As I describe in a new Alternet post, Newt Gingrich has longstanding ties to the religious right going back to the 1980s, and has lined up support from leaders of the New Apostolic Reformation, who were identified during the summer of 2011 as backing Rick Perry.
Here is the first 1/3 of my Alternet post, which is probably as much as you would care to read anyway - but if you want the full version you can find it here
[Introduction: Newt Gingrich's ties to the religious right go to back to the 1980s, and the Former Speaker of the House has worked hard to line up evangelical backing in advance of the 2012 election. As detailed in a February 27, 2012 article in The Nation, Gingrich has cultivated leaders of the New Apostolic Reformation, who shifted support from Rick Perry, as the Texas governor's presidential bid faltered, to Gingrich, whose Faith Leaders Coalition features several NAR leaders, including some with unabashed dominionist agendas, and controversial approaches to faith healing.
But presidential candidate Rick Santorum has NAR leadership support too and, in a general election, if he prevails against Gingrich and Romney, it is likely that the Champion The Vote voter registration initiative - which is financially backed by one of the NAR's "marketplace apostles", as well as factually challenged narratives of the once and future American Christian nation promoted by history revisionist David Barton - will be deployed for the Santorum campaign.]
There are no explicit references to God or Christianity in the U.S. Constitution, the foundational document for American government. But in advance of the 2012 election, a well-funded voter registration initiative called Champion The Vote, which seeks to register 5 million conservative Christian "biblical values" voters before the November vote, is distributing a 2-hour video, "One Nation Under God", that claims key concepts in the United States Constitution are based on scriptures from books in the Old Testament of the Bible, including Leviticus and Deuteronomy.
Starring in the video? - Newt Gingrich, the only 2012 presidential election candidate featured in One Nation Under God. The Gingrich footage in the video was taken last October, while media attention was still fixated on now-withdrawn candidate Rick Perry, then touted as the alleged conservative evangelical favorite.
[below: excerpts from Champion The Vote's "One Nation Under God" video]
On October 20-21, 2011, Gingrich spoke before hundreds of gathered Florida pastors at a secretive, closed-to-the-media meeting held in an Orlando hotel, at which the former House Speaker told (link to video from Gingrich speech) the clergy that "half of what is taught in American colleges and universities is false" and that "the academic left... is determined to propagandize our children."
Rick Perry, the other presidential candidate to address the Orlando pastors gathering, gave a speech by telescreen. Footage of Perry's speech was not included in One Nation Under God. But footage of former Vice Chair of the Texas GOP and close Gingrich ally David Barton, another major speaker at the October Orlando pastors event, was featured in the video.
In his talk Barton, who claimed (link to video from Barton speech) that ideas expressed in the Constitution came from scriptures in Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and other books of the Old Testament, told his audience,
"Strikingly, if you look through that document, it is amazing how many Biblical clauses appear in Constitutional clauses. Biblical verses and phrases - you'll find them throughout - so many concepts, the founding fathers pointed to bible verses as the source of those concepts."
Barton's speech was accompanied by Powerpoint slides showing the pairing of important clauses in the Constitution with their alleged sources in scripture from the Bible's books of Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezra, Exodus, Deuteronomy and Leviticus.
The Book of Leviticus prescribes stoning as a capital punishment for a range of transgressions including blasphemy and cursing, witchcraft, homosexuality, and adultery - a crime to which Newt Gingrich has himself confessed, in a March 2007 radio show appearance with Focus on The Family founder James Dobson.
Unlike Barton, mainstream historians do not credit the Bible as having been a direct source of conceptual inspiration for the Constitution.
This story continues here