Coming soon from Oxygen, the network that brings you "Bad Girls Club," "My Shopping Addiction," "Jersey Couture," and "Dance Your A** Off," is "Preachers of L.A.," and it might be the hottest new reality show to air this fall. Judging from the trailer, the show could just as well have been called "Preachers Driving Big Cars & Living in Big Houses," or "Pimped-out Preachers of La La Land."

"Preachers of L.A." is generating a huge amount of buzz. Since the program was announced, the Oxygen trailer has been viewed more than 475,000 times, its Facebook page has over 27,000 likes, and it has more than 950 Twitter followers, and garnered more than 13 million hits on Google.

It is also causing some in the evangelical community to express grave concerns about the show.

Way back in the 1630s, the leaders of Puritan Massachusetts got the bright idea that every adult in the colony should be required to swear a loyalty oath to the governor that ended with the phrase "So help me God."

The iconoclastic Puritan preacher Roger Williams was not impressed.

There's a new right-wing super group in Washington, D.C. and it aims to out conservative any other conservative group currently operational.

Meet Groundswell, a newly organized conservative effort aimed at combating progressives, the Obama administration, Congressional RINOs (Republicans in Name Only), and the evil machinations of Karl Rove.

As David Corn recently reported in Mother Jones, its participants have "been meeting privately since early this year to concoct talking points, coordinate messaging, and hatch plans for 'a 30 front war seeking to fundamentally transform the nation.'"

What might separate Groundswell from other long-term like-minded entities is its apparent commitment to action. A key to the group's success will be how quickly, broadly and effectively it will be able to craft and dispenses an assortment of messages.

Over the past few decades, there have been numerous attempts by both Religious Right leaders and Republican Party officials to woo Catholic officials and Catholic voters. These days, while the GOP is still paying attention to winning Catholic votes, the Religious Right is spending more time focusing on forging alliances with high-powered Catholic Church officials.

In a new essay, veteran journalist Frederick Clarkson pointed out that, "Evangelicals and Roman Catholics have found common ground -- and the motivation to set aside centuries of sectarian conflict -- by focusing on these issues while claiming that their 'religious liberty' is about to be crushed. The movement is mobilizing its resources, forging new alliances, and girding itself to engage its enemies. It is also giving fair warning about its intentions. It may lose the long-term war, but whatever happens, one thing is certain: It won't go down without a fight."

As many of the pre-Reagan era Religious Right leaders retire and/or die off, beware of the new breed. Lou Engle is one of the new breed. Although Engle has been kicking around for more than a decade, it is only in the past few years that he and the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), the charismatic evangelical political and religious movement that he has come to personify, has made such a splash that it threatens to drown out the more traditional voices of the Christian Right.

In 2000, when the U.S. Supreme Court decided that George W. Bush would be president, Lou Engle saw it as the answer to his prayers. A few months before the election, Engle had held an all-day prayer event in Washington, D.C., that drew approximately 400,000.

Although Engle's prayer rally wasn't as magnetic or media buzz-worthy as when the Promise Keepers drew nearly one million to the nation's capital three years earlier, it could be seen as Engle's coming out party.

Over the past four-plus decades, it has become the largest Christian Evangelical University in the world. Despite its founder's life-long anti-government activism, it receives several hundred million dollars annually in federal financial aid money. It has also been involved in a number of political controversies over the years.

Since its founding in 1971, the Reverend Jerry Falwell's, Liberty University has weathered several serious financial storms: It was bailed out of near-financial collapse by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, who funneled lifeline funds to a non-profit Forest, Va.-based organization called Christian Heritage Foundation; and, Falwell's unexpected death in 2007, provided an insurance windfall that allowed the university to wiggle its way out of yet another financial headlock.

Now a new line of business is helping to grow and stabilize Liberty University. David Swanson's investigative reporting, posted on the Huntington News website, has revealed that Liberty has become one of the foremost national training grounds of "pilots who go up in planes and drone pilots who sit behind desks wearing pilot suits."

So, have you heard the one about how the military is preparing to court-martial anyone who dares to say "God bless you" if someone sneezes?

OK, I'm being facetious. The stories being told about the Armed Forces by the Religious Right aren't that strange - yet. But they are getting there.

While Jay-Z & Beyonce's recent trip to Cuba to celebrate the couple's fifth anniversary stirred up significant controversy, a new song by a Christian rapper, relatively unknown to the general public, is ruffling feathers in the conservative Christian evangelical community, especially amongst a gaggle of religious gurus known as "Prosperity Preachers."

Christian rapper Shai Linne, according to Charisma News, "recently released a song [which peaked at #7 on iTunes' Hip Hop/Rap charts] calling out prosperity gospel teachers by name."

The 12 pastors named are -- Joel Osteen, Joyce Meyer, T.D. Jakes, Benny Hinn, Creflo Dollar, Paula White, Fred Price, Kenneth Copland, Robert Tilton, Eddie Long, Juanita Bynum and Paul Crouch - and each name is followed by the song's refrain, "is a false teacher!"

Reports of the Decline of the Religious Right are Premature

Rocking and reeling from November's election debacle, the Republican Party has been desperately trying to find its footing. A major goal - as stated in its post-election Growth and Opportunity Project report - has Party leadership looking to rebrand and re-market itself to younger people minorities and gays, an almost impossible task considering the power of its conservative Christian base.

Despite its stated desire to reboot, the Republican National Committee came out of its April meet-up in Los Angeles affirming that it can not and will not be embracing change, at least as far as "The Gay" is concerned.

According to ABC News, RNC members "voted unanimously to reaffirm the language in the GOP platform defining marriage `as the union of one man and one woman.' The resolution went further, asking the U.S. Supreme Court to `uphold the sanctity of marriage in its rulings on Proposition 8 and the Federal Defense of Marriage Act.'"

(Thanks to Americans United's Rob Boston for calling attention to the death of David Kuo in an earlier T2A post.)

If you are a regular consumer of conservative blogs, newsletters and other such stuff, you'd be on an unsuccessful Sir Henry M. Stanley-like quest in order to discover that David Kuo has died. (While Stanley found Livingstone, I have yet to see any meaningful reporting about Kuo's passing in the conservative media-sphere.)

On April 5, Kuo died at age 44, after almost ten years of battling a brain tumor. Although he wasn't a household name, Kuo was a major player in the Bush Administration's Faith-Based Initiative who after leaving the administration wrote a book blowing the lid off the administration's faith-based shenanigans.

 

You wouldn't recognize William "Jerry" Boykin if you were sharing a pole with him on the subway or sitting next to him on a bus. While he isn't one of the brightest stars in the conservative Christian right's constellation, he has certainly tried - and in some cases succeeded - to raise his profile. For Boykin, now executive vice president of the Washington, D.C.-based Family Research Council, the path to right wing stardom has revolved around a protracted and vicious anti-Muslim campaign: Shtick that he's been purveying for more than a decade.

Weyrich's vision, Coors' money, Fuelner's leadership, and Reagan's stamp of approval propelled the Heritage Foundation to prominence. Will Jim DeMint's marketing strategy lead to a conservative revival?

For a good part of the past forty years, The Heritage Foundation has been the most influential conservative think tank in the country. Now, with its long-time president Ed Fuelner stepping down and Tea Party favorite former South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint becoming its president, will it continue to prosper?