In its earliest incarnations, musical
"Supergroups" were made up of top-shelf artists that had successful runs in their own right. They came together to make an album (or two or three), do a few shows, make some media appearances, maybe hit the road for a short-lived tour and leave in their wake lots of chatter.

According to Wikipedia, "The term took its name from the 1968 album `Super Session' with Al Kooper, Mike Bloomfield and Stephen Stills."

There have been hundreds of Supergroups and some really outstanding ones over the past forty years: Consider the Traveling Wilburys, the late 1980s group made up of George Harrison, Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison, Tom Petty and Bob Dylan and The Highway Men with Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson. More contemporarily there has been Velvet Revolver with Scott Weiland, Slash, Duff McGagen, Matt Sorum, and Dave Kushner, and Child Rebel Soldier, with Kanye West, Lupe Fiasco, Pharrell Williams (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supergroup_(music).

In Search of a Religious Right Supergroup

The Freedom Foundation

In a recent post at People for the American Way's Right Wing Watch, Kyle Mantyla referred to the Freedom Foundation as a "right-wing supergroup."

The Freedom Foundation, founded in June of last year is indeed made up of an impressive list of Religious Right groups including the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, America's largest Hispanic Christian organization; Teen Mania, which claims to reach several hundred thousand youth each year; American Association of Christian Counselors, the largest Christian counseling organization with over 50,000 professional members; Liberty University, the largest evangelical university in the world with 50,000 students; Catholic Online; American Family Association; Family Research Council; Liberty Counsel; Liberty Alliance Action; Vision America; Morning Star Ministries; The Call to Action; Concerned Women for America; High Impact Leadership Coalition; Campaign for Working Families; Conservative Action Project; Traditional Values Coalition, a coalition of 45,000 evangelical churches; Faith and Action; Renewing American Leadership; National Clergy Council; Eagle Forum; Americans for Prosperity; Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny (BOND); Life Education and Resource Network (LEARN); and Strang Communications.

Because there is no nationally identifiable personality driving the Freedom Foundation, it may indeed qualify as a Religious Right Supergroup; especially if Mike Huckabee is allowed to sit on with his bass.

According to a News Release dated June 30, 2009, the Freedom Federation has come together "to plan, strategize, and work together on common interests within the Judeo-Christian tradition to mobilize their grassroots constituencies and to communicate faith and values to the religious, social, cultural, and policymaking institutions."

The Freedom Federation is a federation of individual, national, multi-ethnic and transgenerational organizations and leaders, its news release stated. It is "not a separate organization [but rather] ... . [i]t is a federation of organizations with large and unique constituencies that share common core values."

Given its "shared core values," the News Release stated that "the leaders of these national organizations will work together on common interests to plan, strategize, coordinate, message and mobilize their various constituents to mobilize a movement to advance these shared core values."

Since the birth of the modern conservative movement the organizations that have had the most sustained impact were not Supergroups -- although most of them wound up with a solid base of affiliated or associated groups. Organizations such as The Moral Majority (the Rev. Jerry Falwell), The Christian Coalition (Pat Robertson and Ralph Reed), Focus on the Family (Dr. James Dobson) clearly depended on personalities of their leaders to pave the way.

The Faith and Freedom Coalition

At around the same time that the Freedom Federation was beginning to federate, Ralph Reed - yes the Ralph Reed who was executive director of Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition, was the Religious Right's wonder-boy for several years, and more recently has been tarred by his close ties to uber-lobbyist Jack Abramoff - was churning out plans for an entity called the Faith and Freedom Coalition, which he described to Christian Broadcasting Network's David Brody as a "21st Century version of the Christian Coalition on steroids, married with MoveOn.org, with a sprinkling of the NRA."

Reed claimed that his organization had 100,000 members and activists and 15 state chapters and predicted that it "will be a major force for good" and become a "permanent fixture on the American political landscape."  

According to Right Wing Watch, over the past year, Reed "has been working to build it into a brand new right-wing powerhouse, teaming up with leaders like Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee and Michele Bachmann and Richard Land and Rick Santorum while setting up affiliates in several states in order to train `Tea Partiers, home schoolers and other conservatives to give them the tools they need to identify, educate and turn out conservative voters in their area.'"

The World Congress of Families

There's also the long-lived World Congress of Families, a delightful collection of Religious Right organizations and individuals organized by the Rockford, Illinois-based Howard Center for Family, Religion & Society, to celebrate and fight for the "natural" family, which according to its website is the "union of a man and a woman in the lifelong covenant of marriage."

The WCF, which claims to be the "world's largest conference of pro-family leaders and grass-roots activists," includes such partners as American Family Association, Alliance Defense Fund, Alliance for the Family, Americans United for Life, Associazione per la Difesa Dei Valori Cristiani - Luci sull'Est, Italy, Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, Concerned Women for America, Ethics and Public Policy Center, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, Family First Foundation, Family Watch International, Family Research Council, Father Peter Skarga Institute (Poland), Fellowship of St. James, Focus on The Family, Grasstops USA, HazteOir.org, His Servants, Home School Legal Defense Association, Human Life International, Media Research Center, Parents Forum Switzerland, Population Research Institute, Real Women of Canada, Red Familia (Mexico), Tradition, Family, & Property, and United Families International.

Council for National Policy

Throughout the history of the Religious Right, there have always been coalitions formed, networks created, alliances built, and now, federations founded. However, nothing in today's Religious Right's constellations will likely ever approach the work of the Council for National Policy, a 450 + member (give or take on a yearly basis) 501(c)(3) operation which could easily be termed the "Mother" of all Religious Right Supergroups.

The CNP was founded in 1981, and while there are conflicting reports as to who should be credited as being amongst the group's founding fathers, a number of some pretty heavy Religious Right hitters were involved either in its founding or in its early development.

Among them were Tim LaHaye, an early leader of several Religious Right entities and, more recently, better known for co-authoring the Left Behind series of apocalyptic novels; Cleon Skousen, a prominent theologian and law enforcement expert; Paul Weyrich, widely considered the "God father" of the Religious Right; Phyllis Schlafly; Howard Phillips, a former Republican affiliated with the Constitution Party; Richard Viguerie, the direct-mail guru; and Morton Blackwell, a longtime leading Republican Party activist.

Ironically, one of the hallmarks the CNP's success has been its Super-secrecy (something Supergroups, by its very nature, are wont to reject). According to journalist Max Blumenthal, the CNP "networks wealthy right-wing donors together with top conservative operatives to plan long-term movement strategy."