Rights, rites, the right. Something's wrong.

There's been quite a flap in the presidential campaigns over pastors and religion, and how much influence they might have in the actual running of the country. I ran across this article on The Nation about why the Hillary campaign has not pounced with much ferocity on this whole Rev. Wright issue. If the public is going to examine a candidate's spiritual leader, this is about Hillary's.

[Here's the link] It's about a group known as The Fellowship or The Family. There's an expose by Jeff Sharlet that's been written about this group that will be published in May. It's a conservative and secretive Capitol Hill religious group with many cult-like features. They organize young people into same-sex group homes known as "cells," where they are indoctrinated concerning Jesus and power.

Historically, The Family has always been politically involved, esp. with right-wing world leaders. In the 1940s they reached out to Nazis (based on their fascination with power), and in the 1960s they forged relationships between the U.S. government and people such as Brazilian dictator General Costa e Silva and Indonesia's General Suharto. During Reagan's term, they bonded with Salvadoran general Carlos Eugenios Vides Casanova, "convicted by a Florida jury of the torture of thousands, and Honduran general Gustavo Alvarez Martinez, himself an evangelical minister, who was linked to both the CIA and death squads before his own demise." On the domestic end, The Family has been associated with Sam Brownback, Ed Meese, John Ashcroft, James Inhofe, Rick Santorum... and... Hillary Clinton, who is a member of the "most elite cell" of the Family.

Their doctrine and message is about power and elitism, issues close to the hearts of both the Christian Right and Neoconservatives.

...in mass societies, it's only the elites who matter, the political leaders who can build God's "dominion" on earth. Insofar as The Family has a consistent philosophy, it's all about power--cultivating it, building it and networking it together into ever-stronger units, or "cells." "We work with power where we can," Doug Coe has said, and "build new power where we can't."

Why does this matter? It matters because it has affected her behavior as a legislator:

...The Family takes credit for some of Clinton's rightward legislative tendencies, including her support for a law guaranteeing "religious freedom" in the workplace, such as for pharmacists who refuse to fill birth control prescriptions and police officers who refuse to guard abortion clinics.

Is that what "freedom of religion" means to her? What if your co-worker insists on their right to anoint your office chair every day with the blood of a chicken as part of a religious rite? That kind of rite is not your right when it imposes a hardship on another citizen who has the right to be free from undesired religious rites of others.

Jeff Sharlet's The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power.

And while we are calling for Obama to "denounce and reject" a pastor, let's look at McCain's alliance with Rev. Rod Parsley, "who has called upon Christians to wage a "war" against the "false religion" of Islam with the aim of destroying it." [LINK]

He's also been associated with and endorsed by Texas televangelist, the Rev. James C. Hagee, a staunch anti-Catholic to point of calling them the Anti-Christ. McCain's reaction was “when he endorses me, it does not mean that I embrace everything that he stands for or believes in.” [LINK] Sounds just a bit like some of the things that Obama has said regarding his pastor.

Here's an idea. Let's keep church and state separate. How refreshing and functional would it be if our candidates were not bound by loyalties to religious groups who are filled with hatred, bigotry, and lust for power and even world domination? It's an influence that a government that strives for freedom and justice could surely do without.

Blog Against Theocracy

Tags: theocracy - Hillary - Obama - McCain