Category: politics

Kirk Cameron’s Search for National Treasure Leads to Christian Reconstruction

Let me begin this post by saying that I have not seen Kirk Cameron’s upcoming movie Monumental, but I have seen the trailers. These clips are the basis for this post and the one on Saturday. On Saturday, I noted that Cameron recruited Herb Titus for his movie. Titus has become popular with Birthers who believe Obama is not a natural born citizen and therefore ineligible for the Presidency.

Reading more, it appears that Dr. Titus is also of the Christian Reconstructionism persuasion. Here he delivers a tribute to Rousas J. Rushdoony, father of Christian Reconstructionism, here he argues that public education is unbiblical, here is his book on dominion and law and here he and law partner William Olson argue against the Lawrence vs. Texas case that nullified sodomy laws nationally.

According to this Atlantic article by Harvey Cox, Titus was fired as law school dean at Regent University because of his dominionist views. Titus later sued the school for $70 million (I don’t know how it turned out). Cox featured Regent University in a November, 1995 article on the religious right. Concerned about Pat Robertson’s dominionist writings, asked about the views among the faculty there:

I [Cox] thought it was important, if awkward, to bring up these questions with Regent faculty members. And I did so. The answer was very clear. Regent, they insisted, is absolutely not a dominion-theology school, and Robertson himself had demonstrated this recently by getting rid of the dean of the law school, Herbert Titus, because Titus was leaning in the dominion direction. (Titus, who was a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union before his conversion to evangelical Christianity, is currently suing the school for about $70 million.) I did not wave quotations from Robertson’s books in front of anyone, because by this time I thought I might hear once again that he just doesn’t choose his ghostwriters carefully enough. Also, Terry Lindvall sounded persuasive when he told me that whatever might have been the case in the past, the battle over Herbert Titus had really been a “struggle for the soul of the university” in which the dominion-theology party had decisively lost. “This is no Masada,” he said. “We just want the evangelical voice to be heard and to make a positive contribution.” In his mind, the matter was settled once and for all.

Most viewers of Monumental will not know this.  About Titus, Cameron says he has been the Dean of two law schools, not saying, of course, that Titus was let go from one of them.

Many evangelicals will jump on this bandwagon without really understanding the implications.

 

Barton, Birther featured in Kirk Cameron’s new Monumental movie

Kirk Cameron has a new movie coming out called Monumental. It claims to search American history to find our natural treasure. Cameron interviews a variety of people, most of whom appear on the Christian nation wing of the church, to make his points. As RWW pointed out Friday, Cameron interviews David Barton about the Aitken Bible. Barton, as is typical, takes an interesting story and misleads his audience.

 

You can read Chris Rodda’s more accurate rendering of the situation here. I hope to have something on this within the month (stay tuned for more on a new project on this coming soon).

Another of Cameron’s “experts” is Herb Titus. Titus has been Dean of the Oral Roberts and Regent University law schools and is prominently featured on birther websites such as this one. (obamareleaseyourrecords.blogspot.com). Titus and Cameron go to Harvard to tell viewers that the separation of church and state is a myth.

A lot of evangelicals will go see this movie and will come away believing that Cameron has assembled unbiased scholars who are simply revealing what the evil statist academic machine wants to hide. Lots of potential for mischief there.

I will have to wait to see what conclusions Cameron provides, but an effort that leads with Barton and a Birther is not getting off to a good start.

Santorum gets nausea over separation of church and state; gets JFK wrong

The repetition of the throw up line is strange to me. Maybe it was something in his breakfast coming back on him.

On ABC News This Week program with George Stephanopoulis, Santorum said he wanted to throw up frequently.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You have also spoken out about the issue of religion in politics, and early in the campaign, you talked about John F. Kennedy’s famous speech to the Baptist ministers in Houston back in 1960. Here is what you had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SANTORUM: Earlier (ph) in my political career, I had the opportunity to read the speech, and I almost threw up. You should read the speech.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHANOPOULOS: That speech has been read, as you know, by millions of Americans. Its themes were echoed in part by Mitt Romney in the last campaign. Why did it make you throw up?

The Kennedy speech assured the Baptists that Kennedy would not take orders from Rome on public policy. Now, I think many Baptists would like Santorum to take his cue from Rome.

More nausea…

STEPHANOPOULOS: You think you wanted to throw up?

(CROSSTALK)

SANTORUM: — the perfect remedy. Well, yes, absolutely, to say that people of faith have no role in the public square? You bet that makes you throw up. What kind of country do we live that says only people of non-faith can come into the public square and make their case? That makes me throw up…

To be fair, Santorum said he believes people of no faith have a voice:

SANTORUM: Yes, I just said. I mean, that’s the whole point that upset me about Kennedy’s speech. Come into the public square. I want, you know, there are people I disagree with. Come to my town hall meetings, as people have done, and disagree with me and let’s have a discussion. Let’s air your ideas, let’s bring them in, let’s explain why you believe what you believe and what you think is best for the country. People of faith, people of no faith, people of different faith, that’s what America is all about, it’s bringing that diversity into and challenge of the different ideas that motivate people in our country. That’s what makes America work. And what we’re seeing, what we saw in Kennedy’s speech is just the opposite, and that’s what was upsetting about it.

However, Santorum is off target about what Kennedy advocated. Here is the lion’s share of Kennedy’s speech:

Continue reading “Santorum gets nausea over separation of church and state; gets JFK wrong”

Change.org petition asking Citibank and Barclays to condemn Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill now has over 20,000 signatures

I really didn’t expect that many but this petition which began with a goal of 200 now has over 20,000 signers.

UPDATE: As of 9:20pm, the petition has over 85,000 signatures.

BBC Interview with Uganda’s President, Yowari Museveni

Here is 4 minutes of it…

You can listen to the entire interview here.

Hmm, he might run again in 2016?

Museveni doesn’t believe in promotion of homosexuality – sounds like Bahati.