Old Time Tent Revival

What about TX Gov. Rick Perry's Olde Time Tent Revival? From Time(emphases mine):

The Response, the prayer gathering that Perry sponsored in Houston last weekend, was a fairly typical evangelical revival. It featured personal testimonies, group prayer and smaller prayer circles, and lots and lots of worship music. But it was very clearly an evangelical revival. There's nothing wrong with a politician speaking and praying at such an event. There's also nothing wrong with a politician calling for a day of prayer and fasting. But a politician, especially a governor who is elected to represent everyone in the large and diverse state of Texas, cannot sponsor an evangelical revival. And if he calls for a day of prayer, it cannot be limited to those "fellow Americans" who "call upon Jesus." To do so is to break a rule in something called the Constitution. ...

Perry and his defenders do not seem to understand or care about these distinctions. They emphasized repeatedly that the event was not "political," as if critics were concerned that Perry would use the occasion to speak about a candidacy or question federal policies....

Instead, religious liberty advocates including clergy from around Houston objected to Perry's sponsorship of the revival because his position as governor is always political. Although he was introduced at The Response as simply "Rick Perry, Austin, Texas," Perry can never set aside his official role. Again, Perry can pray to God in public. If he feels a need to ask for Christ's forgiveness on behalf of the nation's sins, he can do that at his church. He can attend an evangelical revival every day of the week if he wants to. But he cannot organize an evangelical Christian revival so that "as a nation" we can "call upon Jesus to guide us."

The fact that this has to be spelled out speaks volumes about our inability to discuss religion and the public square. It worsened during the Bush years, when many liberals treated any expression of religiosity by Bush as inappropriate and when conservatives dismissed as irrelevant constitutionality concerns about some aspects of the faith-based initiative.

Now comes Perry, whose remarks on Saturday contained more religiosity than Bush ever uttered publicly, and whose supporters don't even think that church and state should be kept separate. And because of that, they interpret concerns about Perry's use of his office to promote one religion as criticism of his faith itself. You can't have a conversation when the response to "If the governor wants to hold a day of prayer, maybe it should be open to all faiths" is "Why are you uncomfortable letting us pray?"

If he wants to wear the mantle of Evangelical Christianity, he's going to put off a very, very large swath of voters. It might help in the primary. I think it will hurt in the general.

What do you think?

Clergy call out TX Governor Rick Perry

It is widely considered that Texas Governor Rick Perry, who jogs with a handgun to shoot coyotes, will throw his hat into the ring for the Republican nomination for president.

Apparently, however, the miracle of Texas on which Perry will try to run turns out to have been …. overstated. Despite hating on the stimulus, Gov Perry used it to balance his budget and now has a deficit the size of California's, although without the unions to blame for it.

At a time when there’s a full-court press on to demonize public-sector unions as the source of all our woes, Texas is nearly demon-free: less than 20 percent of public-sector workers there are covered by union contracts, compared with almost 75 percent in New York.

The "booming Texas economy" is built on the backs of the highest number of minimum wage jobs in the country. And as a result,

Texas has indeed taken a hard, you might say brutal, line toward its most vulnerable citizens. Among the states, Texas ranks near the bottom in education spending per pupil, while leading the nation in the percentage of residents without health insurance. It’s hard to imagine what will happen if the state tries to eliminate its huge deficit purely through further cuts.

. And of course, there's that call for secession.

But undaunted, there's this:

[Perry is] now planning an evangelical hoedown in August, called “The Response,” that features a sort of who’s who of radical theocrats, including John Hagee, the Christian Zionist leader whose support John McCain felt constrained to repudiate in 2008 after Hagee called Adolf Hitler an agent of God’s plans to return the Jews to their biblical homeland. The expressed purpose of the upcoming event is to seek divine intervention to fix America, apparently via the propitiation of an angry God by the abandonment of such abominations as legalized abortion, same-sex relationships, and church-state separation.

A group of progressive clergy have banded together and have called Perry out on this.

We believe in a healthy boundary between church and state... We are concerned that our governor has crossed the line by organizing and leading a religious event rather than focusing on the people’s business in Austin.

We also express concern that the day of prayer and fasting at Reliant Stadium is not an inclusive event. ...It troubles us that the governor’s prayer event is not open to everyone. In the publicized materials, the governor has made it clear that only Christians of a particular kind are welcome to pray in a certain way. We feel that such an exclusive event does not reflect the rich tapestry of our city.

Our deepest concern, however, lies in the fact that funding for this event appears to come from the American Family Association, an organization labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The American Family Association and its leadership have a long track record of anti-gay speech and have actively worked to discriminate against the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender community. The American Family Association and its leadership have also been stridently anti-Muslim, going so far as to question the rights of Muslim Americans to freely organize and practice their faith. We believe it is inappropriate for our governor to organize a religious event funded by a group known for its discriminatory stances.

As religious leaders, we commit to join with all Houstonians in working to make our city a better place. We will lead our communities in prayer, meditation, and spiritual practice. We ask that Rick Perry leave the ministry to us and refocus his energy on the work of governing our state.

It's good to see clergy standing up to the hegemony of the religious right. The RR do not represent the majority of Christians, or the majority of Americans. It's important to hear strong voices of faith countering their lies.

meanwhile, will he run, or not?

Photo from AP via the New Yorker

Texas Republican State House: only Christians need apply

From Steve Benen

The current [Texas] House Speaker is Joe Straus, a conservative Republican leading a conservative Republican majority. He's currently facing a challenge from state Rep. Ken Paxton, who appears to agree with Straus on nearly everything.

So what makes this noteworthy? Straus is Jewish, and some far-right activists in Texas have a problem with that.

A few weeks ago, a coalition of Tea Party and right-wing Republican groups began lobbying for Paxton to replace Straus, with coalition activists circulating anti-Semitic emails. The message from conservatives was that the GOP state House needed a "Christian conservative" leader.

....One of the two party leaders, John Cook, insisted in a message, "We elected a house with Christian, conservative values. We now want a true Christian, conservative running it."
....
He added that he prefers Christian candidates, but isn't anti-Semitic. "They're some of my best friends," he said of Jews, naming two friends of his.

Someday, folks will have to understand that "some of my best friends are [fill in the blank with a minority group]" is a cliche repeated by bigots. I would have hoped that was obvious by now.