This post concerns a number of stories, about the American religious right, that have a bearing on congressional, senatorial, and gubernatorial campaigns in 2010. You won't hear much about them in mainstream or even progressive media however.
[UPDATE: A lot of responses to this post have brought up the received wisdom that Democrats can't make religious beliefs an issue during political campaigns. But that leads to the absurd position that Democrats can't call out Republicans who associate with religious leaders who appear to back the elimination of entire segments of society. The Kansas Democratic Party (Kansas is considered a fairly religious state, remember?) would seem to disagree. And, the Christian religious tendencies referred to in the stories below are explicitly and militantly Christian supremacist and totally opposed to church-state separation. In essence, they want to make all but the "right" sort of Christians second-class citizens. So, it's fair game to call out Republicans (and Democrats) who associate with such religious tendencies, which are considered problematic or heretical by many conservative Christians.
Further, even if Democratic candidates choose not to go after their political opponents for such reasons, there's no reason 1) the left, 2) the anti-theocratic right, 3) alternative media & the blogosphere, 4) mainstream media should ignore the issues raised below. If American society can't, or won't, call out the spread of eliminationist ideology, we're in trouble. Big trouble.
Maybe you can help - I can research, but I'm awful at self-promotion and I'm feeling quite discouraged at the moment, as if facts are wholly irrelevant, as if I'm running my own personal project censored. Maybe I am.
The commonality in all of the stories below is that I've either exclusively broken them, broken them together with a close colleague, or helped break them. None has gotten any substantial traction in mainstream media, and they've barely been touched by alternative media (on or off the Internet) or the political blogosphere.
OK, here goes:
What if the Republican congressional candidate for Oregon's 4th District had, as recently as 2004, proposed dumping crude oil waste and radioactive waste at sea ? Given the Gulf oil spill disaster that should be noteworthy, right ?
Meet Art Robinson
Or, what if two of the Republican candidates for U.S. Senate this year were linked to (or have even belonged to) national and state-level political parties that have fielded, for U.S. president, a candidate (Howard Phillips) who claims as his "mentor" and "wise counselor" a theologian (R.J. Rushdoony) who believed that the Sun rotated around the Earth and advocated executing, by stoning or burning at the stake, accused homosexuals, adulterers, and women who have sex before marriage ?
Well, that's the case with Sharron Angle [ 1, 2, 3 ], and Rand Paul [ 1, 2 ]
What if the Republican candidate for the governorship of Kansas had attended numerous rallies held by, and lived for seven months in the condo of, a preacher who claims homosexuals are possessed by demons and is accused of helping agitate anti-gay hatred in Uganda while a bill before the Ugandan Parliament that would execute gays looms ?
That's the case as well. The candidate in question is U.S. Senator Sam Brownback.
What if that preacher, who predicts legalized abortion and gay marriage will cause a second civil war, had publicly blessed and anointed Newt Gingrich and Mike Huckabee, and appeared in a nationally televised event with Senators Sam Brownback and Jim DeMint and Congressional Representatives Michelle Bachmann and Randy Forbes ?
Again, it's true.
What if Sarah Palin were linked, almost exclusively, to that preacher's evangelical tendency -- which proposes that believers can create a utopia on Earth by driving out witches, demon spirits, and people with the wrong sorts of beliefs ? Whose leader has claimed Japanese emperors have intercourse with succubi (it's on video) ? That teaches believers can learn to raise the dead ? Given her track record, you might be more inclined to believe Sarah Palin was tied to this evangelical tendency, but what if it had been written on extensively but almost wholly ignored by liberal and even progressive media ?
Well, it's been almost wholly ignored by mainstream media, including liberal and even progressive media.
What if two out of the three leading candidates for the governorship of Hawaii were also tied to that tendency, with one having apparently violated state ethics rules by accepting over $7,000 to fly to Argentina for a conference held by a major leader in the movement, a conference also featuring a leading exorcist ?
Sadly, that's true. The candidates ? - James "Duke" Aiona, Lt. Governor of Hawaii, and Mufi Hannemann, Mayor of Honolulu.
The Hawaii story and the Brownback/Engle/Kansas story, above, have actually been picked up by the state-level Democratic Parties in Hawaii and Kansas but even most of the progressive political blogosphere seems oblivious to it.
Any political strategist with half a brain and a decent advertising budget should be able to use this sort of material, above, to tear political opponents into very little pieces.
It's not happening.
Why ?
One explanation is that the Democratic Party is very scared of being tarred as anti-religious, or anti-Christian. I'm sure that's true. But the fear isn't valid in this case - even hard-boiled Christian fundamentalists on the right think the religious tendencies at issue in all of the stories I have referenced above are well over the edge into heresy.
For example, as Kyle Mantera of Rightwing Watch (perhaps the best daily coverage of the Christian right in my opinion) has noted, evangelical radio hostess Janet Porter just had her influential radio show canceled because of her association with dominionist evangelicals who claim to be able to talk to and receive divine revelations from God. Brannon House, who canceled Porter's radio show called leaders in that tendency "whacked out folks."
For an example of what House might have been referring to, consider the New Apostolic Reformation prophet Stacey Campbell:
I honestly don't expect to see such astounding material deployed in the coming mid-term election. Why ? I could speculate at length. There are many reasons, no doubt.
One of the most pernicious may be the belief that the Christian right is washed up, or that religion is irrelevant in American politics. After digging up material that caused John McCain to publicly renounce a major political endorsement during the election, I thought the relevance of religion in US politics would be assumed, a given. I guess not.
What can be done ? I don't really know. But if you want to help, you could email one or more of the stories, above, to media or even big political blogs. Ask why the stories aren't getting coverage.
That's all I have to say. Thanks for reading this.
[have you signed up for a user account at Reddit.com ? Reddit has almost 300,000 readers and allows members to vote up stories they like. It's a significant way to get out stories that are otherwise ignored by the media. Hint - you'll need to have your browser's javascript on to sign up for an account but you can turn it off again after you sign up.]