Every couple of years, a story surfaces in the media about Religious Right leaders and their latest whine-fest. The script goes like this: They’re not happy because they still haven’t gotten everything they want. Read more
In high school, I had a history teacher who summed up George Washington’s importance to early Americans this way: “There was God and then there was George Washington” in the minds of the people, he said.
That seems like a reasonable representation of how many contemporaries likely viewed our nation’s first president. But one could easily wonder what Washington, himself, thought about God. The Religious Right thinks it has the answer, and as usual it’s far removed from reality. Read more
Always beware of the Religious Right when it’s bearing gifts, as was the case at a recent conference attended by roughly 950 pastors in Austin, Texas. Read more
Persistent sexual harassment allegations have finally ended the career of fundamentalist figurehead Bill Gothard. Gothard, 79, resigned from his post as president of the Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP) yesterday. Thirty-four women had accused the preacher of harassment; four had accused him of molestation. Gothard had been placed on leave pending an investigation into the allegations, which span the last three decades.
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What sort of person would use a tragedy like the massacre in Newtown, Conn., as an excuse to advance an extreme, theocratic agenda?
If you guessed William J. Murray, you’re correct.
Murray, who heads the Religious Freedom Coalition in Washington, D.C., doesn’t blame Adam Lanza for taking the lives of his own mother and 26 others, including 20 children. Instead, the Religious Right activist said it’s lack of school-sponsored prayer that led to the tragedy. Read more
As soon as I heard about Friday’s horrific school shootings in Newtown, Conn., I knew it would only be a matter of time before some Religious Right extremist blamed it on the lack of mandatory prayer in public schools.
It didn’t take long. First out of the crazy box was former Arkansas governor and erstwhile presidential candidate Mike Huckabee. Read more
David Barton is the scariest Religious Right leader you never heard of.
But that’s beginning to change. Today, The New York Times offered readers a front-page report on Barton, a “self-taught historian who is described by several conservative presidential aspirants as a valued adviser and a source of historical and biblical justification for their policies.” Read more
Recently, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee told a gathering of Religious Right devotees that Americans should be forced to listen to Religious Right activist David Barton “at gunpoint.” Read more
Judge Vaughn Walker’s ruling against California’s Proposition 8 spurred the predictable round of incendiary rhetoric from the Religious Right. Chuck Colson said it could mean Armageddon for religious liberty, TV preacher Pat Robertson said gay people want to destroy the church and destroy marriage and the American Family Association’s Tim Wildmon demanded that the U.S. Read more
