Religious Right leaders have complained a lot about President Barack Obama since he took office in January of 2009. Among their litany of gripes is that the president doesn't go to church very often. (This, of course, just feeds kooky right-wing conspiracy theories that Obama is secretly a Muslim.)

Well, Obama and his family went to church on Sunday for Easter services. And guess what, the Religious Right still isn't likely to be happy.

Author Nathan Lean has an important essay at Salon.com about the vulgar anti-Muslim words and views of  "New Atheist" figures Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris.  These prominent figures have, Lean reports, drifted off into views that are variously indistinguishable from those of the Christian Right, and even of contemporary neo-Nazis.  

Lean points out for example, that evolutionary biologist and Oxford Don Richard Dawkins has in his anti-Muslim fervor, reveled in ignorance and embraced European far-right leaders. This is not to say, of course, that those who agree with Dawkins and Harris (or anyone else) about some things, necessarily agree with them about all things, let alone these things.  

Lean's is a cautionary tale of what can go horribly wrong, off the deep end of anti-religionism generally and Islamophobia in particular.  Such things are bad enough, but they also have running implications for those of us whose values include religious pluralism and separation of church and state, and understanding the Religious Right and what to do about it.

Photos of Kathy Ainsworth reveal a charming girl-next- door figure.  Her good looks and winning personality were on display as she taught fifth grade students at a private school in Mississippi.  Her story is a fascinating account that links historical events in the late sixties.  Her legacy identifies religious connections with the hard right in the nation.  Her fame is still the topic of books and inter net  web sites.   She was a real American terrorist motivated by convictions with roots in religion   Kathy's life ended when she was slain with an accomplice seeking to bomb a Jewish home in Meridan, Mississippi.

Newly installed Pope Francis is on record regarding the Church and child abuse: Zero tolerance.   Whether his papacy has any credibility on the matter may depend on how he handles the situation of Bishop Robert Finn who heads the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Missouri.

I was fortunate enough to snag a seat in the press gallery for the oral argument before the U.S. Supreme Court this morning in the Proposition 8 case, Hollingsworth v. Perry.

Prop. 8 was narrowly approved by California voters in 2008. It added a ban on same-sex marriage to the state constitution. Opponents are challenging it in court, asserting that it violates the rights of gays and lesbians who wish to marry.

This week's featured item on As The Right Turns is a tale of influential Christian Nationalist writer David Barton, whose distorted and politically opportunistic versions of history have become increasingly controversial. The Texas Freedom Network flags (with a hat tip to Right Wing Watch) Barton's explanation of why white settlers had to wipe out Native American tribes and why the plains buffalo needed to be exterminated.

And In Other News:   Following the goings on of the Religious Right from a critical perspective can be, among other things, time consuming.  However, to save you time, some of us who follow these things, can be followed on Twitter.  So if you find yourself on Twitter, you might follow as I do, these groups whose main focus is on the Religious Right:  Americans United for Separation of Church and State @americansunited  Political Research Associates @PRAEyesRight  Religious Right Watch @ReligiousRW  Right Wing Watch @RightWingWatch  Texas Freedom Network @TFN  And of course, you can follow me too @fredclarkson

How does a regressive and theocratic-minded movement market itself with progressive-sounding jargon? The gubernatorial campaign of Max Myers is a textbook example.  Myers has spent the last six years leading the Global School of Supernatural Ministry under Randy Clark's Apostolic Network of Global Awakening, part of the Revival Alliance network that "commissioned" Todd Bentley and includes aggressively anti-abortion and anti-gay activist Lou Engle.  Myers is running for governor as a Democrat and kicked off a two-day media campaign at an LGBT community center in Philadelphia on Monday. At his next stop, at the state capitol in Harrisburg, Myers told reporters that "he has a strategy to bring transformation to Pennsylvania," although he would not reveal the details.  Transformation is a buzzword that resonates with people across the nation who have embraced the teachings of the apostles and prophets of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR).

Kicks Off His Campaign at Philly LGBT Center

Max Myers spent the last six years as the head of the Global School of Supernatural Ministry (GSSM) of the Apostolic Network of Global Awakening (ANGA). ANGA is led by internationally known apostle, Randy Clark, and includes the regional Wagner Leadership Institute (WLI) and GSSM housed in the Apostolic Resource Center in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, a few miles from the state capitol.  

Required reading for some of the ANGA programs describes homosexuality as caused by demons. GSSM requires students to confess any homosexual sex on their application forms.  Nevertheless, Myers is running as a Democrat in the 2014 gubernatorial race and kicked off a two-day media campaign on Monday morning at Philadelphia's William Way LGBT Community Center.

As I glance out my office window today at the snowflakes drifting down from the leaden gray skies of Washington, D.C., I have to keep reminding myself that spring will be here soon - on Wednesday, actually.

But, of course, that doesn't mean it's too early to start thinking about Christmas - especially if you're Sarah Palin.

In this week's feature story in As The Right Turns, Blogger Slacktivist, reminds us that evangelicals did not always believe that life begins at conception.

In 1979, McDonald's introduced the Happy Meal.

    Sometime after that, it was decided that the Bible teaches that human life begins at conception.

    Ask any American evangelical, today, what the Bible says about abortion and they will insist that this is what it says....

    That's new. If you had asked American evangelicals that same question the year I was born you would not have gotten the same answer.

By the time of the 1988 elections, everyone in American evangelicalism was wholly opposed to legal abortion and everyone in American evangelicalism was pretending that this had always been the case

And in other news:  Jandira Queiroz, Research Fellow at Political Research Associates has the story of the American Christian Right making moves on Brazil. She also has the story of the political rise of the virulently anti-gay  "Marco Feliciano, a right-wing Pentecostal pastor from the country's Social Christian Party."  And in the U.S., Christian Right Latinos (both Catholic and Protestant) are lining up with the Catholic Bishops to say that any mention of LGTB civil rights in immigration reform is a "deal breaker."  Among the leaders this nay to gay coalition is Samuel Rodriguez, leader of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, which wants to sound a lot like the Southern Christian Leadership Conference once headed by Martin Luther King...

April 8, 2013 could be a day to welcome immigrants and people from other nations. My colleague and friend Dr. Mohammad Mahallati, at Oberlin College, wants Congress to declare April 8 International Friendship Day. Mahallati, from a family with generations of Imams, says “difference is a blessing.” He has his hands full at Oberlin due to a rash of recent racial incidents, but he is an optimist. Indeed, we all should be optimists and activists.

Why? One big reason is that our country is facing an unrelenting campaign to demonize immigrants, especially those from Mexico, South and Central America, and the Middle East. This in part is based on fears of the changing demographic backgrounds of the people who make up our society. Fear of new immigrants is nothing new, nor is bigotry, racial strife, or other aspects of anti-immigrant xenophobia. These days there is also an entire industry devoted to spreading false and malicious claims about Muslims.

Xenophobia is one of those words few of us think about; but it just means fear of the stranger or anything we find strange or unfamiliar. We are told by social scientists that as a species we are programmed to face the stranger with a “fight or flight” response.

They leave out the third “F” for friendship. It’s not just a utopian dream; the future of our nation depends on teaching about difference and friendship among people from diverse backgrounds as a practical national policy.

Hat tip to Ulyankee for the recent Talk2action post.

Fox News recently featured  Steve Doocy interviewing Stephen McDowell in the role of Thomas Jefferson. McDowell is the co-author of the popular homeschooling textbook America's Providential History. This textbook includes quotes claiming that there is no shortage of natural resources - all the people on earth could live in Texas in single family homes and live on food produced in the U.S. alone, for example. Authors McDowell and Mark Beliles provide a list of "Christ Guidelines for Resistance to Tyranny" and warn, "There may come a time when we must resist lawful tyranny." (1991 edition, p. 31) It would be hard to find a better example than this textbook, first published in 1989, of the Christian Dominionist worldview behind much of today's paranoid, anti-government politics. Quotes from the text follow after the fold.