Over the past few weeks, I have published a number of pieces that I know will interest people who care about such things as religious pluralism, separation of church and state, marriage equality and religious liberty. Here are links and quickie summaries and some excerpts. In many ways, each one could be a book -- or at least much longer articles and certainly longer summaries. So I apologize for the digest nature of this diary, but then again, some of my links can take you to some nice long reads.
Anyway, in my role as a fellow at Political Research Associates, I have been asked to focus on religious liberty, which I am honored to do. No matter what we each may think about it -- it is one of the defining issues of our time.
LGBTQ Nation In my first bi-weekly column on religious liberty, I discuss how
"Religious liberty is a progressive and liberatory value, over which theocratic factions, and the politicians who pander to them, have no claim."
Eyes Right In "The Nullification of Religious Liberty" I write:
It’s true. Religious liberty is under sustained attack in America—but not in the way the Christian Right would have us believe. A theocratic (and sometimes Neo-Confederate) movement within the broader Christian Right is targeting the religious liberty of those they don’t agree with. Marriage equality is currently on the front lines of this historic assault. And while it has not always been framed as an issue of religious liberty by LGBTQ activists and progressive allies, that is changing—even as advances in marriage equality in the courts and federal policy are causing some Christian Right leaders to discuss potential state-level nullification.
But the narrative promoted by the Christian Right—that they are upholding religious liberty against a creeping secular totalitarianism—is unraveling. People are getting wise to how the religious liberty of those, religious or non-religious, who wish to marry the person of their choice is being stricken by organized theocratic factions bent on using any tool they can find to ensure that only their definition of marriage and of religious liberty prevails.
An historic example came last week. The mainline United Church of Christ (UCC) won their federal court challenge to a North Carolina law which banned same-sex marriage. The UCC, the first national Christian denomination to recognize same-sex marriage back in 2005, noted that North Carolina’s Amendment One not only made it illegal for their members to marry as same-sex couples, but also made it illegal for their clergy to perform the religious ceremony— even if that ceremony carried no legal weight. The federal judge recognized this infringement of true religious liberty, and made that clear in his ruling for the plaintiffs.
“We are thrilled by this clear victory for both religious freedom and marriage equality in the state of North Carolina,” said the Rev. J. Bennett Guess, a UCC national officer. “In lifting North Carolina’s ban on same-gender marriage, the court’s directive makes it plain that the First Amendment arguments… were both persuasive and spot-on. Any law that threatens clergy who choose to solemnize a union of same-sex couples, and threatens them with civil or criminal penalties, is unconstitutional.”
Eyes Right I watched the extraordinary spectacle at the recent Values Voters Conference in Washington, DC -- of Glenn Beck and Mark Levin trying to quell the current Neo-Confederate trend on the Christian Right.
Some critics tend to cast the Christian Right movement as monolithic, when in actuality it has always been at just as fractious and dynamic as it has been powerful and influential. And yet, its considerable successes are sometimes obscured by its leaders’ perennial fear that they may ultimately fail to “restore” their notion of the Christian Nation—and that an evil darkness will fall upon the land. (Yes, much of the public rhetoric at the Values Voter Summit was that prosaic.)
But a deepening shadow of doubt has crept across the Christian Right’s vision of a shining city on a hill since at least 2012 election. Some leaders of the Religious (and non-religious) Right are revealing their loss of faith in American nationhood, and are turning to Neo-Confederate alternatives, including support to secede from the Union (including by some candidates), and a movement to nullify federal laws, regulations and court decisions—all with the full understanding of the political tensions and violence that would likely accompany most of these efforts.
This Neo-Confederatization of elements of the political and Religious Right is such a problem that the State Policy Network of business/libertarian think tanks, (which work in close coalition with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)) issued a PR manual in 2013 which urged members to avoid language that smacks of “extreme views,” advising: “Stay away from words like radical, nullify, or autonomy,” and especially “states’ rights.”
The Public Eye Two presidents in a row have increasingly steered federal grants and contracts to conservative Christian groups—including houses of worship. It is hard to imagine the Obama administration steering grants and contracts to state affiliates of Focus on the Family -- and worse. But
here we are.
[Author Jeff] Sharlet describes the morphing of elite business and Christian fundamentalism this way: “[E]lite fundamentalism, certain in its entitlement, responds in this world with a politics of noblesse oblige, the missionary impulse married to military and economic power. The result is empire. Not the old imperialism … Rather the soft empire of America that across the span of the twentieth century recruited fundamentalism to its cause even as it seduced liberalism to its service… .”...
The privatization of public services has long been a feature of neoliberalism. It has also been part of the domestic and global agenda of the Christian Right, and more broadly, of conservative evangelicalism. The free-market agenda of the economic elite and the interests of elite evangelicalism found common cause and a historic opportunity during the Clinton administration. It is a relationship that continues to this day under the rubric of the Faith-Based Initiative.