Is Cory Booker's church fair game for discussion in an election?  When the senior pastor endorses Booker in a video released by his senate campaign, I would say yes.  David Jefferson, Jr., senior pastor of Metropolitan Baptist Church in Newark, endorsed Cory Booker's candidacy in a video released by his senate campaign in early August as part of the "Voices for Cory" series.  The evangelistic outreach pastor at Metropolitan Baptist is Apostle Bernard Wilks, who has led and organized municipal events, and is head of Transformation Newark. Wilks has called for the return of the city  to Puritan Newark's guidelines allowing only "Christian believers" to vote or hold leadership roles in the city. The significance of this is not just it's shock value, but in understanding the symbiosis of the school privatization and extreme "free marketers" funding Booker, and the Religious Right leaders who redirect the frustration and anger of those most impacted by our current economic structure. For more on the role of Wilks' Transformation Newark see a previous article. Video after break.

When Rick Perry's presidential campaign imploded, the public quickly lost interest in the unfamiliar and exotic modern-day apostles behind his Houston pre-campaign kickoff prayer rally.  But the apostles relentless efforts continue, including in the city they now claim as a model for their efforts - Cory Booker's Newark - and into the Democratic Party. The warning signs have been all but ignored by Democrats who view the election of Obama as evidence that the Right has no way to appeal to African American and Latino communities.

In the early days of Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition, Ralph Reed advocated stealth Christian Right candidates run in GOP primaries against moderates for offices at all levels, and to also conceal their true agenda in general elections against Democrats.

The creeping religious rightism in the Democratic Party has taken many forms over the years, and the list is long. But we need look no farther than the pandering to and promotion of false moderates like Rick Warren and Samuel Rodriguez, and the adoption by some of the ideas and even the phrasings of the Religious Right on such things as "secularism" and "abortion reduction") to get a sense that there is an underlying trend to which these are more the rule than the exceptions.  In the past few years, we have also seen stealth Religious Right candidates in the Democratic Party, for example in Hawaii and Jacksonville, Florida. Most recently, stealth Christian Rightist Max Myers is currently running as a progressive for the Democratic nomination for governor of Pennsylvania.

Now veteran journalist Susie Madrack, writing at Crooks & Liars has an important discussion of the rightwing involvements -- including the Religious Right -- of Newark mayor and leading contender for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate from New Jersey, Cory Booker.  Excerpts below.

Exactly one year ago today, on August 9, 2012, Christian publisher Thomas Nelson took the virtually unprecedented action of pulling one of its books from publication due to the book's many inaccuracies. That book, of course, was David Barton's The Jefferson Lies.

There were several factors that presumably contributed to Thomas Nelson's decision to take the drastic action of pulling Barton's book from the shelves. One of these factors was that the criticism of The Jefferson Lies was coming from a different source than the usual Barton critics. Shortly after the book was released, Warren Throckmorton and Michael Coulter, both professors at a Christian college, published a rebuttal of Barton's book titled Getting Jefferson Right. Throckmorton and Coulter's book contained little new material, with most of the lies it debunked having previously been debunked by both myself and others, but there was one big difference. Throckmorton and Coulter are evangelical Christians. So is John Fea, an associate professor of history and department chair at Messiah College, who also heavily criticized Barton's book. The criticism coming from Christian as well as secularist writers made it difficult for anyone to use the usual excuse that Barton's critics are just a bunch of anti-Christian secularists trying to obliterate the "truth" about America's Christian history.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, accused in the Boston Marathon bombings, collected publications from the extreme right in the United States, reports the BBC. Such writings contain conspiracy theories linking the U.S. government and Israeli agents in global plots for world domination that include suppressing Islam.

According to Alan Cullison of the Wall Street Journal, Tamerlan had a subscription to the American Free Press. An anti-Semitic stew of conspiracy allegations is a main feature of the American Free Press newspaper and other similar publications. Reporters for the American Free Press have worked in a loose coalition of other conspiracy theorists and anti-Semites organized globally in the Voltaire Network.

In light of the claims emanating from from Washington, DC that there is a Religious Left rising and may overcome the Religious Right, I am reminded that it was not so long ago that religious progressives were being told to shut-up about matters of sexual justice. I wrote the post below in 2009 and am reprising it today because it is remarkable how things change. In the previous few years a faux Religious Left had been manufactured Inside the Beltway. The product didn't sell well -- and here we are. But those of us who thought that an authentic Religious Left might be a good thing, published a book of essays about what it might be like and how to get there. The book was deliberately inclusive. No one would be left behind -- not women seeking reproductive justice. Not LGTBQ people seeking marriage equality. Not those of us, both religious and non-religious, who support the values of religious pluralism and separation of church and state. Dispatches from the Religious Left: The Future of Faith and Politics in America provided a platform to discuss these things. This led to some interesting debate. It could be that Dispatches was a little too far ahead of the curve, and that the time for this book is now.-- FC

Over the past few years, my Talk to Action colleagues and I have written a great deal about the way that various Washington insiders, among others, have adopted many of the ideas, framing and even the phrasings of the Religious Right. We also confronted such consultantocratic notions that we should not talk about such historic progressive and Democratic Party interests as reproductive rights, LGTB civil rights and separation of church and state so that they could make alliances with alleged moderate evangelicals and Catholics -- some of whom turned out to be not very moderate at all.  The culture war was over, or about to be, or oughtta be, so it was claimed.

But many of us knew better.

Catholic Right activist Thomas E. Woods, Jr., was upset when I described him as a neo-Confederate. But his ongoing involvement with neo-Confederate organizations as well as the ideas expressed in his writing earned him that descriptor. It is one which will undoubtedly be fairly applied until such time as he publicly disassociates himself from neo-Confederate groups and publicly changes his mind about the value of neo-Confederate ideas.

This post is the second of three brief replies to Woods's critique of my series. In this piece I will focus on how he avoids responsibility for his own views.

Starting tomorrow, same-sex couples in Rhode Island will be able to legally marry - despite the best efforts of a local Religious Right activist to stop them.

The Rhode Island legislature approved marriage equality earlier this year, and Gov. Lincoln Chafee signed the measure into law. At the time, Chafee invoked the spirit of the state's founder, iconic religious liberty pioneer Roger Williams.

There is big news from across the pond regarding Nessie the Loch Ness monster. Accelerated Christian Education (ACE), a publisher of Christian school and home school materials is dropping their science text book's claim that Nessie is real.    

The ACE curriculum among  others, became the focus of controversy in recent years when Louisiana for the first time allowed public funding for vouchers and charters for religious private schools. The inevitable controversy regarding separation of church and state led to a closer examination of the materials that would be purchased with public funds.  ACE's claim that the existence of Nessie the Loch Ness monster helped to disprove the theory of evolution was widely ridiculed. The Scottish newspaper The Herald reports that the new edition of the ACE science text drops the claim.

But curiously, the paper also reports:  "The updated book is only available to creationist-taught pupils in Europe, but campaigners say America is likely to follow suit."

"Likely"?  

Sponsored by Fairvew Baptist Church of Lufkin, the civic center of the east Texas town will hold a three day rally for American Revival.  The town is often a host for Scarborough rallies featuring Tom Delay, David Barton and other who's who of the far right in American politics.  This time a local church claims responsibility for the weekend.

Its the dog days of summer and almost nobody has the time or interest in reading some long essay on the Internet -- even if it runs against the grain of the Conventional Wisdom. (Maybe especially if it runs against the grain of the Conventional Wisdom.) Its too hot, or too raining, or people are too on vacation or too something to get into something like that.  

Anyway, having recently published one of those in The Public Eye, I am grateful that the dog days have not deterred Bill Berkowitz, Rob Boston, Scott Isebrand, Bill Lindsey and Paul Rosenberg from enhancing our summer reading with some thoughtful responses.  

As the old saying goes, politics makes strange bedfellows, and one of the big political issues currently making these strange bedfellows is the issue of gays in the military. We now have the right-wing Catholics joining forces with some of the most anti-Catholic Protestants in the country. This 'strange bedfellows' alliance has become tantamount to a nineteenth century Catholic champion like Bishop John Hughes joining forces with the anti-Catholic nativist party!

I, and others, have previously written about what's going on here, so, before diving into the latest chapter, here's a quick synopsis for those who haven't been following this escalating story: