Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

NJDC  

Seth D summarizes a Detroit newpaper columnist's analysis of the spending habits of Christian Right strategic philanthropist Dick DeVos, who is also running for governor this year.

Dickerson wisely suggests that if you want to know what DeVos really cares about, just follow the money: besides his candidacy, where has he committed his substantial fortune?  
   

What is unique (or at least unusual) about DeVos is his combination of business acumen and religious zeal[...]For more than a decade, DeVos and his wife and the tax-exempt foundation they control have funneled millions of dollars to conservative Christian groups that seek to promote school prayer, public assistance for religious education, the criminalization of abortion and the prohibition of embryonic stem cell research, among other causes.

He also links to the four part series on DeVos by Russ Bellant at Talk to Action.

People for the American Way -- Right Wing Watch

Ezra reports that

While an upcoming U.S. museum tour featuring "Lucy," the 3 million-year-old remains of a human ancestor, is generating controversy over whether to move the fragile artifacts, creationists see a controversy of a different sort: so-called "anti-creationist hype." From the American Family Association's AgapePress:  Creationists ... are predicting that Lucy's tour will be much more about promoting the theory of evolution than about expanding real scientific knowledge.

Blog from the Capital

Don Byrd discusses how All Saints Episcopal Church, the liberal Pasadena, California church that is currently in a legal skirmish with the IRS over politicking from the pulpit opposes the religious right's bill in Congress that would remove restrictions on church politicking and allow chorches to make donations to candidates.

Free speech lines must be clearly drawn and respected, but even All Saints seems to recognize that the ban on tax-exempt political endorsement is a good thing, and a necessary protection for the separation of church and state.

Street Prophets

Chuck Currie reports

the Republican Party aligned-Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD).... spends a lot of time attacking mainline church leaders and "liberals" but now they have also turned their guns on conservative evangelical leaders who have broken from the White House over the state of the environment.  IRD and their allies are so close to George W. Bush they routinely confuse his policies for the Gospel.

 
Wall of Separation

JoeConn debunks the Christian nationalists.

The Religious Right's "Christian nation" brigades are on the march again.

According to The Virginian-Pilot, Pat Robertson and other evangelical leaders in Virginia are planning a big prayer service next spring to mark the 400th anniversary of the Jamestown colony. Noting that English settlers raised a cross at Cape Henry when they landed in 1607, Robertson and Company hope to use that historical footnote to make a political point today.

"We want to reaffirm our Christian roots -- we are a Christian country," said John Blanchard, coordinator for the event that has been dubbed The Assembly 2007. "They did come ashore dragging a cross."

Blanchard insists that Christian character of Jamestown is clear. He cites the colony's chaplain and its founding charter, which calls for the spread of Christianity.

"We were started as a Christian nation," Blanchard told The Virginian-Pilot, "and I feel it's God's purpose we stay a Christian nation."

But Conn thinks Blanchard has a little more reading to do, noting that the charter for the Virginia Company  

...did, indeed, demand that the prospective American colony "provide that the true word, and service of God and Christian faith be preached." But the charter added that the "true word" must be "according to the doctrine, rights, and religion now professed and established within our realme of England."

In other words, Jamestown was to be a bastion of the Anglican Church, the established faith of England. [and]. Governor Thomas Dale in 1612 mandated "Lawes Divine, Moral and Martial" that decreed the death penalty for those who "speak impiously of the Trinity...or against the known articles of the Christian faith."

Those who cursed would have a bodkin "thrust through the tongue," and all immigrants to the new land were to report to the Anglican minister for "examination in the faith." Those who refused facing a daily whipping "until he makes acknowledgement."

Dale's rules were so draconian that they were abrogated on appeal to London, but the colony's leaders busily carried out other acts of religious intolerance over subsequent decades. Puritan clergy were banished, Quakers were fined, imprisoned and banished and Catholics were disqualified from public office. Those who objected to infant baptism were subjected to penalties....

So Blanchard, Robertson and the other non-Anglican "dissenters" are, in fact, getting ready to celebrate a centuries-old religious establishment that would have fined, whipped, imprisoned or banished them - or maybe put them to death. Individuals of their religious stripe were persecuted minorities then; today they are politically powerful and they seek to persecute others who fail their religious test.

Talk to Action

Chip Berlet excerpts a Political Research Associates report he coauthored with Pam Chamberlain explaining how rightwing populism works on the religious right, and debunks some cherished pearls of conventional wisdom.

In October 2006 Michael A. Fletcher wrote an article for the Washington Post titled: "`Values' Decline as Issue in Ohio': Economic Woes Boost Democrats." Fletcher wrote: "Two years ago, exit polls found that "moral values" edged out the "economy and jobs" to top a list of concerns that Ohio voters said most influenced their Election Day choices. The exit polls found that at least a quarter of voters identified themselves as born-again Christians, and three-quarters of their votes went to Bush."
Contrary to the misleading headline, values, as an issue, were not declining in Ohio, what was happening was a shift in which values were seen as a priority, even within the White Christian evangelical voter base.

As for the economy--it depends on what you mean by the word economy. Thomas Frank, in his book What's the Matter with Kansas, nimbly navigated the conservative scene on the ground in Kansas, but slipped when he implied that people in the White working class who vote against their apparent economic self interest did so because they didn't really understand the complex issues, or were easily swayed by fundamentalist preachers and opportunistic politicians. Some, we are led to believe, are simply addled.

There is no evidence that White evangelicals are any more stupid or crazy then the rest of us--at least in terms of percentages of the populations being studied. Nor are they simply the manipulated puppets of a Karl Rove strike force.

Frank Cocozzeli rebuts Senator Rick Santorum's claim:

"From economic issues focusing on the poor and social justice, to issues of human life, George Bush is there," he said. "He has every right to say, `I'm where you are if you're a believing Catholic." No Senator Santorum, George Bush is not "there."  And contrary to the spin generated by many of your friends on the Catholic Right, neither are you.

Bartholomew has a profile  of  an Ohio Christian rightist:

One of the more absurd "culture warriors" of the Christian Right... "Coach" Dave Daubenmire, of Pass the Salt Ministries and Minutemen United. Daubenmire is a familiar figure on the dominionist right;

Bruce Wilson has the strange tale of a federal government program that is using churches as court houses.

Moiv explains how the religious right's agenda, just passed in Nicaragua is on the ballot this year in South Dakota.  

MANAGUA - The Nicaraguan Congress on Thursday approved a law punishing doctors who carry out abortions on rape victims and women who could die at childbirth with a four-to-eight-year jail sentence.

    Women who get an abortion would also face the same punishment.

    Hundreds of women from feminist organizations hurled obscenities at the legislators outside the Congress building as the measure was debated. One group of angry women tried to storm the building, but were held back by police blocking the main entrance.

    The new law was backed by Catholic and Evangelical churches in Nicaragua, which have been pushing for it for years.    

    The Nicaraguan vote came just days ahead of the November 5 election, and as the country's political parties seek to reach out to the country's deeply religious electorate.

Luisa Cabal of the U.S. Center for Reproductive Rights observes, "[I]nstead of lawmakers acting to adopt measures that protect women, they have chosen to send the message that they don't care if women die."

And that horrific situation in Nicaragua has deeply disturbing parallels to what's happening right here at home, with South Dakota's ironically titled Women's Health and Human Life Protection Act.