Religious Right Watch

New Report Finds Ex-Gay Movement in Latin America Divided, But Still of Concern | Political Research Associates

While conversion therapy faces challenges from within and without the movement, the report’s authors suggest caution regarding the Christian Right’s ability to adapt, and the mainstream influence these antigay organizations continue to possess. As recently as 2010, Exodus Global Alliance representatives attended the Third Lausanne Congress, the world’s largest conference of evangelical leaders, leading sessions on sexuality and promoting ex-gay therapy and other harmful psychological views of homosexuality. A conference endorsed by such high-profile figures as Rick Warren and Billy Graham, it’s acceptance of Exodus gives it mainstream sanction for its views.

via www.politicalresearch.org

Pope Francis prays for ‘full unity’ with Coptic Church

Here is an interesting moment in modern ecumenism. Pope Francis was recently visited in Rome by the 118th Coptic Pope of Alexandria and Patriarch of the See of St. Mark, Tawadros II. There's about 15,000,000 Coptic Christians, approximately 12,000,000 of them in Egypt, their traditional home.

Pope Francis...prayed for “full unity” with the Coptic Orthodox Church as he received Patriarch of Alexandria Tawadros II for an historic visit in the latest sign of closer ties between the Catholic and Orthodox (sic) worlds.

“We long for the day when, in fulfilment of the Lord’s desire, we will be able to communicate from the one chalice,” he said, acknowledging that there had been “centuries of mutual distrust” between their two Christian churches.

This was the first such meeting in 40 years.

via www.gulf-times.com

To understand the division between the Coptic Church and Roman Catholicism, one has to look to the split between the Oriental Orthodox churches--of which the Coptic Church is one--and the dominant churches of the West and East, which occured as a result of the Council of Chalcedon in A.D. 451, the Fourth Ecumenical Council, due to what the modern mind almost certainly sees as a technicality.

 

via citizenship.typepad.com

Bryant Huddleston, Gay Producer, Claims Arkansas High School Canceled Graduation Speech Over His Sexuality

In a controversy that has engulfed a small Arkansas town, a graduate of one of the local high schools claims the school canceled his appearance as this year's graduation speaker because his is gay.

via www.huffingtonpost.com

Help with the archival costs of "Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia"

A critic of the Religious Right (and to be fair religion in general) was Gore Vidal, who many regard as one of America's last great public intellectuals. After an amazing life as novelist, essayist, playwright, screenwriter, patrician gadfly, and even for a time candidate and politician, Gore Vidal died in 2012, but not before filmmaker Nicholas Wrathall was able to spend time with Vidal and shoot some great footage for Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia.

The documentary had a very successful premiere at Tribeca Film Festival last month, but Wrathall and his team still need help with the final archival materials and post production.

You can help. And you'll get mentioned in the credits! Check out the documentary's Kickstarter page.

But deadline is fast approaching… please get involved. Even a small contribution is appreciated.

Clergyperson Expected to Face Trial for Officiating Son’s Wedding « Reconciling Ministries Network

Officiating his son’s same-sex wedding was the most significant act he performed as a pastor, and now he will possibly have to justify that action to a jury of his peers. Rev. Dr. Thomas Ogletree, a United Methodist clergyperson, former seminary dean, and distinguished Christian ethicist, awaits charges by the New York Conference of The United Methodist Church (UMC) for presiding over his son’s wedding. Bishop Martin McLee referred the case to counsel, an action expected to lead to a church trial.

Ogletree, formerly the dean of Yale Divinity School and Drew Theological Seminary, performed the wedding, knowing that The UMC bans such ceremonies. He believes the ban is morally indefensible. “As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. reminded us, ‘One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.’ Marrying Tom and Nick was for me a profoundly personal and quintessentially pastoral act,” said Ogletree. “I have been deeply moved by their exceptional bond, and their strong commitment to a more just and inclusive society. It is high time for The United Methodist Church to honor such bonds and to take strong and diligent steps to overcome persisting prejudices.”

via www.rmnetwork.org

To show your support for Ogletree and marriage equality, consider joining Reconciling Ministries Network’s mailing list or sign on to the Altar For All. Also, tweet your support with the hashtag #UMConTrial

Belief in biblical end-times stifling climate change action in U.S.: study | The Raw Story

The United States has failed to take action to mitigate climate change thanks in part to the large number of religious Americans who believe the world has a set expiration date.

Research by David C. Barker of the University of Pittsburgh and David H. Bearce of the University of Colorado uncovered that belief in the biblical end-times was a motivating factor behind resistance to curbing climate change.

“[T]he fact that such an overwhelming percentage of Republican citizens profess a belief in the Second Coming (76 percent in 2006, according to our sample) suggests that governmental attempts to curb greenhouse emissions would encounter stiff resistance even if every Democrat in the country wanted to curb them,” Barker and Bearce wrote in their study, which will be published in the June issue of Political Science Quarterly.

via www.rawstory.com

Will GOP women stay home? | CharlotteObserver.com

In the contest in North Carolina between U.S. Senate candidates Elizabeth Colbert Busch (D, pictured) and former Gov. Mark Sanford (R), the Republican Party might have a problem: Republican women voters might stay at home on election day.

For the first time in decades, Julie Bell of Hilton Head Island might sit out an election and not vote.

“I’m 50 years old and I always vote. I believe it’s important,” said Bell, a Republican activist and former member of the Beaufort County School Board who has decided not to support GOP nominee Mark Sanford in his bid for the 1st Congressional District seat. “But I never had such a moral conflict before on supporting the Republican candidate

From www.charlotteobserver.com

Unfortunately, the article does not explore the effects of religious identity on voter intension.

Photo by Bruce Smith, Associated Press

7 Experts Who Want to Reframe the Boston Bombing Media Coverage

Chip Berlet of Talk To Action delves intelligently into the media coverage of the Boston bombing case:

Much media coverage of the worldview and motivation of the suspects in the Boston bombing case--one now dead--was sensational and provocative. Very little of it, however, relied on experts who use contemporary rather than outdated and discredited social science. Discussions of the possible role of religion were often stilted or stifled.

Contemporary sociological theory contends that:

• Most people who join social movements, political movements, or religious movements are not mentally ill or stupid. They have adopted an ideology and constructed an identity that in their view justifies their actions--whether these actions are deemed constructive or destructive by society. 
• The vast majority of movement activists never engage in violence. 
• There is no correlation linking religious piety with violence. 
• The radicalization process itself does not cause violence. 
• Dissent, movement activism, and non-violent civil disobedience are part of the democratic process in civil society. 

So we asked a variety of respected academics, researchers, and analysts of movements and political violence to craft an answer to this question: "As a person with expertise, what would you tell a reporter who wanted to know what she or he needs to know to craft a better, more informed story about the Boston bombings as details emerge?"

Click through to read responses from Assoc. Prof. Julie Ingersoll, Prof. Cynthia Burack, Prof. Lauren Langman, Devorah Kalekin-Fishman, Assoc. Prof. Jeffery M. Bale, Mustafa E. Gurbuz, and Bill Fletcher, Jr. 

Julie Ingersoll on Howard Phillips, Founding Father of Religious Right | Religion Dispatches

Howard Phillips, the...founding father of the religious right, has died.
.....
As the story goes Phillips, Paul Weyrich, and Richard Viguerie got together in the late 1970s using Viguerie’s groundbreaking direct mail company to help Jerry Falwell build the Moral Majority and Paul and Judy Brown build the American Life League.*  While Weyrich, Vigerie and the Browns were Catholic, Falwell was a Baptist, and Phillips was an evangelical convert from Judaism with great affection for RJ Rushdoony and Christian Reconstructionist leanings.

It’s hard to overstate Phillips’ influence in the transformation of the more secular mid-century conservatism of Barry Goldwater and William F. Buckley into today’s religiously-inflected conservatism.

Read Julie Ingersoll's excellent article at www.religiondispatches.org.

Photo: Howard Phillips, President Ronald Reagan, Rev. Jerry Falwell.

*Of this meeting, Richard Viguerie--today a Tea Party movement leader--writes:

For about nine years in the mid 1970’s, a small group (8-10) of national conservative leaders who became known as the “New Right” began meeting for breakfast at my home near Washington to plan and implement conservative strategy. And, for a period of time, we would reconvene at my home for dinner with the same breakfast group, but now with some New Right young congressmen.

If there ever was something resembling Hillary Clinton’s vast right wing conspiracy, this was it.

Besides Howie and me, the group included Paul Weyrich, Ed Feulner, Morton Blackwell, Terry Dolan, Ron Godwin, Congressmen Newt Gingrich, Vin Weber, Bob Walker, Hal Daub, Bill Dannemeyer, and others.

At those Wednesday meetings, and many hundreds of other meetings, Howard and the other New Right leaders began to develop and implement the strategies to put conservatives on a path of aggressive opposition to big-government politicians that is today best embodied by Tea Party constitutional conservatives.

Lawsuit alleges Mississippi high school forced students to attend Christian lectures

From Raw Story:

A high school in central Mississippi allegedly forced students to watch a Christian video and listen to church officials preach about Jesus Christ. The American Humanist Association’s legal center filed a lawsuit against Northwest Rankin High School in Flowood on Wednesday, accusing the school of violating the student's (sic) First Amendment rights. The school has held at least three mandatory assemblies about finding hope in Jesus Christ this month, according to the lawsuit.
.....
The assemblies concluded with a prayer and teachers blocked the exits to prevent students from leaving, the lawsuit claimed.

Harkin: 'Religious Right' Scaring Off GOP Candidates

Retiring Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, on Thursday shared a theory as to why Republicans aren't lining up to run for his soon-to-be open Senate seat. They are intimidated, Harkin said -- and not by the Democratic opposition.

"The religious right and the tea party people in Iowa have so cowed the moderates in the Republican Party that moderate Republicans are afraid to step forward," Harkin told Hotline On Call. "Because they know they'll get creamed in a primary."

Harkin, who spoke enthusiastically of Rep. Bruce Braley, D-Iowa, the de facto Democratic nominee, nonetheless said the Iowa GOP has plenty of strong potential candidates capable of beating Braley in November. But he doubts any of them would be acceptable to a party base that, in his view, favors ideological purity over electability.

via www.nationaljournal.com

God's Gospel Lizards: Creationist Group to Educate Kansas Public School Students on the "Truth About Dinosaurs" | American Civil Liberties Union

Students at Hugoton High School in Hugoton, Kansas, are set to finally learn the “truth about dinosaurs” next week—at least the truth as the Creation Truth Foundation sees it. The religious organization, which advocates for “a return to all of [the] realities of Biblical Creation,” is scheduled to conduct several mandatory school-day assemblies about dinosaurs for all students and teachers on Tuesday. The ACLU of Kansas & Western Missouri and the ACLU Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief learned about the planned assembly yesterday afternoon and sent a letter today demanding that the public school district cancel the event.

The “truths” about dinosaurs that the Foundation claims to reveal include, among others:

• “God created these creatures along with other land dwelling creatures on day six and they lived with men.”

via www.aclu.org

Texas Rep. Cites Biblical Flood as Example of Climate Change - Yahoo! News

"I would point out that if you're a believer in the Bible, one would have to say the Great Flood is an example of climate change, and that certainly wasn't because mankind had overdeveloped hydrocarbon energy," he said.

The Bible teaches that God created the flood to destroy the world because of mankind's evilness.

Barton, who has been fairly outspoken about the issue of climate change, said mankind has been adapting to the climate since the beginning of existence.

via news.yahoo.com

Chalcedon Pastor: There is a place for slavery in godly cultures

Noted by Vyckie Garrison of No Longer Quivering:

In a recently posted YouTube sermon, The pastor of Chalcedon Presbyterian Church, Dr. Joe Morecraft says in a Biblical society, the godly must own “the fool who despises God’s wisdom” because it’s the only way to keep those with a “slave mentality” from ruining other people’s families.

Based on Proverbs 11:29, Morecraft makes a case for Biblically justified enslavement of a man who does not “trust in Christ” since slavery is the only way to “keep a fool under wraps.”

The dominionist pastor interprets the Proverb to predict that in a Christian theocracy, an unbeliever will “lose his family, his property, and his freedom,” and “his energies, talents and life will not be used as he himself pleases, but in the service of wise people who work hard to benefit the community.”

via www.patheos.com

Southern Baptist Convention President Suggests Gay Marriage And Kim Jong Un Threats Linked

A conservative radio host and the president of the Southern Baptist Convention suggested recently that support of same-sex marriage and gay rights could be linked to North Korea's most recent threats against the United States.

Radio host Rick Wiles recently welcomed Southern Baptist Convention President Rev. Fred Luter onto his TruNews program on Wednesday, and both agreed that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's threat to strike the U.S. could be connected to the most recent debate on same-sex marriage and the Boy Scouts' possible inclusion of gay members, according to Right Wing Watch.

During the program, Wiles pointed out that at the same time the Supreme Court is reviewing the constitutionality of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and California's Proposition 8, Kim is threatening the U.S. with a military strike. "Could the two be connected?"

via www.huffingtonpost.com

Image: God's tools for smiting, apparently. (WPVI, ABC)