Mark Sanford, recently elected Congressman from South Carolina, has hit the airwaves with a startling comeback. The former governor of the state, hid in shame after it was discovered the Republican left the nation with government "entertainment" money to have an affair.  He promptly bowed out of the public eye only to resurface this past year to run for office again. The question the nation was asking was whether the "family values" folks in the party would forgive such an openly public scandal.  The answer was a resounding, "yes".

This past week we saw a remarkable example of the whipping-up of outrage over the alleged persecution of Christians.

The story turned out to be bogus.

Christian Right leaders are scrambling to recover.

And its getting ugly.

The Indiana Society of Professional Journalists gave Andy Kopsa its 2012 award for Best Investigative Reporting for a newspaper under 40,000 in circulation.  And it is well deserved.

The judges wrote:

"The writer does a good job of connecting the dots to show the cozy intersection between religion and politics in Indiana. [S]He highlights the lack of accountability and transparency on the state's part, raising legitimate questions about whether public money is being spent properly. This is the kind of watchdog journalism that can make a difference, giving readers useful information to become more engaged in how their tax dollars are being spent."

Her story  Separation Anxiety:  Limited religious mindset takes broad root in Indiana politics appeared in the altnerative weekly, NUVO.

Thomas Woods is an increasingly influential  player on the Catholic Right. In this and a subsequent post, we will consider how his world view is   incompatible with both Catholic Social Justice principles and American history.

Thursday is the National Day of Prayer, and if you want to pray, by all means have at it.

I'll let you in on a little secret: You can pray (or not) as dictated by your very own conscience. You don't need any branch of the government to tell you what to do when it comes to religion.

A book published in 2012 predicted the motive for the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing. Terrorist's Creed, by professor Roger Griffin, explains how revolutionary religious movements construct a motive for terrorism against the United States and the West.

Griffin, a world-renowned expert on totalitarian thought and the connections among political fanaticism, violence, and religion, highlighted Chechnya in his study that explains how young men are radicalized into a zealous form of Islam. Carefully avoiding stereotyping Islam or Muslims around the world, Griffin zeros in on the powerful allure of revolutionary "Islamism" in mapping a course toward terrorism.

It is no small thing that Sally Quinn, doyenne of religion at The Washington Post, seems to have turned around on the problem of dominionism.

In a recent column at The Washington Post, where she is the founder and co-editor of On Faith online, Quinn wrote about the serious problems of divisions in the military, pointing in particular to rape and proselytization. In the case of the latter, she highlights the problem of "dominionism."   If this signals a trend, it is a sea change at the paper, whose featured religion writer Lisa Miller was a noted contributor to the literature of pooh poohery about both the New Apostolic Reformation and dominionism.  

"'Dominionism'", Miller wrote at the time, "is the paranoid mot du jour."  

It is good to see these issues getting fresh traction Inside the Beltway.  Let the debate that Miller et al sought to squelch -- begin now in earnest.  The constellation of issues related to religion in the military has long been reported and discussed on this site.  Noted blogger Ken Bernstein at Daily Kos has taken the conversation forward. I hope others will as well

The Chalcedon Foundation in Valecito, California was founded by R.J Rushdoony in 1965 and continues to this day as a think tank devoted to the development of a school of evangelical Christian thought called Christian Reconstructionism. It is part of a broader modern theocratic movement that many writers and scholars refer to as dominionism, after the notion that a goal of many conservative Christians is to "take dominion" over all aspects of society.

The Chalcedon Foundation conveniently provides its own explanation of the notion of Christian Dominion on its web site. This is significant in part because in a media flap a few years ago some journalists and pundits engaged in a round of smears, denials and distortions in response to reporting on the contemporary politics of dominionism in the Republican Party.  Some professed ignorance, and claimed that dominionism was insignificant if it existed at all. Some questioned the motives of those of us who have written about these things. (Some of us formally responded to the more egregious smears.)

Much media coverage of the worldview and motivation of the suspects in the Boston bombing case--one now dead--was sensational and provocative. Very little of it, however, relied on experts who use contemporary--rather than outdated and discredited social science. Discussions of the possible role of religion were often stilted or stifled. Contemporary sociological theory contends that:

• Most people who join social movements, political movements, or religious movements are not mentally ill or stupid. They have adopted an ideology and constructed an identity that in their view justifies their actions--whether these actions are deemed constructive or destructive by society.
• The vast majority of movement activists never engage in violence.
• There is no correlation linking religious piety with violence.
• The radicalization process itself does not cause violence.
• Dissent, movement activism, and non-violent civil disobedience are part of the democratic process in civil society.

So we asked a variety of respected academics, researchers, and analysts of movements and political violence to craft an answer to this question: "As a person with expertise, what would you tell a reporter who wanted to know what she or he needs to know to craft a better, more informed story about the Boston bombings as details emerge?

Below the fold is a collection of their responses along with additional resources.

Following the death of Howard Phillips on April 20, the New York Times described Phillips as a "pillar of conservative activism," but with no mention of his role in the Religious Right or the Christian Reconstructionist base of the political party Phillips founded.  The Constitution Party, previously the U.S. Taxpayers Party, is described in the New York Times as "based on the founding documents of the nation and the original intent of the founding fathers" with no reference to the party's mission "to restore American jurisprudence to its Biblical foundations."

It's impossible to describe the significance of  Howard Phillips' career without mentioning religion, but mainstream press tried.  Like former Rep. Ron Paul, with whom he worked closely for many years, Phillips was at the nexus of the free market gospel and authoritarian Christianity, using biblical inerrancy as the justification for both social and economic policy. The redefining of libertarianism and "religious liberty" as part of a theocratic agenda, is a driving force behind the radicalization of today's political Right and its "Constitutional Conservatism."

A week before the bombing of the Boston Marathon I was in Colorado explaining how demagogues can use skillful rhetoric to construct a framework that justifies apocalyptic aggression in the name of a higher purpose. Those who join in such a violent campaign to purify the land by targeting the scapegoated enemies are heroes in this storyline. That is what scholars Hannah Arendt and Gordon W. Allport spent decades explaining about the Nazi genocide in chilling detail. That was my topic which I summarized in less than ten minutes in the video here.

The corporate media is locked in a battle between two offensive frames for explaining the Boston Marathon Bombings, both of which treat religion like pathology.

Right-wing frame: Blame Islam, the religion of violence, it's all about a religion of uncivilized tribalists, unleash the FBI, round up all the teenage Muslims in the United States. Pay no attention to all the liberals mewing about civil liberties. Our religion is good; theirs is bad.

Liberal/Centrist Frame: It's not Islam, it is teenage angst, and it's all psychological alienation. Send all the teenagers in the United States to counseling sessions so they join the Peace Corps or the military instead of Jihad or Occupy Wall Street. Religion is a crutch for the damaged.