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the covert campaign against liberal chuches and the social justice tradition
[above: click on image for YouTube video trailer]"Renewal or Ruin": New Video Documentary By Steve D. Martin Spotlights Secretive Rightwing Effort To Destroy Mainstream Protestant Churches
Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy, by Frederick Clarkson
Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort
by Chip Berlet and Matthew N. Lyons
sample chapter
God's Profits: Faith, Fraud and the Republican Crusade For Values Voters
By Sarah Posner
Liars for Jesus: The Religious Right's Alternate Version of American History
By Chris Rodda
Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism
: by Michelle Goldberg
With God on Their Side: How Christian Fundamentalists Trampled Science, Policy, and Democracy in George W. Bush's White House.
by Esther Kaplan
Straight to Jesus: Sexual and Christian Conversions in the Ex-Gay Movement
Tanya Erzen
Attack on The United Churches of Christ
Attack on The United Methodist Church
"The Christian Right, Dominionism, and Theocracy", by Chip Berlet
"Taking Over The Republican Party", a four part series by Joan Bokaer
The Woman in A Mink CoatWhile We Were sleepingAngels On a PinheadUnder Cover of Night
The Indian River Incident : What You Can Do
link > The "Stop the ACLU Coalition" Shaming Project
How you can help stop "Stop The ACLU" just by sending a few emails
The Shaming Projectdoes the violence of "Left Behind: Eternal Forces" bother you ? If so, what can you do ? Well, to begin with you can email Jonathan Hutson's stories to people you know. That will help to bring more public scrutiny of the game. Public shaming really works ! Just click on the "email" icon and link at the top or bottom of the story and you'll be taken to a form that will allow you email the first story, The Purpose Driven Life Takers or the latest installment without leaving this site. Thanks.
Stats, Lies, and the NYT Magazine: Falwell U. isn't #1 in debating. Not even close. |
| Sun Mar 19, 2006 at 09:26:33 PM EST |  print story | |
 
Brayton's sendup is a muscular outing of the credulity mainstream media pays to claims by leaders of the Christian right. But, Brayton says the MSM "laps it up" likes "kittens". Perhaps. And, perhaps Brayton's a gentleman - I'll be blunt. The NYT Magazine has been gobbling up something less savory than milk or cream. Here's their claim:
The most interesting thing about modern Lynchburg is that Liberty consistently produces one of the nation's great collegiate debate programs. |
| topic: |
[ NYT Magazine quote continued ] This season Liberty is closing in on an unprecedented sweep -- first place in the rankings in all three national college debate groups: the American Debate Association, the Cross Examination Debate Association and the National Debate Tournament.Two men are responsible for this improbable success. One is Liberty's founder, the Rev. Jerry Falwell, who has spared no effort to make his school into a national debate power. The other is the team's head coach, Brett O'Donnell.
That sounds all authoritative-like, y'know ? Like revealed truth. [ per the Grey Lady's stupendous reputation for great reporting on, say, the presence of WMD's in Iraq ? ]
Says Brayton:
"Liberty University gets to be #1 ranked by sending lots and lots of novices and JV debaters to smaller regional tournaments, piling up points. But their varsity team is slightly above average at very best. No varsity team from Liberty has finished with a winning record at the National Debate Tournament (NDT) in the last 8 years....When weighted for quality, matched against the top winning teams, Liberty's top team is ranked 111th with a 3-6 record against the top 25. In matchups against teams that "clear" at tournaments - meaning teams that qualify for the elimination rounds at tournaments - Liberty doesn't rank at all and is below 26% in wins against them. And when you actually do adjust for quality of competition, where does the Liberty team rank? How about 117th.
Despite this, they're all over the media claiming to be the best debate team in the country, "higher ranked than Harvard", and the media is lapping it up like a hungry kitten. [emphasis mine]
In short, Liberty University's approach resembles a common approach of many leaders on the Christian right : game the system.
If you want some historical background on how the Christian right games politics to the detriment of the Democratic process, here are two great examples:
How Southern Baptists Have Changed:
Dr. Bruce Prescott - one of the world's top authorities on the subject - writes details the Christian right's takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention.Taking over The GOP: Eyewitness to the event, Joan Bokaer details how Christian right theocratic insurgents have largely over the GOP and vanquished the the secular faction of the Republican Party.
The point of both these personal narratives, deeply felt, is something like this : the strategic thrust of those who have engineered the rise of the Christian right in modern America has little to nothing to do with concern for truth or the spirit of Democracy. It is mainly about the acquisition of power.
Truth is elsewhere.
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