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Sarah Posner

Sarah Posner's coverage of religion and politics has appeared in The Washington Post, The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The Week, and many others.

 

Recent Articles

HUCKABEE COMPARES AMERICA TO NAZI GERMANY.

Sarah PosnerJan 23, 2008
In a speech to the Florida Renewal Project Monday night, which in an unprecedented move was live streamed on the American Family Association's Web site, Mike Huckabee compared America to Nazi Germany. He first implored the audience to renew their "commitment to Christ" and "to our nation, to its heritage, as well as to its future," adding "do we expect the seculars [sic] to do it? Do we expect the unbelievers to lead us, and if so, how will they lead us and where?" He then engaged in an extended description of his visit to the Israeli Holocaust Memorial Yad Vashem with his 11- year-old daughter, who asked, "why didn't somebody do something?" Huckabee, who has called abortion a "holocaust," then issued a dire warning: ... I pray that no father ever stands over the shoulder of his own daughter and after her witnessing the decline and the fall of a great nation, writes, and sees her write these words, "why didn't somebody do something?" You see, I believe the reason we're here is because...

The FundamentaList (No. 18)

Who's behind the Renewal Projects?; Huckabee implies he'd like a Christian Constitution; and televangelists are threatened with "full exposure."

Sarah PosnerJan 23, 2008
1. Renewal Project Fails to Deliver South Carolina to Huckabee Although the Iowa Renewal Project’s Pastors’ Policy Briefings, at which Mike Huckabee was a featured speaker, contributed to his victory in the Iowa caucuses, last week's South Carolina Pastors’ Policy Briefing, hosted by the South Carolina Renewal Project, failed to deliver the votes he needed to beat John McCain in the state's primary. This week, the Florida Renewal Project hosted a pastors' briefing, but so far Huckabee is polling behind McCain, Romney, and Giuliani there, and it's unclear whether Thompson's withdrawal from the race will benefit Huckabee. The "Renewal Project" events mirror those held by the Texas Restoration Project . As I reported on TAPPED, the watchdog Texas Freedom Network (TFN) recently filed a complaint with the Internal Revenue Service, charging that the non-profit that funded the Texas Restoration Project, the Niemoller Foundation, violated its tax-exempt status by sponsoring conferences that...

THOUGHTS ON MICHIGAN AND THE EVANGELICAL VOTE.

Sarah PosnerJan 16, 2008
Last night's exit polls showed Mitt Romney barely edging out Mike Huckabee in cornering the evangelical vote, 34-29%. About 40% of the Republican electorate in Michigan self-identifies as born-again or evangelical, but as I've argued before, not all of them hate Mormons, not all of them are as staunchly conservative as Huckabee on church-state separation, abortion, and gay marriage, and some of them, in Michigan's open primary might have even been Democrats! (The exit polling doesn't ask Democrats if they are born-again or evangelical.) As they head into South Carolina, however, the Republican candidates face a very different evangelical voter than than in Michigan. The Palmetto State is heavily Southern Baptist (Huckabee's denomination) and support for him among those voters runs high. Yesterday I chatted with Fred Astin , who works for the Beaverdam Baptist Association, a coalition of 70 Southern Baptist churches located in Seneca, South Carolina. Astin, who attended the November...

The FundamentaList (No. 17)

Huckabee and the rise of religious populism, the gay marriage amendment in Florida, and Soulforce seeks dialogue between mega-churches and LGBT families.

Sarah PosnerJan 16, 2008
1. Huckabee and Religious Populism There's been a lot of talk of late about how Mike Huckabee's candidacy demonstrates the fractures not only within the Republican Party , but within the religious right . He's been compared to Pat Robertson and William Jennings Bryan, and is thought by some to be channeling God. But none of that is really helpful in trying to understand whether he really is an economic populist, or as some have wondered, some sort of 21st-century "religious populist." His speech on Monday urging the amendment of the Constitution "so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards so it lines up with some contemporary view" was a clarion call to this religious base. Although Huckabee has denied that he is a dominionist, it is the religious right's quest to Christianize government (and the GOP ) that has driven the groundswell for his candidacy. The ground troops in Huckabee’s populist march have been cultivated in mega-churches, through televangelism...

THOUSAND POINTS OF LIGHT PASTOR CHARGED WITH PERJURY.

Sarah PosnerJan 15, 2008
Earl Paulk , televangelist and former pastor to the now almost defunct Cathedral of the Holy Spirit in Atlanta, was charged with perjury yesterday, for lying under oath in a lawsuit brought by a former congregant, Mona Brewer , who charges that he forced her to have sex with him over a fourteen year period. In sworn deposition testimony in the suit, Paulk admitted to having sex with Brewer, but said it was consensual. The perjury charge comes in because he testified that she was the only woman he's had sex with outside his marriage. (At least a dozen women, including his own granddaughter, have accused him of sexual abuse.) But late last year, court-ordered paternity tests confirmed something that had been rumored for years: that the 80 year-old Paulk was actually the father of his nephew, Donnie Earl Paulk. In other words, he had slept with his brother's wife. During the George H.W. Bush administration, the president bestowed upon Paulk one of his "thousand points of light" accolades...

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