CARTER: Some Christians who I know very well, very devout people, believe a certain interpretation of Revelations, that in my opinion are quite weird, in that in the coming of Christ that the holy land has to be occupied by the Jews and not by anyone else and then in the end that all Jews will have to be killed or either converted to Christianity. This is a very seriously distorted interpretation of the Scriptures that I am very familiar with. READ IT ALL

Posted at 08:55 PM | Permalink

This is hilarious: [Thanks Carlos]

Posted at 10:42 AM | Permalink

Mark Dybul being sworn into the State Department with his partner

From EthicsDaily

Southern Baptist Convention official criticized the White House for putting an openly gay physician in charge of the United States policy to combat global AIDS.

"I think it's a tragedy to have a sodomite living with another man and being the AIDS coordinator," Wiley Drake, the SBC's second vice president said in Agape Press, "because we all know that if we do away with sodomy we'd almost eradicate AIDS."

With First Lady Laura Bush standing by, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice swore in Mark Dybul as U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator, a post with the rank of ambassador, Oct. 10.

Dybul took the oath of office with his hand on a Bible held by his domestic partner, Jason Claire. Rice referred to Claire's mother as Dybul's "mother-in-law," raising hackles among the Religious Right.

"I am truly honored and delighted to have the opportunity to swear in Mark Dybul as our next Global AIDS Coordinator," Rice said, according to a transcript on the State Department Web site. "I am pleased to do that in the presence of Mark's parents, Claire and Richard, his partner, Jason, and his mother-in-law, Marilyn."

"You have a wonderful family to support you, Mark, and I know that's always important to us," Rice said.

Peter Sprigg, vice president for policy at the Family Research Council, called the secretary's comments "profoundly offensive" and said they fly in the face of the Bush administration's endorsement of a federal marriage protection amendment. READ IT ALL

Related: The Gay Old Party Comes Out

Posted at 09:53 AM | Permalink

From the AP via HuffPost

Famed pastor and best-selling author Rick Warren on Wednesday defended his invitation to Sen. Barack Obama to speak at his church despite objections from some evangelicals who oppose the Democrat's support for abortion rights.

Obama is one of nearly 60 speakers scheduled to address the second annual Global Summit on
AIDS and the Church beginning Thursday at Warren's Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif.

Obama, who is mulling a run for president, plans to take an HIV test during his appearance Friday and encourage others to do the same. The Illinois Democrat will be joined by a potential 2008 White House rival -- Republican Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas -- and is urging unity to fight AIDS despite differences on other issues.

Conservative evangelical Rob Schenck, president of the National Clergy Council, e-mailed reporters Tuesday to protest the visit because of Obama's support of abortion rights. "Senator Obama's policies represent the antithesis of biblical ethics and morality, not to mention supreme American values," Schenck wrote.

Saddleback responded with a statement acknowledging "strong opposition" to Obama's participation. The church said participants were invited because of their knowledge of HIV/AIDS and that Warren, author of "The Purpose Driven Life," opposes Obama's position on abortion and other issues.

"Our goal has been to put people together who normally won't even speak to each other," the Saddleback statement said. "We do not expect all participants in the summit discussion to agree with all of our evangelical beliefs. However, the HIV/AIDS pandemic cannot be fought by evangelicals alone. It will take the cooperation of all -- government, business, NGOs and the church."

Obama declined an interview request. But in a statement, he said while he respects differing views on abortion, he hopes for unity "to honor the entirety of Christ's teachings by working to eradicate the scourge of AIDS, poverty and other challenges we all can agree must be met.

"It is that spirit which has allowed me to work together -- and pray together -- with some of my conservative colleagues in the Senate to make progress on a range of key issues facing America," Obama's said.

Brownback, who has close ties to conservative Christians, responded to the dispute with a statement also calling for unity. "To win the fight against AIDS we must each set aside our differences and join together as human beings from all political, religious, and nonreligious walks of life, fighting for the lives of people who are suffering and dying," he said.

Though still in his first term in the Senate, Obama has attracted national attention for his fresh face, commanding speaking style and compelling personal story. He also has encouraged liberals to engage in religious discourse and not leave the topic to conservatives to claim as their own.

While in California, Obama also plans a Friday night appearance on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" to promote his best-selling book, "The Audacity of Hope."

As part of his consideration for a presidential run, Obama will make his first political visit to New Hampshire on Dec. 10 for a celebration of the state Democratic Party's victories in the congressional, gubernatorial and legislative races.

Obama has traveled to Iowa, site of the leadoff presidential caucuses, but New Hampshire hasn't been on his itinerary.

The race for the 2008 Democratic nomination is considered wide open, and at least a dozen potential contenders are weighing formal bids, including front-runner Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.

Posted at 04:09 PM | Permalink

"From wrestlers to goths, a motley army of troubled young Americans is taking refuge in an evangelical fantasy-world of love and ignorance. Photographer Justin Lane captures the new faces of faith." Check our the whole gallery here.

Posted at 12:00 AM | Permalink

Watch the whole retarded thing by clicking below. We especially like how Michelle Malkin suggests that Crate & Barrell is where elitist liberals shop. Evidently, she only shops at Walgreens.

Posted at 06:57 PM | Permalink

Rev. Joel C. Hunter

president-elect of the Christian Coalition of America, which has long served as a model for activism for the religious right, has stepped down, saying the group resisted his efforts to broaden its agenda to include reducing poverty and fighting global warming.

The Rev. Joel C. Hunter, pastor of a Florida megachurch, was named the group’s president-elect in July. He was to have taken over the presidency in January from Roberta Combs, who is also the chairwoman of the Christian Coalition’s board. Mrs. Combs will continue in both positions now.

Over the last few years, Dr. Hunter, senior pastor of Northland Church in Longwood, Fla., has gained a reputation as an evangelical leader seeking to expand the agenda of conservative Christian activists from issues like abortion and same-sex marriage.

In a telephone interview, Dr. Hunter said that although Mrs. Combs had indicated that the organization also wanted to expand its priorities to include the issues that concerned him, the board backed away from such a commitment during a conference call last Tuesday. By the end of the call, Dr. Hunter and the coalition had decided to part amicably, according to both sides.

Dr. Hunter said, “When we really got down to it, they said: ‘This just isn’t for us. It won’t speak to our base, so we just can’t go there.’ ” READ IT ALL

Posted at 12:49 PM | Permalink

From the AP

A public Christmas festival is no place for the Christmas story, the city says. Officials have asked organizers of a downtown Christmas festival, the German Christkindlmarket, to reconsider using a movie studio as a sponsor because it is worried ads for its film "The Nativity Story" might offend non-Christians.

New Line Cinema, which said it was dropped, had planned to play a loop of the new film on televisions at the event. The decision had both the studio and a prominent Christian group shaking their heads.

"The last time I checked, the first six letters of Christmas still spell out Christ," said Paul Braoudakis, spokesman for the Barrington, Ill.-based Willow Creek Association, a group of more than 11,000 churches of various denominations. "It's tantamount to celebrating Lincoln's birthday without talking about Abraham Lincoln."

He also said that there is a nativity scene in Daley Plaza — and that some vendors at the festival sell items related to the nativity.

The city does not want to appear to endorse one religion over another, said Cindy Gatziolis, a spokeswoman for the Mayor's Office of Special Events. She acknowledged there is a nativity scene, but also said there will be representations of other faiths, including a Jewish menorah, all put up by private groups. She stressed that the city did not order organizers to drop the studio as a sponsor.

"Our guidance was that this very prominently placed advertisement would not only be insensitive to the many people of different faiths who come to enjoy the market for its food and unique gifts, but also it would be contrary to acceptable advertising standards suggested to the many festivals holding events on Daley Plaza," Jim Law, executive director of the office, said in a statement.

Officials with the German American Chamber of Commerce of the Midwest, which has organized the event for several years, did not immediately return calls for comment. The festival started Thursday.

An executive vice president with New Line Cinema, Christina Kounelias, said the studio's plan to spend $12,000 in Chicago was part of an advertising campaign around the country. Kounelias said that as far as she knew, the Chicago festival was the only instance where the studio was turned down.

Kounelias said she finds it hard to believe that non-Christians who attended something called Christkindlmarket would be surprised or offended by the presence of posters, brochures and other advertisements of the movie.

"One would assume that if (people) were to go to Christkindlmarket, they'd know it is about Christmas," she said.

Posted at 10:07 AM | Permalink

Forget the war on Christmas; the war on peace has begun. From the AP:

A homeowners association in southwestern Colorado has threatened to fine a resident $25 a day until she removes a Christmas wreath with a peace sign that some say is an anti-
Iraq war protest or a symbol of Satan.

Some residents who have complained have children serving in Iraq, said Bob Kearns, president of the Loma Linda Homeowners Association in Pagosa Springs. He said some residents have also believed it was a symbol of Satan. Three or four residents complained, he said.

"Somebody could put up signs that say drop bombs on Iraq. If you let one go up you have to let them all go up," he said in a telephone interview Sunday.

Lisa Jensen said she wasn't thinking of the war when she hung the wreath. She said, "Peace is way bigger than not being at war. This is a spiritual thing." READ IT ALL

Posted at 10:19 AM | Permalink

King James was actually a queen

From OpEdNews

Now that the North Carolina Baptist Convention has threatened to expel any church that is friendly to gays, does this mean that they are going to abandon the King James Bible? After all, his subjects joked "Elizabeth was King: now James is Queen."

Southern Baptists and anti-gay fundamentalists might not like to hear it but just listen to what King James wrote to George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham: "I naturally so love your person, and adore all your other parts, which are more than ever one man had." James also wrote that "I desire only to live in the world for your sake."

Lest there be any doubts among Southern Baptists investigators about this being erotic as opposed to platonic affection, the far older James called angelic young Villiers "my sweet child and wife, and grant that ye may ever be a comfort to your dear dad and husband." In return, Villiers, the subject of the nursery rhyme, Georgie Porgie, wrote James that "I cannot now think of giving thanks for friend, wife, or child; my thoughts are only bent on having my dear Dad and Master's legs soon in my arms." Villiers wrote as a man who "threatens you, that when he once gets hold of your bedpost again, never to quit it." James wrote to Villiers that "whether you loved me now . . . better than at the time I shall never forget at Farnham, where the bed's head could not be found between the master and his dog." READ IT ALL

Posted at 10:55 AM | Permalink

From CNN via ThinkProgress

LARRY KING: Have you spoken to him?

DOBSON: I have talked to him. I was asked to serve on a three person restoration panel and I originally wanted to be of help and said that I would, but I just don’t have the time to do that. And I called my board of directors, we talked about it at length and they were unanimous in asking me not to do that, because this could take four or five years and I just have too many other things going on.

KING: How’s he doing?

DOBSON: I don’t know. I haven’t talked to him since it happened.

KING: Oh you haven’t?

DOBSON: I talked to him the day that the news broke and I have not talked to him since then.

KING: Was he sad that day?

DOBSON: Oh, of course. I mean you can imagine he was shocked, he was numb, he even lied about it. There’s a video of him saying that none of these things are true, but they were true or a least some of them were

KING: When you say, Doctor, when you say “restoration” you mean restore him from being gay to not gay or what do you mean?

DOBSON: Yeah, probably that, too.

Posted at 10:23 AM | Permalink

These ladies know Jesus is the reason for the season

A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving

Posted at 10:42 AM | Permalink

Bill Sanderson, author of the new guidelines

Churches that don't conform to the following will be kicked out of the Baptist State Convention. From the Biblical Recorder

Churches not in "friendly cooperation with the Convention" shall be those whose actions include:

1. Official public statements affirming, approving, endorsing, promoting, supporting or blessing homosexual behavior.

2. Ordination of those whom the church knows have not repented of their homosexual behavior.

3. Knowingly allowing a staff member to perform, or the church providing facilities for marriage or other ceremony, blessing, or union of persons of the same sex.

4. Knowingly affiliating with, contributing money to or maintaining membership in a group which affirms, approves, endorses, promotes, supports or blesses homosexual behavior.

5. Accepting as members those whom the church knows have refused to repent of the sin of homosexual behavior.

Men who have ever watched a program on Bravo or worn a pair of designer jeans—or known another man who has committed these transgressions—will be kicked out as well. [Hat Tip EthicsDaily]

Posted at 10:13 AM | Permalink

Somehow, millions of Christians still believe Wal-Mart is Jesus' favorite company. (We doubt he'd be a fan). In fact, evangelicals love the company so much, they've launched a campaign to SaveWalmart. From SaveWalmart.com

Wal-Mart is changing! It is departing from the rock from which it was hewn. The faith and love for God and His Word by Sam Walton, the founder of Wal-Mart, is being trashed before our very eyes. God blessed Wal-Mart because Sam Walton applied biblical principles to run his business. He never failed to give King Jesus the glory.

The devil is forcing our schools, businesses, government, and churches to honor those things which are an abomination to God. Christians must take a stand! It’s time for our theology to become biography in the streets! It’s time for us to come out of the closet!

And here's their plan

On Friday, November 24, 2006, the busiest shopping day of the year, Christians from across the nation will bring the Gospel of Christ to the very gates of the largest retailer in the World -- WAL-MART!

In Charlotte, North Carolina and at over 300 other Wal-Mart Stores across the nation, a Gospel information explosion will take place with brochures, preaching, praying, and Christian witnessing. Christianity is moving out of the closet to become biography in the streets to come to the aide of America’s “favorite” store! God blessed Wal-Mart and it became America’s favorite store because Sam Walton chose to honor God and run his business according to Biblical principles. That has now changed.

Posted at 10:50 AM | Permalink

From the NY Times

It was a lonely time here in the capital for the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada in the early days of the gay marriage debate in 2003.

Of the scattered conservative Christian groups opposed to extending marriage rights to same-sex couples, it was the only one with a full-time office in Ottawa to lobby politicians. “We were the only ones here,” said Janet Epp Buckingham, who was the group’s public policy director then.

But that was before the legislation passed in 2005 allowing gay marriage in Canada. And before the election early this year of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, a Conservative and an evangelical Christian who frequently caps his speeches with “God bless Canada.”

Today across the country, the gay marriage issue and Mr. Harper’s election have galvanized conservative Christian groups to enter politics like never before.

Before now, the Christian right was not a political force in this mostly secular, liberal country. But it is coalescing with new clout and credibility, similar to the evangelical Christian movement in the United States in the 1980s, though not nearly on the same scale.

Today, half a dozen organizations like the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada work full time in Ottawa, four of which opened offices in the past year, all seeking to reverse the law allowing gay marriage.

They represent just some of the dozens of well-organized conservative Christian groups around the country and more than a hundred grass-roots campaigns focused on the issue. In recent months, religious groups have held rallies, signed petitions, drafted resolutions and stepped up their efforts to lobby politicians to overturn the law.

These Christian conservatives have been instilled with a sense of urgency in the expectation that Mr. Harper will follow through on a campaign promise, as early as the first week of December, to hold a vote in Parliament on whether to revisit the gay marriage debate.

“With the legalization of gay marriage, faith has been violated and we’ve been forced to respond,” said Charles McVety, a leader of several evangelical Christian organizations that oppose gay marriage and president of the Canada Christian College in Toronto.

“Traditionally people of faith in Canada have not been politically active,” he said. “But now we’re finally seeing organizations that are professionalizing what was a very amateur political movement.”

Mr. McVety, who recites from memory the decision of an Ontario judge in 2003 that paved the way for gay marriages, has organized dozens of rallies attracting altogether some 200,000 supporters.

He asked the Rev. Jerry Falwell and other American evangelical leaders for advice on building a religious movement in Canada and traveled Ontario and Quebec in a red-and-white “Defend Marriage” bus.

Though the expected vote in Parliament will not decide whether to rescind the gay marriage legislation, but instead whether members wish to reopen the issue for debate, it remains significant for the Christian right and the government.

For leaders of the Christian right, the vote is a chance to get the marriage issue back on the government’s agenda and to get a better sense of where individual politicians, especially newly elected ones, stand. They have adopted that strategy in part because they say that the vote in Parliament will be difficult to win.

For Mr. Harper and his Conservative Party, the vote is an attempt to appease the religious social conservatives who form the core of the support for his minority government without losing moderate voters who want to avoid the issue. READ IT ALL

Posted at 09:47 AM | Permalink

Haggard's board of overseers

From NY Times

A male prostitute had accused Mr. Haggard, one of the nation’s most prominent evangelical ministers, of engaging in a three-year affair with him and of using drugs. Then, in a private emergency meeting, Mr. Haggard promptly confessed to the ministers -- his handpicked board of overseers -- that he had engaged in sexual immorality.

Now, the question was, what punishment did Mr. Haggard deserve? The board had two options: discipline him or dismiss him as senior pastor of New Life Church. Could he take a leave of absence, repent, receive spiritual counseling and return to ministry?

The answer became clear the next morning, the overseers said, when Mr. Haggard gave an interview to a television news crew as he pulled out of his driveway with his wife and three children in the car. He denied having sex with the male prostitute, and said he had bought methamphetamine but never used it. The overseers said they watched Mr. Haggard, affable as ever, smile grimly into the television camera and lie.

“We saw this other side of Ted that Friday morning,” said the Rev. Michael Ware, one of the overseers. “It helped us to know whether this would be a discipline or a dismissal.”

The Rev. Mark Cowart, another overseer, agreed. “It was a defining moment.”

In many ways, Mr. Haggard had sealed his fate long before the driveway interview by establishing a mechanism for accountability in his church that gave a committee of his peers ultimate authority to remove him. Years ago, Mr. Haggard had asked four of his closest friends, all senior pastors of their own churches, to serve as a board of overseers. They had only one function: if Mr. Haggard was ever accused of immoral conduct, they would act as judge and jury.

Until the scandal that drove him from the pulpit, Mr. Haggard appeared to be a responsible steward and chief executive of New Life Church and the adjoining World Prayer Center — an evangelical empire that he built from nothing on a bare plateau with sweeping views of the Air Force Academy and Pikes Peak. He was sovereign over a 14,000-member church that answered to no denomination and was in many ways built on his charisma.

Mr. Haggard spelled out his system of checks and balances in bylaws that independent churches in the United States and overseas have adopted as a model. “All of our bylaws are really set up to protect our churches from us,” said Mr. Ware, the senior pastor of Victory Church in Westminster, Colo. “The same bylaws Ted wrote were the same laws by which he was dismissed.”

Unlike the televangelists Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart, who became mired in sexual and financial scandals in the 1980s, Mr. Haggard’s case was decided by his board with a haste that stunned many church members and employees.

“To watch his whole world evaporate in less than 24 hours is one of the most humbling and God-fearing experiences I’ve ever encountered,” Mr. Ware said in an interview over a motel breakfast of little but coffee with two other overseers.

Mr. Haggard could not have picked overseers with more potential conflicts of interests. Mr. Haggard, Mr. Ware and the Rev. Larry Stockstill started in ministry together 28 years ago in Baker, La., at Bethany World Prayer Center, where Mr. Stockstill is now the senior pastor.

Another member of the board, the Rev. Tim Ralph, the senior pastor of New Covenant Fellowship in rural Larkspur, has known Mr. Haggard since he founded New Life Church in his basement 21 years ago. Mr. Ralph’s son was a sound technician at New Life for six years.

Three of the overseers have their own boards of overseers at the churches they pastor, and Mr. Haggard was on all of them.

In 20 years, Mr. Haggard’s overseers had been summoned only once, to investigate an accusation of sexual impropriety that turned out to be a misunderstanding, overseers and staff members said. A church member reported to the elders in 2001 that he had seen Mr. Haggard in the church offices embracing a woman who was not his wife. The elders immediately called in the overseers to investigate, and they found that the woman was Mr. Haggard’s sister.

But the accusations that surfaced on Nov. 1 proved much more serious.

Mr. Ralph said the accusations left the overseers “holding nitroglycerine” in one hand. In the other hand, he said, they held “some very valuable life to the body of Christ,” referring not only to Mr. Haggard, but also to his wife, Gayle, who directed women’s ministries at New Life Church, and their five children, ages 13 to 25. The Haggards’ eldest son, Marcus, pastors a satellite congregation of New Life in downtown Colorado Springs.

The overseers gathered the next afternoon in the offices of the church’s lawyer, a bit stunned to be called into action, said Mr. Ralph, who likened the assignment to his second job as a firefighter.

“You don’t want to take the trucks out,” he said, “you want to keep shining the trucks.”

They reminded one another that despite their long ties to Mr. Haggard, the Bible says they are to judge accusations without partiality. On handheld computers, they pulled up another Scripture that says two or three witnesses are necessary when determining the guilt of an elder.

They considered the prostitute the first witness. When Mr. Haggard confessed that afternoon, he became the second. Within hours, he had resigned as president of the National Association of Evangelicals.

“He made it easy on us,” said another overseer, the Rev. Mark Cowart, the senior pastor of Church for All Nations in Colorado Springs. “We didn’t have to sort through everything.”

Mr. Ware said Mr. Haggard told them: “Ninety-eight percent of what you knew of me was the real me. Two percent of me would rise up, and I couldn’t overcome it.”

The harder decision was whether to dismiss him, but the overseers said Mr. Haggard’s lie in the television interview had deeply unsettled them. When they informed Mr. Haggard of their decision on Saturday, they said, he told them they had done the right thing.

The overseers also believed that Mr. Haggard needed more counseling, oversight and accountability than they could provide. They asked three of the country’s most renowned evangelical leaders — the Revs. Jack Hayford and Tommy Barnett and Dr. James Dobson — to serve as a “restoration team.” Dr. Dobson, the founder of the Focus on the Family ministry, soon excused himself, saying he could not devote adequate time and attention. He was replaced by the Rev. H. B. London Jr., a Focus on the Family vice president who runs a division that counsels clergy members and churches.

Mr. London said it could take at least three years before a fallen minister was “restored” to “spiritual, emotional and physical health,” with no assurance he could return to ministry.

He said Mr. Haggard’s former congregation had rallied around him, and church officials said they were negotiating a generous severance package.

There are mixed views on how well the overseer system Mr. Haggard put in place worked.

“From what I can tell, it was handled very well,” said Mark A. Noll, a historian at the University of Notre Dame who studies evangelicals. “If the accountability procedure is real, as this one seems to have been, it works well.”

But Eddie Gibbs, a professor of church growth at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calf., said Mr. Haggard’s accountability structure was a failure. The flaw, he said, was that it provided for intervention only when the pastor was about to crash and burn, rather than establishing a process to check on him routinely to prevent such an outcome.

“You’ve got to have the kind of people who will ask the awkward questions about every area of life,” Mr. Gibbs said, especially if for a high-profile pastor in a large church.

In the New Life executive suites, the Rev. Rob Brendle, Mr. Haggard’s young associate pastor, who said he had thought of himself as “Ted’s Karl Rove,” said he was so traumatized he could not yet ask himself if had seen signs of Mr. Haggard’s double life. But Mr. Brendle said he was comforted by the smooth handling of the crisis.

“I want everyone to see how evangelical Christians respond during adversity, and how we treat our wounded,” he said. “We aren’t interested in kicking someone to the curb when he shames our movement. We are committed to serving him.”

Last week, a young man working at the cafe of the World Prayer Center stripped Mr. Haggard’s books off a shelf. Mr. Brendle said he had approved the purge of books and of the sermon archives on the Web site because he did not want people “looking for clues.”

In his book “Foolish No More,” Mr. Haggard wrote that lying about a sexual affair produces “the stinking garbage of a rotting sin.”

“If a church leader sins,” he warned, “everyone within the church’s influence pays.”

Posted at 10:44 AM | Permalink

From ThinkProgress

In 2000, John McCain called Jerry Falwell an “agent of intolerance.” Now, he has hired the debate coach from Falwell’s Liberty University, Brett O’Donnell, to advise him on his communications strategy. O’Donnell has been executing Falwell’s strategy to train scores of debaters to confront “the culture on moral default.” READ IT ALL

Posted at 01:33 AM | Permalink

Rick Warren from The Sinner's Guide to the Evangelical Right

[Thanks Bene Diction] From Speroforum

The state-run Syrian news agency reported that Protestant Pastor Rick Warren disagrees with US policy in the Mideast and Iraq and that he believes the American administration is mistaken not to hold dialogue with Syria. Rick Warren is pastor of 20,000-member Saddleback Church in Orange County, California.

During Warren's visit to Syria on Sunday, the news agency also said Warren believes there was no peace in the region without Syria, and he noted that 80 percent of the American people rejected what the US Administration is doing in Iraq.

The news agency also mentioned Rick Warren as part of an "American delegation" and photographed him sitting beside Syrian President al-Assad. The agency also said Warren "hailed the religious coexistence, tolerance and stability that the Syrian society is enjoying due to the wise leadership of President al-Assad, asserting that he will convey the true image about Syria to the American people." It reported that Warren also gave the President a drawing as "a gift to the Syrian people for their generosity and hospitality, thanking their efforts exerted for maintaining peace and harmony."

In a statement, Christian radio network, VCY America, a frequent critic of mega churches, said Warren "has no business involving himself in any role that appears to be representative of the United States. His promise to Syria to present a brighter view of that nation to America and Saddleback members demonstrates his willingness to serve as a mindless shill for a nation that embraces terror as a legitimate way of solving problems."

The United States has listed Syria as a state sponsor of terrorism since 1979 but said the Syrian Government has not been implicated directly in an act of terrorism since 1986. In September, the US lauded Syrian forces for foiling an attack by extremists on its embassy in Damascus. The US State Department added, though, that preliminary findings of a UN investigation into the February assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri have indicated a strong likelihood of official Syrian involvement. READ IT ALL

Posted at 11:11 AM | Permalink

From the AP

A picture book about two male penguins raising a baby penguin is getting a chilly reception among some parents who worry about the book's availability to children -- and the reluctance of school administrators to restrict access to it.

The concerns are the latest involving "And Tango Makes Three," the illustrated children's book based on a true story of two male penguins in New York City's Central Park Zoo that adopted a fertilized egg and raised the chick as their own.

Complaining about the book's homosexual undertones, some parents of Shiloh Elementary School students believe the book -- available to be checked out of the school's library in this 11,000-resident town 20 miles east of St. Louis -- tackles topics their children aren't ready to handle.

Their request: Move the book to the library's regular shelves and restrict it to a section for mature issues, perhaps even requiring parental permission before a child can check it out.

For now, "And Tango Makes Three" will stay put, said school district Superintendent Jennifer Filyaw, though a panel she appointed suggested the book be moved and require parental permission to be checked out. The district's attorney said moving it might be construed as censorship.

Posted at 10:14 AM | Permalink

From the AP

Most no-sex-before-marriage programs escape the type of scientific scrutiny required to show if they even work, a government watchdog said Thursday in a report on the federally funded abstinence education efforts.

Also, the materials used by the programs face limited review for scientific accuracy, the Government Accountability Office said in its review of federal oversight of the programs. The abstinence programs receive about $158 million (€123.4 million) a year from the federal Department of Health and Human Services.

The report follows complaints that the government often presents biased and inaccurate information when it comes to sex. Just last month, another GAO report reminded the Bush administration that literature distributed by federally backed abstinence programs must contain medically accurate information about how well condoms prevent sexually transmitted diseases.

Flashback: Abstinence Programs Mislead Teens

Posted at 10:03 AM | Permalink

Pentagon guidelines that classified homosexuality as a mental disorder now put it among a list of conditions or "circumstances" that range from bed-wetting to fear of flying. READ IT ALL HERE.

Posted at 09:54 AM | Permalink

We're delighted to see people waking up to his creepiness. Read all about the protest here.

Related: "Hipster" Pastor Mark Driscoll Blames Haggard's Behavior On Pastor Ted's Wife
The "Hipster" Pastor, Mark Driscoll, Exhibits His Misogyny Again

[Thanks Lauren]

Posted at 10:01 AM | Permalink

Christian band Winterhaven is simply too rockin' for words. They rock so hard, it's quite possible that they could be the headlining band in Hell. As The Right Reverend Rabbi Judah asks: "ever wondered what might have become of the Partridge Family if they'd had the fear of God put in 'em." Winterhaven, we love you:

The Devil Is A Liar
(make sure you see the rocking guitar solo)

I Don't Need A Vice

Check out more here.

A big Hat Tip to The Right Reverend Rabbi Judah

Posted at 07:14 PM | Permalink

Gay Expert H.B. London

Since James Dobson doesn't have time to help Ted Haggard get the gay out, Focus on the Family crony, H.B. London, has stepped up to the plate. As part of Haggard's therapy, London will be performing a "symbolic laying on of hands" with his extremely soft, yet thoroughly heterosexual hands. We can assume Haggard will undergo a rigorous "ex-gay" brainwashing program since London wrote a book called Love Wins Out that helps people "gain perspectives from past homosexuals, know how to reach out, how to respond to the "born that way" argument and extend compassion without compromise." Focus on the Family routinely sponsors ex-gay counseling programs and teaches that through "reperative therapy" homosexuality can be cured.

From Christian Post

Focus on the Family announced Tuesday that one of its senior officials, H.B. London, will join the team overseeing a counselling programme for Ted Haggard...

"From the Christian perspective, we think in terms of prayer, we think in terms of what we call godly counsel, where godly men who are clean themselves insert themselves in the life of the one who is struggling," London said.

The symbolic laying on of hands may also be a part of the recovery, London said.

"I'm sure there will be those who lay their hands on Pastor Haggard as an act of faith, calling on the act of God to restore and heal," he said. "The prayer can be therapeutic, the laying on of hands can be ceremonial."

"Godly men who are clean themselves insert[ing] themselves" and "the symbolic laying on of hands?!" Sounds like London truly is an expert on all things gay.

Posted at 11:36 AM | Permalink

From Christian Post Reporter. [Thanks Right Reverend Rabbi Judah]

The spectaculars in Times Square will be flashing Christian messages to an anticipated 21 million people in an unprecedented two-week campaign. The Assemblies of God kicked off an outreach today on two prominent jumbotrons in New York's lighted landmark.

Displayed on the ABC jumbotron and the News Astrovision Screen in the nation's largest city will be hundreds of spots with the theme "God Gives Hope" and a flashed prayer phone line for thousands to request prayers and accept Christ as Savior.

"God has given to the Assemblies of God an unprecedented opportunity to take the message of hope to millions in Times Square," said the Rev. Thomas E. Trask, general superintendent of the Pentecostal denomination. "Those who have been involved in planning for this outreach have seen it grow far beyond our dreams or fondest imagination."

The Times Square campaign is one of the most visible outreaches the Assemblies of God has ever undertaken and will also be accompanied by live radio broadcasts and volunteers on the streets.

Scores of Christians from the Assemblies of God will be scattered throughout Times Square distributing literature and offering prayers during the outreach. An added bonus to the major effort is the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade -- one of the nation's largest parades that draw some 2.5 million people to the streets of Manhattan and more than 40 million television viewers.

"Without question, God has opened these doors at this time for us to literally take the good news of Jesus Christ to the streets of our nations," commented Trask. "I believe this is a God-given window for this church."

The outreach also involves pastors and churches in the New York District and believers nationwide in financially supporting an effort that normally would be far-fetched when it comes to funding, especially in "pricey" New York City.

Advertising campaigns have become more popular among Christian denominations that are beginning spend the dollars to pierce through popular media in reaching the general public.

The United Methodist Church had launched a $1.7 million national television campaign earlier this year, encouraging people to "believe again" in the power of prayer. This was only one of several costly television campaigns that United Methodists have run to bring more people into the church.

The Assemblies of God reported that the costs for the November outreach were reduced to a fraction of the "original retail price," but is still in the tens of thousands of dollars range. A request for monetary support continues.

Posted at 12:00 AM | Permalink

From the AP [Thanks Snails]

... "The tone of the document is positive, pastoral and welcoming," Serratelli said. "Its starting point is the intrinsic human dignity of every person and God's love for every person."

But gay Catholic groups thought the bishops' approach was flat-out wrong.

Francisco DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, an independent outreach to Catholic gays that has run afoul of some church leaders, said the guidelines "do not reflect good science, good theology or human reality."

"This document proposes that lesbian and gay people be viewed not in the entirety of their lives, but in one dimension only — the sexual dimension," DeBernardo said. "No other group in the church is singled out in this way."

The guidelines condemn discrimination against gays and say it's not a sin to be attracted to someone of the same sex — only to act on those feelings.

The bishops also underscore Catholic opposition to gay marriage and adoption by gay and lesbian couples, but also say children of gay Catholics can be baptized if they are being raised in the faith.

Under the guidelines, parishes are instructed to help Catholics avoid "the lifestyle and values of a 'gay subculture.'" Gays also are discouraged from telling anyone about their sexual orientation outside a close circle of friends and supporters in the church.

On the subject of therapy to change same-sex attraction, the bishops said there is no scientific consensus on whether it can succeed. But church leaders say gays are free to seek counseling to help them live a chaste life.

Sam Sinnett, president of DignityUSA, an advocacy group for gay Catholics, said the document is damaging because it recommends that gays "stay emotionally and spiritually in the closet."

Posted at 12:00 AM | Permalink

From the AP [Thanks Snails]

A talking Jesus doll has been turned down by the Marine Reserves' Toys for Tots program.

A suburban Los Angeles company offered to donate 4,000 of the foot-tall dolls, which quote Bible verses, for distribution to needy children this holiday season. The battery-powered Jesus is one of several dolls manufactured by one2believe, a division of the Valencia-based Beverly Hills Teddy Bear Co., based on Biblical figures.

But the charity balked because of the dolls' religious nature.

Toys are donated to kids based on financial need and "we don't know anything about their background, their religious affiliations," said Bill Grein, vice president of Marine Toys for Tots Foundation, in Quantico, Va.

As a government entity, Marines "don't profess one religion over another," Grein said Tuesday. "We can't take a chance on sending a talking Jesus doll to a Jewish family or a Muslim family."

Michael La Roe, director of business development for both companies, said the charity's decision left him "surprised and disappointed."

"The idea was for them to be three-dimensional teaching tools for kids," La Roe said. "I believe as a churchgoing person, anyone can benefit from hearing the words of the Bible."

According to the company's Web site, the button-activated, bearded Jesus, dressed in hand-sewn cloth outfits and sandals, recites Scripture such as "I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again" and "Love your neighbor as yourself." It has a $20 retail value.

Grein also questioned whether children would welcome a gift designed for religious instruction. "Kids want a gift for the holiday season that is fun," he said.

The program distributed 18 million stuffed animals, games, toy trucks and other gifts to children in 2005.

Posted at 12:00 AM | Permalink

From NY Times

As Israeli bombs fell on Lebanon for a second week last July, the Rev. John Hagee of San Antonio arrived in Washington with 3,500 evangelicals for the first annual conference of his newly founded organization, Christians United For Israel.

At a dinner addressed by the Israeli ambassador, a handful of Republican senators and the chairman of the Republican Party, Mr. Hagee read greetings from President Bush and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel and dispatched the crowd with a message for their representatives in Congress. Tell them “to let Israel do their job” of destroying the Lebanese militia, Hezbollah, Mr. Hagee said.

He called the conflict “a battle between good and evil” and said support for Israel was “God’s foreign policy.”

The next day he took the same message to the White House.

Many conservative Christians say they believe that the president’s support for Israel fulfills a biblical injunction to protect the Jewish state, which some of them think will play a pivotal role in the second coming. Many on the left, in turn, fear that such theology may influence decisions the administration makes toward Israel and the Middle East.

Administration officials say that the meeting with Mr. Hagee was a courtesy for a political ally and that evangelical theology has no effect on policy making. But the alliance of Israel, its evangelical Christian supporters and President Bush has never been closer or more potent. In the wake of the summer war in southern Lebanon, reports that Hezbollah’s sponsor, Iran, may be pushing for nuclear weapons have galvanized conservative Christian support for Israel into a political force that will be hard to ignore.
READ IT ALL

Related: John Hagee: Evangelist of Doom

Posted at 09:48 AM | Permalink

From WFMU, [Thanks Chris!]

This clip is from a 1997 Pastor's Conference in which the late minister and plagiarist Kenneth "Papa" Hagin leads the visiting clerics in a raucous Holy Laughter session, cackling, guffawing, and inspiring the congregants to "act like drunks" and make collective noises that must be heard to be believed. One "Holy Laugher" makes sounds which can only be compared to those of Loons (as in the water bird). Other practitioners of Holy Laughter make crowing and mooing noises, find their bodies stuck magnetically to the floor and generally work themselves up to such a frenzy of induced drunkenness that they are sometimes unable to drive home from the service.

Posted at 09:10 PM | Permalink

Mark Driscoll, image from The Sinner's Guide to the Evangelical Right

Last week, Driscoll blamed Ted Haggard's meth and gay hooker scandal on the pastor's wife.

Now he says the Episcopalians elected their first female leader because they don't have enough testosterone. Read his inane blog entry Episcopalians and Male Testosterone Show Corresponding Decline. Lucklily, Mark seems to have enough testosterone for all of us.

Posted at 03:52 PM | Permalink

You know, because they're retarded. Incidentally, Ted Haggard was originally a Baptist. From the AP

Delegates gathering this week at the Baptist State Convention are expected to approve a policy that would prohibit membership for churches or affiliate groups that endorse homosexuality.

The policy, proposed by the convention's board of directors earlier this year, would forbid churches from ordaining gay clergy, making public statements supporting homosexuality or accepting openly gay churchgoers as members.

The proposal, believed to be the first of its kind in the country, includes steps for triggering an investigation.

"We seem to agree on this issue," said the Rev. Stan Welch, president of the 1.2-million-member group, whose 4,080 churches fund the convention's $38 million mission-focused budget. "It's an overwhelming majority time after time. We view it as a biblical precedence of right and wrong."

The measure, to be voted on during the convention's three-day meeting that starts Monday, requires a two-thirds majority to pass.

Opponents of the policy aren't optimistic.

"I don't think we're going to get heard, I don't bear any illusions about winning," said the Rev. Robert Ferguson of Emerywood Baptist Church in High Point, one of 40 pastors who signed a letter opposing the change. "But if we're going to start asking everybody about everything going on in their lives ... where are we going to stop? What about divorce? Are we going to narrow it down so only the 'righteous' can come?"

A convention official disputed that concern.

"There is no team, staff person, no position, no anything at the Baptist State Convention whose responsibility is to monitor church activity as it relates to homosexuality," said convention spokesman Norman Jameson. "None. Nada."

Under the policy, two people would have to make a complaint without anonymity and it must regard a church "with which they are familiar."

Jameson said the difference with homosexuality is that unlike many other issues opposed by the church, this one has become a cultural -- and legal -- touchstone.

"While we fully recognize that other sins assail our members, there is no other sin that has a national advocacy group where people march and try to change laws and cultural mores to gain approval for itself," Jameson said. "This particular sin is creeping its way into acceptability by virtue of this group's advocacy, and it is time for us to take a stand."

St. John's Baptist Church in Charlotte has taken no formal stance on homosexuality, but it does support the Alliance of Baptists, which opposes the policy, and expects to be expelled.

Richard Kremer, pastor of the church, said Tuesday's vote is inevitable because of the more conservative path the state convention has taken for the past 10 years. He believes it will lead to a major realignment of Baptist churches.

"There is sadness, but this is not a great surprise to any of us," Kremer said. "This is one small step in a spectrum of events. You can be sure they'll narrow the tent along the way."

Posted at 01:38 PM | Permalink

There’s been a lot of talk about the tantalizing announcement of Thomas Pynchon’s new novel, “Against the Day,” coming later this month. But let me draw attention to a throwaway line from the one-page excerpt in the publisher’s catalog that may have escaped your notice. “It’s O.K, we’re open-minded,” says the leader of a gang interrupted in the midst of a robbery; “couple boys in the outfit are evangelicals.”

The setting is Colorado in 1899, but Pynchon has his eye on the present. And part of the job of a writer in 2006, so it seems, is to comment on evangelicals or “conservative Christians” more generally, the way that many writers in the late ’60s and early ’70s -- novelists, poets, cultural critics, anyone whose opinions regularly appeared in print -- felt obliged to weigh in on blackness, often with embarrassing results.

In their fictional guise, evangelicals and their kin -- fundamentalists, Pentecostals and all manner of weird cultists calling fervently on the name of Jesus -- are usually side characters, rarely protagonists, except, of course, in the alternative universe of so-called Christian fiction, where all the protagonists are evangelicals, and in coming-of-age stories in which a youthful protagonist attains enlightenment and leaves faith behind. Sometimes these fictional evangelicals are ominous figures: glassy-eyed pro-lifers hellbent on murdering doctors and bombing abortion clinics, or charismatic psychopaths like the villain in Henning Mankell’s “Before the Frost,” who is mentored by Jim Jones of Jonestown fame. Mostly, though, they are drawn in broadly satiric strokes (see for example the “moaners” of the First Resurrectionist Maritime Assembly for God in Carl Hiaasen’s new novel, “Nature Girl”). Charmless, ignorant, homophobic and either brazenly hypocritical or obnoxiously sincere, they quote Scripture unctuously and have bad sex.

“Darwin,” muses a clueless Pentecostal mother in Kelly Kerney’s novel “Born Again.” “Isn’t that the guy who thinks God is a monkey?”

A reader who moves from the fiction shelf to the stacks of reportage and commentary may experience cognitive dissonance. The evangelical buffoons who populate so many novels these days seem hardly capable of organizing a local witch-burning, yet their nonfictional counterparts are said to be on the verge of turning these United States into a theocracy. (See, for starters, Kevin Phillips’s “American Theocracy” and Michelle Goldberg’s “Kingdom Coming.”)

And if you wander from the bookstore to the multiplex, you may end up watching the documentary “Jesus Camp,” which shows young children being drilled to become “foot soldiers” in the culture war. “Evangelical Christians are perhaps the most powerful single force in American politics today,” Jessica Reeves warned in The Chicago Tribune, adding that the film offers “an enlightening and frank look at what ... Evangelical America believes, preaches and teaches.” Reviewing “Jesus Camp” for The New York Times, Stephen Holden was reminded of the way in which “another puritanical youth army, Mao Zedong’s Red Guards, turned the world’s most populous country inside out.” Today, Holden concluded, “the possibility of a right-wing Christian American version of what happened in China no longer seems entirely far-fetched.”

That’s a scary prospect, when you consider that the Cultural Revolution -- the orgy of violence and denunciation that convulsed China from 1966 to 1976 -- ended with millions dead, many millions more in prison or laboring in rural “re-education” camps, and irreplaceable cultural treasures defaced or destroyed. Will the evangelical Red Guards soon be storming the Museum of Modern Art? How worried should you be?

Not very. Writing from one of the nerve centers of the evangelical conspiracy -- the magazine I edit, Books & Culture, is published by Christianity Today International, whose flagship magazine was founded by Billy Graham -- I can assure you that such fears are wildly overstated. To begin with, evangelicals are not by any stretch of the imagination a unified “force.” On the contrary, they -- we -- are notoriously riven by disagreement over matters large and small, from the particular translation of the Bible that should be used to the political implications of the Gospel, from the flavor of music most conducive to worship to the role of women in ministry. No wonder a new evangelical denomination or quasi-denomination is born every day.

Ever since Jerry Falwell and his Moral Majority began making headlines in the 1980s, it has served the purposes of certain conservative activists and their ideological foes to exaggerate the influence they wield among evangelical Christians. In fact, it is both a strength and a weakness of evangelicalism that the “movement” lacks a center. Yes, a significant majority of evangelicals voted for George W. Bush. Big deal. At the moment, it appears unlikely that a Republican of any stripe will win the White House in 2008, though the Democrats may yet find a way to squander their advantage. So much for theocracy.

If many commentators give a false impression of evangelical unity, they also underestimate the fluidity of religious identities. My wife and I have four children, all of them raised in an evangelical setting. The two oldest, ages 36 and 28, stopped going to church when they were about 16. We pray that they will return. Our third child — after graduation from Graham’s alma mater, the evangelical Wheaton College in Illinois — converted to Catholicism along with her husband, also a Wheaton grad, who was home-schooled in a self-described fundamentalist family in Texas.

If you have raised your offspring to be freethinkers before sending them away to college, you may be horrified to learn that one of them has fallen in with Christians on campus and is lustily singing praise choruses. You may have an evangelical at your table come Thanksgiving. (Your mail carrier may be one of Them already.) Or you may have grown up in a secular Jewish family, not in the least observant, only to find yourself drawn into one of the flourishing Jewish renewal movements when you begin to raise your own children.

Many years ago, when I was teaching English at a large state university, I sat through part of a faculty debate on the problem posed by evangelical groups who were “proselytizing.” These professors, you understand, were fully committed to free speech -- they’d swear to it, so help me Mario Savio -- but they were concerned about the vulnerability of impressionable young minds to the seductive wiles of Campus Crusade for Christ, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and other such evangelical organizations.

I left while the hand-wringing was still in progress and walked across the campus, passing a row of tables. One displayed books published by Progress Press, including works by Lenin and some classics of Socialist Realism. The books were dingy, as if they had been sitting outside for a long time, but I was tempted by Viktor Shklovsky’s study of Tolstoy. The fellow who took my money -- studious, by the look of him, and with hair almost as long as mine -- wanted me, improbably enough, to become a Communist.

The university was a marketplace of ideas. Wherever I turned, someone was trying to persuade me to do something. A young woman in a fetching tank top wanted me to join the army of the credit-card indebted. (I had already enlisted and re-upped, foolishly, at great eventual cost before I was discharged.) A couple of beefy guys wanted me to drink beer and do whatever else fraternity guys do. But some ideas are more threatening than others. So the evangelicals were a problem.

Evidently we still are. But such is life in a pluralistic nation. Even as book after book sounds the alarm about the evangelical menace -- coming in January, Chris Hedges’ “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America” -- conservative evangelical activists are sending out fund-raising letters portraying themselves as a beleaguered remnant. The reality, as usual, is considerably messier.

Posted at 09:54 AM | Permalink

image from quiverfull.com

From The Nation [hat tip TheocracyWatch]

But Wolfson, Moore and thousands of mothers like them call themselves and their belief system "Quiverfull." They borrow their name from Psalm 127: "Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are sons born in one's youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. They will not be put to shame when they contend with their enemies in the gate." Quiverfull mothers think of their children as no mere movement but as an army they're building for God.

Quiverfull parents try to have upwards of six children. They home-school their families, attend fundamentalist churches and follow biblical guidelines of male headship--"Father knows best"--and female submissiveness. They refuse any attempt to regulate pregnancy. Quiverfull began with the publication of Rick and Jan Hess's 1989 book, A Full Quiver: Family Planning and the Lordship of Christ, which argues that God, as the "Great Physician" and sole "Birth Controller," opens and closes the womb on a case-by-case basis. Women's attempts to control their own bodies--the Lord's temple--are a seizure of divine power....

Our bodies are meant to be a living sacrifice," write the Hesses. Or, as Mary Pride, in another of the movement's founding texts, The Way Home: Beyond Feminism, Back to Reality, puts it, "My body is not my own." This rebuttal of the feminist health text Our Bodies, Ourselves is deliberate. Quiverfull women are more than mothers. They're domestic warriors in the battle against what they see as forty years of destruction wrought by women's liberation: contraception, women's careers, abortion, divorce, homosexuality and child abuse, in that order.

Pride argues that feminism is a religion in its own right, one that is inherently incompatible with Christianity. "Christians have accepted feminists' 'moderate' demands for family planning and careers while rejecting the 'radical' side of feminism--meaning lesbianism and abortion," writes Pride. "What most do not see is that one demand leads to the other. Feminism is a totally self-consistent system aimed at rejecting God's role for women.

Posted at 11:11 AM | Permalink

The Duke of Haggard, from The Sinner's Guide to the Evangelical Right

Rev. Louis P. Sheldon, head of a antigay evangelical group known as the Traditional Values Coalition says many leaders of the evangelical Right have known that Haggard was gay for some time. From The Jewish Week:

Sheldon disclosed that he and “a lot” of others knew about Haggard’s homosexuality “for awhile ... but we weren’t sure just how to deal with it.”

Months before a male prostitute publicly revealed Haggard’s secret relationship with him, and the reverend’s drug use as well, “Ted and I had a discussion,” explained Sheldon, who said Haggard gave him a telltale signal then: “He said homosexuality is genetic. I said, no it isn’t. But I just knew he was covering up. They need to say that.”

Evidently, Jesus endorses hypocrisy. Here's what TVC has to say about homosexuality:

Homosexual behavior is explicitly condemned in both the Old and New Testaments as an abomination and a violation of God’s standards for sexuality. We oppose the normalization of sodomy as well as cross-dressing and other deviant sexual behaviors in our culture.

And don't forget to check out their “Homosexual Urban Legend Series”

Posted at 05:23 PM | Permalink

The Washington Post has another great story about evangelicals and Tuesday's election. Check it out here.

Posted at 11:18 AM | Permalink

This story is a few months old, but we're just hearing about it now. Obviously, it warrants a post. [Thanks Rev] From Reuters:

The Idaho gubernatorial candidate formerly known as Marvin Richardson is so strongly opposed to abortion that he has changed his name to Pro-Life. "I'm the most conservative politician in Idaho," the candidate said in a Western U.S. state known as a conservative bedrock. "When sperm meets egg, that's a new person."

He changed his name in August to highlight his stand against abortion, joining the ranks of Prince, Madonna, Cher, Bono and others who go by a single moniker.

He also has campaigned in his own distinct way. During a candidates' debate at one point the longshot candidate avoided a question and instead began to pray.

The southern Idaho farmer added Pro-Life as a middle name in 2004 but a court approved his request to make it his entire name as of August. However, Pro-Life made the change too late to get the updated name on the ballot so supporters will still have to look for his old name.

Posted at 11:14 AM | Permalink

From Radar

"He loved to have sex in the dark. We would have one little candle going."

Haggard was a "bottom" and "vanilla"

"he looks gay. ... All the guys that were up on stage were young, good-looking men."

"He acted stupid when he first got [the meth], like, "How should I do it? What do I do with it?" And I was like, jeesh. I would fall into the trap and show him, like he was this innocent guy who was curious"

"he usually did it [meth] every time he saw me."

Posted at 11:29 AM | Permalink

From the AP

The summer camp featured in the documentary "Jesus Camp," which includes scenes with disgraced preacher Ted Haggard, will shut down for at least several years because of negative reaction sparked by the film, according to the camp's director.

"Right now we're just not a safe ministry," Becky Fischer, the fiery Pentecostal pastor featured in "Jesus Camp," said Tuesday.

The documentary, which hit select U.S. theaters during the summer, portrays Fischer, 55, as drill instructor to a group of young evangelical children steeling themselves for spiritual and political warfare.

Led by Fischer, the children pray in tongues, as is common in charismatic strains of Pentecostalism; tearfully beg God to end abortion; and bless President Bush at a weeklong camp in Devils Lake, N.D.

Fischer has drawn fire from some corners for "brainwashing" the children. After vandals damaged the campground last month and critics besieged Fischer with negative e-mails, phone calls and letters, the pastor said she's shutting down the camp for at least several years.

"I don't think we'll be doing it for a while," she said.

Fischer lives in Bismarck, N.D., and is chief pastor at The Fire Center, a church devoted to children's ministry there. She has run the weeklong "Kids on Fire" summer camp, which is featured in the film, since 2002, with 75 to 100 children attending each year.

The documentary also includes scenes of Haggard, the evangelical leader accused of gay sex and drug use.

Posted at 09:44 AM | Permalink

From the AP [thanks JDR]

Conservative Christian leader James Dobson accused the Republican Party of abandoning values voters in the midterm elections — and paying the price by losing control of Congress. "What did they do with their power?" Dobson said in a statement. "Very little that values voters care about."

Finger-pointing abounded in the days after Democrats seized control of Congress after 12 years in the minority. Dobson, chairman of Focus on the Family, issued a statement railing against the Republicans for letting their majorities slip away.

"They consistently ignored the constituency that put them in power until it was late in the game, and then frantically tried to catch up at the last minute," said Dobson, who argued that religious conservatives ensured GOP wins in 2004.

Dobson also criticized other conservatives, including former Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas — an architect of the 1994 GOP House takeover — for complaining recently that the religious right was "too involved" with the party.

"Without the support of that specific constituency, John Kerry would be president and the Republicans would have fallen into a black hole in '04," Dobson said. "In fact, that is where they are headed if they continue to abandon their pro-moral, pro-family and pro-life base. The big tent will turn into a three-ring circus."

Dobson said he had predicted in 2004 that Republicans might squander their opportunity and pay the price in future elections.

"Sadly for conservatives, that in large measure explains what happened on Tuesday night," he said. "Many of the values voters of '04 simply stayed at home this year."

Posted at 06:32 PM | Permalink

Forget the election results. We've got Kirk Cameron! Bananas are "the aetheist's nightmare." [Hat Tip DefCon and The Really Good News]

Posted at 10:42 AM | Permalink

From The AP

In a triple setback for conservatives, South Dakotans rejected a law that would have banned virtually all abortions, Arizona became the first state to defeat an amendment to ban gay marriage and Missouri approved a measure backing stem cell research.

Nationwide, a total of 205 measures were on the ballots in 37 states Tuesday, but none had riveted political activists across the country like the South Dakota measure. Passed overwhelmingly by the legislature earlier this year, it would have been the toughest abortion law in the nation, allowing the procedure only to save a pregnant woman's life.

Lawmakers had hoped the ban would be challenged in court, provoking litigation that might eventually lead to a
U.S. Supreme Court reversal of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion.

Jan Nicolay, a leader of the state's anti-ban campaign, said voters viewed the measure—which lost by a 55-45 margin—as too intrusive.

"We believe South Dakotans can make these decisions themselves," she said. "They don't have to have somebody telling them what that decision needs to be."

Arizona broke a strong national trend by refusing to change its constitution to define marriage as a one-man, one-woman institution. The measure also would have forbid civil unions and domestic partnerships.

Posted at 09:59 AM | Permalink

read the story here

Posted at 08:22 PM | Permalink

Gov. Rick Perry (covering his face in prayer) as pastor John Hagee prays

From Dallas Morning News

Gov. Rick Perry, after a God and country sermon attended by dozens of political candidates Sunday, said that he agreed with the minister that non-Christians will be condemned to hell.

"In my faith, that's what it says, and I'm a believer of that," the governor said.

Throughout much of the 90-minute service at Cornerstone Church, Mr. Perry sat on the red-carpeted stage next to the Rev. John Hagee. Mr. Perry was among about 60 mostly Republican candidates who accepted the invitation to be introduced to the megachurch's congregation of about 1,500, plus a radio and TV audience.

"If you live your life and don't confess your sins to God almighty through the authority of Christ and his blood, I'm going to say this very plainly, you're going straight to hell with a nonstop ticket," Mr. Hagee said during a service interspersed with religious and patriotic videos.

Asked afterward at a political rally whether he agreed with Mr. Hagee, the governor said he didn't hear anything that he would take exception to.

Related: John Hagee Is Insane

Posted at 01:39 PM | Permalink

Posted at 09:48 AM | Permalink

Mark Driscoll, image from The Sinner's Guide to the Evangelical Right

We've been covering this douchebag for a while. This is from his blog [via Wonkette]

At the risk of being even more widely despised than I currently am, I will lean over the plate and take one for the team on this. It is not uncommon to meet pastors’ wives who really let themselves go; they sometimes feel that because their husband is a pastor, he is therefore trapped into fidelity, which gives them cause for laziness. A wife who lets herself go and is not sexually available to her husband in the ways that the Song of Songs is so frank about is not responsible for her husband’s sin, but she may not be helping him either.

Posted at 08:57 PM | Permalink

From AmericaBlog

Michelangelo Signorile: Tell me a bit about how you first met Ted Haggard.

Michael Jones: It was approximately three years ago. Got a call from a gentleman who said his name was Art. He wanted to see if we could hook up. At the time I was advertising as an escort in gay publications. I only advertised in gay publications. So if someone was looking for me, they were looking in a gay publication. He said he was from Kansas City and he wanted to hook up. We hooked up at my place. Always at my place. I had never been to a hotel with him.

MS: Did he use the term "hook up?" I mean, what did he actually say he wanted to do?

MJ: He said he wanted an appointment with me. He came to my apartment. And the clothes came right off. The first time it was pretty much mutual masturbation, then in time oral sex. He was really pretty vanilla. Only once in three years did we try anal sex.

MS: Was he a top or bottom? What was he interested in?

MJ: When I was on the radio show in Denver, the question was asked: Did you practice safe sex? I said, 'We used a condom once." The talk show host goes, "You mean he wore the condom once?" I said, "Uh, no, I did."

MS: What about with oral sex. Was he the passive partner or the active partner?

MJ: You know, it kind of went back and forth --- and I can't say he was very good at it.

[...]

MS: Tell me about this: You're having sexual encounters with him once a month. After about a year he just asks you about crystal meth?

MJ: He just goes, "Hey Mike, I have a question. What do you know about crystal meth?" I was a little bit surprised. I said, "I don't care for it. I've tried it but I don't care for it. But I have friends who do it and they think it enhances their sexual pleasure." He goes, "Do you think you can get me some?" I told him I'll see what I can do.

MS: And you hooked him up with somebody who could get him this drug. Then what? He would do it in your presence when he had sex with you?

MJ: Yes, he agreed it enhanced his pleasure and said that he used it when he had sex with his wife too.

[...]

MS: He said he was taking this when he had sex with his wife. Did he indicate he had trouble having sex with his wife? Did it allow him to have heterosexual sex more easily? Is he gay, bisexual, any ideas on that?

MJ: I really don't know. I really think he is a gay man. When you're in that business, you've got to put up a good front. I think he has enormously strong homosexual tendencies but he just told me the drug enhanced his pleasure with his wife. I don't know if he even really was having sex with his wife, or just said that. I think part it too is that he was a very busy man, traveling all over the country and the world. I think he enjoyed the drug too because it kept him going.

[...]

MS: You spoke about a fantasy he told you, his sexual fantasy. Tell me about that?

MJ: This was the only time he ever spoke about something sexual other than being with me. He goes, "Mike do you know any young college guys" I said, "Well, I know a few, why? "He said, "I would love to get about 4 to 6 young college guys, about 18 to 22, I'd love to have group sex with them.' I said, "Let me check around and see what I can do and see if I can organize that for you." I never pursued it.

MS: What have you been hearing from people in response to what you've done?

Posted at 03:16 PM | Permalink

From Colorado Springs Gazette

The three men chosen to oversee the Rev. Ted Haggard’s spiritual restoration are well-known in conservative Christian circles and are old pros at such work. James Dobson, the Rev. Jack Hayford and the Rev. Tommy Barnett have been tapped by New Life’s overseer board to “perform a thorough analysis of Haggard’s mental, spiritual, emotional and physical life.”

Posted at 03:05 PM | Permalink

"Find a person of the opposite sex and make a lifelong commitment to them"

Posted at 10:26 AM | Permalink

Posted at 12:00 AM | Permalink

"The Protector," a homoerotic statue at New Life Church

Even gayer at New Life: "The Watcher" by Thomas Blackshear

Lauren Sandler has a great overview of New Life's first post-scandal service. From Salon

On Sunday morning the 12,000 members of New Life Church officially learned what had been the talk of the nation Saturday evening: that Rev. Ted Haggard, their founding pastor and the former head of the National Association of Evangelicals, was to lead their flock no more. On Thursday, a male prostitute in Denver, Mike Jones, accused Haggard of paying him for sex and buying and using methamphetamines over a three-year period. Sunday, a visiting pastor named Larry Stockstill, who heads up New Life's Board of Overseers -- and who gave Ted Haggard his first associate preaching post before he founded New Life 26 years ago -- announced Haggard's dismissal from the church.

"We interviewed Haggard on Thursday and discovered the roots of his problem," Stockstill told thousands of congregants gathered here today for the 9 a.m. service, filling the 7,000-seat sanctuary and spilling out into every worship area on New Life's giant campus. The board then called Focus on the Family's James Dobson and powerful pastors across the nation, Stockstill said, who unanimously called for Haggard's dismissal.

Stockstill stood in a dark suit behind a Lucite podium and told the members of Colorado's largest megachurch that God opted to reveal Haggard's indiscretions now for a reason. And he implied that the reason had everything to do with Tuesday's election. "We can be mad at God. We can say that's not fair, the timing is terrible," said Stockstill. "He chose this incredibly, um, important time." God was telling the nation, Stockstill said, on the eve of an election favoring Democrats even in this blood-red congressional district, that it's time for a "revival." Then Stockstill read a letter from Haggard to his congregation.

"I am a sinner. I have fallen," Haggard wrote. "The fact is, I'm guilty of sexual immorality." Mike Jones' allegations, the pastor insisted, are not all true, but "enough of them are true."

"Part of my life is so repugnant and dark," Haggard said in the letter Stockstill read. "I've been warring against it all my life." He told of how he had sought counseling to address his sexuality, which he said cured him for spells. But then, he wrote, "the dirt I thought was gone would resurface ... the darkness increased and dominated." Haggard asked his congregation for forgiveness for him, and also for his accuser, who he suggested was inspired by God to reveal his "deception and sensuality."

Haggard's letter was followed by one from his wife, Gayle, addressed to her husband's female former congregants. "What I want you ladies to know is I love my husband Ted Haggard with all my heart. I am committed to him with all my heart." Her words, which echo the guide to marriage the Haggards published earlier this year (still on sale here in the bookstore outside the sanctuary), inspired a standing ovation.

A service that began with easy listening-style worship music sung by a 300-person choir, bathed in the fuchsia and lavender lights that suffuse the sanctuary, quickly became a clarion call for heterosexual marriage, and the "therapeutic restoration" of the soul of the founding pastor of this church. The choir and worship band sang about God's all-knowingness, of having absolute trust in him and nothing else. The clear message here was neither to question, nor to reassess, nor even to consider the personal struggle of their beloved former leader, who is at once the same man they have adored and followed -- and someone who happens to be attracted to men. It was to go back to the Psalms, and to soldier on. READ IT ALL

Posted at 10:39 PM | Permalink

From CNN

On Saturday overseers of [Haggard's] church recommended he be permanently removed.

"We, the Overseer Board of New Life Church, have concluded our deliberations concerning the moral failings of Pastor Ted Haggard," a statement from the church said.

"Our investigation and Pastor Haggard's public statements have proven without a doubt that he has committed sexually immoral conduct."

Haggard, 50, and his wife were informed of the decision, the statement said, and "they have agreed as well that he should be dismissed and that a new pastor for New Life Church should be selected according to the rules of replacement in the bylaws."

The statement said "a letter of explanation and apology" from Haggard and "a word of encouragement" from his wife, Gayle, would be read at Sunday morning services.

The couple has five children.

Posted at 01:41 AM | Permalink

Read all about The Duke of Haggard, who we interviewed extensively in our book The Sinner's Guide to the Evangelical Right. (Yes that's Pastor Ted on the cover standing behind Pat Robertson). And here's our favorite Pastor Ted quote from the book: "I’m a right-wing religious conservative. … I joke that the only disagreement I have with George Bush is on what type of truck to drive.”

Posted at 09:39 AM | Permalink

Forget prayer and forgiveness, Pat and Jerry know that mudslinging works better. From WaPo

Some fellow conservative Christian leaders got in their digs yesterday. "We're sad to see any evangelical leader fall," the Rev. Pat Robertson said on his television show, "The 700 Club." But, he added, it "just isn't true" that the NAE represents 30 million churchgoers, as the association claims.

"We can't get their financial data. I think it's because they have very little money and very little influence," Robertson said.

James Dobson, chairman and founder of Focus on the Family, which is headquartered near Haggard's megachurch, called Haggard a "close friend." "Nevertheless, sexual sin, whether homosexual or heterosexual, has serious consequences, and we are extremely concerned for Ted, his family and his church," Dobson said.

The Rev. Jerry Falwell, speaking Thursday night on CNN, said Haggard "doesn't really lead the movement. He's president of an association that's very loose-knit . . . and no one has looked to them for leadership."

Posted at 09:11 AM | Permalink

This sounds eerily reminiscent of "I didn't inhale." From CNN

The Rev. Ted Haggard, who resigned as one of the nation's top evangelical leaders, admitted Friday he had contacted male prostitute Mike Jones "for a massage" and bought drugs from him.

Haggard said he never had sex with Jones and never used the methamphetamine drug he bought.

He told reporters earlier this week that he did not know Jones, who claims to have had a three-year sex-for-money relationship with him.

Haggard, 50, resigned Thursday as leader of the National Association of Evangelicals -- a group representing more than 45,000 churches and 30 million people -- and he also stepped down temporarily from leadership at New Life Church in Colorado Springs.

He was one of a group of religious leaders who regularly participated in conference calls with White House aides.

Haggard told CNN affiliate KUSA-TV Friday that he received Jones' name as "a referral" from a hotel where he was staying in Denver.

He did not name the hotel. "I did call him," Haggard said. "I called him to buy some meth, but I threw it away."

"I was buying it for me but I never used it. I was tempted, I bought it, but I never used it."

"He told me about it. I went there for a massage."

Earlier, Jones said he would not back down from his allegations despite a polygraph test that showed "deception."

Jones took the test voluntarily, answering questions about his alleged ties with the Haggard, who regularly participates in White House advisory conference calls.

Test administrator John Kresnik said the results "did show deception" but that Jones was physically and mentally exhausted. Kresnik said he would like to take the test again after Jones had slept and eaten, which could provide more trustworthy results. (Watch Haggard's response to whether he knows gay men in Denver -- 2:07 )

The Rev. Ross Parsley, who assumed leadership of Haggard's church, said Haggard had made "some admission of indiscretion -- not an admission to all of the material that has been discussed, but there is an admission of some guilt."

Posted at 02:36 PM | Permalink

This is a great overview, if you're playing catch-up on the Duke of Haggard's meth-induced manlove scandal. It includes Haggard's damning voicemails. [HT Americablog]

Posted at 11:21 AM | Permalink

As the Duke of Haggard's gay-bashing ilk are known to say: "what's next? Bestiality?!"

From kktv

A sudden about--face in the scandal facing New Life Church's pastor.

After Pastor Ted Haggard went public Wednesday night denying allegations of a homosexual affair, senior church officials told KKTV 11News Thursday evening, Pastor Ted Haggard has admitted to some of the claims made by a former male escort. The church's Acting Senior Pastor, Ross Parsley, tells KKTV 11 News that Pastor Haggard has admitted to some of the indiscretions claimed by Mike Jones, but not all of them.

Posted at 09:05 AM | Permalink

Voice expert believes the voicemails are real... listen to the voicemails here

From TowelRoad

Voicemail 1

"Hi Mike, this is Art, I am here in Denver and sorry that I missed you. But as I said, if you want to go ahead and get the stuff, then that would be great. And I'll get it sometime next week or the week after or whenever. I will call though you early next week to see what's most convenient for you. Okay? Thanks a lot, bye."

Said speech expert Richard Sanders: "This certainly sounds like the same person. If we can find enough words and phrases that match then it's generally accepted by courts that that's the same person."

"Everybody is 100 percent for him, for his family, and for encouraging the process where he gets some great encouragement and spiritual counsel."

Voicemail 2

"Hi Mike, this is Art, I am here in Denver and sorry that I missed you. But as I said, if you want to go ahead and get the stuff, then that would be great. And I'll get it sometime next week or the week after or whenever. I will call though you early next week to see what's most convenient for you. Okay? Thanks a lot, bye."

Said speech expert Richard Sanders: "This certainly sounds like the same person. If we can find enough words and phrases that match then it's generally accepted by courts that that's the same person."

"Everybody is 100 percent for him, for his family, and for encouraging the process where he gets some great encouragement and spiritual counsel"

Posted at 08:34 AM | Permalink

From NonProphet, Hat Tip Wonkette

Dear New Lifers and friends of New Life Church,

Many of you have expressed concern about today's news regarding our pastor. Thank you all for your prayers and support, and for your concern for our church family.

As you've likely heard by now, Pastor Ted has voluntarily placed himself on administrative leave as New Life's senior pastor to allow our external board of overseers to work effectively. Below is the statement that we released to the media on Thursday afternoon.

Since that time, the board of overseers has met with Pastor Ted. It is important for you to know that he confessed to the overseers that some of the accusations against him are true. He has willingly and humbly submitted to the authority of the board of overseers, and will remain on administrative leave during the course of the investigation.

I am serving as the acting senior pastor of New Life Church. I met with the pastoral staff and elders Thursday night, and I assure you that the leadership team is strong and united. We remain resolute in our commitment to serving New Life Church and the people of our community.

Please continue to keep Ted and Gayle and their family in your prayers.

I love serving God with you all,

Ross Parsley

Posted at 12:00 AM | Permalink

"We don't have to debate about what we should think about homosexual activity, it's written in the bible....I think i know what you did last night, if you send me a thousand dollars I won't tell your wife"

RELATED: Haggard calls homosexuality a “sin” and “devastating for the children of our nation and for the future of Western civilization.”

RELATED: Past coverage of Ted Haggard

Posted at 11:58 PM | Permalink

"I no longer find this rumor hard to swallow."

From 9 News in Denver, CO:

A pastor from Colorado resigned from a national organization and put himself on leave from his church Thursday, 9NEWS has confirmed.

The resignation came a day after a male escort claimed he has been having a sexual relationship with the pastor for the past three years.

A statement from the New Life Church says Pastor Ted Haggard resigned as president of the multi-million member National Association of Evangelicals Thursday and put himself on leave from his church.

Haggard is the founder and senior leader of the New Life Church in Colorado Springs. The church has 14,000 members.

The statement says Haggard could "not continue to minister under the cloud created by the accusations".

Mike Jones, a gay man and admitted male escort, said on talk radio Wednesday he and Haggard had been in a "sexual business" relationship for the past three years.

Jones also says Haggard used methamphetamine in his presence.

Haggard denied the allegations in an exclusive interview with 9NEWS Wednesday night.

The statement from Martin Nussbaum, legal counsel for New Life Church, says Haggard put himself on administrative leave pending an investigation and a decision by the church's board of overseers.

"I am voluntarily stepping aside from leadership so that the overseer process can be allowed to proceed with integrity. I hope to be able to discuss this matter in more detail at a later date," said Haggard in the statement.

In the interim the church's associate senior pastor will serve as acting pastor of the church.

Haggard is married with five children and an outspoken critic of gay marriage.

Nussbaum stresses Haggard's decision to resign from the National Association of Evangelicals and go on administrative leave is in no way an admission of guilt.

Nussbaum says the church's bylaws state that when an allegation of immorality is made, a pastor is supposed to go on leave while the rest of the board makes a decision on his future.

Former NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw profiled Haggard in 2005 in a series on mega-churches. Haggard was also listed by Time magazine as one of the 25 most influential Evangelicals in America last year.

More:
Denver Post
ABC News
Think Progress

Previous post:

Head of National Association of Evangelicals, Ted Haggard, Is Gay!

Posted at 08:33 PM | Permalink

Of course, we've always had our suspicions about Pastor Ted. [Via kusa.com with a big hat tip to DefCon.]

A gay man and admitted male escort claims he has had an ongoing sexual relationship with a well-known Evangelical pastor from Colorado Springs.

Mike Jones told 9 Wants to Know Investigative Reporter Paula Woodward he has had a "sexual business" relationship with Pastor Ted Haggard for the past three years.

Haggard is the founder and senior leader of the New Life Church in Colorado Springs. The church has 14,000 members.

He is also president of the National Association of Evangelicals, an organization that represents millions of people.

Haggard is married with five children and an outspoken critic of gay marriage.

Jones broke his silence Wednesday morning on talk radio.

In an exclusive interview Wednesday night, Haggard denied the claims and told 9NEWS he is prepared for his own church to investigate them.

"I did not have a homosexual relationship with a man in Denver," said Haggard. "I am steady with my wife. I'm faithful to my wife."

"I don't know if this is election year politics or if this has to do with the marriage amendment or what it is, but I'm not even the guy who will investigate it or question it. I don't know what the dynamics are, but this independent group will come in and do that."

Jones started talking to 9 Wants to Know two months ago. He claims Haggard has been paying him for sex over the past three years, even though Haggard preaches that homosexuality is a sin.

Jones also claims Haggard used methamphetamine in his presence on several occasions.

"People may look at me and think what I've done is immoral, but I think I had to do the moral thing in my mind and that is expose someone who is preaching one thing and doing the opposite behind everybody's back," said Jones.

Former NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw profiled Haggard in 2005 in a series on mega-churches. Haggard was also listed by Time magazine as one of the 25 most influential Evangelicals in America last year.
9NEWS and 9NEWS.com will continue to update this story as information becomes available.

Watch Haggard's response here.

Posted at 12:03 PM | Permalink

From Charlotte Observer

The Rev. Dan Burrell of Charlotte's Northside Baptist Church has lost faith in politics. Two years ago, Burrell, an outspoken Christian conservative, registered voters, distributed Christian Coalition voter guides and urged the 3,000 members of his church to the polls.

Not this year.

Burrell said his disillusionment with the national Republican Party -- sparked by the war in Iraq, the Mark Foley scandal, and lagging action on conservative social issues -- won't stop him from voting.

But his extra effort these days is focused on saving souls, not electing politicians.

"In terms of major get-out-the-vote campaigns, frankly, we're going to be focused more on the work of the Gospel and ministering to our local community," he said.

As Election Day looms, political activists are eyeing Burrell and others like him, trying to perform a critical election-year calculation: Will the religious right turn out as strongly as in the past?

The question is an especially important one for Republicans fighting to maintain control of Congress. The party credited Christian conservative turnout two years ago as a major factor in President Bush's re-election. Their votes could prove decisive this year in an election that Democrats -- motivated by years of losses -- are eager to win.

"They are the bulwarks that the Republicans have against really catastrophic losses," said Matthew Wilson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. "If Republicans are going to hold on to really either house of Congress, it's going to be important on Election Day that conservative religious voters ... turn out in significant numbers." READ IT ALL

Posted at 09:52 AM | Permalink

Our favorite political action group, The Campaign To Defend the Constitution (DefCon), has been kind enough to invite Robert Lanham to participate in a "live chat" today, Thursday November 2 at 2pm.

You can sign up and listen here.

If you're not familiar with DefCon, you should be. The organization has much in common People for the American Way, only with a special emphasis on keeping the Evangelical Right in check. Rapture-Ready Fundamentalists take note: both aforementioned organizations are run by secular humanists propagating the agenda of the Beast.

Lanham will be discussing his new book, The Sinner's Guide to the Evangelical Right, theocracy, the Rapture, megachurches, the evangelical Vatican and, if there's time, the health benefits of semi-solid fermented milk products.

About DefCon:

The Campaign To Defend the Constitution is an online grassroots movement combating the growing power of the religious right. We will fight to uphold the First Amendment's guarantee of separation of church and state and will oppose efforts to control and distort religion, education, science and culture in ways that ultimately threaten the health and well-being of American society.

Here's what DefCon had to say about our book: "This book is hilarious... [Lanham] didn't skimp on his research. The book provides a telling overview of the religious right's leadership, the beliefs they espouse, and just how incredibly absurd and hypocritical they are."

You can pick up a copy of The Sinner's Guide to the Evangelical Right here

Posted at 12:00 AM | Permalink

From Denver Post

"We are in the midst of a war, and the president is the commander in chief, and we've got troops in the field, and we're going to paralyze him [Bush] for two years?"

Meanwhile, according to the NY Times:

Burials at Arlington National Cemetery took on a grim regularity in October, when at least 103 American troops were killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. In Iraq, the toll had reached 99 by Saturday, making October the deadliest month since January 2005.

Clearly, Dobson is getting pretty desperate. His people are resorting to scaring the hell out of potential voters by calling them in the middle of the night.

Posted at 10:41 AM | Permalink

hat tips: Americablog and TheocracyWatch

Posted at 10:35 AM | Permalink

Devil Worshippers

From Atlanta Journal-Constitution, hat tip Theocracy Watch

A Loganville mother argued that the Harry Potter books promote witchcraft and should be banned from all Gwinnett County public schools. But an attorney for the county's school system said the popular stories encourage children to read and should be available to all students.... The Gwinnett school board decided in May that the books should remain. Laura Mallory, the parent who wants the series removed, appealed to the state education board.

Mallory said the books are harmful to children. She said the good characters lie, cheat and steal and are not punished. The stories, she said, encourage children to perform spells and promote Wicca.

"When my children are at school, I'm trusting them to the teachers and that school," Mallory said. "They are my most precious things in the entire world to me. I surely don't want them indoctrinated into a religion whose practices are evil." [...] Mallory's fight to banish Harry Potter began in September 2005 when she filed a complaint with her children's school.

Posted at 10:30 AM | Permalink