Christian Reconstructionism.

Do not miss Sarah Posner's recent post on Christian Reconstructionism at Religion Dispatches. Here's an excerpt:

Back when Huckabee was running for president, a reporter asked him if he was a Christian Reconstructionist. It was an amusing moment -- because anyone who didn't want to be linked with some Christian Reconstructionists' endorsements of slavery or the death penalty for homosexuals would of course say no. And Huckabee did. But many have documented his Reconstructionist ties, and how his callsfor biblical law in place of the Constitution reflect Reconstructionism's influence.

Huckabee is not alone. Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, who backed away from his controversial thesis during his campaign last year, was shown by Diana Butler Bass to be tied to Christian Reconstructionism, both through the subject matter of his thesis and his advisor Herb Titus.

Now comes Star Parker, a favorite on the religious right speaking circuit for being a walking example of how a welfare queen who had had multiple abortions can be transformed into a conservative Christian icon. Parker -- an early endorser of Huckabee in 2008 -- is now running for Congress in the 37th district of California, and hopes to "have the opportunity to share my ideas inside the Congressional Black Caucus" about how the country is sliding towards socialism.

Parker -- who is an admirer of Christian Reconstructionism founder R.J. Rushdoony -- recently gave aninterview to the John Birch Society, which during the Kennedy administration insisted that proposed civil rights laws were "in flagrant violation of the 10th amendment," and threatened individual freedom. (Sound familiar? The same arguments are being made about health care reform.)

In the JBS interview, Parker said that Obama "is a secular leftist" who doesn't have a "biblical worldview" and is "pushing the envelope as far as angering God." Whether he is a "Pharaoh or a Nebuchadnezzar we don't know, but we do know that ultimately he will not succeed. The Scriptures are very clear, that God abhors the bloodthirsty and the deceitful." (According to some eschatology, Nebuchadnezzar is the Antichrist.) Parker not only endorsed the notion that abortion is genocidal in black communities, but added that Obama supports abortion through the ninth month (which is false).

Kenneth Starr, New President of Baylor University.

It has not been a quiet week in the world of American Baptism. Monday's announcement that Kenneth Starr - yes that Kenneth Starr - will be the new president of the largest Baptist University in America has been met with resounding disapproval by Baptists high and low in the church hierarchy.

David Wilkinson writes exaperatedly today at Associated Baptist Press, where he is executive director:

Last year Baptists worldwide celebrated their 400th birthday. Now, a few months later, the board of the world’s largest Baptist institution of higher learning has elected the first not-now, never-been-a-Baptist president in Baylor’s 165-year history.

Whatever your opinion about the regents’ latest choice, it’s at least ironic. Out of 105 million Baptists worldwide, Baylor’s presidential search committee and board of regents could not find a solitary soul deemed worthy of occupying the chief executive’s office in Waco. Assuming the search was limited to the United States, nowhere among thousands of Baptist pastors -- even among those with a Ph.D. and previous leadership experience in higher education -- could a qualified candidate be found. Nowhere among Baylor’s 14,000 alumni or among the tens of thousands of alumni of other Baptist colleges and universities did a Baptist with the right leadership qualities and the right portfolio of experience rise to the top of the resume stack. Upon no one among the chief academic and executive officers of 48 Southern Baptist-affiliated colleges and universities -- the presidents, the deans and provosts, and all the vice presidents of this and that -- did the light of God’s chosen fall. Not even in the broader arena of all American higher education could a lone Baptist employed by a non-Baptist university be found -- not a member of a non-Baptist church or a church of Baptist heritage that has opted not to use “Baptist” in its name; not a current non-Baptist but the product of a Baptist education; not even a former Baptist (as was the case with Starr’s immediate predecessor) or a wannabe or wouldabeen Baptist with a strong, self-proclaimed affinity for the Baptist heritage. None was found worthy. No not one.

The state of Baptist leadership in America must be sadder than I thought.

Find Baylor's selection somewhat ironic? Wilkinson tells us that the whole story is even more so. Starr and his wife have decide to convert from their long-time membership in the Churches of Christ (baptism is necessary for salvation) to Baptism (baptism not necessary for salvation) before he is sworn in as the university's new president. Yes, Starr's not even Baptist. Couldn't the university simply "welcome his commitment to embrace the university’s distinctive heritage as a Baptist institution while remaining true to his own faith tradition, and move on?" Apparently not. Instead his timely conversion seem manipulated and showy.

As to the other meaningful tasks ahead of him, Starr explains in a recent interview:

“Our great mediator is Christ Jesus, our Lord,” he added, affirming the individual’s right and responsibility to relate directly to God, as well as Baptists’ non-hierarchical view of divine relationship that reflects those principles.

“We have been given gifts of reason to seek to discern biblical truth and then to exercise our conscience,” he said. And this manifestation of soul competency results in “the precious, almost quintessentially American but deeply Baptist, commitment to the separation of church and state.”

Asked about his feelings for Baylor’s J.M. Dawson Institute, which historically has championed church-state separation, Starr said Baylor should be a leader in affecting culture. “Baylor is particularly situated to reflect on the growth of the central government” and to grapple with questions regarding the role and relationship of religious institutions to the state and to individuals within the state, he said.

Acknowledging he will have a lot to learn from his fellow Texas Baptists, Starr affirmed his commitment to Baylor’s strong, historic relationship to the BGCT.

For its part, Baylor can contribute to the strength of Texas Baptists by training young people to be strong people of faith throughout their lifetimes.

This should begin with freshman orientation, with a lesson on the Baptist principles that led Texas Baptists to found the university 165 years ago, he explained. Baylor should teach students to develop a “moral sense of connection to this cloud of witnesses who have gone before, to what led them to found this Baptist university that has had a global impact.”

Starr also affirmed Baptists for their historic commitment to establish institutions that minister to “the least” of society. That commitment continually manifests itself in “current, active, purposeful engagement ... through all avenues of Baptist life, pouring themselves into kingdom service.” During the administrations of Starr’s two immediate predecessors -- Robert Sloan and John Lilley -- the “Baylor family” sharply divided over the university’s nature and future.

The president can make an impact on the future and the relationships of Baylor’s constituencies through his style of leadership, Starr said.

“It’s the duty of a servant leader to take seriously the Baylor mission of the creation and fostering of a caring community,” he said. “We are in fellowship with one another in common cause, and each voice needs to be listened to with dignity and respect.”

That he's exactly the right person to espouse separation of church and state, end division and exercise dignity and respect is hard to believe. At least Pepperdine Law School, where Starr has been employed, won't get kicked around any more.

Beck, Textbooks, and the "Wall of Separation."

I wrote last week about the fake historian David Barton who was called on for testimony during the Texas Board of Education hearings to discuss the writing of the textbooks that will not only be used in Texas but across the country.

Turns out that Barton's got bigger ears to fill than just the Texas School Board's. Glenn Beck who has been scheming up a conspiracy-laden next "great awakening," called "The Plan," set to be kicked off in DC on the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, draws on Barton's ahistorical accounts of the US founding. Here's a segment from Keith Olberman's show that account's not only Barton's rewriting of history but Beck's plans for our nation's next 100 years.

In tomorrow's New York Times Magazine, Russell Shorto has a story that looks at the battle over the soul's of the Founding Fathers and how the Texas School Board and affiliated organizations (the Legal Right) work to establish that not only was the country founded on Christian principles but that the US' laws are Biblical in origin. Barton makes an appearance, below. In the article, Shorto writes that like last year's battle over "intelligent design," this year's battle over the religious birth of the nation has a long history:

The cultural roots of the Texas showdown may be said to date to the late 1980s, when, in the wake of his failed presidential effort, the Rev. Pat Robertson founded the Christian Coalition partly on the logic that conservative Christians should focus their energies at the grass-roots level. One strategy was to put candidates forward for state and local school-board elections — Robertson’s protégé, Ralph Reed, once said, “I would rather have a thousand school-board members than one president and no school-board members” — and Texas was a beachhead. Since the election of two Christian conservatives in 2006, there are now seven on the Texas state board who are quite open about the fact that they vote in concert to advance a Christian agenda. “They do vote as a bloc,” Pat Hardy, a board member who considers herself a conservative Republican but who stands apart from the Christian faction, told me. “They work consciously to pull one more vote in with them on an issue so they’ll have a majority.”

snip

The Christian “truth” about America’s founding has long been taught in Christian schools, but not beyond. Recently, however — perhaps out of ire at what they see as an aggressive, secular, liberal agenda in Washington and perhaps also because they sense an opening in the battle, a sudden weakness in the lines of the secularists — some activists decided that the time was right to try to reshape the history that children in public schools study. Succeeding at this would help them toward their ultimate goal of reshaping American society. As Cynthia Dunbar, another Christian activist on the Texas board, put it, “The philosophy of the classroom in one generation will be the philosophy of the government in the next.”

On Barton, Shorto writes:

The other nonacademic expert, David Barton, is the nationally known leader of WallBuilders, which describes itself as dedicated to “presenting America’s forgotten history and heroes, with an emphasis on our moral, religious and constitutional heritage.” Barton has written and lectured on the First Amendment and against separation of church and state. He is a controversial figure who has argued that the U.S. income tax and the capital-gains tax should be abolished because they violate Scripture (for the Bible says, in Barton’s reading, “the more profit you make the more you are rewarded”) and who pushes a Christianity-first rhetoric. When the U.S. Senate invited a Hindu leader to open a 2007 session with a prayer, he objected, saying: “In Hindu [sic], you have not one God, but many, many, many, many, many gods. And certainly that was never in the minds of those who did the Constitution, did the Declaration when they talked about Creator.”

In his recommendations to the Texas school board, Barton wrote that students should be taught the following principles which, in his reading, derive directly from the Declaration of Independence: “1. There is a fixed moral law derived from God and nature. 2. There is a Creator. 3. The Creator gives to man certain unalienable rights. 4. Government exists primarily to protect God-given rights to every individual. 5. Below God-given rights and moral laws, government is directed by the consent of the governed.”

Social conservatives have long known that the best way to shape the future tone of the country is through Christian schools (and universities, targeting particularly the medical and legal fields) that instill respect for and adherence to God's laws.

My first reaction to the need to paint the founding fathers as Christian is the question: So what if they were? As a necessarily "living" document, the Constitution should be interpreted to reflect contemporary society and technological, social and scientific advancements. But as Shorto notes, even the term "living document" has been eradicated from text books:

To give an illustration simultaneously of the power of ideology and Texas’ influence, Barber told me that when he led the social-studies division at Prentice Hall, one conservative member of the board told him that the 12th-grade book, “Magruder’s American Government,” would not be approved because it repeatedly referred to the U.S. Constitution as a “living” document. “That book is probably the most famous textbook in American history,” Barber says. “It’s been around since World War I, is updated every year and it had invented the term ‘living Constitution,’ which has been there since the 1950s. But the social conservatives didn’t like its sense of flexibility. They insisted at the last minute that the wording change to ‘enduring.’ ” Prentice Hall agreed to the change, and ever since the book — which Barber estimates controlled 60 or 65 percent of the market nationally — calls it the “enduring Constitution.”

I was born and raised in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. My grandparents were Mennonite and their story and that of Martin Harnish, our ancestor who was recruited by William Penn, along with other Anabaptist families (Amish and Mennonite) to come to America in the early 1700s, is the perfect illustration of the importance of separation of church and state. The Radical Reformation bred a hostile environment for those in Switzerland and Germany who did not ascribe to the beliefs of the state-ordained church. They were killed and tortured for their faith for centuries. A ticket to the frontiers of what would soon be called Pennsylvania saved my ancestors from continued persecution.

Today, the Amish and to some extent the Mennonites live outside society, protected from governmental discrimination by the Establishment Clause and the "separation of church and state."

One can only wonder how non-evangelical or non-fundamentalist Christian Americans feel about a particular "Christian" history being taught at their public, federally-funded schools. It is this sort of discrimination against individual religious conscience that "separation of church and state" is meant to prevent. And yet, it is this sort of discrimination that the Texas Board of Education and other related groups seek to perpetrate.

Nine Texas Church Arsons This Year.

Church Mutual Insurance today issued a press release warning churches in Texas of ways that they can take precautions against arson. Since the first of the year, 9 churches in Texas have been burned.

It's an odd release, on the one hand making church pastors and congregations fearful of arson and welcoming insurance policies against such an instance, and on the other, providing practical measures for these religious entities. Via Religion Press Release Services the release reads:

Arson protection tips for Texas churches

MERRILL, Wis.—The occurrence of nine suspicious fires at worship centers in eastern Texas since the first of the year emphasizes the need for vigilance in protecting ministries.

As the No. 1 insurer of religious organizations in the United States, including more than 8,000 customers in Texas, Church Mutual Insurance Company is at the forefront of providing risk management solutions for religious organizations on a variety of topics, including fire safety.

"Worship centers can be easy targets as they are unoccupied at night, and if they are in a rural area, they have few, if any, neighbors nearby for the criminals to worry about," said Rick Schaber, Risk Control Manager of Church Mutual. "The reasons for arson range from religious disagreements to covering up other crimes, such as burglary to acts of vandalism. Arson is on our radar screen each and every year."

There are many steps religious organizations can take immediately to reduce the risk of arson including:

• Maintain adequate exterior lighting to eliminate hiding places.
• Use motion detection lights to alert neighbors of activity.
• Put interior lighting on sequential timers to give the impression of occupancy and activity.
• Trim or remove shrubbery that blocks the view of possible entries to your building.
• Trim tree branches that might allow second-story access.
• Ladders offer easy access to your roof. Store them properly.
• Install deadbolt locks with a minimum one-inch throw on all outside doors (if your building codes permit).
• Keep all doors (including interior offices and closets) locked when unattended.
• Install locks on all basement, ground floor and second-story windows.
• Remove and secure gasoline and other fuel sources from inside and around your building.
• Request patrols by local police.
• Establish a neighborhood watch program. Notify law enforcement authorities of suspicious activity—do not confront suspects yourself.

Additional arson prevention tips are found in Church Mutual's Fire Safety At Your Worship Centerbooklet and DVD.

"We have distributed millions of our fire safety booklets and videos to religious organizations and various fire safety agencies over the years," Schaber said.

Founded in 1897, Church Mutual does business in all 50 states and currently insures more than 100,000 houses of worship, schools, camps, colleges and senior care facilities.

Church Mutual offers all of its safety material to any religious organization at no charge. To order the booklet or video—Fire Safety At Your Worship Center—call Church Mutual at (800) 554-2642, select Option 4 and enter Extension 4205. Or go to www.churchmutual.com, select Safety Resources and click on Order Safety Material.

Perry, Hutchison Vie for Texas Governor.

A report from Dallas News on their first debate which included a race to the bottom on women's rights and a great show of ignorance regarding state laws on end of life care. A third candidate, Debra Medina, a nurse, also participated.

"My record is one that always comes down on the side of life," Hutchison said Thursday night during the televised verbal bout at the University of North Texas. She said she voted against late-term abortions and federal funding for abortions.

Perry, seeking an unprecedented third four-year term, chided Hutchison for voting in favor of a nonbinding resolution supporting Roe v. Wade and noted she was once praised by an abortion rights group.

"The consistency issue is one I'm having trouble with, senator," he said.

Republican candidate Debra Medina also participated in the debate and appeared to be the only one of the trio familiar with the state's so-called futile care law, another issue important to anti-abortion groups.

The law gives families of some terminally ill patients 10 days notice before life support is cut off unless a court intervenes or the patient is moved. Texas Right to Life, disabled activists and others say they don't want medical officials making those decisions.

Medina, a registered nurse, said she sees its real-life effects and pressed Perry on why he hadn't repealed it. Neither he nor Hutchinson seemed familiar with the law.

Reporting the Texas History/Social Studies Textbook Hearing.

Here are some great sources:

The Baptist Standard covers testimony

The Texas Freedom Network is lifeblogging

KBTX has a news report posted (beware the "education elites")

Texas Board of Education (Re)Writes History.

It's a long hard battle. The Washington Post weight in. You can read other sources at my prior post here and here. And don't miss the new joint statement from religious leaders and public policy experts on religion and public life here.

Early quibbles over how much prominence to give civil rights leaders such as Cesar Chavez and Thurgood Marshall, and the inclusion of Christmas seem to have been smoothed over in the draft now being considered. But board members are crafting dozens of amendments to be raised for consideration before the tentative vote, expected Thursday. The 15-member board won't adopt final standards until March.

The curriculum it chooses will be the guideposts for teaching history and social studies to some 4.8 million K-12 students for 10 years. The standards will be used to develop state tests and by textbook publishers who develop material for the nation based on Texas, one of the largest markets.

Much of the conversation ahead of the hearing has turned to how much emphasis will be given to the religious beliefs of the nation's founding fathers, with some activists lobbying to promote and highlight their Christianity. Others who promote the separation of church and state are prepared for battle.

Texas Baptists Break from Denominational Doctrine.

Wilkyjr has a post at Talk2Action about the Southern Baptist of Texas continuing the break from traditional Baptist support of separation of church and state. Their agenda looks more theocratic than democratic. Here's a clip:

Ledbetter wants churches to get government funds for church outreach programs. When Civil Rights issues come into play on this charitable choice program, Gary wants government to look the other way. He thus believes tax money can be used to win converts and indoctrinate potential converts. He also demands that the government cannot have any strings attached in hiring practices with the use of government money. The convention seemed to like the idea of Rick Warren, a Baptist preacher, interviewing potential Presidential candidates. The interview of candidates by Warren was used by the Fundamentalist paper to attack Obama. The paper's candidate comparison carried only one issue, abortion. The position on abortion was determined to be the overriding moral issue in the 2008 campaign.

When church state separation groups grew concerned that the Bush administration was claiming to allow discrimination in hiring with the use of tax money, Fundamentalist Baptists became defensive. The "L" word was thrown at those who didn't like this new Bush policy. They were dismissed as just "liberals". The taking of any government money foir church programs is a radical departure from Baptist heritage. With such paths traveled ture Baptists must wonder if the name "Baptist" even fits here.