  As a general rule of thumb the religious right has been anti union.  It has a legacy of hostility towards organzied labor. Christian talk radio often uses the word "union" in the same disdain they would  mentioning  the ACLU.

Today Republican Congressman Steve King of Iowa said Gay Marriage was part of socialist plan. Why does this make sense in a Christian Right worldview?

How did the post WWII Christian Right shift from a focus on the military defeat of godless global communism to a policing of our bedrooms—straight or gay? What happened? Why care? How do they justify vilifying President Obama?

The U.S. Supreme Court is gearing up to come back into session Oct. 5, and just in time for that, Justice Antonin Scalia has decided to pop off in the media about how much he hates church-state separation - again!

In what is billed as an "Historic Exclusive Interview" in the Brooklyn-based Orthodox  Jewish newspaper Hamodia, Scalia attacks one of the core concepts of church-state separation - the idea that government must remain neutral between religion and non-religion.

Matthew Hagee is ready to step into his father's shoes, but Pastor John Hagee is not quite ready to leave the building

As a number of older Religious Right leaders pass on, retire, and/or slip reluctantly into history, many of their sons are heeding the call, and are stepping in to take their place. Jerry Jr. and Jonathan Falwell have succeeded their father, the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, in the running of Liberty University and in the pulpit at Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Va., where their father had presided for 40 years before his death; Gordon Robertson has taken on a major role at Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network; and for the past several years, Tim Wildmon has been playing a significant role in the Rev. Donald Wildmon's American Family Association.

Now, it's closing in Matthew Hagee time.

He's a preacher, a talented singer, an author, the host of his own television program, and he's waiting in the wings for his father, Pastor John Hagee -- who late last year underwent open heart surgery -- to ride off into the sunset.

Does Matthew have his dad's fire in his belly? Will he be as controversial a figure as his father? Is he ready for prime time?

Listening to the rhetoric and reading the placards at recent right-wing events has led many progressive observers to conclude that "these folks are nuts!" Well, they are no more crazy or ignorant than most Americans (stifle that giggle), but they do live inside a bubble.

We all live inside our own bubbles in terms of where we get our information. If you grew up listening to right-wing libertarian talk radio and conservative Christian televangelism programs you might be able to break out of that that bubble, but it is difficult, and the exception, not the rule.

A few months ago I explored the Catholic Right's efforts to create a climate in the church that is so hostile that moderate and liberal Catholics would leave. Part one identified the two schools of social conservatism pushing this agenda while part two explored their discernable goals.

I take a more comprehensive look at the matter in the Fall 2009 issue of The Public Eye magazine.

I'm back from the Religious Right Bizarro World that is the "Values Voter Summit." As always, it was quite an experience.

I'll have a full report on the event in the October Church & State, but I wanted to share some things I learned at the Summit with you today:

A lot of mileage has been made about the confrontations between two TV reporters at the 2009 Christian Right Values Voter Summit in Washington, DC this weekend.

I was there.  Let me offer a different version of events. The two reporters were rude and lazy and disruptive. Other video standups by other reporters were done in a large lobby a few steps away from the camera risers in the auditorium.

[below: video excerpt of Roy Blunt telling "monkey anecdote" at 2009 Values Voter Summit]

"He is now the second highest ranking Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which is a very important committee on the health care issue," Family Research Council head Tony Perkins introduced Congressman Roy Blunt (R-MO) before a crowd of roughly 2,000 at the Family Research Council Action's 2009 Values Voter Summit last Friday. Taking the podium, Blunt repaid the favor, enthusing, "I really appreciate Tony Perkins coming and introducing me himself. He is one of my great friends."

"This is an opportunity for us," Blunt told his predominantly white audience, "this is a time for us to be more of who we should be."

Congressman Blunt then went on to tell an anecdote which suggested that life in Washington, for GOP members today, is comparable to the lot of imperial British agents in India who had to contend with monkeys running amok on a golf course that the colonial occupiers had carved out of the verdant Indian jungle. There was a problem, the Missouri Representative explained; monkeys would come out of the jungle, grab golf balls, and throw them about. Amidst swelling laughter from his audience Roy Blunt narrated,

"I could go into great and long detail about how many things they did to try and eliminate the 'monkey problem.' But they never got it done, so finally this golf course and this golf course only, they passed a rule and the rule was - you have to play the ball where the monkey throws it. [audience laughter swells] And that is the rule in Washington all the time."

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) was founded in 2005 by U.S. Air Force Academy graduate and Reagan administration White House counsel Mikey Weinstein, after the harassment his own sons faced as Jewish cadets at the Academy led him to discover that the fundamentalist Christian takeover of the Air Force Academy was far from an isolated problem. It was a military-wide issue that needed to be confronted head on. But it quickly became apparent that MRFF's initial mission of protecting the rights of our men and women in uniform was only addressing part of the problem. The evangelizing and proselytizing of Iraqi and Afghan Muslims by both private religious organizations and U.S. military personnel also had to be exposed and stopped -- particularly the materials and media available via the internet and television that could be used by extremists as propaganda for recruiting purposes.

When MRFF began exposing some of what we were finding on the internet, Weinstein was contacted by two Bush administration national security officials, one civilian and one military, confirming that the kind of stuff we were exposing was, in fact, being used as fodder for propaganda, and urging him not to stop what MRFF was doing. The most astounding thing, as you'll see in the list below, is that it's not the private religious organizations who are most at fault in spreading the crusader message, but the U.S. military itself.

A few weeks ago, Rev. Steven L. Anderson found himself in the midst of a firestorm of controversy. The night before a member of his congregation protested outside the hall where president Obama was giving a speech, carrying a semi-automatic rifle -- Anderson had repeatedly called on God to kill the president. Anderson was engaged in what is called, "imprecatory prayer" -- literally calling on God to smite his enemies.

As shocking as it is to pray for God to kill the president, even more worrisome is whether maybe someone will get it in their head to help God out in this regard. Anderson artfully plays with that notion, even while denying he is calling on anyone to vigilantism.

I wrote about it at the time, and waited for the other shoe to drop.

One never know what the other shoe might be like, but it just about always shows up.

Scott Horton of Harper's asked me six questions about my new book, "Republican Gomorrah: Inside The Movement That Shattered The Party."

Here are my answers:

1. You open your first chapter with a portrait of R.J. Rushdoony, the son of survivors of the Armenian genocide, who devoted his life to a socially conservative vision of Calvinism that sees the United States as a political extension of that religion. What led you to pick a fairly exotic figure like Rushdoony as a starting point for your account, when most students of the religious right in America would put the Southern Baptists at the movement's heart ?

Rushdoony's tomes advocating the replacement of America's constitutional democracy with a theocracy based on Leviticus case law-under which disobedient children, witches, adulterers, abortion doctors, and blasphemers would be executed-provided the antecedents of the Christian right with a blueprint for the government it hoped to establish. Rushdoony's vision of the church supplanting government functions like healthcare and schooling, a system he called Christian Reconstructionism, also influenced the rise of right-wing libertarianism....

I've always been skeptical of psychics, palm-readers and other prognosticators who claim to see the future, but today I'm going to gaze into my crystal ball and deliver a message to officials in Baker, La.: You are going to be sued very soon.

Furthermore, you are going to lose.

If you buy Bruce Ledewitz's proposal for "A New Progressive Vision for Church and State" which he presented on a panel at Netroots Nation, you probably think that Jefferson's old wall of separation is doing more harm than good.  And if you do, I beg to differ -- as I vigorously did with professor Ledewitz at the panel. Generally, I find that he is basing his ideas on a pile of false premises. As I told a reporter prior to Netroots Nation, "If he was making a baloney sandwich, he used the whole package."

Since then, there have been some colorful blog posts written, the panel video has been posted, and I have posted my prepared remarks. There is much to chew on for those who really want to dig into the contemporary debate on these things.

In my last piece I described how certain players of the Catholic Right are attacking the idea of a public option for health care insurance. In doing so, they are employing a theological concept known as subsidiarity -- the concept that "issues be treated at the lowest level possible, that is, at the level closest to the individual."

"The President of the United States has reposed special trust and confidence in the patriotism, valor, fidelity, and abilities of the following officers," says the order promoting Army Lieutenant Colonel Robert G. Young to the rank of full colonel.

Now, the president can't be expected to personally vet every military officer who is up for promotion, and, for all but those in the highest ranks, would obviously just rely on the recommendations of the superiors of officers on the promotions lists, but I have to wonder how the president would feel about having rubber stamped the promotion of an officer who said that blacks were better off as slaves.

A  few years ago I read William Snider's book, Helms and Hunt.  I was taken back by the idea in the story Snider told that Senator Jesse Helms was connected with private groups that had influence with governments around the world.1  I had run  across this story more than once regarding religious right leaders who were connected with world leaders on more than a personal level.  Certainly the Council on National Policy is a case in point.  Exactly what kind of direct influence the CNP has is foreign affairs in the world is subject to speculation because of its secrecy.

Ignacio Reyes and David Schmidt have the look of a boy band; they're young and flashy, earnest and media-savvy. As leaders of the group Live Action, they're committed to organizing a corps of young anti-abortion activists. Pro-choice groups should take notice.

During a town hall meeting hosted by Representative Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), a neatly attired young man rose to ask the congresswoman a question. He identified himself as Ignacio Reyes: "We know that over 90 percent of abortions are purely elective, not medically necessary. Why is this being covered when abortion is not clearly health care?" The question -- fair and asked politely -- was greeted by a round of applause and cheers from some in the audience. "Abortion will be covered as a benefit by one or more of the healthcare plans available to Americans, and I think it should be," Lofgren responded.

On hand to videotape the proceedings, and quickly post it on You Tube, was David R. Schmidt. (Schmidt's video is titled "Dem Congresswomen Admits ObamaCare = Taxpayer Funded Abortion Coverage" -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTYvK4h44RU)

Both Reyes (the questioner) and Schmidt (the videographer) are members of Live Action, the anti-abortion organization founded by Lila Rose.

The video quickly bled over into a number of other outlets, from Web sites and blogs to newszines and news aggregators; LifeSiteNews.com's story was headlined "Cat out of the Bag: Dem Congresswoman Admits ObamaCare Covers Elective Abortions," and the Heritage Foundation titled it, "Townhall Downfall: Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) Admits Obamacare Will Fund Abortions."

Perhaps not surprising in this age of proliferating media, Live Action's activists had become significant content providers. This wasn't a Susan Boyle moment, and their video will never top then-candidate Barack Obama's speech on race which within 48 hours garnered nearly 1.5 million viewers, but it did provide for another serious distraction for President Obama's health care reform project.

Pol Pot With a Fish Emblem on His Car ?

While Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has recently raised the specter of totalitarian government by warning about "death panels" she claims are part of the Obama Administration's health care plan, Palin herself has ties to a prominent Christian pastor who publicly advocates the establishment of a government regime that, in his own words, "may seem like totalitarianism" and would re-educate citizens in 'correct' decision making - an approach reminiscent of re-education campaigns during the violence-wracked Chinese communist Cultural Revolution or in Cambodia under Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge.

Last March, Sarah Palin enjoyed an extended telephone consultation and pep talk with Morningstar Ministries Founder and head Rick Joyner, who has contacts among Republicans in Congress and whose ministry is closely tied to Palin's most important Alaska church, the Wasilla Assembly of God.

Every September, we brace ourselves at Americans United for Separation of Church and State because we know the new school year will spark a fresh round of squabbles about the proper role of religion in public education.

Indeed, we're seeing some already. Two recent stories - one from Kentucky and one from Iowa - showcase two very different ways of dealing with this contentious topic.

WorldNetDaily announces a Christian right rally for 9/11 at American courthouses:

An organization says now only 17 percent of Americans attend church on any given Sunday.

Can that be changed, and if so how?

One possible answer is coming up soon: A prayer outreach called Cry Out America assembled by the Awakening America Alliance that calls for Christians to meet for prayer at a time when a spokesman says the greatest need in the United States is not more money, health care or other physical conditions.

Spokesman Billy Wilson said the hope is that there is an awakening in the nation, "to issue a new spiritual wakeup call to help Americans understand the greatest need in America is...spiritual."

...The work will being with a team prayer gathering at Ground Zero at 11 a.m...Other events are at county courthouses from noon until 1 p.m.

Cry Out America's website tells us that according Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (or rather, "Rise and Fall", as it is unfortunately called here), one reason Rome fell was because of "spiraling taxes and government spending".

This doesn't look so much like a real religious "awakening" as someone like Jonathan Edwards would have recognised it, or even  a memorial for those who were murdered on 9/11 - rather, this looks more like a political stunt by teabaggers at prayer on issues of tax and anti-healthcare reform.

Last month, Martin Mawyer and Jason Campbell of the Christian Action Network visited the UK with Robert Spencer to meet up with various self-styled "anti-Islamist" pundits and activists in England. Mawyer - a former editor of Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority Report - was previously known for his virulent anti-gay activism, publicising the rumour that Hilary Clinton is a lesbian and the idea that gay-friendly days at Disney World are evidence that gays are "after our children". More recently, however, he has focused on Islam, publicising supposed jihadi training camps across the USA, which he claims have unspecified weapons of mass destruction.

His visit to England included an interview with three balaclava-wearing men who represent the leadership of the "English Defence League". The EDL came into existence only recently; its originators include some former football hooligans and a British man who briefly became a "free speech martyr" among American conservatives when he was investigated for incitement over his blog, only to be repudiated when his qualified support for the British National Party came to light.

When I posted Professor Bruce Ledewitz's description of his proposal for a "New Progressive Vision of Church and State," it received an (understandably) poor reception.

I held back from offering my own views at the time (why give away the ending?) except to say that I disagreed, but would state my objections at the panel discussion of his proposal at Netroots Nation.  My prepared remarks are now posted here -- so while Ledewitz has not posted his full proposal as presented at Netroots Nation, I want there to be an easy to reference public record of exactly what I said.  The video is now available at the Netroots Nation web site (I was feeling a bit ill at the time of the panel, but managed to muddle on through) and there has been a fair amount of blogging about it, notably at The Wall of Separation and Friendly Atheist.

Since then, Professor Ledewitz has written a report on the panel, which is serving as a jumping off point for further discussion at an online "round-table" hosted by Religion Dispatches.  Publication is slated for next week.

Meanwhile that sound... that sound that sounds like footsteps in the distance -- is the sound of strawman arguments, marching, marching.   Fellow church state separationists, light your torches!