Americans United lawsuit sought to block taxpayer money from being used by faith-based organizations to promote marriage
After suffering several legal defeats regarding its faith-based initiative, the Bush administration finally came up a winner. Last week, a federal court dismissed a lawsuit against the Northwest Marriage Institute, a conservative Christian faith-based social service provider, and Institute for Youth Development, a nonprofit agency that partnered with the Department of Health and Human Services to provide federal grant funding to Northwest Marriage. The decision by Judge Franklin D. Burgess pointed out that "[I]t has never been held that religious institutions are disabled by the First Amendment from participating in publicly sponsored social welfare programs."
"We are grateful that the court strongly affirmed what the U.S. Supreme Court has said many times," said Steven H. Aden, chief litigation counsel for the conservative legal outfit, the Center for Law & Religious Freedom. "Faith-based organizations are not required to abandon their religious mission and viewpoint when they cooperate with the government to address pressing social problems."
Are Conservative Christian Evangelicals Gearing Up to Join the the Attack-Iran Brigades?
As the launching of the Iraq War commemorates its fourth anniversary it is worth remembering that during the lead up to the invasion a number of conservative evangelicals voiced their support for the war: Richard Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission for the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation's largest Protestant denomination, maintained that Bush's action met criteria for a just war; the National Association of Evangelicals, which represents several dozen denominations encompassing more than 30 million American evangelical Christians, openly supported the war; Mike Evans, who heads the aggressively pro-Israeli Jerusalem Prayer Team, pointed out that war with Iraq could be a "dress rehearsal for Armageddon," the fulfillment of Biblical Prophecy.
These days, while the Bush Administration and beltway neoconservatives doggedly crank up the volume against Iran, they are again being joined by several notable conservative Christian evangelical leaders.
Ousted Republican Senator will head up a new program called "America's Enemies"
In one of those "how can you miss them if they don't go away" stories, Senator Rick Santorum's resounding defeat in November's election has not sent him scurrying back home to Pennsylvania; Instead, Santorum will be staying in the nation's capital to head up a new program at the Ethics and Public Policy Center called "America's Enemies."
Set up some 30 years ago "to apply moral principles derived from Christianity and Judaism to public policy issues," the Center "is strongly, but not exclusively, associated with conservative Catholic intellectuals," the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has pointed out.
Not nearly as star-studded, headline-grabbing, or politically potent as the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute or the Family Research Council, nevertheless, The Ethics and Public Policy Center has carved out its own special niche amongst the beltway's right wing think tanks and lobbying groups.
Russian newspaper Kommersant reports on a church conference, under the headline "Christians Do Not Believe in Human Rights":
Meeting of Christian leaders of CIS and Baltic countries ended in Moscow yesterday. One of the chief issues on the agenda was the initiative of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) to reconsider the concept of human rights existing in secular world.
..."We are for changing the existing human rights, up to reconsidering the International Human Rights Declaration," said Pastor Konstantin Benas, executive secretary of the United Russian Union of Gospel Faith Christians. "For there cannot be universal human rights," he added.
Instead, human rights should mean: (1) the right of religious groups not to be offended, and (2) no gays.
This past Thursday, Feb. 15, a pair of culture-warring lawyers from the conservative Southern California law firm, Ackerman, Cowles & Lindsley, began arguing a case before the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on behalf of two Christian women employed by the City of Oakland, Regina Rederford and Robin Christy, claiming that, if a current decision against these women is not overturned, "the phrase `natural family, marriage and family values' -- words that implicate the sincerely held religious beliefs of millions of Americans - [will be legally ruled] as "hate-speech." Plaintiffs Rederford and Christy are appealing a 2005 ruling in a District Court on a case that began in 2003, when the plaintiffs sued the City of Oakland on the grounds that its anti-discrimination policy "`promotes homosexuality' and `openly denounces Christian values.'"
At work in the bureaucracy of the City of Oakland, Rederford and Christy were offended to see the office's email system and bulletin board utilized by GLBT groups promoting a newly-formed gay and lesbian employee association. In response, the plaintiffs formed a club of their own, the "Good News Employee Association," which was to be "a forum for people of Faith to express their views on contemporary issues of the day. With respect for The Natural Family, Marriage and Family Values." The title of their bulletin, pinned up next to the GLBT group announcement, was "Preserve Our Workplace with Integrity." In his opening statements (statements apparently undelivered, as the judges in the case took issue with the law firm's presentation of the facts in the case) of one of the attorneys, Scott Lively wondered what could be contentious about language like "the natural family."
Kingmaker? Not any longer. Cable news attraction? Not so much. Still a political force to be reckoned with? You bet.
Given his questionable health, and his desire to devote his time, energy and fundraising abilities to building his legacy, the 2008 presidential campaign may be the last hurrah for the Reverend Jerry Falwell. "I think we got the social and moral issues on the front burner. But while we have made progress ... we have not won any of the battles yet," Falwell, the founder of the Moral Majority, recently told Reuters in an interview.
"We are at least one U.S. Supreme Court Justice short of a socially conservative court," Falwell pointed out. The Reverend, who successfully used his multi-layered platform as a Baptist preacher, televangelist, University chancellor, and regular guest on cable television's news networks to promote the religious right, revived the Moral Majority Coalition not too long ago.
"Because of his prominence, Falwell still carries some weight among religious conservatives but he doesn't have the organizational power that he once had," John Green, a political scientist at the University of Akron, told Reuters.
These days, Falwell is building his legacy at the campus of Liberty University.
Debt, lawsuits, president-elect's resignation threaten Pat Robertson's former juggernaut
It is no secret that the Christian Coalition has been on a downward spiral for quite some time. Last week, the organization founded by the Reverend Pat Robertson, headed by the once-upon-a-time-boy-wonder Ralph Reed, and considered the most powerful conservative Christian lobbying and grassroots group in the country, may have hit rock bottom when it got in on the so-called airplane scandal surrounding Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.
When government employees, whether school teachers, mayors or presidents abuse their positions of authority to impose their religious views on others; allow a culture of intolerance and bigotry to fester; and fail to protect the rights of others to believe as they will -- they are failing, arguably betraying, a central ethos of American culture -- respect for the beliefs of others and their right to believe as they will. But some opinion leaders seem to be falling under the sway of the religious right in their refusal to acknowledge abuses of power by government employees; abuses that are violative of the establishment clause of the first amendment, and in their trampling on the rights of individuals, the free exercise clause as well.
The Republican congressman from Colorado will try to woo GOP voters with anti-immigration rhetoric and a boatload of Christian right politics
These days, probably the most recognizable name in anti-immigration politics is Colorado Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo. Over the past year, Tancredo has gone from a little known congressman to a highly visible anti-immigration spokesperson. "Tancredo has thoroughly enmeshed himself in the anti-immigration movement and with the help of CNN talk show host Lou Dobbs, he has been given a national megaphone," Devin Burghart, the program director of the Building Democracy Initiative at the Center for New Community, a Chicago-based civil rights group, told Media Transparency.
Now, Tancredo (http://www.teamtancredo.org/), who has represented the state's Sixth District since 1999, has joined the long list of candidates contending for the GOP's 2008 presidential nomination. In mid-January, Tancredo announced the formation of an exploratory committee - Tom Tancredo for a Secure America -- the first step to formally declaring his candidacy. While his announcement didn't cause quite the stir as the announcement by Illinois Democratic Senator Barak Obama that he too was forming an exploratory committee, nevertheless Tancredo did not go completely unnoticed.
While voters' concerns over the war in Iraq and the GOP's "culture of corruption" predominated in Election 2006, Tancredo will be doing his best to make immigration an issue for the presidential campaign of 2008.
[ click on button for CNN report on the video ] "My first priority is my faith in God, then my family, then my country..." : Pentagon allows "Christian Embassy" group to film infommercial on it's organizing activities within the Pentagon : The Campus Crusade For Christ attempts to remove copies of the scandalous video from the internet. Here's a still surviving copy. Meanwhile, amidst a growing scandal the "Left Behind Games" company is trying to sell as many copies as possible - before Christmas - of its religious warfare video game marketed to teens and young adults.
UPDATE : Jews On First has been covering this scandal in depth and the original Christian Embassy video can be seen at that website here
The strange alliance between the US Christian Right and the Unification Church has been assiduously documented by a number of journalists - particularly, of course, John Gorenfeld. However, Rev Moon not the only controversial Korean figure who has been embraced by some Christian conservatives in the USA: several months ago, the Family Research Council's David Prentice travelled to the Philippines to a take part in a conference organised by the ministry of Jaerock Lee, a neo-Pentecostal faith-healer with some very eccentric beliefs. In 1999 Lee allegedly directed a mob of followers to invade a Korean television station just before a critical documentary was due to be aired.
(AP) LOS ANGELES The Marine Reserves' Toys for Tots program has decided to accept a donation of Bible-quoting Jesus dolls, reversing course after saying earlier this week that it couldn't take them.
"The talking Jesus doll issue has been resolved," the organization announced on its Web site Wednesday. "Toys for Tots has found appropriate places for these items. We have notified the donor of our willingness to handle this transaction."
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