Tony Perkins

Family Research Council president hasn’t tried hard to downplay the apocalyptic rhetoric surrounding the presidential election in November coming from the Right, as he has called President Obama “the worst president this country has ever had” and warned that his administration “will destroy this country” if “given another four years” in office. On Tuesday’s edition of Truth that Transforms, Perkins warned that the upcoming election “doesn’t so much define our future but I would have to say determines whether or not we have a future as a country.” He claimed that the Obama administration “is moving this nation not slowly but rapidly down the path of moral and fiscal bankruptcy” and urged conservatives to only vote for candidates who “share our biblical worldview”:

Perkins: This is an election that I think doesn’t so much define our future but I would have to say determines whether or not we have a future as a country. We are faced with so many significant fiscal issues that are intertwined with the moral and social foundations of this country. I’ll be very blunt. I respect the office of the President and I do believe we are to pray for those in authority, and I do, but we have an administration that is moving this nation not slowly but rapidly down the path of moral and fiscal bankruptcy. This election is going to have significant consequences on our generation and for future generations. We need to be electing candidates to every level of office, state office, local office, federal office, that share our biblical worldview and we need to have Christians presenting themselves as candidates as well, to get into this process, to stand for truth, to stand for justice and that which is right.

Today, Newt Gingrich sent a letter to Iowa Religious Right leader Bob Vander Plaats detailing his commitment to fight gay rights and reproductive rights, and also taking a vow to stay faithful to his wife Callista, his third wife and former mistress. After vowing to fight against gay and lesbian couples’ right to marry, Gingrich said he would “pledge to uphold the institution of marriage through personal fidelity to my spouse and respect for the marital bonds of others.” Vander Plaats has previously floated supporting Gingrich, who leads in the Iowa polls, and publicly announced that his organization has narrowed its choices to Gingrich, Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum.

But Gingrich’s problems winning over Religious Right activists despite his best efforts were exhibited in an interview Family Research Council president Tony Perkins gave on Friday with radio talk show host Janet Mefferd. Perkins told Mefferd that Religious Right voters may be viewed as hypocritical if they pick Gingrich over right-wing candidates who, unlike Gingrich, also have both “their personal lives and their professional lives in order” like Bachmann, Santorum and Perry in the Republican primary. However, Perkins said it would not at all problematic for Christian conservative voters to back Gingrich over President Obama if he is the party’s nominee.

Listen:

Mefferd: My question is, Tony do you buy this idea that if Newt Gingrich does end up being the nominee and Christian conservatives end up getting behind him because they want to vote out Barack Obama, which we all do, that that somehow will ruin the reputation of Christians? Are you buying that connection?

Perkins: No, I think the question that does have some legitimacy is in—right now, where it stands, you’re still four weeks away from the vote in Iowa, and there are still solid conservative candidates in this race. You have Michele Bachmann, a strong Christian woman who I know very well and is completely in line with us, Rick Santorum, another close friend again who is perfectly in line with us, as well as Rick Perry, who is in line with us on all the issues. So I think for Christian conservatives to come out now and say, ‘alright well we’re going to support Newt Gingrich,’ when you still have people that have their personal lives and their professional lives in order, I do think that then rings kind of like, ‘well we just want to be with a political winner,’ so I think that charge would stick now.

Family Research Center president Tony Perkins joined James Robison on Life Today to discuss the dire consequences of the separation of Church and State that has allowed the “unrighteous” to rule. Perkins and Robison, who was Mike Huckabee’s mentor and recently addressed FRC’s Watchmen on the Wall summit, both agreed that God will judge America for not voting for politicians aligned with the Religious Right.

Watch:

Sarah Posner has a good piece up at Religion Dispatches on Lou Engle, founder of The Call, and his recent branching out from this militant anti-abortion proselytizing and into the marriage debate and the upcoming election. 

Engle, as Posner explains, is best known for his efforts to turns hordes of young men and women into warriors for Christ and “raise up of an army of spiritual warriors for revival” and is becoming something of a regular figure in the political Religious Right movement, appearing with notable figures such as Tony Perkins and Mike Huckabee before and during his recent “The Call” rally in Washington, DC:

The Call’s advisory board is stacked with prominent Pentecostal and charismatic preachers, leading figures in the controversial apostolic movement, which is elevating a new generation of self-appointed prophets and apostles, African-American and Latino religious leaders, charismatic publishing giant Stephen Strang, and religious right leaders like Perkins, Harry Jackson, and Gary Bauer.

The religious right political leadership’s keen interest in Engle was evident at The Call held on the National Mall in August. The day before the event, the public relations firm Shirley Bannister introduced Engle, flanked by Family Research Council president Tony Perkins and former Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee, at a press conference just a few blocks from the White House. Perkins, one of the most visible political leaders on the religious right, noted Engle’s influence on young evangelicals, who he claimed were even more conservative on abortion than their parents, though he cited no surveys or polls to support the claim.

…

Engle, per his custom, likened his crusade against abortion to Martin Luther King’s civil rights movement. He rocked back and forth, as though davening, preached against Roe v. Wade, and shouted, as the crowd prayed and spoke in tongues, “this is a Passover Day for America. Today, we plead the blood of Jesus on the doorpost!” Purity covenants, requiring abstention from even thinking about sex outside of marriage, were distributed. Participants were urged to consecrate themselves, to be ready for the moment when Jesus “is going to rule over Washington, DC and the world.”

“Repentance and revival cannot start in the building behind me,” said Huckabee, his back to the Capitol, “until it starts in the temple inside me.”

But when he’s not leading day-long rallies such as this or the anti-gay marriage one scheduled at San Diego’s Qualcomm Stadium this weekend, Engle and his army can be found at International House of Prayer he co-founded in Kansas City where they direct their prayers toward things like remaking the US Supreme Court … and rather successfully at that, according to Engle: 

Engle unabashedly credits prayer for George W. Bush’s presidency and his subsequent appointment of Supreme Court Justices who upheld the ban on so-called “partial birth abortion.” “The praying church deals with the demonic realm, so that God raises up one and brings down the other,” Engle said in a recent video on The Call’s web site, explaining how prayer proved victorious over satanic forces in the spiritual warfare of an election, adding, “I directly attribute [Bush’s election] to the prayers of the saints.”

Young people at his House of Prayer, said Engle, had been praying about judges for three years when Sandra Day O’Connor retired and William Rehnquist died. As if to prove to his acolytes that their prayer and fasting is not in vain, Engle maintains that their prayers and prophecies shaped the Supreme Court. “One of the young ladies had a dream,” Engle asserted, “that a man named John Roberts would be the next Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.” He beams with pride. “Don’t you think those kids were baptized with confidence? Their prayers, I believe, were literally moving a king to appoint a justice who has now led a court that has banned partial birth abortion. Don’t tell me prayer doesn’t shape a nation.”