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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.
The Catholic Right's Dislike of Joe Biden. |
| Sat Aug 30, 2008 at 09:35:17 AM EST |  print story | |
Democratic presidential nominee Senator Barack Obama choice of Delaware Senator Joe Biden has set off a barrage of invective from the Catholic Right. Why is that? It effectively exposes the Astorturf nature of their movement. |
| topic: Analysis of Christian Right |
Regarding universal healthcare, like the overwhelming majority American Catholics Senator Biden wants the federal government to guarantee health insurance for all Americans. And like the majority of his co-religionists, he is pro-choice and supports the federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. Time and time again, he has shown that he understands the importance of keeping Church and state separate.
But for these same reasons Obama's choice of Biden has sent the Catholic Right into a tizzy. Fidelis, unsurprisingly, already has its spin machine going into overdrive. As usual it is trying to use abortion to frame Biden as a heretic while describing McCain veep pick Sarah Palin as "a natural choice for Catholics"; a rather curious thing to say in light of her recent libertarian-tinged economic comments made to conservative cable television hosts Laurence Kudlow and Glenn Beck.
Is anyone surprised that abortion is the litmus test. once again? Economic issues remain unimportant because in their eyes, what happens to the already born is of lesser consequence.
Many on the Catholic Right cite Thomas Aquinas's definition of liberty, as "being able to do what one ought to do." Apparently doing what one ought to do has nothing to do with fair wages, stewardship of the earth or providing basic healthcare; only to abortion and a handful of other biological issues.
Senator Biden presents a danger to the Catholic Right. He better reflects the worldview of most American Catholics than they do. Because that is so, they view him as a one-man referendum on the legitimacy of their movement.
If he is successful, he exposes the reality of the Catholic Right and debunks the idea that a small group of neo and paleoconservative operatives speak for sixty-plus members of the Church in America, funded not by ordinary citizens, but by a variety foundations whose goal is to make the world safe for buccaneer-style capitalism. Their edifice is built upon the false foundation that sixty-million of the faithful are something close to being a monolithic voting bloc, seeing all major issues of the day in a lock-step vision.
Nothing could be further from the truth. And Senator Joe Biden just may become living proof of that point.
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