IN 2004, The Texas Republican Party platform declared the United States to be a "Christian nation". Christian nationalism is probably the driving ideology of the Christian right, and that ideology rests on a falsified version of history that tens of millions of Americans believe to be true. This post concerns that problem and introduces readers to one historian, Chris Rodda, who rightfully deserves to be called a hero for writing Liars For Jesus: The Religious Right's Alternate Version Of American History, and for her ongoing 15 part series at Talk To Action debunking falsified American history from the Christian right. For free, so far. I've organized this fundraiser so she can keep her electricity and utilities on.

Some things are said enough times that they become facts in some quarters. One Example is "American law is based on the Ten Commandments". Close behind that is "America was founded on religious principles", which is a clear revision of "America was founded on religious tolerance". Another good example is "The Constitution was written by Christians so it is based on Christian principles".

After his bizarre commandments debacle, Alabama's Judge Roy Moore claimed that "It was never about the monument, or the Ten Commandments... It was always about the recognition of God as the sovereign source of our laws, liberty, and government!"

The religious right lives in a legal worldview that existed before the US Constitution. Their church-state ideas are right out of the legal orders of Medieval Europe, Great Britain, and the British colonies prior to the US Constitution. It is the world they want to return us to.

"The Switch" is set in the context of a teacher discussing with his students what an inarguable nightmare Bush and his enabling Republicans are. Most of the students are portrayed by people of notoriety so it has a lot of humor despite how infuriating it is. I'm sending it out to like-minded people to help get the buzz going.  Hopefully the following samples of praise I've received for it, along with an excerpt, will intrigue you enough to put this on the top of your to-do list. You can access it from my yahoo group UndoBush where the preface and corresponding political cartoon are: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/UndoBush/    http://www.geocities.com/hail111mary/The_Switch.doc

"I was blown away by how brilliant it is." --Dell Long, B.B. King's former PR manager

 "Found the message worth the time it took to read.  Its references are most impressive.  And the teacher and use of well known folk as students worked.  [This is coming from a reader who] is a 79+ year old vet of WWII and a former college journalism and political science teacher.  I was a senior staffer and speech writer to a governor, research assistant to a U.S. Senator and personal staff consultant to state-wide office holder. You made me feel guilty for not paying closer attention to Clark in 04!" --Jim E. Gregg

"Absolutely astounding! YOU ROCK!" --a Daily Kos blogger.

[ note: this story was originally posted in 2004 on the Daily Kos website ]

Given the recent campaign by the American Christian right to allege a vast liberal conspiracy against Christmas [ which - as Michelle Goldberg, senior writer for Salon, suggests - has ugly resonances with anti-semitic conspiracy theory ], this should be breaking news...

 During the American Clergy Leadership Conference tour that the president hailed last week, pastor John Kingara of Massachussetts puts a cross out with the garbage, April 18, 2003 (Source: Moon's Web site FamilyFed.org, as reported on by John Gorenfeld )

....just look at the picture. It's real. However, it's almost three years old. You've never heard of it. Why ?

Well, I didn't catch this either, and we all should have known it, because the Christian Right is knocking the stuffing out of the left on the "War Against Christmas" issue and on the faux-religion/morality playing field in general...

Girthful Yuletide gift bringing elf, beloved by Christian children, of Germanic mythology, avoids trumped up political controversy  

...and in most areas in the so-called  "culture wars"....

Talk To Action contributor Jonathan Hutson's two part series on the new "Left Behind : Eternal Forces" video game "The Purpose Driven Life Takers" series ( read the series : part 1, part 2 ) has provoked widespread controversy and discussion as well as approaching 100,000 visits to this website. Here is the spoken narratives, and images, from the promotional trailer for the game ( note : trailer is accompanied by an ominious, dramatic symphonic score )

Click on thumbnail images below for larger, mid-resolution .jpg versions. I am in the process of adding more images : please refresh or reload your browser page to check if more have been added.

Narrative and Images From "Left Behind: Eternal Forces"

"Throughout history, men and women have chosen one of three paths : Those  who daily seek a personal relationship with God, unbelievers and believers who don't seek after God and those who choose to ignore God. And as the prophets foretold, God will come to take his people home...No one knows the day or the hour. Without any warning, all infants, children, and many people myseriously disappear....Terror and confusion reign the world over. For those left behind, the apocalypse has just begun..."

Note the jarring contrast between frame #1, which seem to claim divine mandate for the narrative, and the final two frames - promotional images from the game being played, released by "Left Behind Games" - in which New Yorkers are gunned down in the streets and corpses pile up. Frame #2 seems to invoke revisionist claims of the Christian right that the United States was founded as a Christian nation rather than a secular nation. The top right frame - a busy New York City street - is accompanied by the narrative "unbelievers and believers who don't seek after God". Frame number four : "No one knows the day or the hour" ( of the "Rapture" ). One notable point about the images is that the trailer does not show any of the images from the game as it being played ( the last two frames). According to the Left Behind Games website the company seeks to offer "a less graphic experience to the sexual themes and gratuitous violence currently found in many titles." and hopes that its games will receive an "E" rating ( suitable for ages 6 and up )

Prolific Talk To Action member dogemperor showcases a number of the many excellent posts, from the Talk To Action member post section, on the Christian right's war on reproductive rights:

 

Life and Death: Just Don't Think About It (good summary, includes discussion of the HPV vaccine controversy as well as details of anti-abortion laws in El Salvador that are so strict that they force women to carry ectopic pregnancies till their fallopian tubes rupture (which pretty much kills any future chances at having kids); I discuss in comments a precursor controversy (dominionists' prior and present objections to the hepatitis-B vaccine on similar grounds) and discusses how one little noted reason for objection is that it eliminates a possible anti-gay talking point)

More on "moral refusal" and women (talking on "moral refusal" clauses and how the application is expanding now to refusing even post-abortion antibiotics and any medications prescribed by women's clinics; I will not be surprised to see, should the HPV vaccine be approved, pushes to expand "moral refusal" clauses to giving the jab)

"Moral refusal" extends to healthcare in general (details how LGBT people are being refused reproductive assistance and reproductive health services by docs)

TruLuv: Faith-Based Embryos (notes on dominionist "moral refusal" clauses, notes my speculation (sadly, confirmed in El Salvador) that women may be forced to carry ectopic pregnancies and "molar pregnancies" to term (the latter being a type of uterine cancer that develops from either placental tissue or an embryo whose development goes horribly wrong--in other words, these are essentially cancers of the embryo, and can only occur during pregnancies))

Dominionism: Pro-cancer, pro-birth-defects, pro-domestic-abuse (discusses in detail the HPV vaccine controversy, also in context discusses general war on birth control, dead-agenting of the March of Dimes (in claiming--falsely--the March of Dimes is a pro-abortionist group simply because the March of Dimes hasn't issued a formal statement saying Abortion Is Evil), and even working to create new forms of marriage that would make it next to impossible for an abused spouse (or a spouse who discovers the other spouse is abusing the children) to leave an abusive spouse)

"Every Zygote Is Sacred", or "Can I have my birth control, already?" (discusses HPV vaccine controversy in context of general war on reproductive health by dominionists, notes that other drugs that can be used against STD infections (specifically Zovirax, an antiherpetic which can be used for non-STD indications and frequently is) are being denied people under "moral refusal" clauses and under similar claims by dominionists; unfortunately, such reports are becoming more common (see in "More on 'moral refusal' and women", detailing refusals of post-abortion antibiotics and all prescriptions from a women's clinic by some pharmacists))

Press Release :
"FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE              

NCC PRESIDENT URGES COMMUNICATORS, TAKE ON `FALSE RELIGION'

New York, March 30, 2006--The president of the National Council of Churches, the Rev. Michael Livingston, strongly urged church communicators to, "Tell our story.  By any means necessary." [ see full story for entire press release ]

[image left: partial map of IRD associations with media and religious organizations. click here  for full version from Media Transparency]  As material - mostly courtesy of Andrew Weaver's leadership in guiding research efforts - has acrued on John's Dorhauer's ongoing series I've created a new Talk To Action anthology dedicated to IRD associated attacks on the United Methodist Church

. Why would the IRD want to attack the mainline Protestant Denominations ? Andrew Weaver, in his review of Hardball on Holy Ground, by Stephen Swecker, explains:"Think about this: While the members of churches affiliated with the National Council of Churches account for about a quarter of the population, approximately half of the members of the U.S. Congress say they are members of these communions. NCC church members' influence is disproportionate to their numbers and include remarkably high numbers of leaders in politics, business, and culture.... Moreover, these churches are some of the largest land owners in the U.S., with hundreds of billions of dollars collectively in assets, including real estate and pension funds. A hostile takeover of these churches would represent a massive shift in American culture, power and wealth for a relatively small investment. "

see here for a Talk To Action ongoing discussion on this topic [ scroll down page for discussion ]

Attack on The United Methodist Church : Articles and Books.

Special Report : "Follow the Money"
Documenting the Right's Well-Heeled Assault on the UMC
-Andrew J. Weaver and Nicole Seibert

Excerpt: "Six months ago, we reviewed in these pages an unsettling book titled United Methodism @ Risk: A Wake Up Call by Leon Howell (see Zion's Herald, July/August 2003). The book exposes an orchestrated attack by the American political and religious right on The United Methodist Church (UMC) and other mainline Protestant denominations that have been sufficiently vigorous, socially involved and politically effective to garner its wrath (Howell, 2003).

In response to the ensuing criticism of the book and our review, we organized a group of researchers to check the facts and found the volume to be well documented and reliable. In the process, we also reviewed hundreds of documents published by the key organization involved in the assault on the church, namely, the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD). Our findings as outlined below are very disturbing.

The IRD is affiliated with no denomination and is only accountable to its own self-appointed, self-perpetuating board of directors. According to public sources, the IRD focuses its principal expenditures and most of its efforts on The United Methodist Church.....

When Good News is Bad News, or Working on a Coup D'etat

By Andrew J. Weaver, Nicole R. Seibert, and Fred W. Kandeler

[ excerpt ] The January/February 2004 issue of Zion's Herald published a special report on the activities of the Washington "think tank," the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD).  It documented that The United Methodist Church (UMC), other mainline Protestant denominations, as well as the National Council of Churches of Christ have been the targets of an orchestrated attack by determined right-wing ideologues since 1981 (Weaver and Seibert, 2004a).

IRD has relentlessly used unethical propaganda methods to carry out the radical political agenda of a handful of secular benefactors opposed to the churches' historic social witness (Weaver and Seibert, 2004b).This is particularly true of Mark Tooley, director of its UMAction arm, who worked for the CIA for 8 years immediately preceding being hired by IRD (UMACTION, 2003).

In 1996, in a characteristically misleading fundraising letter, Tooley claimed that the UMC was supporting "Marxist guerrilla movements in Central America, violent revolution in southern Africa, halting U.S. defense programs, government-funded abortion, expanding the role of the federal government in the lives of ordinary Americans."   He then asked, "Did membership in the United Methodist Church require loyalty to a political program of the far left?"  Dr. John M. Swomley, Emeritus Professor of Social Ethics at St. Paul School of Theology in Kansas City, Missouri, observes that "Tooley, did not -- and could not -- document any of these assertions" (Swomley, 1996).

According to California-based investigative reporter Matt Smith,
IRD and its allies' use of right-wing nonreligious foundation money to smear liberal church leaders through mailings, articles in IRD-aligned publications, press releases, and stories in secular newspapers and magazines has more in common with a CIA Third World destabilization campaign than ordinary civilized debate (Smith, 2004).

Church & Scaife: Secular Conservative Philanthropies waging unethical campaign to take over United Methodist Church

Excerpt: "The United Methodist and other mainline Protestant churches are the targets of a continuing, orchestrated attack by determined right-wing ideologues who use CIA-style propaganda methods to sow dissention and distrust, all in pursuit of a radical political agenda.

[ image above maps IRD assocations with media and religious organizations. click on image for the full version, courtesy of Media Transparency ]

The leader of this attack is an organization called the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD), a pseudo-religious think-tank that carries out the goals of its secular funders that are opposed to the churches' historic social witness.

The IRD works in concert with other self-styled "renewal" groups like Good News and the Confessing Movement. IRD answers only to its own self-perpetuating board of directors, most of whom are embedded in the secular political right (Howell, 1995)."

IRD/Good News: How the right wing targets United Methodist women

Excerpt:"For the past two years, Media Transparency and the Boston Wesleyan Association have published research on a steady stream of attacks against the United Methodist Church (UMC) and other mainline American denominations carried out by conservative philanthropy sponsored institutions and people (Weaver, and Seibert, 2004 a, b; Weaver, Seibert and Kandeler 2005).

[ above: "Hardball on Holy Ground" , by Stephen Swecker. Andrew Weaver writes, in his review of the book : "why would Richard Melon Scaife, Adolf Coors, Howard Ahmanson, the Bradley Foundation, the Olin Foundation, and other secular political operatives care about funding a multi-million dollar crusade against mainline churches and the National Council of Churches(NCC)? Think about this: While the members of churches affiliated with the National Council of Churches account for about a quarter of the population, approximately half of the members of the U.S. Congress say they are members of these communions. NCC church members' influence is disproportionate to their numbers and include remarkably high numbers of leaders in politics, business, and culture. The prevailing ethos of American culture is and has been shaped by the leadership and membership of theses churches. Moreover, these churches are some of the largest land owners in the U.S., with hundreds of billions of dollars collectively in assets, including real estate and pension funds. A hostile takeover of these churches would represent a massive shift in American culture, power and wealth for a relatively small investment. If this sounds far-fetched, one need only consider how right-wing groups during recent decades have taken over and now wholly control the Southern Baptist Convention." ]

The primary actor in this unethical and mendacious attack is the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD), a political "think tank" that operates more like a shark in a fish tank as it attempts to undermine mainline Protestant ministries to form an unholy alliance with far-right politics (Swecker, 2005).

IRD has received millions of dollars from right-wing secular benefactors such as Richard Mellon Scaife, Adolf Coors and the Bradley and Olin foundations in an effort to muffle the prophetic voice of the church (Weaver and Seibert, 2004a, b; Weaver, Ellison, Kandeler, Binggeli and Clark, 2005; Media Transparency, 2003).

Methodist Ministers Andrew J. Weaver and Fred W. Kandeler recently wrote the following Talk To Action piece on one of the IRD's opening red-baiting salvos, in 1983, against the National Council of Churches

Being 60 Minutes Means You Never Have to Say You are Sorry - Except Once

Sixty minutes executive producer Don Hewitt appeared on the December 2, 2002, edition of Larry King Live (CNN) and was asked whether he regretted any shows that he had done in his 36-year career. Hewitt named only one, the 1983 60 Minutes double segment on the National Council of Churches and World Council of Churches. Hewitt told King that;

"We once took off on the National Council of Churches as being left wing and radical and a lot of nonsense. And the next morning I got a congratulatory phone call from every redneck bishop in America and I thought, oh, my God, we must have done something wrong last night, and I think we probably did."

The broadcast on CBS's 60 Minutes entitled "The Gospel According to Whom" began with Roman Catholic priest, Richard John Neuhaus, saying, "I am worried - I am outraged when the church lies to its own people." The camera moved from an offering plate in a United Methodist church in the Midwest to images of the Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and then to marchers in Communist Red Square. The lengthy segment over and over suggested that the National Council of Churches (NCC) was using Sunday offerings to promote Marxist revolution.

Methodism Under Attack [ source ]

Andrew Weaver:  "...although the United Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church USA, and the Episcopal Church total only about 14 million in membership, they have been and remain a powerful and influential voice for moderate and progressive social values in American society. Almost 30 percent of the members of the U.S. Congress belong to one of these three denominations as well as disproportionate numbers of well-educated  and progressive leaders who advocate for the poor, civil and human rights, environmental protection, and a responsible foreign policy. The activities and leadership of mainline Protestant churches are linked to the social  conscience of the nation and contribute to civil discourse.

The political right seeks to gain top leadership positions in the church by spreading misleading information and incendiary allegations against organizations and individuals. These groups employ the propaganda method of "wedge issues" like abortion and homosexuality to cause confusion, dissension, and division. Irving Kristol, father of William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard and one of the "godfathers" of the political right, summed up this strategy in the Wall Street Journal: "Attack the integrity, not the words, of those with whom you disagree." More recently, Grover Norquist, a conservative activist and long-time friend of top presidential aide Karl Rove, was even more blunt when he told the Denver Post that civility is out and nastiness is in among conservative activists. According to Mr. Norquist, "bipartisanship is another name for date rape."

By contrast, Methodists and other mainstream Protestants have held proudly to the "extreme middle" during most of their history, recognizing that self-righteousness is the bane of religion, be it the ideology of the left or right. Unless progressive and moderate members in the mainline churches muster the will to organize and battle for what they believe is fair and just, they are in danger of losing the historical values of these traditions to a determined cadre of ideological advocacy groups. It is time, in other words, for "fighting Methodists" to make a comeback lest their tolerance and Christian charity be turned against them and used to undermine their churches and further the social ends of the right wing's radical ideology.

FURTHER READING : see United Methodism @ Risk: A Wake-Up Call by By  Leon Howell and the  Information Project for United Methodists:  

"Organizations leading an ultra-conservative effort to control and reshape The United Methodist Church to fit their agenda are the focus of a book released today by active United Methodist lay and clergy leaders. United Methodism at RISK: A Wake-Up Call shares extensive research to show who is behind the campaign to force the denomination into a narrow political and theological framework.

The book was published by the Information Project for United Methodists, co-chaired by Bishop C. Dale White, widely known for his leadership on peace issues, and New York attorney and well-known United Methodist lay leader Beth Capen. Veteran Christian journalist Leon Howell is the author. The books close to 200 pages detail the rise of conservative renewal groupswithin United Methodism and sister denominations, and link their activity to right-wing activity in society.

"All United Methodists need to read this book to be fully informed on the tactics, ideological bias and theological restrictions evidenced in the life and work of the conservative renewal groups," Bishop White said in announcing the books release. The direction they would take our church demeans clergy and laity, he said."

Information on Ordering the Book

We all need to spend some time considering how best to defend liberty and freedom, and what unites us as a nation concerned with democratic values. In doing so, we need to commit to a process that respects civil liberties, and civil rights, and civil discourse.

The rhetoric used by some sincere and well-meaning human relations groups--"extremists of the left and right," "religious political extremists," "radical religious right," etc. -- can actually unintentionally undermine civil liberties, civil rights, and civil discourse by demonizing dissent and veiling the complicity we all share in institutionalized forms of oppression in our society: racism, sexism, heterosexism, antisemitism, Arabophobia, and Islamophobia.

When we lump together all political candidates and movements outside the "mainstream" as "extremists" of the left and right we are not only stifling a potentially valuable debate, but also using a theoretical model that has been seriously challenged in academia during the last 20 years. After World War II a number of scholars looked at the popular appeal of fascism and communism and concluded that mass movements threatened the stability of society. Shocked by the acquiescence of most Germans to the Nazi genocide of Jews and liquidation of other groups, these scholars saw warning signs in the Red Scare of the McCarthy Period, the Presidential campaign of ultraconservative Republican Barry Goldwater, Jr., and the Populist Party movement of the late 1800s. The scholars concluded that people swept along by social movements were psychologically-dysfunctional grumblers who couldn't play by the rules of democracy, and instead turned to irrational behavior to make their voices heard. The idea that extremists of the left and right threatened society was a dominant frame in sociology and the other social sciences until the mid 1970s.

More than a decade ago I sat in a conference room in Washington D.C. and was told I had to start using the phrase "religious political extremist." This was the new way for people on the political left to frame our opponents on the political right. It made me unhappy. I already had problems with language such as "radical religious right," "lunatic fringe," and "wing-nut." This new phrase just seemed wrong to me.