Coalition of religious leaders urges Bill O'Reilly and other Christmas Warriors to consider a cease fire
Over the past few years, the "War on Christmas" -- a shared project of the Religious Right and the Fox News Channel - has become as much a part of the holiday season as the showing of Frank Capra's "It's a Wonderful Life" and Charles Schulz`s "A Charlie Brown Christmas" on television every year.
Now, after a few years of sitting on the sidelines while an assortment of conservative Christian leaders and Fox's talking heads grinched and groaned about a so-called "War on Christmas," some Christian leaders have decided to fight back - and they're doing it with an interesting twist; placing the emphasis on peace and charity this holiday season.
Today, according to a press release issued yesterday by Faith in Public Life, a group of religious leaders are placing advertisements in the Washington Times and the New York Post "challenging Bill O'Reilly of Fox News and others who have lashed out against a so-called secular `War on Christmas' to join them in a new campaign that restores a focus on the common good during this holy season."
Two rejected Republican politicians form new "grassroots" organization aiming to challenge Democrats and regain control of Congress
When he was not out bashing the leadership of the Republican Party, expressing a desire to "bitch-slap" New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, attending David Horowitz's annual Restoration Weekend, promoting his book "No Retreat, No Surrender," or claiming he no longer is interested in holding public office, Tom DeLay made time to meet up with Ken Blackwell and found a new "grassroots" organization aimed at retaking congress in next year's elections.
The disgraced former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) who is waiting to stand trial on a number of charges, and former Ohio Secretary of State Kennneth Blackwell who is currently a Senior Fellow for Family Empowerment at the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C., a contributing writer for Townhall.com and is the Ronald Reagan Distinguished Fellow for Public Policy at Ohio's Buckeye Institute, have launched The Coalition for a Conservative Majority (CCM).
[image, right: iconography of American Christian nationalism. The image is printed on a T-shirt I bought last May, Memorial Day weekend, at the Stone Mt. memorial park near Atlanta, GA.]
Did General David Petraeus, commander of US forces in Iraq, know just who he was endorsing ? And, does Petraeus endorse the Christian nationalist T-shirts, with crosses superimposed over US flags, that musician-evangelist Eric Horner peddles at his concerts on US military bases Horner says are sometimes mandatory for US troops and which, although ostensibly "patriotic", allow Horner to push his particular form of Christian fundamentalism on US military personnel whom Horner says are sometimes forced to attend ? Is Petraeus endorsing religious coercion, Christian nationalism, and basic disregard for the principle of religious liberty and even the Department of Defense's own regulations regarding religion in the military ?
Pat Robertson's endorsement of Rudy Giuliani sends shock waves through religious right
Not long after Saddam Hussein was captured in 2003, Rudy Giuliani and Pat Robertson shared a flight back from Israel.
"We had a lot of time coming back from Israel to talk about our understanding of how important Israel is to the United States, how important they are in this whole vast effort that we're involved in this terrorist war against us," Giuliani recently told Radio Iowa. "We realized that we agreed on far many more things than we disagreed on."
In a two-week span that saw several conservative Christian evangelical leaders finally climb down off the fence and begin spreading their endorsements across the field of Republican Party presidential candidates, it was the unexpected endorsement by one of Christian conservatism's longtime leaders that garnered the most media attention.
When Pat Robertson, the founder and chairman of the Christian Broadcasting Network and the man who created and helped make the Christian Coalition a political powerhouse in the Republican Party of the 1990s, recently endorsed former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, he accomplished at least two things: He enhanced Giuliani's standing amongst those evangelicals still paying attention to Robertson -- his CBN "700 Club" draws millions of nightly viewers -- and he injected himself back into the political spotlight.
Derek Davis ,a past leader in church/state matters at Baylor University and legal expert, introduced me to the concept of the problem of "institutional violations." That is, it is one thing for an indivudaul, minister for example, to engage in secular politics, it is quite another for the institutions to do it. I have a personal right to vote, even plan and organize for politicans, but to drag the church into such activity violates the concept of separation guaranteed by The Constitution. As I mentioned here, individual ministers have become engaged, using their official title to engage in secular politics. I wish now to deal with institutional violations.
The idea of a minister endorsing a political candidate for office was a rare commodity in the last generation. More and more the influx of secular political activity has gained entrance into the church. It has brought more pressure on some pastors to endorse candidates. A famous mega church pastor in the North drew the wrath of several in his congregation for not following Religious Right protocol regarding promoting these causes. His story is that hundreds of families left the church over his refusal to go along with them. Most congregations still look with concern at a minister taking his position as a pastor to use it to promote a candidate. I know of some ministers who refuse to even endorse another minister for fear of its reflection on them. Linking up with a secular political candidate might bring embarrassment as it did with Billy Graham's friendship with Nixon.
In the mid nineties the Houston Post published an article from me on the Southern Baptist Convention and the Republican Party. I updated the article and it can be found at www.livingston.net/wilkyjr/link9.htm I wanted to publish an update of recent happenings. The participation of the SBC has been ratcheted up since my earlier investigation.
Named nation's 'greediest executive' by Fortune magazine in 1999 and recently identified by Beliefnet as the tenth most powerful Christian in Hollywood, Anschutz is bringing faith-based movies to the nation's cineplexes
He's a Denver, Colorado-based billionaire whose net worth was recently tabbed by Forbes magazine at $7.6 billion; his corporate holdings include the nation's largest movie theater chain, Regal Entertainment, some of the world's most prominent sports and entertainment venues, and a stack of professional sports teams including the National Hockey League's Los Angeles Kings and several soccer teams including the Los Angeles Galaxy. He heads Clarity Media Group, which owns the Examiner chain of free conservative-leaning newspapers.
The native-born Kansan made his first fortune in the oil business before moving into railroads and then telecommunications. In 2005, Waldon Media, his Hollywood production company -- in partnership with Walt Disney Pictures -- released "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," a $200 million dollar film adapted from C.S. Lewis' children's book of the same title. "The Chronicles" has earned more than $700 million worldwide.
The vast majority of Americans have never heard of him -- which is just the way he prefers it.
As a newly released Military Religious Freedom Foundation report describes, an extensive and well funded effort has targeted the US military for religious (read: ideological) conversion. Meet the leader of one of the organizations in the forefront of that effort:
Jerry Farwell's board member and best ally Bailey Smith, once defended his friend in a letter to the editor to Christianity Today. Smith, the controversial fundamentalist Southern Baptist President wrote in response to the magazine's article about the life of Falwell. To the critics Smith replied that they were like a "Chihuahua barking at a locomotive."1 Bailey viewed his hero as a stellar mountain whose critics could not even build a chicken coop. Falwell would bill himself to audiences I was in in similar fashion. He saw himself as simultaneously persecuted while he had the muscle to be a bully. Jerry told us he raised over $12 million a year and surrounded himself with powerful attorneys so that no one could touch him. It might be interesting to see what kind of information was on board that locomotive.
Over the past two decades, Catholic voters -- once consistent supporters of the Democratic Party -- have been heavily courted by the Republican Party.
In the 2004 presidential election, Republican organizers, together with a cadre of high-profile neoconservative Catholics, focused on winning Catholic votes by forging an alliance with conservative evangelical Christians based on two hot-button "culture war" issues: abortion and same-sex marriage.
In that year's presidential election, President George W. Bush received 52 percent of the Catholic vote, up from 47 percent in 2000, to John Kerry's 47 percent.
Two years later, however, Catholics, who compose a 67 million-person slice of the U.S. population, favored Democrats by 55 percent to 45 percent, according to National Election Pool exit polls. The Religion News Service reported that Catholic voting patterns varied by state, but the overall shift significantly helped Democrats in such big states as Pennsylvania and Ohio.
Are Catholic voters heading home for the long term?
Is the Christian Right's threat to consider supporting a third party candidate smoke and mirrors?
Despite its oft-written obituary -- particularly in the mainstream press -- the Christian right wing in the United States is alive and ... uh, alive.
It continues to be the most significant sector within the Republican Party; it still brings in large sums of money for its various religious and political enterprises; and it still has a well-oiled infrastruture to go along with high-profile well-connected leaders.
Over the past few years, however, the Christian right has suffered more than its fair share of setbacks including the demise of Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition; the deaths of movement leaders, the Rev. Jerry Falwell and D. James Kennedy; Pastor Ted Haggard's sex and drugs scanda; Ralph Reed's connection to the jailed Republican super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff; and a roster of front-running Republican presidential candidates who are less than desirable to so-called values voters.
Now, Dr. James Dobson is threatening to leave the party.
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[image, right: iconography of American 