Ken Connor was president of the Family Research Council and now leads an organization called Center for a Just Society. His recent article in the Baptist Press criticizes how the religious right has been silent over the recent Abramoff corruption scandal. It is good to see Christian Right figures like Connor beginning to express a little independence from the Republican party. It is also a nice surprise to see an article in the Southern Baptist press that is not uncritically praising president Bush and the policies of the Republican party.

Ethics Daily has posted a superb essay about "Reading the Bible While Listening to the State of the Union." There's already a lot of hype and spin and handwringing about the President's State of the Union address. Nothing is likely to be said or written, before or after the address is given, that is as insightful and prophetic as what Robert Parham has written.

Parham asks, "If a biblical prophet gave the 2006 State of the Union address, what would the message be?" Among a host of other things, this is what Parham says:

David Barton, vice chair of the Republican Party in Texas, enjoys strong support from the President and the Republican National Committee.  Before the last national election, he was a paid campaign consultant for the President's re-election campaign.  He has long been proclaiming that the United States is a "Christian Nation" (i.e. a theocracy) and that separation of church and state is a "myth."

Recently Barton spoke to the state legislators at the state capital in Oklahoma.  To help correct his errors, I filled a newsletter with source materials from the colonial era and distributed it to the same state legislators.

I am scandalized by my own ignorance.  Yours too.

I suppose it's presumptuous of me to say I am scandalized by your ignorance. If you are reading this, you are an anonymous reader. Even if we happen to know each other, we may be having an anonymous conversation -- right out here in public -- thanks to the nature of blogging. But odds are that you are -- no offense -- at least as ignorant as I am.

It will take me a few paragraphs to get around to telling you why I am scandalized, and the nature of my ignorance.  Please bear with me. All will be revealed before your eyes glaze over.

Mercer University, a school with a Southern Baptist background located in Macon, Georgia, was recently denied a few million dollars in funding per year by the Georgia Baptist Convention because of the perception that Mercer was becoming too gay friendly. The Associated Baptist Press has two articles quoting the outgoing and incoming presidents of Mercer and how they want to encourage a climate of freedom and dialogue. Mercer is leading the way on how to respond to the Christian Right and it is encouraging to observe their efforts.

Pope Benedict XVI said in his first encyclical, "God Is Love," issued January 25, 2006, that the Roman Catholic Church has no desire to govern states, and that the church should maintain independence while fighting for justice with a spirit of love.

Significantly, the pope rejected the notion of theocracy, stating, "The church cannot and must not take upon herself the political battle to bring about the most just society possible. She cannot and must not replace the state. Yet at the same time she cannot and must not remain on the sidelines in the fight for justice."

This goal of this website is to move from "Talk to Action" in response to the Religious Right.  It might be helpful to note how some people of faith have responded to the threat of Fundamentalists and Dominionists.

A good example from within Southern Baptist circles is my good friend and colleague T Thomas whose ministry combatting malaria in Sub-Saharan Africa is being hightlighted on Ethics Daily today.

As Canada's Conservative Party came into power on Monday -- marking a striking shift from four consecutive Liberal national election victories in the last thirteen years -- I am reminded of something I witnessed about three years ago at the Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship (TACF). As its name says, the Fellowship is located near the Toronto Airport.

I went for a purely selfish reason. I love to laugh. I  was there to experience the "Toronto Blessing"

From TACF's website:

The Toronto Blessing is a  transferable anointing.  In its most visible form it overcomes worshippers with outbreaks of laughter,  weeping, groaning, shaking, falling,  "drunkenness," and even behaviours that have been described as a "cross between a jungle and a farmyard." Of greater significance, however, are the changed lives.

Let me be clear. I did not go to mock the Toronto Blessing; I went to take part in it. I believe in the healing power of laughter and other forms of emotional release.  I was in for a big surprise, but not the one I had hoped to find.

Christianity came of age in what the Roman scholar Keith Hopkins calls, "A world full of gods "--the era of Rome's history, not terribly long after the republic became an empire, marked by the rise of: 1. mystical religiousity and 2. megalomaniacal monarchs.

As Rome warred hard and played hard, said mystical religiosity became only more prevalent, politically relevant, and distracting, and the state become only more deified in the person of the emperor, corrupt, and militarized.

Does this perhaps sound strangely familiar? [image: Roman god personifying the Nile]

I vividly remember my own experience having an abortion, more than a decade ago. My boyfriend and I were on the rocks and hadn't spoken in days when I discovered I was pregnant; it felt like we were on the verge of a permanent rupture. I was broke and without health insurance. After two weeks of wrenching discussions we decided to terminate the pregnancy. I was in a fragile state as I headed for the doors of a Midtown clinic when a woman ran up to me and screamed, just inches from my face, "You're killing your baby!"

I have sharp memories of clinic defenses, too, at the height of Operation Rescue's work, helping to escort other women past phalanxes of protesters who yelled that they were murderers and would go to hell.  I recall more than one pro-choice march in Washington where the streets were lined with counterdemonstrators carrying giant images of bloody fetuses, the gory results of late-term abortions.

Today's March for Life felt extremely different. As I describe in a piece for the Village Voice, the scene in Washington today was like a love bomb.

Ralph Reed's campaign for Lieutenant Governor of Georgia is facing unwanted publicity over the loss of several steering committee members, who have joined the campaign of his Republican primary rival, State Senator Lowell S. "Casey" Cagle. Six of Reed's statewide steering committee members from Gwinnett County -- key political and business leaders -- released a statement dated January 20, 2006, citing Cagle's "combination of experience, electability, dedication to conservative values and record of integrity in office" to explain why they jumped ship. The letter was signed by three other former steering committee members who quit several months ago.

The loss of nine members in a statewide steering committee that numbers nearly 600 is largely symbolic. But campaign momentum trades on such symbolism, and news coverage of the latest defections comes at a critical time for the Reed campaign. Although Reed leads in overall fundraising, his campaign is struggling to regain its momentum against Cagle, who enjoys less name recognition, but whose popularity is growing just as Reed's key supporters are voicing doubts.

Reed's campaign is beleaguered by a headwind of negative news coverage, including questions over his 25-year friendship and strategic political alliance with convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff, a slowdown in his fundraising, and a January 6 Zogby International poll that showed him trailing an unnamed Democratic opponent by three points, while Cagle led the nameless Democrat by five points. Adding to the perception of Reed's vulnerability is this headline, which ran in the Atlanta Journal Constitution on Sunday, January 22: "Reed Offers Cash to Drum Up Crowd for Christian Coalition."

Baptist Press reports that the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention has kicked out a church that has a partnership with a group that ministers to people with sexual orientation minorities. This is not news, as Southern Baptist anti-gay policies are widely known. What is news is that there are churches, even Southern Baptist churches in Texas, that are beginning to practice a new form of pro-gay ministry that promises to challenge how the Christian Right has used homosexuality as a tool for political power and control.