What the NHCLC Would Have Us to Believe

My last post reported on the NHCLC’s official statement in response to my open letter. As you’ll recall, my letter asked Samuel Rodriguez and the NHCLC to explain why they had joined in two separate amicus briefs in support of major power companies and to describe how this action fit with the mission of the NHCLC. The answer to this particular inquiry is rather stunning to me. The NHCLC, through its Legal Counsel the noted attorney Matthew Staver, issued the following reply:

Regarding the amicus brief, NHCLC worked with CORE, the Congress on Racial Equality, but CORE, not NHCLC, filed the amicus brief. NHCLC was unaware that its name was listed and did not consent to the name being listed. CORE has already issued regrets to NHCLC for listing its name. NHCLC would not have and did not give consent to be listed.

Let’s examine this statement carefully and line by line. First of all, there were two amicus briefs filed. One, filed on March 7, 2010, before the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, the other filed on February 7, 2011, before the Supreme Court of the United States, Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City. It is in the nature of amicus briefs to be perfectly clear who filed the brief and whom the brief speaks for. The entire purpose of these briefs is to add an additional voice to the court’s record on the case and so it is vital that it be clear whose voice is represented in the brief. I believe that a simple reading of these briefs make perfectly clear who filed them and whose voices were intended to be heard. In the case of the 2010 brief before the Fifth Circuit, page one reads the following: “BRIEF OF AMICI CURIAE THE AMERICAN FARM BUREAU FEDERATION AND THE AFFORDABLE POWER ALLIANCE” (caps in original, bold/underline emphasis added). CORE is not listed as being responsible for the brief, the Affordable Power Alliance (APA) is. And who is the APA? The first page of the brief immediately defines the APA this way: “comprised of the Congress of Racial Equality, the High Impact Leadership Coalition, the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, and the 60- Plus Association”. Of course, this is not a surprise since that is the makeup of the APA in all of its public statements. Any visitor to the APA’s website will find it identified as being composed of these same groups.

In the second amicus brief, the one filed for the Second Circuit, the cover page reads “BRIEF FOR AMICUS CURIAE NATIONAL BLACK CHAMBER OF COMMERCE AND AFFORDABLE POWER ALLIANCE” (emphasis added). On page two of the brief the APA is defined this way:

The Affordable Power Alliance, an ad hoc coalition of civil rights, African American, Latino, small business, senior citizens and faith- based advocacy organizations. Its members include:

§ The Congress of Racial Equality, which was founded in 1942 and is the third oldest and one of the “Big Four” Civil Rights groups in the United States;

§ The High Impact Leadership Coalition, a national coalition of faith-based leaders, ministers and churches;

§ The National Hispanic Christian Leader- ship Conference, the largest Latino Christian organization in America, with 16-million Latino evangelical members and 24,000 member churches

In both cases the law firm that filed these briefs gave no indication that the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) was actually doing the filing, rather than the APA as a whole. It is very much worth noting that the law firm that represented the APA in these two filings is Troutman Sanders LLP, and the lawyer for this firm is in both cases presented as Douglas A. Henderson. Troutman Sanders is a major international law firm with “more than 600 lawyers and offices located throughout the United States and China”. Energy and Industry Regulation are one of its five primary areas of focus and its client list is a veritable whose who of major oil and power companies. In the two cases that the APA used Troutman Sanders for, the companies the APA was speaking in defense of included Shell, Exxon, BP America, Dow Chemical, Chevron and the American Petroleum Institute.

What the NHCLC would have us to believe is really quite remarkable. They would have us to believe that a high-powered law firm filing in defense of some of the most powerful companies in the world in cases before two of the Supreme Court’s Circuit Court of Appeals made two interwoven mistakes: one, they made a mistake in their filing by listing APA as the filer of the briefs, not CORE which supposedly was really responsible for the filing; two, they made a mistake by clearly identifying the NHCLC as an equal member with the APA in its description of the APA. In each of these mistakes the NHCLC would have us believe that Troutman Sanders never checked with the NHCLC to gain its consent. This would be a remarkable set of errors, made by a remarkably competent lawyer, working for a remarkably respected law firm, on behalf of remarkably powerful companies, before remarkably prestigious courts, but I don’t see any other way to explain the situation if what the NHCLC is saying is true.

I find it quite extraordinary that the NHCLC expects people to believe its version of events and I note for anyone interested that neither the APA’s website or the NHCLC’s website make any public expression of the story that the NHCLC has told me. Samuel Rodriguez is still pictured on the leadership page of the APA, no mention of any regret is made anywhere on the APA or CORE websites, and the NHCLC continues to list without clarification its role as a member of the APA and a partner with CORE in its leadership. All of this fits the pattern of behavior I experienced following my last two encounters with the NHCLC, first over Samuel Rodriguez’s leadership role in the Oak Initiative, and second concerning the contradictory positions staked out by Rodriguez on the question of EPA regulation of mercury. I fear that the many good works of the NHCLC are threatened by a crisis of leadership and a radicalization of purpose deeply at odds with the public image presented to its member congregations, partnering organizations and the media at large. At a time when America needs voices of integrity and clarity on the major issues we face we find from the NHCLC anything but those virtues in case after case. 

Rodriguez/NHCLC respond to open letter

Matthew Staver, NHCLC Chief Legal Counsel

My last post featured an open letter to Samuel Rodriguez and the leadership of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference (NHCLC). This letter, which was sent directly to Rev. Rodriguez and to his press secretary, featured four questions:

1.     When will you correct your website by removing Rev. Harkins from your Board of Advisors and taking down his picture from all promotional materials associated with your organization?

2.     Why has Rev. Harkins been listed on your advisory board when, according to him, he has “no association with NHCLC, or the advisory board in any way”?

3.     Are there other figures on your publicity materials that are similarly unaware of the way that their reputation is being used to enhance the public image of your organization?

4.     The NHCLC has been a part of amicus briefs siding with major power companies. Is the leadership of NHCLC aware that the organization is siding with power companies in these lawsuits? How does this relate to the stated mission of the NHCLC?

Shortly after sending this letter and posting it at this blog I received communication from Matthew Staver, Chief Legal Counsel for the NHCLC. This demonstrated to me how seriously the NHCLC viewed my questions and I was pleased to correspond with Mr. Staver about the questions. After doing his own research into the questions, including the question related to the involvement of the NHCLC in legal briefs on behalf of major oil and power companies, Mr. Staver issued the following statement in response to my questions:

Regarding the amicus brief, NHCLC worked with CORE, the Congress on Racial Equality, but CORE, not NHCLC, filed the amicus brief. NHCLC was unaware that its name was listed and did not consent to the name being listed. CORE has already issued regrets to NHCLC for listing its name. NHCLC would not have and did not give consent to be listed.

Regarding the website, the list of Advisors was done some time ago regarding Mr. Harkins. NHCLC was unaware that he wanted to be removed. NHCLC has sent him an email to confirm his desire and upon hearing from him will remove his name if that is his desire.

No one else to our knowledge is on the Advisors list who desires to be removed.

These answers are extraordinary and are worthy of considerable dissection and analysis, which I intend to give them in the days to come. For now I want to briefly note a few facts.

First, while I am obviously not privy to any private correspondence or discussion between CORE and NHCLC, I have seen no indication of any public sign of “regrets to NHCLC” from CORE. Nothing was sent to me indicating regret by CORE, CORE’s website has no sign of that regret, and the Affordable Power Alliance which CORE and the NHCLC are key members of gives no indication of any disagreement between them at its website.

Second, Rev. Harkins is still listed as a member of the Board of Advisors, with his picture, ironically, just above Mr. Staver’s at the NHCLC website.

Third, the amicus briefs that I linked to in my open letter were quite clear in their inclusion of the NHCLC within the filing paperwork. In the amicus brief filed before the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals the very first page says the following: “BRIEF OF AMICI CURIAE THE AMERICAN FARM BUREAU FEDERATION AND THE AFFORDABLE POWER ALLIANCE IN SUPPORT OF DEFENDANTS-APPELLEES UPON REHEARING EN BANC” and then reads “Counsel for Amici the American Farm Bureau Federation and the Affordable Power Alliance (comprised of the Congress of Racial Equality, the High Impact Leadership Coalition, the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, and the 60- Plus Association)”.

The amicus brief filed before the United States Supreme Court reads on page one “BRIEF FOR AMICUS CURIAE NATIONAL BLACK CHAMBER OF COMMERCE AND AFFORDABLE POWER ALLIANCE IN SUPPORT OF PETITIONERS” and on page two defines the Affordable Power Alliance quite clearly:

The Affordable Power Alliance, an ad hoc coalition of civil rights, African American, Latino, small business, senior citizens and faith- based advocacy organizations. Its members include:

§ The Congress of Racial Equality, which was founded in 1942 and is the third oldest and one of the “Big Four” Civil Rights groups in the United States;

§ The High Impact Leadership Coalition, a national coalition of faith-based leaders, ministers and churches;

§ The National Hispanic Christian Leader- ship Conference, the largest Latino Christian organization in America, with 16-million Latino evangelical members and 24,000 member churches

While I appreciate the prompt and courteous response of Mr. Staver on behalf of the NHCLC, I believe his answers raise profound questions about the direction of the NHCLC and its stewardship of the trust and interests of the thousands of congregations and millions of individuals it claims to be working on behalf of. These questions must be raised with all clarity and candor precisely for the welfare of those congregations and individuals, as well as for the broader integrity of the other institutions that Rodriguez is a significant part of. I know that I will continue to raise these questions and I trust that more and more writers will be doing the same.   

Open Letter to Rodriguez/NHCLC

Dear Rev. Rodriguez and the leadership of the NHCLC,

On November 9, I published an article on Rev. Rodriguez and the NHCLC. In this article I noted that the Rev. Derrick Harkins, head of Faith Outreach for the Democratic National Committee, is listed and pictured at the NHCLC website as a member of your Advisory Board. Shortly after posting this article I received a public comment from Rev. Harkins, followed up by a personal email from him, both attesting to his shock that he was being publicized as a supporter of the NHCLC. Here are the exact words as they appear at my article’s web page:

I wanted to take a moment to let you know that that it came as a surprise to me that I was still listed as an Advisory Board member to the NHCLC. I have not had any connection with them or Sam Rodriguez in more than six years, and stand at polar opposites with Rev. Rodriguez on most issues. At the time when immigration reform was being debated in Congress (2006-2007), I was one of a very few African American clergy to voice my support. I gladly collaborated with a number of groups working toward the same end. Unfortunately since then Rev. Rodriguez has embraced some perspectives that differ from my own. I have no association with NHCLC, or the advisory board in any way, and will inform them to remove any reference to me.

Thank You

Derrick Harkins

These comments from Rev. Harkins prompt me to ask the following questions of the leadership of the NHCLC:

1.     When will you correct your website by removing Rev. Harkins from your Board of Advisors and taking down his picture from all promotional materials associated with your organization?

2.     Why has Rev. Harkins been listed on our advisory board when, according to him, he has “no association with NHCLC, or the advisory board in any way”?

3.     Are there other figures on your publicity materials that are similarly unaware of the way that their reputation is being used to enhance the public image of your organization?

4.     The NHCLC has been a part of amicus briefs siding with major power companies. Is the leadership of NHCLC aware that the organization is siding with power companies in these lawsuits? How does this relate to the stated mission of the NHCLC?

Given the public nature of these questions this letter will be published as an open letter, as will any reply you send to me.

Sincerely,

Greg Metzger

On Three Marks--Tooley, Hatfield and Malan

When I was in college in the 1980s one of the evangelical leaders who most shaped was a man by the name of Mark Malan. Mark, a leader in InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, was as committed an evangelical Christian as I have ever known. One of the stories I heard about Mark was that in his frustration over national politics in America in the 1970s and 1980s he had taken to casting his vote for president by writing in the name Mark Hatfield, a legendary Senator from Oregon and an evangelical of international significance. I mention Hatfield because, as I said here a while back, I will be attending a conference on September 14 at Georgetown University very much in the spirit of the great Hatfield. The gathering, entitled “Evangelicals for Peace: A Summit on Christian Moral Responsibility in the 21^st Century”, interested me because it was being planned in part by the group “Evangelicals for Peace”. This new organization is one I came to learn about through Aaron Taylor. When he told me the reasons for the event and the people who were planning to come I knew I had to be there. Now, as the conference draws near, the planners and participants of the event are the subject of the kind of rhetorical hit-job that has become so sadly common on the Religious Right. Mark Tooley, President of the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD), has determined the real reasons for this event and published them under the headline “Evangelical Left Plots D.C. Pacifist Summit”. Here are the key claims Tooley makes against our gathering:

1. Tooley says we are “Determined to neutralize historically pro-national security evangelicals.”

2. He says we believe “evangelicals join most Americans in being too enthusiastic about defending the country rather than offering the preferred mournful apologies.”

3. He thinks the conference is “slanted towards voices prone to portraying America as the chief threat to peace in the world.”

4. He intuits that the conference will “primarily be a gabfest uninterested in deep moral reflection and instead seeking the rhetorical satisfaction of denouncing violence and its ostensibly wicked advocates.”

5. He determined that “the chief direction seems to be the attempted emasculation of evangelical support for a just and decent world that desperately requires American strategic strength.”

I want to thank Mark for his extraordinary ability to read code words and translate them into their actual meaning. I had no idea that these were the motives behind the conference, especially because the main description of the event says the following:

On Friday, September 14th a group of evangelical scholars, journalists, activists, and pastors are convening for the first ever Evangelicals for Peace summit. The stated goals of the summit are:

• To build and birth a network of evangelical scholars and activists committed to the pursuit of a Biblical, comprehensive, and proactive peace

• To reduce violence, work toward human flourishing, and prevent war

• To mobilize and educate a new generation of evangelicals committed to the pursuit of peace

• To convene a gathering of non-profit and pastoral leaders who are actively working for peace with justice throughout the world

• To give a special focus on peace as it relates to U.S. foreign policy

As I was trying to understand the disconnect between Mark’s translation of those goals into the language of America’s culture wars and scorched earth political discourse I came across a fascinating post that gave excellent historical background on the IRD and Tooley’s style of “analysis”. David Swartz, Professor of History at Asbury University, notes that Tooley’s opinions reflect the institutional bias of the IRD and its tactics of simplistic demonizing those it disagrees with. He offers this excerpt from his forthcoming book:

In 1983 conservative activists repeatedly disrupted a conference on peacemaking at Fuller Theological Seminary. During a workshop on Central America, one protester shouted his objection to evangelical accommodation with Communist totalitarianism until delegates ushered him out of the room. Another protester berated the 1,700 delegates from a balcony during a plenary session. When the disturbance brought the proceedings to a halt, the audience sang the hymn “Amazing Grace” to drown him out. A display table manned by the Institute for Religion and Democracy urged delegates to sign a “research report” accusing Senator Mark Hatfield and Sojourners’ Jim Wallis of advocating Soviet-style communism. These scenes and what they represented—an increasingly vocal and activist right-wing coalition of Christians—appalled progressive evangelicals.

When I first read Mark Tooley’s post I admit it discouraged me, but as I read this broader narrative in which the IRD once spoke of Mark Hatfield as “advocating Soviet-style communism” I am encouraged. If the IRD spoke of Mark in that way, and they speak of this gathering in an equally distorted way, then Evangelicals for Peace is in good company. My simple goal is to gather with other followers of the One who blessed peacemakers and to pray for a more faithful witness to Him.  

What Did Metaxas mean by "bullets"?

The author and journalist Frederick Clarkson has taken the conversation about Eric Metaxas and the HHS Mandate in a different direction by interpreting a speech by Metaxas differently than I did. Here is the paragraph from Metaxas’ speech at the Catholic Information Center in DC:

“This HHS mandate” situation he said “is so oddly similar to where Bonhoeffer found himself” early in the Nazi era. “If we don’t fight now,” Metaxas warned,

“if we don’t really use all our bullets now, we will have no fight five years from now. It’ll be over. This it. We’ve got to die on this hill. Most people say, oh no, this isn’t serious enough. Its just this little issue. But it’s the millimeter... its that line that we cross. I’m sorry to say that I see these parallels. I really wish I didn’t.”

Fred ties this revolutionary language into a broader context of conservative rhetoric that invites violence. I am not sure that I agree with him. I interpreted Metaxas to be speaking metaphorically in the paragraph sited. However, I wonder if I have viewed the quote that way because I was inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. It would certainly fit with Metaxas’ focus on Bonhoeffer, the man who attempted to assassinate Hitler, to view his call to bullets and “die on this hill” literally, but I don’t think that was his intent. I still think I was right to interpret his language as a call to skip nuance, fight verbally with every last extreme language possible, and leave the careful language for after the "crisis". What I can say is that Metaxas’ lack of clarity in using this kind of language is troubling.

Rodriguez, Romney and the Politics of Immigration

Samuel Rodriguez has been back in the news in a big way over the last month. As regular readers will recall, I have quite a history of reporting on and writing about Rev. Rodriguez although I have been away from the topic for some time. I am drawn back to it in light of the recent statement by Rodriguez in which claims Mitt Romney has made a “180 turn” with respect to his relationship with the Hispanic community. This was a striking comment and one that cried out for substantiation given the fact that Romney has not made any public comments that would suggest waffling or backtracking on his stated positions with respect to key Hispanic issues like the DREAM Act, the President’s recent action regarding prosecution of children of undocumented immigrants, or the Arizona law. In the absence of facts such as these to point to, one is left with the impression that Rodriguez is again demonstrating his own loose speech. Here is how Bill Berkowitz weighs Rodriguez’s recent pronouncement on Romney:

Of all the leaders Team Romney has engaged, Samuel Rodriguez takes a back seat to none, although whether Rodriguez actually represents any voters is open to question. "I stand convinced the Governor appreciates the significance of the Hispanic electorate and he refuses to give up the Hispanic vote without a fight. He has made a 180-degree turn and is headed to a significant Hispanic outreach," Rodriguez told Brody.


It is unclear what kind of "outreach" Rodriguez is referring to given Romney's refusal to back the "Dream Act," and his predilection for pushing for the "self-deportation" of immigrants. In addition, a key Romney advisor on immigration issues is Kris Kobach, co-author of the Arizona's SB1070 law that was largely struck down by the Supreme Court, and who is considered "the intellectual architect of the draconian state-by-state approach immigration reform," as Tim Dickinson recently pointed out in Rolling Stone.

According to Brody, Team Romney's "focus now is on getting the conservative evangelical base motivated." The aim of a recent meeting of 70 conservative Christian leaders was "to figure out ways to get the conservative Christian base mobilized and excited about the GOP presidential nominee."

Rachel Tabachnick, drawing on Brody’s reporting for the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), notes that Romney’s outreach to Rodriguez is part of a wider effort to coalesce evangelicals behind his campaign. “Brody also reported that the Romney campaign has been quietly meeting behind the scenes with conservative evangelicals including Rick Warren, Richard Land, Gary Bauer, Samuel Rodriguez, and leaders from Focus on Family and Family Research Council.” All of this attention to Rodriguez is part of a pattern stretching back years in which Rodriguez is viewed as a vital cog in the Hispanic community. Questions about just how significant he really is, such as those raised by noted journalist Frederick Clarkson, are important but seemingly besides the point for writers like Lisa Miller who continue to puff Rodriguez as a “principled conservative” who President Obama would do well to listen to. Of course, this ignores two important facts: 1) Obama has actually given Rodriguez wide access to his administration especially when considering that 2) Rodriguez has been a vicious critic of Obama at times during his first term, especially when accusing Obama of leading “a government [that] has taken over the auto industry, the banking industry, the health industry, soon the energy industry. We have never been in this place before. Our founding fathers are turning in their graves. This is big government on steroids.”

I tire of the Rodriguez story because his standing in religious and mainstream media is so entrenched as to be impervious to hypocrisy and distortion that would have been the downfall of other Christian leaders. But when I see him poised to make another play at presidential kingmaking I must try again to raise the red flag to other media—why are you continuing to report on Rodriguez without even a mention of his scandals and distortions?

David French and the Christian Partisan

David French recently wrote a refreshingly candid piece explaining his journey to being an unapologetic Christian culture warrior. It is a thoughtful first person narrative and together with a recent set of reflections by his fellow Patheos blogger, Timothy Dalrymple, is representative of the kind of discourse left-leaning Christians like myself need to consider and engage with. French’s argument in his “Open Letter to Young, ‘Post-Partisan’ Evangelicals” is not addressed to me—I am neither young, easily defined as Evangelical (although I consider myself evangelical) or post-partisan in the sense French seems to have in mind--but I am actively engaged in the debates French writes about and I am a more than casual participant in the cultural moment that French unfortunately insists on viewing as a culture war. In this work I have the occasion to read French and other self-described Christian conservatives and I think I could perhaps offer him a richer explanation, based on a different example of French’s own work, for why many young evangelicals, and many other folk of different ages and beliefs, are tempted to describe themselves as post-partisan.

When I am tempted to use the term post-partisan, and often when I encounter people using the term, it is in reference to a frustration with a style of partisan argument that so completely distorts its opposition’s views and so cartoonishly portrays the moral and political choices people must make that I want to wad up the paper or punch the computer screen. The frustration turns to spiritual sadness when these types of partisan arguments are made by people of Christian faith who are therefore bearing witness to a watching world. Partisans of both the left and the right are capable of these distortions, as my open letter to Jim Wallis demonstrates. It is at moments like that when I am tempted to throw up my hands, yield the debate to the warriors and attempt to fashion myself a neutral, “Jesus only” observer and commenter. French is correct that such a stance is not wise or even really possible, but he is sadly the source of such frustration in ways that I hope he will consider and rethink. Allow me to explain.

In a June 13 column for Lifenews French unwittingly displays precisely the kind of Christian partisanship that leads people to wonder if the culture warrior mentality is  beneficial to the Church’s witness to the public truth of the gospel. In his article “Why do ‘Social Justice’ Christians Ignore Pro-Life Issues?” French engages in three culture warrior practices that give partisanship a bad name:

Culture Warrior Practice #1: Fail to engage real people and their real arguments and instead rely on your own worst-case descriptions to describe the entirety of the perspective you want to defeat. Here is the clearest example of this in French’s article:

Again and again I see young social justice-focused evangelicals abandoning any effective voice for the unborn for the sake of an ephemeral, culturally-fashionable concept that as a practical matter means little more than advocating a utopian ideal through a grab-bag of banal, functionally socialist policies. Moreover, the embrace of social justice often drives them functionally into the arms of a political party and political movements that are dedicated to protecting and even subsidizing the “right” to kill children on a vast, industrial scale.

If he sees examples of this way of thinking among young evangelicals “again and again” then it should have been easy to link to even one example of these views.

Culture Warrior Practice #2: Present current debates in a way that is beneficial to “your side” but distorted to such a degree as to raise questions about your commitment to truthful discourse. As even casual observers know, the issue of the environment is one that drives many Christians, particularly young evangelicals, away from conservative political values. It makes sense, then, that French would address the issue. But look at how he does it:

Let’s take the environment. Social justice Christians just adore the environment. (Don’t we all?) They want us to be good stewards of creation (who can disagree with that?) and as a result decry dependence on fossil fuels and tend to embrace the full agenda of the environmentalist Left — carbon taxes, cap and trade, emissions caps, etc. etc. etc… in exchange for adopting fashionable leftist policies that at worst actually harm the people they’re trying to help and at best represent debatably-effective solutions to complex and intractable problems, the social justice Christian Left has thrown under the bus the most vulnerable citizens of this (or any) culture — unborn children.

What is interesting about this is that the leading evangelical environmental group espousing the kinds of policies French finds wanting—the Evangelical Environmental Network (EEN)—consistently uses pro-life arguments to buttress their policy descriptions. Far from “throwing under the bus” unborn children (what a terrible image to place on another’s perspective), the EEN has made a point of marshalling its energies around environmental issues that damage the unborn. This is not a convenient fact for French, but it is a major one and it has been the subject of intense debate within the evangelical community (Christianity Today even devoted a special feature to the EEN’s actions so it is not an obscure debate). Perhaps French is completely unaware of this debate, but I find that hard to believe. It seems more likely that instead of addressing the pro-life merits of the EEN and their explicit claim to being completely pro-life, he has chosen to distort evangelical environmentalists as those who silence the pro-life cause. This fits neatly with his vision of himself as a culture warrior for the unborn, but at the cost of any recognition of the complex context of the debate between leading evangelical environmentalists and the broader pro-life community

Culture Warrior Practice #3: Finish your article by reducing your opponents to a label they reject and then claim to have discerned the true intentions and motivations of anyone who fits your simplistic description. Here is French’s concluding paragraph:

So, please, let’s drop the false moral pretense of “social justice.” You’re not fooling anyone. You’re a leftist seeking leftist solutions to known cultural problems, and in so doing you’ve elected to side with those who seek the legal right to intentionally kill children. Oh, you may claim to be pro life even as you work diligently to maintain and increase the power of those individuals and institutions that advance and protect our abortion regime, but you’ve made your choice in the real world.

That probably speaks for itself, but I would be remiss if I did not point out that the greatest voice for the unborn in French’s and my generation, John Paul II of blessed memory, regularly and consistently gave voice to the specific policy prescriptions on the environment and the war in Iraq that French equates with the social justice/leftist position. Did John Paul, of all people, really “maintain and increase the power of those individuals and institutions that advance and protect our abortion regime”? Is it any wonder that young evangelicals wonder about the merits of Christian partisanship when they see it practiced in a way that reduces moral and spiritual giants like John Paul II to the moral equivalent of abortion apologists?

The Metaxas Mantra (UPDATE)

Some of my Catholic readers may not be familiar with Eric Metaxas, and some others who are may not know just how committed Metaxas is to defining the HHS Mandate as a  monstrous attack on religious freedoms. Since I only have referenced a tweet he made last weekend I may have left the impression that I am overdoing his stance. Make no mistake--for Metaxas this is a singularly awful moment in American religious history and one on par with the beginnings of the Nazi Regime in Germany. He has shared these opinions widely and regularly, including the appearance on MSNBC pictured on this page. He is an activist with an unusually wide reach and his historiography is therefore of real significance to the ongoing debate, and we owe it to the quality of that debate to challenge Metaxas on statements like this given at the Catholic Information Center in Washington, DC: “This [the HHS Mandate debate] is so oddly similar to where Bonhoeffer found himself” in the early stages of Nazi Germany. “If we don’t fight now, if we don’t really use our bullets now, we will have no fight five years from now…it’s the millimeter that is that line which we cross. I’m sorry to say that I see these parallels, I really wish I didn’t…We are getting a second chance…so we don’t make the same mistakes and go down the same road.”

This is the kind of urgency that Metaxas brings to this issue and it is the kind of historical framework he places it in. That framework justifies, as he puts it, "using our bullets now"--meaning engage in arguments with a tenacity and an aggressiveness and a sense of full campaign mode that skips over historical questions like these:

1) Which Nazi laws in particular do you compare the HHS Mandate to?
2) How were the Nazis redefining the definition of religious organizations as the HHS Mandate does and which I and others disagree with? If the issue is one of religious freedom, as you regularly insist it is, then which religious freedom were the Nazis infringing on and how does that compare to the HHS Mandate?
3) When a person invokes Bonhoffer as a parallel it is bringing with it the fact that he ended up being killed in a concentration camp during the Holocaust that killed millions of Jews and millions of other people. Explain a scenario in which the HHS Mandate, in a time frame similar to the rise of Nazi Germany and the unleashing of the Holocaust, brings about a comparable historical event?
4) The HHS Mandate fails to expand religious freedom exemption beyond houses of worship and other narrowly defined religious organizations. At other times in American history the government has gone way beyond this type of restriction and actively repressed religious expression, most notably with the Slave Codes of the 1830s. How exactly is the HHS Mandate a more singular threat to religious liberty than those laws? Is there really even a comparison.

Eric Metaxas puts himself forward as an authority on religious freedom and religious history. He is regularly making statements putting the HHS Mandate on par with early Nazi German actions and worse than any other American historical example of restrictions on religious liberty. Why aren't more people calling him on this? At the very least, doesn't he owe the Obama Administration more of an explanation as to why he thinks what it is doing is like Nazi Germany and worse than the Slave Codes active persecution of African American Churches? Is this the kind of rhetoric we can expect more of as the Fortnight For Freedom takes shape?


{This post was updated to include the MSNBC video}

Bishop Lori and the Coming “Fortnight Follies”

Michael Sean Winters is right to detect in my post yesterday a level of frustration with Bishop Lori and President Garvey that reaches beyond the specifics of their handling of Bishop Bruskewitz’s impertinent “question.” While Michael is right to point out that there is a certain protocol to the USCCB gatherings, I want to make clear that my concern is with the broader context of the bishops’ ongoing campaign for religious freedom more generally and its upcoming “Fortnight of Freedom” specifically.

I was upset by the ignorance and incompetence displayed in Lori and Garvey’s feeble-minded response to Bishop Bruskewitz because it is part of a pattern of high profile steps indicative of some sort of combination of public relations incompetence, shallow ignorance and latent bigotry that lead me to conclude that the Fortnight of Freedom will be similarly marred by those qualities unless the bishops and the lay leaders who have their ear come to their senses. Examples of this pattern are numerous. Consider the Catholic Governor Sam Brownback, one of the leading politicians in the conservative Evangelical/Catholic alliance, signing into law just weeks ago so-called “anti-Shariah” legislation with nary a peep of resistance from the Diocese of Kansas or key leaders of the USCCB. This came on the heels of the Auxiliary Bishop of Detroit appearing at a religious freedom rally where he shared the microphone with the President of the Thomas More Law Center, an organization known for its reckless attacks on the religious liberty of Muslims. This disregard for the religious freedom of Muslims is sadly consistent with the Bishops’ own failure to even mention the numerous threats to Muslim’s religious liberty in their major “Statement on Religious Liberty”. Lest anyone believe that these judgments are the result of my own progressive bias, know that even a cursory look at the recent actions of the conservative Becket Fund to distance themselves from anti-Muslim laws and bigotry reveals that my outrage is rooted in a very basic understanding of “religious freedom for all” that the bishops claim to represent. Lori and Garvey’s stated ignorance of the gutter level charge of Muslim “exemption” from the Affordable Care Act is therefore to me not primarily a result of protocols surrounding USCCB gatherings but of a consistent display of genuine ignorance of and disregard for the very real threats to religious liberty facing Muslims.

Unfortunately the bishops’ failure to consistently apply their concern for religious freedom to Muslims is not the only major weakness that Lori and Garvey’s actions confirm. By showing such notable absence of even the most basic public relations savvy they follow in a long line of gaffes related to questions of religious freedom. Cardinal Dolan’s choice to compare the passage of a gay marriage bill by the state of New York to North Korea comes to mind, as does Cardinal George’s unfortunate comparison of gay pride marchers in Chicago to the KKK. The instinct to compare their perceived opponents to fascists was also on display when the Bishop of Peoria, Illinois said Obama’s HHS Mandate put him on a “similar path” to that taken by Bismarck, Clemenceau, Hitler and Stalin. In these and other cases the bishops have shown themselves to be, as Saturday Night Live used to say, “not yet ready for prime time players” when it comes to the task of communicating their commitment to religious freedom in civil, competent ways.

I take no delight in pointing these errors out. I have ignored them for weeks now in the hope that the bishops would use this Atlanta gathering as a time to reign in their rhetoric, put forward their competence and put these past incidents in the past--maybe even just let the excellent lawyers bringing suit agains the HHS Mandate do their work. I was perhaps naïve to expect a clear display of perspective and poise by the leaders of the upcoming Fortnight of Freedom. Instead, I saw, in addition to the Bruskewitz incident, Garvey and Lori holding up the example of Thomas More with such simplicity and naivete that Cardinal George took it upon himself, immediately after Bishop Bruskewitz’s question, to engage in a sort of mini-history lesson for Garvey and Lori on the basic fact that THOMAS MORE BEHEADED COUNTLESS PEOPLE FOR THEIR RELIGIOUS VIEWS. The sense that Lori and Garvey are leading “the gang that can’t shoot straight” was not relieved in the session that followed a recess. The very first speaker, the excellent Bishop Pates, noted that there was significant comment and some media questions during the break about Bishop Burkewitz’s question and that it had been decided that he should immediately make a statement to the gathering. The core of Pates’ comments was this: “Our very capable staff here at the Conference very quickly researched the question that Bishop Bruskewitz raised with regard to the Muslims and they asked me to say that they are not exempt.” While I commend Bishop Pates for his intervention, I can’t help but note how easy it was for the “capable staff” to ascertain the truth of the matter. If a few minutes over lunch break were enough time to answer Bruskewitz’s query with competence, what does it say for the general competence of Lori and Garvey that they could not come up with the answer in real time?

I should mention that I worked in the 1990s for a religious publisher, InterVarsity Press, in a public relations capacity and I have been an avid follower of religious and general media for decades. Since moving to Washington DC in October of 2010 I have been particularly active in writing about the intersection of religious leaders and public policy in the media spotlight. I have paid specific attention to the relationship between the Bishops and the leadership of the Obama administration, especially the leadership of the Health and Human Services (HHS). As I have said in the past, part of my interest in this relationship is personal—my wife is one of the thousands of employees of HHS and we are raising our children in the Catholic faith. I also am one of the vanishing breed of pro-life Democrats who watched in horror in 2010 as the hierarchy of the USCCB aided and abetted the demonization of “Obamacare” and helped provide the rhetorical firepower for a campaign by pro-life groups to rid the House of Representatives of pro-life Democrats who voted for the Affordable Care Act. The viciousness of this campaign—from the attack on Notre Dame for inviting President Obama to speak, to the takedown of Congressman Stupak for carving out wording on abortion that allowed him to vote for the ACA—was to me stunning and a direct reflection on the leadership of the USCCB in the age of Obama. Despite these reservations about and disagreements with the USCCB, I was very vocal at this blog and elsewhere in supporting the bishops in their initial resistance to the HHS Mandate. Like many other politically progressive Catholics, I could see in the Mandate an Executive Branch overreach with profound constitutional repercussions and potentially devastating effects on religion in public life generally, and Catholic involvement specifically.

I continue to believe, even after the Obama administration’s accommodations, that lawsuits such as those filed by Notre Dame in opposition to the Mandate are appropriate and warranted. But I am done pretending that the leadership of this campaign for religious freedom knows what they are doing, understands the issues at sufficient depth, and is capable of communicating the breadth and depth of Catholic social teaching in a way that will advance the overall common good during the upcoming Fortnight of Freedom. What I expect to see is more folly and I will be pleased if I am proven wrong. Bishop Pates and the countless other outstanding bishops deserve better than the spectacle that is likely to play out in the coming weeks. The Catholic Church is filled with outstanding voices for religious liberty and it is telling that many of them are publicly distancing themselves from the USCCB’s efforts. This is a long-winded response to Michael Sean Winters’ post, but I felt like he and you the reader deserved a richer explanation for the tone and content of yesterday’s post. Thanks for sticking with it to the end!! Peace. God is good!

The Bishops and Sharia Law--My article for Commonweal

A few weeks back I did a short post on the Catholic Bishops' statement on religious freedom, taking special note of the absence in it of any mention of anti-Sharia law. From that I received an opportunity to write a more substantive reflection for Commonweal, which I am proud to say is now up at their website.
It begins like this:

The U.S. Catholic bishops' recent statement “Our First, Most Cherished Liberty,” which calls for resistance to growing threats to religious freedom, mentions Islam once. Defending religious liberty, the bishops wrote, “is not an Orthodox, Mormon, or Muslim issue. It is an American issue.” The bishops’ case for the universality of their cause would have been more persuasive if, in their list of specific concerns, they had included examples of how compromised religious liberty is, in part, a “Muslim issue.” One phenomenon they might easily have mentioned is the rise of “anti-sharia” laws in the United States.

Read more here.

PENTECOSTALS and Catholics Together? (Update)

The landmark work of Evangelicals and Catholics Together (ECT) has been much in the news of late. The Catholic bishops refer to it in their statement on religious freedom; the cofounder of the movement, Charles Colson, passed away this weekend; Ross Douthat’s new book on religion and American life draws on the ECT narrative concerning religion and public life; and this presidential election may well be marked by aggressive collaboration between key leaders of the ECT movement. All of these stories are receiving considerable attention in religious and general media outlets, as well they should. But another piece of the story of how cultural and political conservatives from religious communities are coming together to effect change in America is being missed—a new book by James Robison and Jay Richards that signals an aggressive effort to link Pentecostals and Catholics together in culture war efforts. The book, published by the influential Ignatius Press (Fr. Fessio, Ignatius’ publisher, writes a foreword to the “Catholic edition” of the book), is an explicit attempt to galvanize these two communities in advance of the 2012 election. Titled Indivisible, with the breathless subtitle Restoring Faith, Family and Freedom Before It’s Too Late, the book is backed by a major marketing campaign and debuted number 5 on the New York Times Bestseller list. How important a role it will play in the presidential campaign remains to be seen, but for anyone with a long view of religion in America its importance should not be missed. Robison, a key figure in the fusion of Pentecostalism and Evangelicalism, is back from a self-imposed “exile” from political life in recent years and he has chosen to return in collaboration with a Catholic leader and publishing with a Catholic press. (UPDATE)His media empire is playing up his return to active culture war engagement with blogs about and major appearances with Glenn Beck as well as David Barton, including a visit on Robison's TV show. The movement of Evangelicals and Catholics Together is showing resilience and growth and this clear play by a key Catholic leader to unite with Pentecostals is something that reporters and others should take note of.

What Are You So Worked Up About?

I have been away from this blog for weeks, partly due to a lack of writing in general because of many other commitments. But I have also been absent from this site because of other blogging opportunities. This writing has introduced significant new parts of the narrative I have been writing here about the Religious Right, Samuel Rodriguez and the radicalization of the evangelical center. To people that have followed my thought only through my facebook feeds and tweets it may seem as if I have developed a more strident, urgent voice out of nowhere. I hope that reading these lengthier pieces I have done at other outlets will give justification for the new tone of urgency, for I do feel that we are living through a crossroads moment in the confusing but critical intersection of evangelicalism, Pentecostalism and the Religious Right.

A lengthy piece that seeks to be Demonstrating Samuel Rodriguez's Green Hypocrisy

In light of Samuel Rodriguez's continued and increasing role in major evangelical mainstream einstitutions I ask Is THIS the New Evangelical Center? (See below for my response to a reader's question about this article).


I explain the significance of Rodriguez becoming a central component of a new media/publicity initiative of Christianity Today emphasizing evangelical identity and civility. Christianity Today Doubles Down on Samuel Rodriguez


I engage with Bishop Harry Jackson's embrace of Herman Cain in a Review/application of Miroslav Volf's A Public Faith.

My piece on the evangelical center was at the religiously pluralistic site Talk to Action and it elicited this response from a reader:

When has this not been the evangelical center? A pastor fleecing his flock is at least the second oldest profession. Gotta admire his technique though. Very smooth. And I love the way they wrap things up within 10 minutes of getting the checks. Get the money, hit the door. That's the way.  I responded with this:

I have to say that I have been around gatherings of evangelicals for over 40 years, and I distinguish evangelical from Pentecostal, and I have never in my life seen anyone with a major role in evangelicalism such as the one Rodriguez enjoys via his leadership in the 3 institutions I referred to, who has practiced this kind of prosperity gospel, this kind of "apostolic" reordering of the basis of church/congregational authority and who has then claimed that these beliefs are fully consistent with the evangelical movement. Evangelicalism as defined and self-understood by the folks at the three institutions I refer to has a meaning dating back to the 1940s and centered around Billy Graham's rejection of fundamentalism. This evangelicalism has always had an ambiguous relationship to the Pentecostalism that is generally seen as having emerged in the early 1900s out of the Azusa Street Revivials. The idea that a major Pentecostal figure, and particularly one who is a recognized and open leader of the new form of "apostolic" Pentecostalism and who preaches this kind of prosperity gospel, would be given such a prominent place in the evangelicalism I have described is a major story. It is all the more important given the fact that Rodriguez is also part of a Religious Right outreach to aposotolic  groups and minority groups that so many in the mainstream and religious media have viewed for over a year as some minor, fringe phenomena. The fact that this phenomena is so not fringe that a leading voice of it is also a leading voice in major evangelical institutions that are anything but fringe is vital to our understanding of how significant apostles and Religious Right culture warriors are to the mainstream of evangelicalism. This may be old news to you, but it is anything but the accepted wisdom in media coverage.