"Christians", KKK, & Politics: Birds of a Feather ? & More....

April 26, 2005
Justice Sunday Preachers
by Max Blumenthal

Senate majority leader Bill Frist appeared through a telecast as a speaker at "Justice Sunday," at the invitation of the event's main sponsor, Family Research Council president Tony Perkins. "Justice Sunday" was promoted as a rally to portray Democrats as being "against people of faith." Many of the speakers compared the plight of conservative Christians to the civil rights movement. But in sharing the stage with Perkins, who introduced him to the rally, Frist was associating himself with someone who has longstanding ties to racist organizations.
Four years ago, Perkins addressed the Louisiana chapter of the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), America's premier white supremacist organization, the successor to the White Citizens Councils, which battled integration in the South. In 1996 Perkins paid former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke $82,000 for his mailing list. At the time, Perkins was the campaign manager for a right-wing Republican candidate for the US Senate in Louisiana. The Federal Election Commission fined the campaign Perkins ran $3,000 for attempting to hide the money paid to Duke.
As the emcee of Justice Sunday, Tony Perkins positioned himself beside a black preacher and a Catholic "civil rights" activist as he rattled off the phone numbers of senators wavering on President Bush's judicial nominees. The evening's speakers studiously couched their appeals on behalf of Bush's stalled judges in the vocabulary of victimhood, accusing Democratic senators of "filibustering people of faith."
James Dobson, who founded the Family Research Council as the Washington lobbying arm of his Focus on the Family, invoked the Christian right's persecution complex. On an evening when Jews were celebrating the second night of Passover, Dobson claimed, "The biggest Holocaust in world history came out of the Supreme Court" with the Roe v. Wade decision. On his syndicated radio show nearly two weeks earlier, on April 11, Dobson compared the "black robed men" on the Supreme Court to "the men in white robes, the Ku Klux Klan." By his logic, the burden of oppression had passed from religious and racial minorities to unborn children and pure-hearted heterosexuals engaged in "traditional marriage."
Bishop Harry Jackson, from Hope Christian Church in College Park, Maryland, was Justice Sunday's only black speaker. Jackson had recently unveiled his "Black Contract With America," a document that highlights wedge issues like gay marriage that would presumably pry black churchgoers away from the Democratic Party. But so far he has been disappointed. "Black churches are too concerned with justice," Jackson lamented in his speech. Nonetheless, his association with the right wing has done wonders for his personal profile. Just after Bush's second inauguration, he was among a contingent of black clergy members invited to the White House for a private meeting.
Justice Sunday also featured a token Catholic, William Donohue, who heads the nation's largest "Catholic civil rights organization," the Catholic League. In the battle to confirm far-right judicial nominees like William Pryor, who happens to be Catholic, Donohue has become a key asset for the Christian right's evangelical faction. He has argued that Democratic senators opposing Pryor and others are motivated by anti-Catholicism. "There isn't de jure discrimination against Catholics in the Senate," Donohue claimed on Sunday. "There is de facto discrimination. They've set the bar so high with the abortion issue, we can't get any real Catholics over it."
But for all his concern with anti-Catholicism, Donohue had no qualms about sharing the stage with Southern Baptist Theological Seminary president Dr. Albert Mohler. "As an evangelical, I believe that the Roman Catholic Church is a false church," Mohler remarked during a 2000 TV interview. "It teaches a false gospel. And the Pope himself holds a false and unbiblical office." Donohue, who has protested against Democrats who have made no such comments about Catholics, was silent about Mohler. In fact, the site of Justice Sunday, Highview Baptist Church, in Louisville, Kentucky, is Mohler's home church.
"We're fed up and we're on the same side," Donohue declared. "And if the secular left is worried, they should be worried."
For Tony Perkins, Justice Sunday was the fulfillment of a strategy devised more than two decades ago by his political mentor, Woody Jenkins. In May 1981, in the wake of Ronald Reagan's presidential victory, Jenkins and some fifty other conservative activists met at the Northern Virginia home of direct-mail pioneer Richard Viguerie to plot the growth of their movement. The Council for National Policy (CNP), an ultra-secretive, right-wing organization, was the outcome of that meeting. The CNP hooked up theocrats like R.J. Rushdoony, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell with wealthy movement funders like Amway founder Richard DeVos and beer baron Joseph Coors. As DeVos famously said, the CNP "brings together the doers with the donors."
Jenkins, then a Louisiana state lawmaker, became CNP's first executive director, and promptly made a bold prediction to a Newsweek reporter: "One day before the end of this century, the Council will be so influential that no president, regardless of party or philosophy, will be able to ignore us or our concerns or shut us out of the highest levels of government."
Eighteen years later, in 1999, the CNP was addressed by Texas Governor George W. Bush, on the eve of his presidential campaign. At the gathering, which was closed to the press, Bush reportedly sought to put to rest any notion that he was a moderate. Later, when he was asked to release to the public a transcript of his speech to the CNP, Bush stubbornly refused. But the press reported rumors that he had promised the CNP he would appoint only antiabortion judges if elected.
For years, Jenkins had been grooming Perkins as his political successor. "To Jenkins, Perkins was like a son, and the feeling was and is mutual," wrote former Jenkins staffer Christopher Tidmore. In 1996 Perkins cut his teeth as the manager of Jenkins's campaign for US Senate. It was during that campaign that, in an attempt to consolidate the support of Louisiana's conservative base, Perkins paid David Duke $82,000 for his mailing list. After Jenkins was defeated by his Democratic opponent, Mary Landrieu, he contested the election. But during the contest period, Perkins's surreptitious payment to Duke was exposed through an investigation conducted by the FEC, which fined the Jenkins campaign.
Six years later, in 2002, Perkins embarked on a campaign to avenge his mentor's defeat by running for the US Senate himself. But Perkins was dogged with questions about his involvement with David Duke. Perkins issued a flat denial that he had ever had anything to do with Duke, and he denounced him for good measure. Unfortunately, Perkins's signature was on the document authorizing the purchase of Duke's list. Perkins's dalliance with the racist Council of Conservative Citizens in the run-up to his campaign also illuminates the seamy underside of his political associations. Despite endorsements from James Dobson and a host of prominent CNP members, Perkins was not even the leading Republican in the senatorial race.
In the wake of his defeat, with Dobson's blessing, Perkins moved to Washington to head the Family Research Council. In a closed meeting at the Plaza Hotel in New York City during the Republican National Convention in August 2004, an alliance drawing in Frist was sealed. Perkins's associates at the CNP presented the Senate majority leader with its "Thomas Jefferson Award." The grateful Frist declared, "The destiny of the nation is on the shoulders of the conservative movement."
On Justice Sunday, Perkins introduced Frist as "a friend of the family." "I don't think it's radical to ask senators to vote," Frist said from a giant screen above the audience. "Only in the United States Senate could it be considered a devastating option to allow a vote." His face then disappeared, and Perkins returned onstage to urge viewers to call their senators.
But there is more at stake here than the fate of the filibuster. With Justice Sunday, Perkins's ambition to become a national conservative leader was ratified; Bill Frist's presidential campaign for 2008 was advanced with the Christian right; and the faithful were imbued with the notion that they are being victimized by liberal Democratic evildoers.
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050509&s=blumenthal
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Tuesday September 6, 2005
News
Roy Spence announces project to explore 'Amazing Faith of Texas'
By Roy Spence Jr. -- Special to the Bulletin

Almost 40 years ago, back in the mid-1960s, then-Texas Gov. John Connally envisioned a unique showcase for the remarkable array of cultures represented by the people of Texas -- from Spaniards, French and Germans to English, Swedes, Poles and Greeks.
That idea became the Institute of Texan Cultures, a highlight of the 1968 World's Fair in San Antonio. It remains a legacy of Hemisfair to this day, part of The University of Texas at San Antonio.
For more than three decades, my colleagues and I have been blessed to witness and be immersed in the color and character of those cultures as our firm has served countless projects related to consumer behavior. And we have been intrigued by the richness and variety of faiths embraced and practiced by those cultures.
Yet today there seem to be voices that too often attempt to amplify our cultural and religious differences instead of celebrating those ideas and beliefs that unite us as people and as Texans.
It is fitting that we recognize and celebrate the remarkable faith of Texas. We therefore are undertaking an unprecedented not-for-profit project to collect and publish a series of essays and portraits in book form recording the faith of real people and families across the Lone Star State. And we need the help of our fellow Texans in this endeavor. If you have a story to tell, you will find details at the end of this article that tell how you can participate.
"The Amazing Faith of Texas" is a humble attempt to build a common purpose around the variety of faiths of our people. It reflects my concern that here and around the world we are many times hearing the views and voices of only those who seek to divide people and cultures, helping create an environment that fuels cultural wars in the name of religion.
I certainly am not a pastor or religious scholar by any means. But I am a Texan and an American. And a person who loves God and loves those who "love thy neighbor as thyself."
I believe in my heart that it is time to begin to mend fences and build bridges amongst our neighbors. When we dig deep we see common ground in how we should treat one another and how we should love one another. If we listen, read and study carefully, we can hear the calling of the whole family of faith guiding us to be compassionate, humble, charitable, forgiving and above all, to have faith -- Amazing Faith.
This journalistic journey is motivated in part by personal experience that has given me an appreciation for the diversity of faiths held by our collective cultures.
I grew up in the First United Methodist Church in Brownwood, Texas. There was, and probably still is, a friendly rivalry between the Methodists and the Baptists. That's OK.
I moved to Austin, went to The University of Texas and met and married my wife of 28 years, Mary Couri Spence. She grew up Catholic in Peoria, Illinois. We were married in the Catholic Church in Houston by our cousin, the late and wonderful Monsignor Jimmy Jamail. Our children were baptized Catholic.
By chance we moved next door to Reverend Gerald Mann, the founder and now Pastor Emeritus of Riverbend Church of Austin. Our families became best friends and I worked with Gerald Mann on his radio and television ministries.
Two other roads led me to a better understanding as well. One was the journey of a friend of 30 years who decided to fulfill a lifelong dream of becoming a rabbi. I had the privilege of being part of his amazing quest.
The second, and perhaps the most life-changing experience, occurred in the days just after 9/11. Ten colleagues, making our way back to Texas from the D.C. area, conceived of a public service announcement called "I Am an American." As a show of solidarity with Muslim Americans, the ad was a simple reminder that this country is made up of people of many different cultures, ethnic backgrounds and faiths, and that we are all in this together.
I respect different religions simply because each one, while unique in rituals and tactics, in its own way reports to the higher callings of virtues and values that seem to be the ties that bind all faiths.
Our collective house here in Texas has been built on the strong foundation of the spirit of community. Texans have a rich, instinctive tradition of extending a hand, especially when one of our neighbors faces trouble. We as Texans and Texans of faith need to come together and raise the spiritual barn together.
So the book we will publish will be a celebration of what unites us, not what divides us, as Texans and as a family of faith. It is my hope that in some small way we can help bring our state and nation closer together in recognizing that while we may have differences in how we practice our faiths, we need to be more aware that "we are all in this together."
I ask you and all Texans -- if you want to share a personal story on your own faith as well as what unites all faiths please visit our Web site at www.amazingfaithoftexas.com to submit a short essay and share a photograph of your place of worship.
Common ground on higher ground -- that is what The Amazing Faith of Texas is all about.

Roy Spence, a native of Brownwood, is one of the nation's foremost marketing industry leaders. As founder and president of Austin-based GSD&M, he has been associated with prominent Texas projects for three decades, including the state's highly successful "Don't Mess with Texas" campaign. "The Amazing Faith of Texas" book is a pro bono initiative.

source: http://www.brownwoodbulletin.com/articles/2005/09/06/news/news04.txt