Quite a few articles were written last week about speculative McCain VP pick, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, many focusing on Jindal's signing into law a bill that will allow the teaching of creationism, through "supplemental materials," in Louisiana's public schools. Some of last week's articles mentioned Jindal's association with former Texas Republican Party co-chair and pseudo-historian David Barton, a name all too familiar to those of us who closely follow the religious right, but largely unrecognized by just about everyone else on the left, in spite of the impact he managed to have on evangelical voters in the last two presidential elections.

Ohio Religious Right leader Phil Burress recently said of McCain, "We don't like him, and he doesn't like us." But Burress has gotten himself out ahead of the pack of Religious Right leaders who appear poised to finally get around to helping McCain. In the wake of McCain having been recieved by Billy and Franklin Graham, and a widely reported meeting of Religious Right leaders in Denver this week, we are about to see how badly the Religious Right wants to stop Barack Obama, or at least limit the damage.

Following on from my examination of Walid Shoebat's snake-oil Biblical scholarship a couple of days ago, I decided to check out his former collaborator, Simon Altaf. Altaf, who is based in the UK, explains his links to Shoebat on his "Abrahamic Faith" website:

Three years ago [2000] when I met Walid Shoebat, an Ex-Muslim convert from Bethlehem we started to discuss end times prophesy.  He was the one who enlightened me about real theology and eschatology of the Bible....I am an Ex-Muslim Convert of the dominant Sunni sect from Lahore, Pakistan.  I came to know the Lord Jesus Christ back in September 1998 after reading the testimony of an Egyptian convert while browsing the internet one day.  Later Walid and I both decided to create a website on the internet... to propagate the truth to the world about what is coming to pass.

Early verions of the "Abrahamic Faith" website state that Shoebat and Altaf founded it together. As well as pushing hardline Christian Zionism, it originally attacked other Christian groups, including Evangelicals and Charismatics, Billy Graham, and the Pope.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State has recently received calls from a couple of Minnesota pastors who are convinced they have a constitutional right to engage in partisan politics from the pulpit, including telling which candidates to vote for or against.

These pastors sounded sincere, and they were very polite when they called - but they are still wrong.

When Joe Lieberman gives credibility to the upcoming Christians United for Israel with his attendance, he won't just be lending his reputation to conspiracy-monger John Hagee. Also on the CUFI line-up is Walid Shoebat, the self-proclaimed former Palestinian Muslim terrorist-turned evangelist. Various sources have challenged Shoebat's account of his former terrorism, with the Jerusalem Post in particular raising questions about his story that so far have not been answered.

Shoebat also fancies himself as a bit of a Biblical scholar and palaeographer, and in a video clip that I have just been made aware of he expounds his theory that the "Number of the Beast" mentioned in the Book of Revelation is in fact a reference to...Allah.

Previously I discussed the Reverend Peter Marshall's work here.  Rev. Marshall is a fairly big figure in "Christian America" circles.  From what I know of his work, it's pretty shoddy.  He wrote a classic in that idiom entitled "The Light and the Glory."  Here is how Dr. Gregg Frazer describes that work in his PhD thesis from Claremont Graduate University:

It became the classic text of that camp. Its historiography is abominable; it is a collection of speculations, suppositions, personal musings, and "insights" with little or no proof or documentation for extraordinary claims. p. 38.

Time: Amy Sullivan thinks Dobson's attack on Obama may be backfiring.

Americans United for Separation of Church & State to Louisiana:  "We are watching."  

Kansas City Star columnist says Kansans need to be wary about the Religious Right trying to take back the state board of education.

Daily Kos: Darksyde discusses the politics of creationism.

Street Prophets: Pastordan reports that the one man religious right web site "UCC Truths" -- thinks torture is no big deal.

A few days ago I wrote a piece on Todd Bentley's faith-healing revival in Florida, noting support for Bentley from Steven Strang, the influential editor of Charisma, and from Paul Cain, the neo-Pentecostal revivalist who is now described as a "restored prophet" following past Ted Haggard-like indiscretions. Bentley's revival has been going on since the beginning of April, and now after some debate all the "Third Wave" big-hitters have decided to jump on the bandwagon. Peter C Wagner joined Bentley on stage to offer a remarkable endorsement which shows us as much about his own self-importance as his views about Bentley:

The Catholic Right, Part Sixty-one
A little more than a year ago Fidelis, an umbrella advocacy group consisting of various not-for-profit entities, sought to derail the presidential prospects of pro-choice Republican (and Catholic) Rudy Giuliani. It is now going after presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama (the junior senator from Illinois is also pro-choice, pro-embryonic stem cell research, and perhaps what truly horrifies these folks, he favors contemporary liberal economics).

However, my question of May 2007 still stands: Is Fidelis violating the Internal Revenue Code's provisions regarding not-for-profits?

Tradition, Family and Property's attack on same-sex marriage in California has brought the traditionalist Catholic organisation back into the spotlight. Bill Berkowitz has an excellent introduction to the organisation in the entry below this; here I'd like to take a trip down memory lane back to the 1980s, when TFP was at the forefront of support for South Africa and other causes beloved of the New Right in America and the UK. While today TFP rails against gay marriage in the name of authoritarian Christianity, back then its strategy was to work closely with supposed "libertarians" - who in turn ignored TFP's decidedly non-libertarian activism.

Christine Wicker's new book, The Fall of the Evangelical Nation, tells two stories very well.  First, it explains how Americans have been duped into believing that evangelicals comprise a significant and growing percentage of the population.  She demonstrates, using evangelicals' own statistics and reports, that committed evangelicals comprise only about 7% of the U.S. population and the percentage is declining, not growing.  Here's a quote:

For the past thirty years, 7 percent of the population has swayed elections and positioned itself as the ultimate arbiter of right and wrong.  By puffing its numbers and its authority, it has gotten legislation passed that opposes the popular will and has divided the country into acrimonious camps.  It has monopolized the media so effectively that other religious voices have been all but silenced.  It has been feared and loathed, revered and loved.  It has been impossible to ignore.  But underneath its image of power and pomp, the evangelical nation is falling apart.  Every day the percentage of evangelicals in America decreases, a loss that began more than one hundred years ago.

Jeff Sharlet's book The Family has been getting some high profile media attention, most recently with an interview on The Diane Rehm show, on public radio. In light of this, it seems like a good moment to reprise my review. -- FC

My review of Jeff Sharlet's new book, The Family: the Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power appears in the current issue of The Public Eye. Here is an exerpt, on the flip:

Louisiana has become the latest target of the Discovery Institute, the Seattle think tank whose "Wedge Strategy" for getting intelligent design (ID) creationism into public school science classes was thoroughly discredited in Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District (2005). The Discovery Institute has teamed up with the LA Family Forum, the Louisiana affiliate of Focus on the Family, to promote a stealth creationism bill in the guise of "academic freedom" legislation. The bill sailed through the Louisiana legislature and now awaits action by Gov. Bobby Jindal. [promote on Digg 1 and 2]

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) has sent the following letter to Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, urging that appropriate action be taken to halt the re-airing of a 2003 Fourth of July Christian concert, and demanding an investigation into the appearance in this program of active duty military personnel, including, among other things, an interview with a prominent three-star general, and a military color guard dipping two American flags to Christian pop star Carman.

The annual Netroots Nation conference (formerly the Yearly Kos) will be held this year in Austin, Texas, July 17-20th.  I'm pleased to announce that  Pastordan and I will be leading a panel titled Whatever Happened to the Religious Left?.    I will talk about what the Religious Right has got that the Religious Left hasn't got -- and offer a few ideas of how to get it. (And it does not involve going off to see the wizard!)

There is nothing on the Left corresponding to the politically dynamic Religious Right. But there are some promising elements with the potential to become greater than the sum of their parts.

This panel seeks to address what's going on and what should happen next. We will discuss how common approaches to electoral politics can be found and practiced in a way that respects the unique character of progressive faith.

Whatever Happened to the Religious Left?
Sat, 07/19/2008 - 4:30pm, Ballroom E

Over the past few months, other important issues have led me to stray from my usual writing on Christian nationalist historical revisionism, but that doesn't mean I haven't been keeping an eye on the progress of certain proposed Christian nationalist legislation, particularly Congressman Randy Forbes's House Resolution 888. The other resolutions I was following, the two Ten Commandments Weekend resolutions, were specific to the first weekend of May of this year only, a weekend that has already come and gone, making these a non-issue (at least for this year). H. Res. 888, on the other hand, is not year specific, calling for its proposed "American Religious History Week" to be designated "each year." The resolution currently has 86 co-sponsors -- 80 Republicans, and 6 Democrats.

As I reported in my last update, by the middle of March I had received word from a reliable source that it looked like H. Res. 888 was effectively dead. Mr. Forbes, however, had vowed on David Barton's WallBuilders LIVE! radio show to keep fighting for this one, even if he had to file a discharge petition to force it to the floor, so, in spite of getting the good news that this resolution was stalled in committee and looked like it was destined to stay there until it died a natural death at the end of this session of Congress, I didn't rule out the possibility that Mr. Forbes would make good on his threat. It now appears that he's gearing up to do just that.

Mainstream media has been very compliant in broadcasting Focus On The Family head James Dobson's recent attack [1,2] on Barack Obama, in which Dobson said Obama holds "fruitcake" views on church-state Separation. Dr. James Dobson, through his books on child rearing that have sold into the millions or tens of millions, has influenced millions of American parents. Why, asks FrameShop's Jeffrey Feldman, does the media give James Dobson a pass given how far out of the mainstream his parenting ideas really are ? The following post examines the apparent origins of Dobson's views on child-discipline which seem to be tied to or grounded in Dobson's sense of how to train dogs - by beating them into abject submission, an approach that's generally held by professional dog trainers to be less than worthless and even dangerous. James Dobson has taught to an entire generation of Americans a parental approach based in a failed, crackpot "break their will to resist, beat them into submission" dog training theory and, while Barack Obama actually taught Constitutional law professionally for twelve years, Dr. Dobson, as a dog trainer, would likely either be hounded out of town, sued, bitten or mauled. But, rather than train dogs, Dobson translated his crackpot dog-beating ethic into books of advice, for American parents, on child discipline and so made a small fortune.

As Fred mentioned elsewhere on this blog today, Focus on the Family founder James C. Dobson is at it again. Dobson grabbed newspaper headlines this morning with an attack on U.S. Sen. Barack Obama. According to Dobson, Obama holds a "fruitcake interpretation of the Constitution."

Dobson's salvo on Obama is based on a 2006 speech the Illinois senator gave to a group of moderate evangelicals. During the speech, Obama pointed out that in the United States, laws must have a secular basis. People can oppose abortion, he noted, but they should not expect the government to ban the procedure just because some people say the Bible calls for that.

Steven Strang, editor of the influential Charisma magazine (and a close ally of John Hagee), gives an imprimator to Canadian evangelist Todd Bentley:

I'm glad to see "revival" breaking out. It is wonderful to hear the testimonies of healing and even stories about people being raised from the dead. I hope the revival continues because I believe that it is a fresh move of God.

Bentley has for the last three months been leading a revival session in Florida that has become known as the "Florida Outpouring". He boasts of raising the dead, making tumours drop off, meeting angels and Biblical figures, and of being told by God to heal a woman by kicking her in the face.

I think he can.

James Dobson, head of Focus on the Family, says the Barack Obama distorts the Bible and has a "fruitcake interpretation of the Constitution."

This according to the Associated Press, which was provided a copy of Dobson's pretaped remarks that will air on Tuesday on his nationally syndicated radio program.

Dobson's colorful attack on Senator Obama, who taught constitutional law for twelve years at the University of Chicago, invites examination of Mr. Dobson's views on the Constitution -- something I have written about from time-to-time.

A glassy-eyed computer generated avatar declares that the Book Of Revelations prophesies a Global Warming-driven apocalypse. Is it a script for the next Schwarzengeer blockbuster, with the California Governor playing hooky ? No. It's been a while since I've updated the "site topics" at Talk To Action, but the British Pentacostalists who run the RedSky Ministry wouldn't fit anywhere I could imagine. They're suis generis, their own category. Whereas most on the American hard Christian right have long minimized the threat of Global Warming, denied it altogether and even, as US Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe has long claimed, held Global Warming to be a hoax and a UN plot intended foist on humanity a One World government ruled by the Antichrist, the leaders of the British "Red Sky" ministry not only accept Global Warming science as legitimate but are in fact up on the latest developments in the field of climate-change research. In the end, though, there's still plenty of room in the equation for people such as Chuck Missler or Ray Comfort - attacking Evolution with a jar of peanut butter or asserting Godly design from the ability of human hands to effectively grasp bananas. "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose..."

Box Turtle Bulletin has more on the farther Religious Right's favorite pseudo social scientist, Paul Cameron.

Street Prophets: Pastordan says that Obama met with religious right leaders in part because getting to know people in person reduces the the chances they will demonize you.

World Net Daily:  Obama is not a Christian nationalist.  The Religious Right plans to use that against him.

Grassroots Use of Technology, Saturday, June 28, 2008, University of Massachusetts @ Lowell; Netroots Nation July 17-20, @ the Austin Convention Center, Austin, Texas; Facebook: Fans of Talk to Action.

The Washington Post has an overview of the Obama campaign's "faith outreach" -- which apparently really means outreach to conservative evangelicals and Catholics.

Melissa Rogers has survey data that suggests that John McCain is doing much better with conservative evangelicals than meets the eye.