Jake's blog

A recent film released by Truth in Action Ministries, entitled Why Christians left the Political Arena, implores evangelicals to remain politically engaged. Featuring activists Calvin Beisner, Wayne Grudem and Rick Scarborough along with an eminent montage of gay rights, pro-choice, and environmental activists, the film decries any separation between religion and public policy. It implies that if a truly observant Christian is to obey the commands of Jesus, they must advocate for laws that “protect” marriage, and warns that God will hold us accountable for “how we have acted in responsibility towards influencing government.”

Truth in Action Ministries has previously embraced anti-gay activists who have likened homosexuality to “slavery” and warned that “moral chaos” was inevitable due to “liberal secular people” marginalizing religious people in the public arena.

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Beisner: Law plays a proper function in curtailing sin. So, we have a responsibility to seek to use laws to retrain the outward sinful conduct of people, even where we can’t use them, we never can use them, to change people’s hearts.

Grudem: If I truly love my neighbor I want laws that will protect my neighbor’s marriage, that will give good education to neighbor, that will protect my neighbor’s health and well-being, and economic well-being, so government doesn’t steal everything from us. I think it is a way of obeying Jesus’ command ‘you shall love your neighbor as yourself.’

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Scarborough: If pastors don’t get involved in confronting the moral issues of our day, biblically, we will soon digress into becoming a lawless nation. And frankly, we’re on the very edge of that right as we speak. Our country is becoming an amoral country because so many preachers have withdrawn from the culture completely.

Beisner: There is no part of life that is neutral, to which Christ doesn’t say “it’s mine”. No part of life. And there is no neutrality on any moral issue whatsoever. And all of life is religious.

Grudem: The bible does tell us that God will hold us accountable for how we act. I think that includes all of life and certainly it includes how we have acted in responsibility towards influencing government.

In an interview with Tony Perkins on Washington Watch Weekly, former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell slammed the Obama campaign’s effort to expand early voting procedures in Ohio, saying that the President is running “probably the most bareknuckle campaign I’ve seen”.

Blackwell also accused democrats of exploiting the “Voter ID controversy to gin up their base” and energize minority voters in their favor. The controversy surrounding early voting in Ohio centers on a new special exemption that the state extends to military voters. The Obama campaign filed suit, seeking to restore early voting procedures for all citizens, including servicemen and women.

Despite decrying the so-called “bareknuckle” tactics of the Obama campaign, Blackwell is no stranger to political combat. His 2006 gubernatorial campaign smeared his opponent as gay, and Blackwell worked tirelessly to suppress minority voting in Ohio in the 2004 presidential election.

Perkins: To me it suggests that they’re pretty desperate, that they see every vote as being, as counting, in the state of Ohio, that they cannot spare a single vote in that state.

Blackwell: Well you’re absolutely right, and just think about, there is an alarming pattern. They are actively opposed, and in the case of what I’m getting ready to say, the administration is actively opposed to Voter ID. And they are using the Voter ID controversy to gin up their base because they are running a base turnout campaign and its imperative that they get a high voter turnout from blacks and Latinos and that they get a substantial disproportionate share of their vote, so they are basically creating the conservative republican boogeyman by saying, you know, voter ID requirements suppress votes. They then, on the other hands, they’re suppressing the votes on the military because they know the numbers are against them. So you begin to see, or the Obama campaign and their friends going after chick-fil-a. You know, it is, this is, probably the most bareknuckle campaign that I’ve seen from a sitting President, it is Chicago-style politics, and there are no rules. It’s a no-man’s land.

Televangelist and self-styled Apostle Cindy Jacobs possesses the supernatural power to initiate miracles. It isn’t too far-fetched, considering that her mentor and founder of the New Apostolic Reformation C. Peter Wagner has claimed that people like himself “can do the same or greater things than Jesus did.” On the August 6th edition of her show God Knows, the self-proclaimed “respected prophet” channeled her supernatural powers live on air to revive a dead child, claiming to have done so in the past as well. Jacobs has previously claimed that Satan “wants to steal God’s family and create tyranny” and that health care reform requires everyone to have a computer chip “put in their finger” in order to receive care.

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Jacobs: The bible says the same power is in us that raised Christ Jesus from the dead. I see someone; you literally had a child that just died. And I speak to the spirit of death in that child in the name of Jesus and I command you to lead that child. I speak to the spirit of infirmity that caused the child’s death and I say “Live in Jesus name! Live!’ And I see a child coughing, waking up, oh we saw that in Pakistan, we saw a little boy raised from the dead, just like that. God is on the move. God is on the move!

Speaking at Glenn Beck’s Under God Indivisible Conference, anti-gay Bishop Harry Jackson unleashed a screed against marriage equality and called upon Christians to unite against gay rights in a new ‘rainbow coalition’, saying that religious leaders must “steal back the rainbow. We can’t let the gays have it.” Jackson was apparently not referencing the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, a civil rights organization founded by Rev. Jesse Jackson.

Jackson, a key figure in the Religious Right’s outreach to African American Christians, has previously said that gay rights advocates are trying to recruit young people “just like during the times of Hitler,” and that gay marriage is part of a “satanic plot” to destroy the family.

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If marriage is redefined, then the family is redefined, is redefined, who has children and how that operates is redefined, if the family is redefined then education is redefined. That’s how you “Heather has two mommies” being taught to 2nd graders and eight-year-old kids in Massachusetts and California, and folks who cannot reproduce want to recruit your kids. What we’re facing is a radical force of people that want to change the way America looks for the next twenty years and we’re going to have to stop this thing now.

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It’s gonna take a black and brown revolution, us working together in a broader, what I want to call, a rainbow coalition, a new rainbow coalition. We need to steal back the rainbow. We can’t let the gays have it. We’re the rainbow coalition. We’re the army of god. We’re the covenant people of god. We have got to break the division that has tried to keep us apart. I guarantee you if we united in this generation, we’ll unite in this season, nothing shall be impossible to us, the church of the living god, and we are going to take back America in the name of the lord Jesus Christ. Yes! Come on let’s say it, ‘yes we can, say it yes we can!’

On yesterday’s edition of The Janet Mefferd Show, the host and her guest, Matt Philbin of the Media Research Center, took aim at an unlikely vector of liberal ideals: the world of sports. Reflecting on an MRC report, Mefferd said that ESPN and other sports broadcasters are “using their sports platforms really to push this liberal economic and social ideology.” Philbin asserted ESPN hires people with a “liberal pedigree” and its website includes content that is in “support of the gay agenda.”

Philbin held up liberal commentator Keith Olbermann, who previously worked at ESPN, as proof of the network’s liberal bias. He conveniently ignored the fact that Texas Republican senate candidate Craig James is also a former ESPN broadcaster and ESPN’s chairman and vice president are both Romney donors.

Mefferd: If you are a big sports nut you’re noticing also that from time to time you’ll see a little bit of political material creep in on the sidelines and that’s really the intent of a lot of people on the left, they want to politicize the games, but it’s true of sports in general, and if you follow sports TV at all, ESPN, some of those other sports shows, you’ll see this, and in fact, the Culture and Media Institute of the Media Research Center has put together a report all about this documenting the trend of commentators and sportscasters using their sports platforms to really push this liberal, economic, and social ideology. Matt Philbin is with us, managing editor of the Media Research Center. So Matt, let’s talk about sports in general and what you guys noted looking at channels like ESPN or some of these other sports shows, where do you see this liberal ideology kind of creeping in?

Philbin: Well, you can see it all over the place, and uh, I would just, uh, just a reminder, that, uh, Keith Olbermann came from ESPN. Before he went to MSNBC, he came from SportsCenter which he actually helped create, I believe, uh, so, ESPN has a long liberal ESPN and you can see that in a lot of its programming. And you can see that on its website as well. Its website has always, for years now, has featured commentary in support of the gay agenda.

Philbin later maintained that sports journalists, like other journalists, have “an antipathy toward conservatives and toward traditional Americans.” The two also took umbrage in particular to the sports network’s supposedly cozy relationship with President Obama: Mefferd was dismayed that ESPN is helping the President “show his softer side” by broadcasting his NCAA bracket selection.

Of course, President Bush, a former baseball franchise owner, previously appeared on ESPN to talk fishing and baseball.

Philbin: They’re just pulling from the same sort of pool of people as the mainstream media is, sort of, uh, habitually liberal journalists who really have an antipathy towards conservative and toward traditional Americans.

Mefferd: What about ESPN and its relationship with President Obama, because they’ve sort of fawned over him as well, haven’t they?

Philbin: Oh, They think he’s terrific.

Mefferd: Sports picks and everything.

Philbin: Yes, you know, oh, They’ve had him on to pick his, uh, brackets in the NCAA tournament. They’ve had him speak about reforming college football’s BCS system. Things that really, a President doesn’t have much interest, or shouldn’t have much interest in talking about.

Mefferd: Well, he wants to be a man of the people I guess. Show his softer side, I guess. “They’re calling me a socialist too much, quick, ESPN, let me do my March Madness picks!

Philbin: That’s right, I’m, just like them.

Mefferd: Just like them. 

On yesterday’s edition of The Janet Mefferd Show, anti-gay pastor Robert Jeffress of First Baptist Dallas labeled the message of liberals “hopeless,” and said that gay people lead a “miserable lifestyle” that is predisposed to “depression, or suicide, or alcoholism.” Jefress’s comments are the latest in a string of anti-gay screeds. He has previously implied that gay rights will result in the “inevitable implosion of our country” and that gays are using a variety of “brainwashing techniques” to “inject homosexuality” into our culture.

Jeffress: God’s plan for sexuality is one man with one woman in a lifetime commitment called marriage. Any deviation from that is sin. And of course, I’m always, the retort to that is 'oh! Are you pulling a Rick Santorum and saying that homosexuality is like bestiality, uh, incest, or pedophilia'? And I say 'Yes.'. It is just as immoral as those practices. But then I’m quick to add, it’s also just as immoral as adultery, pre-marital sex, or unbiblical divorce. Any deviation from god’s plan is sin.

Mefferd: Well, but so much of what they’re trying to do now is not just say “accept us and don’t be discriminatory in your beliefs”. But also, embrace it, see that the bible really was wrong in these passages, in Leviticus and Romans I and it’s really not commending homosexuality. It’s almost as if they’re trying to co-opt the bible and make it say what it obviously does not say.

Jeffress: Absolutely, you have to do so many hermeneutical gymnastics. But what you really have to do is just throw out the bible to get to the point that you say, that uh, it’s uh normal. There are two agendas that homosexuals have in order to gain acceptance. First of all they try to normalize their behavior but also to marginalize as bigots those of us who oppose homosexuality. Normalize and marginalize are the two tactics. And they are being extremely successful about it.

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Jeffress: We’re the ones that have a message of hope. And the message of hope we have is you don’t have to stay the way you are. You can experience freedom. You can experience life as god intended you to have it, by trusting in Christ and following his plan. You know, it’s the liberals that have no message of hope. It is the liberal message; 'you’re born that way, and you have to stay that way until the day you die.' I mean, why is it that gays, and I talk about this in my book, you know, have such a more preponderance for depression, or suicide, or alcoholism. It is a miserable lifestyle. And that is why we, as preachers of the gospel and Christians, we’ve got the message of hope, and we need to quit being ashamed to share it.

Political Research Associates released a new report yesterday to shed light on the activities of Religious Right organizations in Africa – activities that often fly under the radar of American media.

Exporting similar tactics used to influence voters and policymakers in the United States, a broad coalition of far-right groups have invested heavily on outposts in African nations. These groups use their outsize influence to push for radical legislation banning all rights for LGBT persons and curbing reproductive rights.

The report authored by Rev. Dr. Kapya Kaoma, an Anglican priest originally from Zambia, investigates the Pat Robertson-founded American Center for Law and Justice, the Mormon-led Family Watch International, and the Roman Catholic Human Life International, as well as a network of Christian dominionists known as the Transformation Movement or New Apostolic Reformation. The report details ACLJ's efforts to influence the constitution-writing process in Zimbabwe and Kenya, and the anti-LGBT and anti-reproductive justice activities of the other groups in such countries as Uganda, Malawi and Zambia.

The report lays out a detailed explanation of why the Christian right enjoys sizable influence on the African continent, and issues ten recommendations for protecting human rights and developing an infrastructure for the long term.

RWW’s own Brian Tashman is featured in the report, in an article which explores the role of the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), a right-wing legal group founded by Pat Robertson and led by Jay Sekulow.

His research sheds light on its extensive network (and questionable accounting practices) and opposition to LGBT and reproductive rights at home and abroad:

The ACLJ is now one of the principal legal advocacy groups in the conservative movement, along with the Alliance Defense Fund, Liberty Counsel, the Liberty Institute, and the Thomas More Law Center. The group has built strong partnerships with many Religious Right groups, including the Christian Defense Coalition, Faith and Action,5 the American Family Association,6 and WallBuilders. Its reach has expanded globally with affiliates in countries including France, Israel, Kenya, Pakistan, Russia, Zimbabwe, and Brazil.

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The Better Business Bureau says the ACLJ does not meet ten of its twenty standards for charity accountability, citing problems with oversight, compensation, accuracy of expenses, financial transparency, and disclosure; even the founder of the conservative Rutherford Institute has criticized the group’s financial mismanagement.9 An Associated Press investigation found that since 1998, the ACLJ and Christian Advocates Serving Evangelism (CASE), Sekulow’s family-controlled charity, “have paid more than $33 million to members of Sekulow’s family and businesses they own or co-own.”

During a recent appearance on Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum Live radio show, conservative radio talk show host Mason Weaver, whom Schlafly introduced as “a very articulate black” who is urging African Americans to “get a life” and “get off the plantation.”

Schlafly: Our guest today is Mason Weaver, who is a very articulate black, he is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, and he’s trying to encourage blacks to get a life, get off the plantation, make something of yourself and stop depending on Uncle Sam to give you everything from food to childcare for your kids.

He described the feminist movement as “anti-God”, and insisted that liberal social policy, (in this case referred to euphemistically as ‘the other man’) breeds dependency and thus promotes and justifies criminal activity. Schlafly’s organization recently lamented the downward trend in the white birth rate, and Schalfly herself has said wistfully that the United States “was a lot better off before 1962,” before the civil rights movement had made major gains.

Schlafly: And you realize the disaster the feminist movement has been in this country because they’re anti-men, and anti-husbands, and anti-masculine, and when they talk about liberation…

Weaver: They’re anti-God, that’s all it is.

Schlafly: Yeah.

Weaver: They’re anti-God. The feminist movement was created to have another front on the attack on masculinity. It’s an attack on the culture in the family, it’s an attack on success. They want dependency, they want failure, they want themselves to be in charge, it’s just simply agreed on their part.

Schlafly: And they want everybody, blacks and women, to believe they’re victims of society. And of course if you wake up in the morning and you think you’re a victim, how far are you going to get?

Weaver: Well think about the male ego. If you convince a 20 year old man, black or white, that another man controls his family, his health, his income, his job, why go get a job? The other man controls it. Why go out and try to earn something? He’s going to take it from you. But you also feel justified in criminal activity, in not respecting your family. If you buy the liberal mindset of yourself, as a black man, you are by definition depressed.

Schlafly: That's right.

Speaking at the Epicenter Conference in Jerusalem, radical evangelist and daughter of Billy Graham, Anne Graham Lotz, elaborated on her belief that the end times are here. Quoting from Joel 1:6, she compared the locust plague with the pornography industry, saying that it constitutes an “invasion” upon our land.

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The locust invasion that destroyed the land, was like an army, but was not a human army. So then I was asking myself, what non-human army is invading our world and destroying it? Just like that I could think of pornography. Invading our land and our nation – just subtle, seeping corruption, destroying the fabric of society, tearing apart healthy relationships and families, the very bedrock on which a nation is built. Pornography makes more money in a year, than apple, Microsoft, Google, eBay, amazon, combined. That’s a disaster.

Generations with Vision Ministry’s Kevin Swanson, who last month claimed that gay parents are one of the “most devastating things” in the “history of mankind,” on his radio show yesterday portrayed the scandal at Penn State University as a portent of an imminent doom to befall all of western civilization. He also suggested that gays encourage pedophilia, calling it “part and parcel of the homosexual vision,” and advocated for a complete transition to biblical law. More specifically, a reversion to the law practiced in the time of the pilgrims, where ‘homosexual acts’ were punishable by death.

Even Christopher Marlowe and Shakespeare, to some extent, had some writings that were somewhat favorable of homosexuality. Now, homosexuality had not existed for about 1,000 years, between about 300 AD to 1400-1500 AD where certain mentions of it were extant in some of the classical literature of the day, because classical literature tends to bring back homosexuality as the ‘cool thing’, but it hadn’t existed for about 1,000 years. It was, obviously, very very important to humanism, it always has been important to humanism, and whenever you get a humanist, classical approach to education, you’re probably going to get the gymnasium. The gymnasiums were all built around the idea of pederasty and pedophilia.

Now, I don’t want to get into a lot of the details on this, because it’s very very very gross, but they trained young boys in homosexuality. This is part and parcel of the homosexual vision, still is, by the way, to this day. This is the goal, this is where they’re headed, if you read the homosexual literature, which I encourage you not to do, but this is the direction that they’re headed. This is the goal of humanism. The goal of humanism is to make it to Sandusky. The problem is Sandusky was prosecuted and that’s an indication that we’ve got 2,000 years of Christianity, and these guys are not going to get away with it.

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You know, Dave, I think if we’re going to have a halfway decent, stable society, much like what the pilgrims had, with a divorce rate of .01%, fornication rate of 1%, and a homosexuality rate of .0005%, if we’re going to have a stable society, we’re going to have to get back to biblical law.