Religious Right commentators from Calvin Beisner to David Barton and Bryan Fischer like to think of themselves as experts on the topic of global climate change despite their complete lack of scientific credentials. On the 700 Club today, televangelist Pat Robertson joined the debate, arguing that human-induced climate change is a myth and “hasn’t been scientifically proven”:

But like Newt Gingrich, who costarred in an ad with Nancy Pelosi for Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection, Robertson shared a couch with Al Sharpton for ACP’s “We Can Solve It” campaign to raise awareness about climate change in 2008:

Yesterday we posted audio of David Barton claiming that the Bible, specifically Matthew 20's famous "Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard" taught that employers had no obligation to be "fair" to their employees.

This same idea was also promoted by Jay Richards in his book "Money, Greed, and God" and the tenets of Biblical economics are also now being embraced by James Robison (co-author of a new book with Richards,) which explains why Robison's program today featured an interview with Buddy Pilgrim, a Biblical business consultant who "teaches Biblical principles of leadership, business management and financial success applicable to every Christian in the workplace."

During the program, Pilgrim proclaimed that business is God's system and complained that  wealth and profit are being demonized while warning that a "dangerous" spirit of volunteerism (i.e. collectivism) was taking hold in America today: 

Before the Tennessee primary, Rick Santorum visited the Bellevue Baptist Church outside of Memphis where he prayed alongside Pastor Steve Gaines. Gaines said that “God doesn’t come to take sides, God comes to take over and I pray that He will takeover in America.” He asked God to forgive America for “the sins of racism, the sins of abortion and the sins of immorality”:

Gaines has a sordid history, and the website Ethics Daily, a project of the Baptist Center for Ethics, reported back in 2006 that Gaines failed to report to the police a minister in his church, Paul Williams, who molested his own:

An assistant prosecutor said Bellevue Baptist Church Pastor Steve Gaines may have committed a crime if he knew the "moral failure" a church staff member confessed to him six months ago involved child molestation.

All 50 states have laws requiring mandatory reporting of suspected child sexual abuse. Tennessee requires any person, including ministers, with reasonable suspicion that abuse of a child has occurred to report it immediately.

Gaines has admitted that Paul Williams, a minister on staff at the Memphis, Tenn., mega-church for 34 years, told him in confidence about inappropriate behavior that occurred 17 years ago.

While Gaines did not disclose details of the confession, a Web site critical of his leadership alleged Williams molested his own son. Church leaders have suspended Williams and launched their own investigation, due to last a month.

"Everyone has a duty to report," Kevin Rardin, chief prosecutor of child sexual abuse cases in the district attorney's office in Shelby County, Tenn., told Memphis station WMC-TV. "There are not exceptions for clergy or anyone else."

In fact, Gaines kept Williams’s admission a secret for six months:

"It is that every person is required to make a report to an agency like Department of Children's Services if they have reason to believe that someone may, a child may have been molested or abused," said Nancy Williams, with the Memphis Child Advocacy Center.

According to Bellevue Pastor Steve Gaines' own words, he didn't just have reason to believe it, he had a confession from one of his ministers, who admitted to molesting a child.

A report by church leaders found that Gaines allowed the minister to remain on staff even after his admission:

The report states that Williams "engaged in egregious, perverse, sexual activity with his adolescent son over a period of 12 to 18 months."

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In May 2006, Williams informed Jamie Fish, the church's minister of biblical guidance, of his past actions. The report said Fish erred by not coming forward with the information, particularly since Williams' job duties included interviewing adult lay ministry volunteers who had indicated they had been sexually abused.

The following month Williams and his wife met to discuss the issue with Dr. Steve Gaines, Bellevue's senior pastor. Williams indicated that he confessed and repented to his family and there had been no further sexual abuse. The meeting was kept confidential and Williams remained on staff.

But in early December, Williams' son met with Gaines "for an explanation, in light of scriptural qualifications for ministers, as to why Paul should be allowed to continue as minister on the church staff."

While Gaines failed to report a case of child molestation and allowed an admitted child predator to remain on the church’s staff, he did ban a softball team from the church’s athletic league because the coach was openly gay. In fact, Gaines consistently rails against gays and lesbians, warning that gay rights and gays in the media jeopardize America’s security and economy:

"As important as these issues are, ... I believe they pale compared to two other issues that I believe will determine the future of America," Gaines warned. "I personally believe with all of my heart that the two issues that will determine what God will do not only with America but to America are abortion and homosexuality. ... America's economy and America's safety are more tied up with what's going on in those courts in Massachusetts than what's going on in Wall Street or over in Iraq." …

"We love [homosexuals] because we know -- as Jesus said from the cross -- 'they know not what they do.' They're in bondage, but aren't you glad today Jesus Christ can set people free from all sorts of bondage, even homosexuality?"

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Southern Baptists should oppose "pro-homosexual television programming," such as "Will and Grace," "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" and MTV's homosexual channel, Logo, Gaines urged.

"We must help curb the epidemic spread of lesbianism by telling our daughters and our young girls that the passionate kisses shared by Madonna, Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera at MTV's Video Music Awards last August were an abomination to a holy God," Gaines said.

In another sermon, he warned that since “homosexuals and lesbians cannot reproduce biologically so they prey on the children of normal people, seeking to entice them to be trapped in their perverted lifestyle”:

On the home-front, radical homosexuals and lesbians seek to take over our nation. You cannot watch television without being subjected to Gay propaganda. They seek to brain wash our citizens so they can make same-sex marriage the law of the land. Homosexuals and lesbians cannot reproduce biologically so they prey on the children of normal people, seeking to entice them to be trapped in their perverted lifestyle. They want to silence Baptist preachers and others from denouncing their sinful lifestyles by making it an illegal “hate crime” to point out what the Bible says about their wicked practices. Regardless of what anyone says about the goodness of being “Gay,” the Bible still calls it a “degrading, unnatural, indecent, and depraved” (Romans 1:26-28). Homosexual practice always has been, is, and always will be “an abomination” in the sight of Holy God (Leviticus 18:22). By God’s grace, homosexuals can be saved and set free from their sinful lifestyles because the blood of Jesus can cleanse anyone from any sin. But they must first repent of the sin of homosexuality and denounce their ungodly homosexual behavior.

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The Old Testament prophet, Joel, preached to God’s people in Judah just before the Babylonian armies came and destroyed Jerusalem and took God’s people into exile. He cried out for them to repent so that God could spare the land from the coming invasion. His words of warning are very pertinent for us today. I personally believe that if America does not repent, she is headed for national disaster.

The negative publicity around Gaines, however, did not prevent Rick Santorum from actively seeking his support. In fact, Santorum has made frequent appearances with extremists in the Religious Right in his bid to defeat Mitt Romney.

• PFAW: Unbridled Republican Obstruction Forces Extraordinary Action on Judicial Nominees.
• Steve Benen @ Maddow Blog: Tilting at Dutch windmills.
• Alan Colmes: Florida Pastor Supporting Santorum To Call On Romney To Renounce Mormonism.
• Judd Legum @ Think Progress: 140 Companies Drop Advertising From Rush Limbaugh.
• Andy Kopsa @ RH Reality Check: Hate-Group Frontman Bradlee Dean Stirs outrage at Dunkerton, Iowa School.

• It seems that the vast majority of likely Republican voters in Mississippi and Alabama do not believe that President Obama is a Christian.
• It was reported today that the Alliance Defense Fund filed the lawsuit on behalf of Abby Johnson against Planned Parenthood back in 2009.
• Never one to miss an opportunity to exploit some good ol' culture war outrage, Newt Gingrich weighs in on "GCB."
• Who would have ever guessed that Bryan Fischer interviewing David Barton would be so disappointingly dull?
• Finally, Chaps Klingenschmitt wants you to pray for Kirk Cameron:

It has been almost-comical to see how the Christian Broadcasting Network’s Erick Stakelbeck went from working as a sports reporter to a “terrorism analyst” heralded by Religious Right and anti-Muslim groups, which never seem to question his complete lack of credentials and expertise. But Stakelbeck knows how to please a crowd with his vehement diatribes against Muslims and progressives, warning that they are both have a “shared hatred for this country.”

Stakelbeck’s “expert analysis” even includes biblical prophecy, as he recently told Marcus and Joni Lamb on Celebration that he knows the Syrian civil war will end with the destruction of Damascus because the Bible tells him so in Isaiah 17:1. “I believe right now we are seeing the seeds laid for the eventual destruction of Damascus,” Stakelbeck says. “The Bible says it’s going to happen, and it’s going to happen.”

Stakelbeck went on to claim that Islamic terrorists had infiltrated cities all over the United States, including Dearborn, Michigan, which he referred to as a “radical Islamic enclave” and “Dearbornistan.” This may come as a surprise to Dearborn’s Catholic mayor, John O’Reilly, Jr., who called claims that Dearborn is beheld to Sharia law “absurd” and notes that only a minority of Dearborn’s population are Muslims, who have been in Dearborn for ninety years. Earlier this year, a 63 year old man was caught traveling with explosives with the intention of blowing up a mosque in Dearborn.

He later said that while he was in Israel God spoke to him and told him to defend Israel, saying, “I know why I’m here on this earth.”

Watch:

According to Kirk Cameron, criticizing him is an attack on freedom itself, so it was no surprise to hear him tell Janet Mefferd on Friday that he made his new documentary, Monumental, on the history of the US because he fears that “our freedoms are being taken away.” Mefferd said that the opposition to Cameron’s assertion that homosexuality is “destructive” is representative of the “sinful condition of our country,” which “was what drove you really to make Monumental.” Cameron agreed and maintained that the moral and spiritual fruits of America are “rotting”:

Mefferd: It’s sort of interesting, Kirk, it’s really fascinating to see how your experience this week really points out the sinful condition of our country, and that was what drove you really to make Monumental, your concern for the direction our country is headed.

Cameron: That’s right, and even deeper than my concern for my country and the way it’s headed, I’m concerned for the future of my children. I love my kids, I have friends who have children, and all of us are concerned with what we see—morally, spiritually—we think, wow, the fruit in America seems to be rotting…. All signs tell me that we are headed in the wrong direction; our freedoms are being taken away.

The Center for Arizona Policy, one of the state’s leading conservative organizations, coming out strongly against legislation in the Arizona State Senate, Senate Bill 1462, in the Arizona State Senate that tackles the problem of school bullying, which is nothing new from right-wing groups. But while Religious Right groups typically claim they oppose anti-bullying policies because they identify “sexual orientation” as a reason that students are bullied, SB 1462 does not mention “sexual orientation” or other enumerated categories. Instead, Center for Arizona Policy says that they oppose the bullying-prevention effort just because groups such as the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network and the Anti-Defamation League support the legislation. There is no doubt about it; the ‘bullying’ theme is agenda-driven propaganda,” the group writes. “The irony is that groups like Equality Arizona and GLSEN have chosen this issue to bully you and me into allowing them access into our schools and to our children.” The group also lashed out at a Teaching Tolerance film, Bullied, which “chronicles one student’s ordeal at the hands of anti-gay bullies and offers an inspiring message of hope to those fighting harassment today.”

The questions arise when one considers which organizations would provide the training and which organizations are behind the legislation. As a leading homosexual magazine in Arizona wrote, Equality Arizona, one n ten, the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) were all in attendance at the bill's committee hearing to support and see the legislation pass.

You see, groups like Equality Arizona and GLSEN have used the bullying issue in order to gain access to our public schools. These are the groups that supporters of the bill will bring into schools to teach the anti-bullying training to our students.

What concerns me is that this is already happening. I received an email from a parent whose 11-year-old daughter was forced to watch a documentary called Bullied during class time without any parental notification or consent. Taken directly off the tolerance.org website, "Bullied is a documentary film that chronicles one student's ordeal at the hands of anti-gay bullies and offers an inspiring message of hope to those fighting harassment today. It can become a cornerstone of anti-bullying efforts in middle and high schools." As this dad wrote:

Upon questioning my daughter I was able to determine the video presented was the documentary Bullied. My wife and I spent the next several minutes apologizing to her that she was forced by her school to view the material ... I should note the school was diligent in requiring written parental approval for my daughter to view a specific rendition of Star Wars, but the Administration need not trouble the parents over [these] materials. The material was not all that timely for our child either since we had to define for her the terms "homo" and "fag" at our dinner table.

There is no doubt about it; the "bullying" theme is agenda-driven propaganda. [emphasis theirs]. The irony is that groups like Equality Arizona and GLSEN have chosen this issue to bully you and me into allowing them access into our schools and to our children. To express concerns about anti-bullying bills is portrayed in the most unfavorable light.

These bullying bills are not sound public policy. Not only are they a thinly veiled attempt to allow political groups into our schools, they also divert the focus of our school system off the fundamentals. Class time should be for reading, writing, and arithmetic.

In the past, we have chronicled how David Barton uses the Bible, in particular Matthew 20:1-16, to promote an ultra-right-wing economic view by claiming that Jesus opposed the minimum wage and any sort of employment discrimination laws.

Barton's interpretation of this passage is particularly absurd since, as we have noted before, Matthew 20 is the famous "Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard" in which Jesus explains "the Kingdom of Heaven is like a landowner" who pays all of his works the same amount, regardless of how much they worked. The point of the parable is that no matter how late in one's life one comes to Christ, the Heavenly reward is the same; those who embraced Christ on their deathbed will receive the same eternal reward as those who were Christians all of their lives because of God's generous love.

On his "Wallbuilders Live" radio program today, Barton once again trotted out this parable, this time to declare that employers have no obligation to be "fair" to their workers and to suggest that Jesus also opposed unions:

The Bible says [the worker] started grumbling about what happened, grumbling about his wages and Jesus answered and said to him "am I being unfair to you friend? Didn't you agree to work for a day's wages? You take your pay and go. I want to give to the one who was hired the same as I gave to you. That's my choice." Here it is, Matthew 20:15. "Don't I have the right to do what I want with my own money?"

Now, two things come out here, is if an employee agrees to work for an employer, that's a contract between the two of them ... and Jesus points out that you can go to a different vineyard if you don't like what I'm paying. You've got the free market, you can go choose a different employer. You agreed to work for me for this wage and that's what you're going to get. So first you get the inviolability of contracts between employers and employees ... and whatever is fair has nothing to do with it. That's not their responsibility to be fair, it's "I gave my word, that's what I agreed to work for." So Jesus says, as an employer, isn't my money mine to do with as I please?

Second point is, where were unions in all this? The contract is between an employer and an employee, not between a group. He went out and hired individually the guys he wanted to work.

Notice how Barton takes a parable about the Kingdom of Heaven and transforms it into a Biblical justification for laissez-faire capitalism, anti-unionism, and employment discrimination and does so by attributing to Jesus words that Jesus himself put in the mouth of an unnamed landowner in order to demonstrate God's generosity.

When Barton cites Matthew 20, it is not some parable about God's love, but rather a lesson in right-wing econonics in which Jesus himself hires workers for his vineyard and tells those who complain about wage discrimination that they can take a hike if they don't like it because employers have no obligation to be fair to their workers.  

Mission America president Linda Harvey last week joined Truth in Action Ministries’ Carmen Pate and John Rabe on Truth that Transforms where she argued that public schools are pushing “occult practices and ideas and beliefs” on children through practices like meditation and yoga. Harvey particularly blamed Harry Potter for influencing the entertainment industry to make similar “occult” movies and “taking kids away from authentic Christianity and into all kinds of practices and ideas that will lead them down a dark road.” Pate worried about the “occult underlying themes” in children’s cartoons and even suggested that public school-sponsored Earth Day events have a “focus on Gaia worship” and the “worshiping of Mother Nature.”

Harvey: If you look throughout what our kids are told and taught in the social media, throughout the media and in their schools, you see a constant, casual occult practices and ideas and beliefs. It starts with, of course, the worship of the self and your own impulses and whatever sensational element is out there and people don’t often think of this as leading to the occult but it does. When you’ve decided that you are the center of the universe and you want a designer God or some kind of spirituality that just tickles your ears, that’s what our kids are being taught from meditation to yoga to all kinds of fascinations with things like wizards and magic of all kinds and vampires. I mean it is everywhere.

Pate: I realize that when my grandchildren are visiting I have to be very selective about what cartoons I allow them to watch because of the wizardry and occult underlying themes in cartoons.

Harvey: Absolutely. What most of our kids are taught today, it’s the entertainment and it’s the Hollywood media that is taking this up. They’ve taken off from the success of the Harry Potter series and they have decided that children all need therapy and the therapy that they need is to find special powers within themselves to battle the demons, real or imagined, out there, so they never look to Jesus Christ. It’s all taking kids away from authentic Christianity and into all kinds of practices and ideas that will lead them down a dark road.

…

Pate: I think about how Earth Day comes around each spring and there’s a focus on Gaia worship. I mean, really going back again to this worshiping of Mother Nature and all that she is about and kids come out of this because it’s done at school, schools should be telling them truth they’re thinking, so they believe what they’re told, so parents and churches really have their work cut out for them, Linda.