Christian Right

From “Ex Gay Is Ok” buttons to denigrating Senators Pelosi, Clinton and Boxer, who are not like the “American women that we know”; a personal reflection on the Values Voters Summit…

Liberal media claims that Obama was “sandbagged” at Saddleback, but is this just a knee-jerk reaction to evangelical influence in politics?

California’s Proposition 8 would overturn the state’s Supreme Court decision to allow same-sex marriage — right wing religious groups are girding for the battle they are calling “the Armageddon of the culture war.”…

The main reason why the Religious Right became powerful is not what most people may think. Some would undoubtedly point to the powerful communications media. Others might identify charismatic leaders, the development of “wedge issues,” or even changes in evangelical theology in the latter part of the twentieth century that supported, and even demanded, political action.

Jeff Sharlet’s new book The Family: the Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, is in the best tradition of American investigative journalism. Sharlet, a scholar of religion based at New York University, writes with insight, verve and, thankfully, none of the bogus punditry and bad sociology that often passes for informed discourse about the contemporary role of religion in public life. His refreshing narrative style is as engaging as his groundbreaking information.

As the rightist philosopher Richard Weaver famously said, “ideas have consequences.” And I can tell you from personal experience some of the consequences of at least one idea, that of “natural law.”

Why did the 2007 Values Voter Summit talk about immigration as much as abortion and same-sex marriage?

After the 2000 presidential campaign, I felt a shock of recognition when I read that the George W. Bush Administration planned to use its “faith-based” funding to support organizations to encourage women, especially welfare recipients, to marry. The rationale was that marriage would cure their poverty. Wade Horn, appointed by Bush to be in charge of welfare programs at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), had been the titular head of “fatherhood movement.”

One of the most remarkable, and least remarked upon, features of the contemporary discussion of faith in public life is that a defining feature of the religious right worldview has filtered deeply into mainstream and even progressive thought. This defining feature is the idea that somehow God, and/or Christianity, and/or “people of faith” are being driven from “the public square.”

The 2008 ballot initiatives could impact races up and down the ballot including the Presidential campaign, by elevating an issue and shaping the debate. Dissatisfied voters in particular may see ballot initiatives as a means to fill the leadership vacuum