A landmark decision should soon be forthcoming from the U.S. District Court in Des Moines, Iowa.  Americans United for Separation of Church and State has challenged the use of taxpayer funds to support Prison Fellowship's "InnerChange" Christian rehabilitation program in Iowa.

Prison Fellowship Ministries was founded by Chuck Colson, former Counsel for President Nixon. Colson founded his ministry after spending seven months in prison for obstructing justice in the Watergate scandal.  In most states Colson's work is funded by private contributions.  In Iowa, the state legislature appropriated several hundred thousand dollars for the ministry to run a "value-based treatment program" at its Newton Correctional Facility.

In the beginning of The Matrix, Thomas Anderson, a hacker who goes by the alias Neo, falls asleep in front of his p.c. Behind him, a prompt appears onscreen: "Wake up, Neo." Mr. Anderson rouses and looks around at the screen. He types "CTRL X," but the letter "T" appears. He hits another command, but an "h" appears.  He furiously types functions and commands, but the computer types out a message as though it had a mind of its own. He stops and stares at the message: "The Matrix has you."

This call to consciousness foretells the film's plot. Mr. Anderson spends his days at a soul-sucking corporate job in order to spend his nights seeking all sorts of information that is forbidden to him. He struggles with the choice of whether to escape from or remain imprisoned in the Matrix -- a simulation program that perpetuates ignorance through illusion in order to bypass people's critical thinking and drain their vital energy. His alternative is to gain the knowledge necessary to wake up, and then take action to liberate himself and others. Mr. Anderson's role as one who fights ignorance and illusion, and who invites others to awaken to a life of liberty is seen in his family name, which literally means "son of man." You may recognize that as an alias that Jesus often used to describe himself, such as when he tried to wake up his sleeping disciples on the Mount of Olives. (Gospel According to Mark, 14:41)

So it is ironic that religious right leaders also invoke the "Son of Man" as they labor to put his followers back to sleep by perpetuating illusions based on intellectual dishonesty. Their Matrix is the myth of the "Christian Nation," a totally comprehensive but illusory simulation program. Perpetuation of the illusion relies on isolating people culturally and feeding them a steady diet of junk science, fake history, and baloney of biblical proportions.

What good is all this knowledge and information if no one hears it? Talk2Action is a very important clearing house for info on the religious/political right, but MOST Americans have NO IDEA this is going on - or, if they do, don't see why it's a problem! I created my painting, American Fundamentalists (Christ's Entry into Washington in 2008), to address this challenge. Some people can't sit through a lecture, listen to a radio program or read a multitude of Internet sites. Let's face it, most people are just trying to live and raise their families - they can't all be researchers and activists. By using Art to bring people together, I have hoped to not only get some admittedly complex information across in the work itself, but to also use the display of this large 8x14 foot painting as an EVENT to talk to people about these issues. Some bookings are starting to come in for 2006, and with your help I may get a chance to come to your community, and even include many of the posters to this site on panels and in public discussions about these complex and vital issues.

I gave a speech about the threat of Dominionism and theocracy to a group of prominent business and civic leaders in Oklahoma City last week. The reaction I received from some of them convinced me that there is little concern for democracy among some of the elites in our society. It appears that their disdain for liberalism is greater than any conceivable threat that could be posed to democracy from the theocratic right.

When my speech ended a retired CEO of a Fortune 500 corporation, a Baptist, came up to me and adamantly denied that Southern Baptists were opposed to public schools.

Esther Kaplan will be the featured guest this Friday evening on on Writer's Voice, a weekly radio program devoted to discussion of books and publishing. The topic is Esther's recent book, With God on Their Side:  How Christian Fundamentalists Trampled Science, Policy, and Democracy in George Bush's White House.

Frederick Clarkson (that's me) will also appear to talk about Talk to Action, and the importance of books in the development of political culture.

It is possible to hear the show via streaming audio, over your computer.

Resistance to the religious right is growing, especially since the 2004 election. This growth can be detected in secular and moderate to liberal religious movements. Not as widely reported, but perhaps more significant, is the growth of this resistance within conservative religious communities. Bob Allen of Ethics Daily reports that Southern Baptist pastor Steve McCoy has recently used his blog to send a strong criticism aimed at the leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Paul Hackett is someone we should keep an eye on- he's a Democratic candidate for a Senate seat in the bellwether state of Ohio.

He's gotten off to a great start, saying that the "Republican Party has been hijacked by religious fanatics", which has set off the expected firestorm of ripostes from the very people he's criticizing.

Six weeks before the last national election, Richard Land, head of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, spoke at New Orleans Baptist Seminary and said,

"We have a right and an obligation and a responsibility to go forth and to seek to bring our religious convictions to bear on public policy issues," Land said. "That's not called a violation of the separation of church and state. That's called religious freedom. It's called freedom of speech."

Like other Christian Nationalists and Dominionists, Land speaks as though Christians occupy a privileged position when speaking in the public square.  Constitutionally, people of no faith and people of all faiths -- not just Christians -- have an equal right and and obligation to bring their convictions to bear on public policy issues.  Religious freedom and freedom of speech are rights that all citizens of our society share equally.  These rights exist because the First Amendment created some "sacred ground" where, by force of law, we do not permit others to force their religious convictions on us and where we are not allowed to force our religious convictions on others.  That is what separation of church and state means.

Dominionism is about controlling our lives.  At a Reclaiming America for Christ conference in February, 2005, the Reverend D. James Kennedy said:

...Our job is to reclaim America for Christ, whatever the cost. As the vice regents of God, we are to exercise godly dominion and influence over our neighborhoods, our schools, our government, our literature and arts, our sports arenas, our entertainment media, our news media, our scientific endeavors -- in short, over every aspect and institution of human society.

Yesterday the New York Times treated us to a touching A1 story about "crisis pregnancy centers" and the grass roots anti-abortion movement. "The women in [these groups]," writes John Leland, "are far from the public battles over abortion laws and the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. But in their quiet way, they represent a dimension of the anti-abortion movement that is just as passionate and far-reaching, consisting not of protesters or political activists but of Christian therapy groups, crisis pregnancy centers, adoption ministries, and support programs for single mothers and their children." Fine, as far as it goes. But Leland soft pedals these groups' history of fraud and fails to mention the extremely critical role the Bush administration has played in propping up these groups, channeling millions in federal grants their way.

An audience of more than 3,000 people representing a broad spectrum of political viewpoints repeatedly rose to its feet in ovations to a powerful Martin Luther King Day address by former Vice President Al Gore, titled "Restoring the Rule of Law." C-SPAN broadcast the January 16, 2006, event at the Daughters of the American Revolution Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. The event was co-sponsored by the American Constitution Society (ACS) and the The Liberty Coalition, a "transpartisan" organization whose diverse membership includes the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Conservative Union, Amnesty International, Electronic Privacy Information Center, Free Congress Foundation, Gun Owners of America, MoveOn.org Political Action, and the Rutherford Institute.

In his speech, Gore criticized the Bush administration's sweeping and unilateral decision to direct the National Security Agency (NSA) to monitor the telephone calls and e-mails of thousands of Americans without obtaining warrants. To thunderous applause, Gore stated,

"At present, we still have much to learn about the NSA's domestic surveillance. What we do know about this pervasive wiretapping virtually compels the conclusion that the President of the United States has been breaking the law repeatedly and persistently."

On the day the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, I received a phone call from a member of the Presbyterian youth group I was in, telling me that some of the members of our congregation planned to march in nearby Newark, New Jersey to commemorate the life and death of this man. We had read and been inspired by King's 1963 "Letter from Birmingham Jail," in our youth group, and some of us tentatively began to ease ourselves into a suburban (and very sanitized) version of the Civil Rights Movement.

When I blithely told my parents not to worry about my going to Newark, since the Black Panther Party had guaranteed the safety of all marchers Black or White, they hit the roof. "If you go on that march," I was warned, "don't bother coming home." They thought of King as an "extremist."