1. Progressive Faithful Call for Confronting Wall Street Culture.
If evangelical men have ideas politicians think are worth listening to about "abortion reduction," why not the economic views of other religious folks?
Curious about their thoughts on the financial collapse, I reached out to some individuals on the religious left -- not people who are on the president's Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships advisory council or even those who have Washington institutions through which they try to influence public policy. Rather, they are part of a nascent movement of religious adherents who can be natural allies with progressives on issues from economic justice to LGBT rights. Yet they have been largely ignored as Barack Obama has courted center-right evangelicals and Catholics.
Barbara O'Brien, who writes an online guide to Buddhism, says changes must address executive compensation, a view that is widely shared among people of all types of belief. On her politics blog, O'Brien ties this idea to progressive labor lawyer and writer (and TAP contributor) Thomas Geoghegan's "Infinite Debt", published in Harper's April issue. She notes, "Very simply, the financial sector and the financial services industry is eating America. Directly or indirectly, we're all indebted to and working for the financial industry. We're turning into sharecroppers, basically, except the 'crop' is money."
Peter Laarman, executive director of Progressive Christians Uniting in Los Angeles, and Dan Schultz, also known as "Pastor Dan" at the Daily Kos spin-off blog Street Prophets, and pastor of Salem United Church of Christ in rural Wisconsin, call for a very public accounting. They suggest, "What would be interesting would be for the Religious Left to mount some kind of public Ethical Audit of what's been going on. Not on bullshit side issues but on the heart of the power relations that handed over the fate of working families to the Big Boys. … Call expert witnesses (progressive economists) and victims to testify. Get a few sympathetic members of Congress to endorse it and show up." 2. A Renewed Gingrich: Not So New After All.
It seemed to be big news to Dan Gilgoff at U.S. News and World Report that disgraced former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has launched a new organization, Renewing American Leadership (RAL), designed to bring anti-tax conservatives and right-wing evangelicals together. Wasn't that thing called the Republican Party?
In classic Gingrich form, though, he's pitching the same-old, same-old as a reinvented phoenix of a flailing conservative movement. As Gilgoff mentions in passing, the idea for RAL was "hatched" at Pastors' Policy Briefings held around the country for the past several years, which frequently featured Gingrich as a speaker and bore the slogan of his book, Rediscovering God in America. The Pastors' Policy Briefings, which were closed to the press and shrouded in secrecy, took place under the auspices of state "renewal projects," affiliated with Christian-right organizations in Minnesota, California, Colorado, Texas, Iowa, South Carolina, Florida, and other states at crucial points during the presidential primary campaign. They often showcased Mike Huckabee as a speaker, but not other candidates.
One of the Renewal Projects' chief organizers, David Lane, told me last year, "What we're doing is the mobilization of pastors and pews to restore America to her Judeo-Christian heritage. That's our goal." David Barton, the Christian right's pseudo-historian who believes the separation of church and state is a "myth," was also a frequent speaker at the pastors' policy briefings and is, according to Gilgoff, on RAL's board. RAL was organized in Virginia in 2008. According to state records, Bob McEwen, the former Ohio Congress member, is also on its board. McEwen, like Barton, was a frequent speaker at the pastors' policy briefings.
3.Advocacy or Electioneering?
During the primary, representatives of other Republican candidates complained to me that they had not been invited to speak at the Renewal Project events and worried that they were used to rally voters to Mike Huckabee.
Last year, the watchdog group Texas Freedom Network (TFN) filed a complaint with the Internal Revenue Service against an obscure nonprofit, The Niemoller Foundation, which had funded Renewal Projects' forerunner, the Texas Restoration Project. TFN asked the IRS to investigate whether Niemoller's funding of the Texas Restoration Project violated its tax-exempt status because Texas Restoration Project events, TFN maintained, were essentially campaign events for Gov. Rick Perry.
The IRS does not make public its decisions on whether or not to investigate nonprofits, only revealing its findings if it takes the unusual step of revoking an organization's tax-exempt status. It is not known whether it investigated the Niemoller Foundation, and if it did, whether it found any wrongdoing that wouldn't require revocation. Rick Tyler, a spokesperson and founding director of RAL, says that RAL received no funding from the Niemoller Foundation.
4.Planned Parenthood and Sojourners Presidents Appear on CBN: Common Ground Kaput?
The Christian Broadcasting Network's David Brody, who has become go-to blogger and correspondent when progressive activists decide it's time to reach "people of faith," featured an interview with Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards last week on his blog, The Brody File.
Richards says that trust was essential to building a constructive discussion about reducing the need for abortion. (Brody is doing a larger story for the 700 Club on the issue, which will air Thursday.) But wasn't that trust damaged a bit by Sojourners president Jim Wallis' appearance earlier in the week, when he claimed that including coverage for abortion services would "kill" health-care reform, even though "we need health-care reform desperately"?
5. J Street Applauds Nowruz Overture; CUFI Emphasizes Negative.
President Obama's diplomatic overtures to Iran on the occasion of the celebration of Nowruz were applauded by the progressive pro-peace, pro-Israel group J Street. Jeremy Ben-Ami, the group's president, called the video "a smart first step in the United States' efforts to turn the page of U.S.-Iran relations and pragmatically resolve our differences with Iran over their nuclear program, support for terror, and threats against Israel." He also acknowledged that Israel's differences with Iran could not be bridged with one gesture but that J Street will continue to support the president's push for diplomacy.
John Hagee's Christians United for Israel, which has been using conservative media outlets to gather 110,000 signatures for its Israel Pledge, which Hagee is personally delivering to Congress this week, was unusually reserved. CUFI's weekly mailing doesn't mention the Nowruz video other than to note Tehran's dismissal of a "slogan." In the same e-mail, Hagee writes, "Iran threatens a nuclear holocaust. Israel has an existential threat to its future. What is our role? Jesus made it clear to all of His followers who are called Christians to do the following; 'In as much as you have done it unto the least of these my brethren you have done it unto Me.'" Hagee takes the seminal passage from the Gospel of Matthew in which most Christians find a directive to help the poor and turns it into a requirement that Christians "save" Israel.
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