1. Breaking Down the Romney-Huckabee Evangelical Split
Mike Huckabee has made a lot of hay from his class-warfare evangelism, pitting his ordinary Joe image against the "Wall Street Republican" establishment. And for some Huckabee supporters, no one represents the moneyed class of the Republican establishment better than his fallen rival, Mitt Romney.
Randy Brinson, founder of the nonprofit Redeem the Vote and the for-profit Optimum Impact, which maintains a mailing list of tens of millions of evangelicals, told me last week that Romney "fomented" the issue of gay marriage in Massachusetts in order to lay the groundwork for a presidential campaign. (Brinson said Huckabee hired Optimum Impact to help with his campaign.)
Many of the religious-right leaders who either explicitly or implicitly got in line behind Romney, Brinson charged, were snookered into believing that Romney was serving anything but his own presidential aspirations and his business allies' pocketbooks. Brinson said many evangelicals who support Huckabee "are in full revolt, they're ready to go to war with supporters of Romney because they know he is such a fake and he duped conservatives. The reason they're so angry is that he undermined Huckabee's political fortunes." The religious-right leadership that was "co-opted" by Romney, he said, no longer has any credibility with the grassroots.
"If I were McCain," said Brinson, "I'd pick Huckabee as a running mate and go straight to the grassroots." McCain would win "more kudos" that way, said Brinson, than if he tried to cozy up with the religious-right figures who have shunned both him and Huckabee for most of the campaign. Brinson said he told McCain's advisers "not to kiss their rears. It's stupid. It's ridiculous. You gain nothing."
2. Religious-Right Fixation with Abstinence Holds Up Global AIDS Bill
If you've heard recently that Rick Warren represents that "new kind of evangelical" who really cares about the global AIDS crisis and doesn't engage in the same sort of hateful rhetoric and ideological stonewalling practiced by the old religious-right leaders, you might wonder what he was doing at a press conference with Concerned Women for America (CWA), opposing the reauthorization of the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).
At the press conference, CWA was joined by religious-right figures Harry Jackson of the High Impact Leadership Coalition and Chuck Colson of Prison Fellowship, along with some of the most right-wing Republican members of Congress. Their objections to the new bill -- an act of throwing the baby out with the bathwater -- is the removal of an earmark for abstinence-only education, the elimination of a requirement that clinics pledge to oppose prostitution, and the proposed integration of reproductive health services with HIV/AIDS treatment, so that women could receive HIV/AIDS treatment and contraceptives at the same clinic.
All of the changes to the bill are remarkably sensible, but Warren allied himself with the group that put ideology above practicality, and overheated rhetoric above compassion. Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey, who crafted the anti-prostitution pledge requirement in the original 2003 legislation, said it was intended to "ensure that pimps and brothel owners don't become U.S. government partners." Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana charged that the changes proposed by the Democratic majority "would transform the program into a mega-funding pool for organizations with an abortion-promotion agenda," even though clinics providing abortion services are prohibited from receiving U.S. funds. Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council sent an e-mail to supporters this week, urging them to oppose the bill, which is scheduled for a mark-up in the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Feb. 28. The e-mail also accuses the Democrats of "shutting out any pro-life, pro-Africa voices. ... Aid for Africa must not reward the abortion lobby."
David Bryden of the Global AIDS Alliance, which supports the reauthorization, said that Warren "came to the press conference thinking he was weighing in to bring both sides together, but ended up strengthening one particular side and hardened their resolve not to compromise." Warren did not respond to requests for comment.
The late Rep. Tom Lantos of California, who until his recent death was chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, lambasted the PEPFAR opponents a short time before he died. He cited studies that "found that the abstinence-only earmark has forced a reduction in programs preventing transmission of the virus that causes AIDS from mother to child, has reduced prevention efforts with high-risk groups, and has undermined efforts to implement [prevention] programs." With regard to the opposition to the integration of HIV/AIDS and birth control services, Lantos added, "this provision will ensure contraceptive assistance to HIV-positive women who wish to delay or prevent a subsequent pregnancy. Do the people objecting to this provision want to stand in the way of a sick woman trying to avoid getting pregnant?"
The short answer: yes.
3. Who's Behind the Anti-Muslim Mailing to Jews?
Rabbis and lay Jews across the country recently opened their mailboxes to find a copy of Standing with Israel, a book by Christians United for Israel (CUFI) executive director David Brog, along with a DVD of the film Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West. As first reported on the Web site of Jews on First, an organization that monitors the activities of the religious right, a CUFI spokesperson said the mailing was conducted by the Republican Jewish Coalition, a group that calls itself "the sole voice of Jewish Republicans to Republican decision makers and the Jewish community." CUFI is controversial within the Jewish community because of its eschatology that predicts conversion to Christianity or death at Armageddon, its opposition to a two-state solution, its calls for military confrontation with Iran, and other issues. Brog's book is an attempt to allay Jewish reluctance to form alliances with Christian Zionists.
A spokesperson for the Republican Jewish Coalition initially sidestepped my inquiries about who had sent the mailing. First she said, "Our members did all receive a copy," adding later, "the book was sent to our members," and finally contradicted the Jews on First report by saying that CUFI sent out the mailing. A CUFI spokesperson would only say that "CUFI tries to distribute David Brog's book to the broadest scope of Israel-supporting American Jews across the Jewish streams, philosophies, and ideologies," but did not say whether CUFI or the RJC paid for the mailing.
Obsession, which purports to show Muslim mania for killing Jews and destroying Israel and America, has been condemned as anti-Muslim propaganda, and is currently the subject of controversy in Florida, where Attorney General Bill McCollum directed that the incendiary film be shown to state employees in his department. In response to the outcry, McCollum recently agreed to convene a Muslim community advisory group.
The film features, among others, former Rudy Giuliani campaign adviser and provocateur Daniel Pipes and "ex-terrorist" Walid Shoebat, who recently sparked an outcry after he spoke at the United States Air Force Academy about converting to Christianity after being a Palestinian Liberation Organization terrorist. Critics question whether Shoebat and two others with similar stories are distorting their backgrounds, and charge that they portray all Muslims as murderous extremists.
Rabbi Haim Beliak, who runs the Jews On First Web site, said of the portrayal of Muslims in Obsession, "if this was being said about Jews, what would you think?"
4. Washington for Jesus Founder John Gimenez Dies at 76
Last April, to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the settlement of Jamestown, Virginia, the Rock Church of Virginia Beach organized The Assembly, a weekend-long spectacle of "Christian nation" mythology that culminated with a beach gathering at which "One Nation Under God" crosses were planted in the sand.
John Gimenez, the bishop of Rock Church, died last week of a stroke. Gimenez was not well known outside Pentecostal circles, but he was an instrumental figure in bringing together prominent evangelicals and charismatic Christians in the political movement to install Christian dominion in government. At the event last spring, Gimenez talked about how he worked with Campus Crusade for Christ founder Bill Bright to organize the April 1980 Washington for Jesus rally, which he credited with bringing out evangelical voters for Ronald Reagan. Gimenez subsequently organized hundreds of America for Jesus rallies as well as additional rallies in Washington, intended to spark an evangelical revival in politics.
Gimenez talked about how Bright dismissed the supposed rift between charismatics and other evangelicals. "I heard he didn't like people like me," Gimenez said to laughter from his tongue-talking audience. "That's what the propaganda was." But, Gimenez recounted, Bright believed that God had willed them to work together, and he canceled his own rally to merge it with Gimenez's. According to Gimenez, Bright later told Ronald Reagan, "Mr. President, you were elected on April 29, 1980, when the church prayed that God's will would be done."
Last week, former Bush adviser Doug Wead tried to portray the rift between Pentecostals and other evangelicals as the driving force behind Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley's televangelist investigation, going so far as to paint Grassley as an elitist and the televangelists as populists. But to hear Gimenez tell it, they were all in it together -- as long as "it" was demolishing the separation of church and state, restoring school prayer, overturning Roe v. Wade, or battling the "homosexual agenda." Or, as Grassley target Kenneth Copeland told attendees at the assembly, "Jesus began this nation. Only Jesus can end it. He is the beginning. He is the end. He had the first word. He has the last word."
5. IRS Investigates Southern Baptist Pastor Who Endorsed Huckabee
Wiley Drake, the Southern Baptist minister who prayed for God's wrath on employees of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, is under investigation by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for endorsing Huckabee on his church's letterhead and using his church-funded radio program to further lend his support to the candidate.
IRS rules prohibit clergy from using church resources (such as letterhead) to endorse political candidates. Clergy and heads of other types of nonprofits are, however, permitted to endorse candidates in their capacity as private citizens. Drake's lawyer, the Alliance Defense Fund's Erik Stanley, denied that the endorsement was sent out on church letterhead or that Drake's radio program was funded by his church.
Rob Boston, a spokesperson for Americans United, which filed the IRS complaint against Drake, said, "I'm not surprised they would go back after the fact and make an argument like that." He added, "The fact that the IRS is looking at it shows that [our complaint] is solid."
