The Iowa caucuses are today, and, despite what you may have heard, Jesus Christ is not appearing on the ballot.

Several of his close friends are, though. As voting approaches, Republican candidates have been working hard to win endorsements from prominent conservative evangelicals by explaining just how much they plan to mix up religion and government if elected.

It is a case of the more things change the more things stay the same. I wrote a short post in 2008 about how wrong the media and the pundit class can sometimes be when discussing political endorsements by Christian Right leaders. (I am reposting that piece after the jump.) Sometimes what social scientists and psychologists call confirmation bias rules punditocratic thinking when it comes to the Christian Right. (Confirmation bias is the tendency to see or acknowledge information that confirms one's beliefs while giving disproportionately less consideration to facts that point to or even prove alternatives.) Sometimes confirmation bias is so profound that it deeply skews good reporting, scholarship, and political analysis. This problem may once again become a major feature of the presidential campaign this year.

There has recently been a great deal of head scratching about the meaning of presidential campaign endorsements by various Christian Right leaders. This quadrennial exercise is almost always much more obtuse than is necessary. A few quick observations: The Religious Right has never been monolithic, religiously or politically. As a movement it is has always been divided in election years among the presidential candidates, with the exception of when George W. Bush ran unopposed for his second term. Major candidates with arguably major flaws from a conservative evangelical perspective have been supported through the primaries and general election, drawing varying degrees of leadership and popular support. John McCain and Mitt Romney to name two obvious examples. The thrice married, pro-choice, pro-LGBTQ rights former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani was supported by Ralph Reed in 2012. Pat Robertson supported him in 2008. And so on.

Nevertheless, this time there is great consternation about Jerry Falwell Jr.'s endorsement of Donald Trump. But there is less here than meets the eye. That some prominent leaders would take a chance and endorse the front runner for the GOP nomination, even if seen as opportunistic, should come as no surprise. Marco Rubio has been endorsed by Rick Warren and Samuel Rodriguez. Ted Cruz has been endorsed by Tony Perkins and James Dobson. David Barton runs a Cruz related super-Pac. Huckabee has far fewer major Christian Right endorsements than last time, but he does enjoy the support of Tim LaHaye and Jim Garlow.

Things change, but in important ways it has always been like this. Donald Trump is certainly unlike any candidate we have seen. But what that means for the always deeply divided evangelical community and the broader Christian Right is a different set of questions than many in the media and the pundit class seem to think. -- FC

At public schools around the country, students, mostly high schoolers, are forming Gay-Straight Alliance clubs. Fundamentalist Christians often freak out over the existence of these clubs, like these people are doing in Winchester, Tenn.

Whenever this happens, I have to explain, once again, who made it possible for students to form Gay-Straight Alliances at public secondary schools.

It was fundamentalist Christians.

The church I attend just had a member place a display at the back of a Sunday morning Bible class.  The display called for all Christians to support Israel and there is a sheet for members to sign a document to be sent to Secretary of State, John Kerry.  The promotional material came from Dr. Mike Evans.  Mike is a frequent contributor to Fox News and a self proclaimed expert on Israel.  Evans believes we should shelve the Kerry-led treaty with Iran and instead declare war on the nation.  Evans says God revealed to him in a vision who the leader of Israel would be before the world knew this. Mike believes the move by Kerry to negotiate a treaty with Iran is a satanic plot.  Evans thinks Jimmy Carter is an evil diplomat because of Carter's leadership in supporting the Oslo agreement.  Many Christian Zionists, like Evans, want people who are not Jews driven from the Holy Land which they claim God gave to Israel in the past and it still belongs to them.  Christian Zionist Jon Hagee told an audience I was in that if you place Israel in your church budget God's prosperity will fall upon your congregation.  This promise is not promoting spiritual prosperity, as much as financial prosperity.   More than one writer has uncovered Houston area Zionists who were active Christians and making plans to bomb the Dome of the Mosque.  The sacred Muslim site within the walls of the ancient Jewish Temple.  This move was to hasten the Second Coming of Christ.  (The fact that it might start World War III did not seem to be on the radar in this crowd.)

Saturday is Religious Freedom Day. While it's not one of our most well-known or popular holidays, Religious Freedom Day shouldn't be overlooked. Our country is in the middle of a campaign, spearheaded by far-right religious groups and their political allies, to redefine religious freedom. We cannot allow this to happen.

This campaign takes several forms. We see efforts by Religious Right groups and the U.S. Catholic bishops to take religious freedom, a key individual right, and turn it into something that allows one person to control or make moral decisions for others.

This week, I published a report -- months in the making --  titled, When Exemption is the Rule: The Religious Freedom Strategy of the Christian Right . (I recommend the PDF version, a great reading experience!).  It was intended as a conversation starter. Not because many of us are not already talking about religious freedom as it relates to many issues of concern. Its more that the Religious Right seems to have the upper hand in these matters -- and it is time to change that dynamic.

I'm pleased to report that the conversation has begun this Religious Freedom Week. Rather than going back to the report and quoting myself, allow me the wonderful privilege to introducing the very kinds of reporting and conversations I hoped this project would launch. It is no small thing to publish something like this, and I am grateful that it is being read and discussed by such knowledgeable and thoughtful writers as those below:

Retired Catholic theologian Bill Lindsey kicks it off at his blog.

Fred Clarkson wants this report on how we've gotten where we are with the bogus religious freedom arguments of the religious right, with its attempt to stand authentic religious freedom on its head, to be a wake-up call to us.

Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore last week tried, once again, to block marriage equality in that state.

There is no case pending before the state high court dealing directly with same-sex marriage, but Moore decided to issue an order anyway. He instructed probate judges in the state to cease issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Moore's novel theory is that the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges applies only to a handful of states in the U.S. 6th court circuit, where the case originated.

Yes, folks it's that time of the year again. It's time for the presentation of the annual Coughlin Award. As it is every year, the competition was stiff, so much so that this year for the first time we have a tie!  This year's award goes to Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone and Maureen Malarkey.

With Republican candidate Ben Carson dropping like a stone in a pool of confusion, who gets invited to the tea party?

Tea Party activists currently appear to be splitting their votes between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. That's at 9 am December 14, 2005.

Things could be different by tomorrow in this fast-shifting environment.

Over at the Free Republic website, which caters to all things of interest to the Right-Wing Patriot Movement, there is an
ongoing and vibrant discussion about this split.

Putting this in perspective takes a few steps.

The state of Tennessee used to have a law that banned members of the clergy from running for public office. The U.S. Supreme Court in 1978 rightfully declared this provision unconstitutional.

In the United States, pretty much all adults, with very few exceptions, have the right to run for public office. I wouldn't have it any other way. If democracy means anything, it means the right to choose our own leaders. Disqualifying people from the ballot because of their race, gender or religious beliefs is un-American.

We stand in the overflow crowd of some 300 in the small town of Tyngsborough near the New Hampshire border. Several thousand people are inside a local elementary school. The crowd is excited. Here is Donald Trump in Massachusetts in October of 2015. "Why do they always say a Republican can't win in Massachusetts?" we hear Trump say over the loudspeakers set up outside the school.

One woman we meet at the Massachusetts Trump Rally is Joan. A mature White woman who works three jobs to make ends meet. Joan believes in the Lord Jesus Christ and warns that the United States will soon be judged because events in Israel reveal that we are in the seven-year countdown to the apocalypse and Armageddon.

Now is the time for blunt talk. Donald Trump is a dangerous demagogue generating "scripted violence." Trumpism threatens not just the First Amendment but democracy itself. I call him a right-wing populist using fascistic rhetoric to target scapegoated groups. Other journalists and scholars have dubbed him a fascist or a totalitarian. But we all smell the stench of the burning bodies. So let us have our terminological debates, but setting aside all intellectual disagreements, as citizens of an increasingly unfree society, we must stand up and speak out.

The First Amendment guarantees the free exercise of religion, and that includes the right to call religion ridiculous. It protects devout Roman Catholics and those in the church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster--even those who sometimes wear colanders as hats. Here at Talk to Action we are nonpartisan, welcome respectful contributions discussing human, civil, and constitutional rights, and find debates between theists and atheists annoying (no trolls blasting either are allowed). Democracy is what we cherish...and it is in trouble.