From today’s TFN News Clips:
“I think it’s unnatural. I think it’s wrong that people touch other people’s private parts outside of special covenantal relationships.”
— Texas state Rep. David Simpson, R-Longview, talking about airport security pat-downs by Transportation Security Administration agents.
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Time is running out to purchase tickets for Wednesday night’s presentation by Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and book author Leonard Pitts in Houston. Pitts will speak at 7 p.m. at Congregation Emanu El in Houston. You can purchase tickets ($20) here.
Earlier Wednesday Pitts will also be on a panel discussion for “Religion in the 2012 Elections,” a symposium co-sponsored by the Texas Freedom Network Education Fund, the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy and the Rice University Religion and Public Life Program. But no seats are left for that event, and registration for the symposium is now closed.
Texas Eagle Forum today announced that its current president, Pat Carlson, is stepping down because she is seeking election to the Texas House of Representatives. (We reported about Carlson’s House run here.)
Her replacement is Cathie Adams, who had served as TEF’s president until she became chair of the Texas Republican Party in fall 2009. But Adams wasn’t too popular among Republican activists — she lost her post as state party chair in 2010.
Adams is one of the most extreme voices on the far right in Texas today. How extreme? Let’s take a walk down memory lane.
- Adams sees religious diversity as a threat to this country. From an October 1999 TEF letter:
“(W)e must place our faith in the ONE true God, then humble ourselves, pray and seek Him and repent for our sins. Then God will forgive us and heal our land. Do you think that a jealous God will tolerate ‘religious pluralism’ and allow us to come to Him any way we please? Absolutely not!”
- Adams believes that the United Nations is paving the way for the “anti-Christ.”
From a 2000 TEF letter:
“The Bible tells us that in the end times there will be a world government headed by a world leader, called the anti-Christ, who will profess a world religion, but did you ever think you would live in the day when these things would come into being? That is exactly what the United Nations is doing behind the backs of most Americans.”
From a January 1999 TEF newsletter:
“In the future, the anti-Christ will use the pleas for human rights, economic equity and a promise to ‘end all wars’ to found global government. . . . God is not the author of global government, the anti-Christ is, and the UN conspicuously manifests his warmongering spirit.”
- Adams has compared President Obama to Adolf Hitler, suggesting that a speech to American students was “eerily like Hitler’s youth movement.”
- In an e-mail to far-right activists in 2008, Adams viciously attacked the faith of then-candidate Obama (page 40):
“While many question Barak [sic] Hussein Obama’s ‘religion’…, the more important question is whether he has a ‘relationship’ with Jesus Christ because that is the only HOPE that any of us have to obtain eternal life. I personally see NO evidence that Obama has that kind of ‘saving faith.’”
- Adams is an anti-science zealot.
Criticizing evolution in an October 2003 email to TEF activists during the Texas State Board of Education’s debate over proposed new science textbooks:
“Did you evolve from an ape or were you created by God? This is NOT a rhetorical question. Your child or grandchild WILL be taught according to what you choose now.”
Steven Andrew, president of the way-way-out-there USA Christian Ministries, sent out a press release last week saying that “voting for Mitt Romney is betraying Jesus Christ” because Romney is a Mormon. He goes on:
“Voting for Romney or Obama who do not follow God causes the economy to decline and removes Christian freedoms (Deuteronomy 28, Leviticus 26).”
And he makes a pitch for Rick Santorum for the Republican presidential nomination:
“There is hope. Rick Santorum includes God in government as our Founding Fathers said to do and obeys God with pro-life and one-man and one-woman marriage. Since obeying God will fix the economy, Americans should vote for Santorum who is the most God-fearing Republican running (2 Chronicles 7:13-14).”
So there you have it: no Mormons, end abortion, oppose gay marriage, obey God and — presto — the economy will boom. In other words, bow to the religious right’s political agenda or you’re going to hell and taking our nation’s economy down with you.
Here are some of the week’s most notable quotes culled from news reports from across Texas, and beyond.
You just can’t make this stuff up. A little background:
Back in 2007, actor Chuck “Walker, Texas Ranger” Norris attacked the Texas Freedom Network because we had pointed to dangerous flaws in proposed legislation requiring that Texas public schools teach classes about the Bible. Calling TFN “paranoid,” Norris falsely argued that we were “fighting against the very positions and purposes for which our Founding Fathers raised up this country.” Fortunately, the bill passed only after we succeeded in adding to it nearly all of the safeguards for religious freedom we had proposed.
In any case, the year before — in 2006 — Norris and his wife had also joined the board of directors of the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools. “There has been a great social regression since the Bible was removed from our schools,” that right-wing evangelical organization claims on its website.
Of course, there isn’t a shred of evidence to support such an absurd claim. But that hasn’t stopped the National Council, Norris and other religious-righters from trying to claim the moral high ground in the culture wars they declared long ago.
Then today Norris endorsed thrice-married, serial adulterer Newt Gingrich for president. And he did so the day after Gingrich’s second wife said on national television that Gingrich had asked her — before their divorce — for an open marriage so that he could continue carrying on an affair with the woman who later became his third wife.
So tell us again, Chuck: what’s the source of the “social regression” you see in America?
What do Americans think about the role of religion in American politics? According to results from a New York Times/CBS News poll conducted Jan. 12-17, it appears that most Americans have concerns about the intersection of the two.
By a 61%-29% margin, most poll respondents said they are more worried by public officials who pay too much attention to religion and religious leaders than public officials who don’t pay enough attention to the two.
Only 40 percent of poll respondents said presidential candidates should discuss the role of religion in their lives. In contrast, 56 percent said a candidate’s religious beliefs should not be part of a presidential campaign.
Respondents were also more likely to say that it was not very important or not important at all (59% overall) that a presidential candidate share their religious beliefs.
Some folks might be surprised by those poll results, especially considering efforts by national religious-right leaders to shape the Republican presidential nominating process this year. (See, for example, here and here.)
The Texas Freedom Network Education Fund, the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy and the Rice University Religion and Public Life Program are sponsoring a special symposium on the influence of religion in the 2012 elections on Wednesday, January 25, in Houston. That evening the TFN Education Fund is sponsoring a presentation by Pulitzer-winning columnist and book author Leonard Pitts on the same topic at Congregation Emanu El across from the Rice campus. Click here for more information. Attendance at the symposium is free, but registration is required. Tickets to the Pitts presentation are $20.
Today Texas Gov. Rick Perry ended his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination and threw his support behind former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia. Perry’s withdrawal from the race wasn’t a big surprise — his support in polls was very low after a series of embarrassing stumbles and gaffes over the past few months.
On the other hand, Perry’s endorsement of Gingrich is at least a little surprising. The Texas governor had aggressively courted conservative evangelical voters throughout a campaign that began just after he hosted a large prayer rally in a Houston football stadium last August. Perry had repeatedly pointed to his positions on social issues, including his desire to “protect” traditional marriage by opposing same-sex unions. But he decided to support thrice-married Gingrich anyway.
Moreover, just before today’s announcement, ABC News released an excerpt of an interview with one of Gingrich’s former wives. She says Gingrich had asked her for an open marriage so that he could continue an affair with the woman who would become his third (and current) wife.
From the ABC News interview (video available at the link):
In her most provocative comments, the ex-Mrs. Gingrich said Newt sought an “open marriage” arrangement so he could have a mistress and a wife.
She said when Gingrich admitted to a six-year affair with a Congressional aide, he asked her if she would share him with the other woman, Callista, who is now married to Gingrich.
“And I just stared at him and he said, ‘Callista doesn’t care what I do,’” Marianne Gingrich told ABC News. “He wanted an open marriage and I refused.”
We don’t expect Gov. Perry to police Newt Gingrich’s marital bedroom, of course. In fact, we’d prefer that politicians focus on their own families instead of interfering in the personal lives of other folks. But we do wonder whether Gov. Perry thinks adultery and open marriages are as threatening to “traditional marriage” as a same-sex couple living in a legally recognized, loving and committed relationship allegedly is. Isn’t that a fair question now?
“There is an absolute historical pattern to the bigotry of social conservatives. They rally using terms of moral Armageddon against the freedoms sought by some despised or condescended to Other, whether that be a woman wanting to work outside the home, a Jew seeking to join the country club, an African American trying to get home on a city bus. Then the freedoms are won, and people — even socially conservative ones — realize the world kept spinning after all. Armageddon did not come. Only change.”
That’s from a recent column by Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Leonard Pitts. The Texas Freedom Network Education Fund is hosting an evening presentation by Pitts next week — 7 p.m., Wednesday, January 25, at Congregation Emanu El in Houston. Earlier that day Pitts will speak at a symposium on “Religion in the 2012 Elections,” which the TFN Education Fund is co-sponsoring with the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy and the Rice University Religion and Public Life Program. The symposium is 1-4:30 p.m. at James A. Baker III Hall on the Rice campus.
We have a fantastic line-up of public opinion experts and commentators for the symposium. And Pitts is one of the most engaging writers in America today. Click here for more information and to register for the symposium or purchase tickets ($20) for the Pitts presentation.
It’s a cold and stunning effort to use the Nazis’ systematic murder of millions of Jews before and during World War II to promote a political agenda today. We just saw a press release in which a Texas-based right-wing litigation group peddles the argument that the Holocaust, abortion and evolution are all connected. Check out this excerpt from the press release from The Justice Foundation in San Antonio and other anti-abortion groups:
Millions of innocent unborn children have died and women have been hurt throughout the world through abortion. Millions of men, woman and children died in the Holocaust. Is there a connection between these evils and evolution? … We will examine today the pictures, the stories, the evidence, and the horrors in the concentration camps and abortion clinics.
The release goes on to announce a Friday press conference in the nation’s capital to promote a DVD about “the relationship between Evolution — Auschwitz — Abortion.”
David Barton, head of the Texas-based, far-right revisionist organization WallBuilders, has been suggesting that Thomas Jefferson — one of the least religiously orthodox of American presidents — was really an evangelical Christian. Writer Craig Fehrman, however, squashes that tall tale in a Los Angeles Times op-ed about the “Jefferson Bible.” Fehrman writes that there were two such Bibles, both radical in their own ways. From the op-ed:
Today, the facts about “The Jefferson Bible” might seem like an impossible obstacle to anyone who wants to fashion Jefferson as a hero for right-leaning Christians — and America as a “Christian nation.” Instead, the book has been distorted to fit the religious right’s agenda.
There’s no better example of this than David Barton, an amateur historian who’s become quite popular with Perry, Santorum and Michele Bachmann. Barton loves archival flourishes — his Texas offices include a concrete vault filled with 18th century arcana — but his true concerns lie in the present. Though Barton admits that “The Jefferson Bible” often comes up as proof that its namesake wasn’t the evangelical Christian conservatives want him to be, he also says he can refute this. In a TV appearance in 2010, Barton fixated on Jefferson’s “Indians” title page, mixed in some unrelated material about Jefferson’s Indian policy, then pivoted to an outrageous fabrication: “He then gave it to a missionary,” Barton said of Jefferson and his Bible, “and he said, ‘Here, if you get this printed, and you use this as you evangelize the Indians.’”
There’s absolutely no evidence of Jefferson giving either version of his Bible to anyone other than his bookbinder. Perhaps it’s no surprise that last year, in Iowa, Newt Gingrich said, “I never listen to David Barton without learning a whole lot of new things.” That’s because Barton loves to cherry-pick a phrase and manipulate it support his side in a partisan, present-day debate.
Read the whole Fehrman piece here. We’ll also tell you that a new book about Jefferson by Barton and Glenn Beck (!) is due out in April. The title is The Jefferson Lies: Exposing the Myths You’ve Always Believed About Thomas Jefferson. No, we’re not making this up.
The far-right hate group American Family Association and other well-known religious right organizations and leaders put together Rick Perry’s big prayer rally in Houston last August. But Perry’s presidential campaign is sinking fast, and Sarah Posner writes in Religion Dispatches that follow-up “The Response” events in Republican presidential primary states are being promoted by somewhat lesser-known groups like the International House of Prayer and its affiliated local churches. Today’s “The Response” event in South Carolina, for example, is being promoted by small churches like the Forerunner House of Prayer (FHOP) in Easley, South Carolina, and the the Greenville House of Prayer.
These IHOP churches attract followers who believe, among other things, that the end times are near. Writes Posner:
These self-anointed “intercessors,” or “end-times warriors,” see themselves as modern-day apostles and prophets, purifying the kingdom, “transforming” cities, regions, and the country through a new Great Awakening, preparing the world for Christ’s return.
Posner explores the theological divide between these “end-time warriors” and the old guard of the religious right:
(T)he national elites had pressed for and endorsed The Response. At last summer’s event, Focus on the Family founder James Dobson called it “the highlight of my life” and praised the “next generation” of evangelicals. The old guard of the religious right isn’t blind to new religious movements in its midst, even the 24/7 prayer movement [FHOP founder] Tallulah Dalton has been swept into. Some conservatives actually consider it heretical, or unbiblical—suggesting that these self-anointed apostles and prophets are the “false prophets” the Bible warns of. (One of these critics, the blogger/activist Marsha West, says The Response participants associated with the New Apostolic Reformation are not Christians, but rather “counterfeits.”)
One News Now, the propaganda arm of the far-right group American Family Association, has an article about a poll portrayed as showing that Americans “fear” President Obama’s re-election this year:
According to the new poll from Washington Whispers, a feature in the U.S. News & World Report since 1933, when asked “what news event [Americans] feared the most in 2012,” they responded — by a 2-to-1 margin — “President Obama’s re-election.” While only 16 percent said they fear Obama will not win a second term, 33 percent said they fear four more years.
Then the article quotes right-wing blogger Les Rayburn:
“Most Americans are terrified. President Obama … he’s made it very clear that he’s out to destroy the United States.”
So 33 percent somehow represents “most Americans”? In addition, we suspect that not all of that 33 percent see President Obama’s re-election in such apocalyptic terms. On the other hand, it’s certainly possible given that the propaganda from the far right in recent years has been increasingly extreme and irresponsibly apocalyptic.
We’ll also note that the American Family Association is a hate group that organized a prayer rally for Texas Gov. Rick Perry in Houston the week before Perry announced his run for the presidency last August.
