Breaking Away

by digby

I think everyone knows I’m a godless hippie and all, but I am fascinated by the subjects of politics and history so naturally I find myself constantly reading about religion. It’s all related.

So this story by Bruce Wilson at Talk to Action about the Episcopalian break-away over gay rights piques my interest:

Yesterday, seven Virginia Episcopal churches including two of the largest and wealthiest in the American Episcopal Communion voted to break away and, as a New York Times story written prior to the vote put it, “report to the powerful archbishop of Nigeria, Peter Akinola, an outspoken opponent of homosexuality who supports legislation in his country that would make it illegal for gay men and lesbians to form organizations, read gay literature or eat together in a restaurant.” ” Commentor Jim Naughton, who writes the “Daily Episcopalian”, noted “this no longer seems to be a debate about the proper role of gay and lesbians Christians in the Church, but about the moral legitimacy of rolling back human rights for minorities”…

It doesn’t get more political than that. But this highlights something that’s going on in the world of religion that I don’t think most people are aware of: the right is systematically attacking the liberal churches from within.

For instance, it so happens that the ever so mainline Episcopal church has been under assault from big money wingnuts for some time. This article by Max Blumenthal in Salon from 2004 reveals this pet project of rightwing freakshow Howard Ahmanson:

In the summer of 2000, a group of frustrated Episcopalians from the board of the American Anglican Council gathered at a sun-soaked Bahamanian resort to blow off some steam and hatch a plot. They were fed up with the Episcopal Church and what they perceived as a liberal hierarchy that had led it astray from centuries of so-called orthodox Christian teaching. The only option, they believed, was to lead a schism.

But this would take money. After the meeting, Anglican Council vice president Bruce Chapman sent a private memo to the group’s board detailing a plan to involve Howard F. Ahmanson Jr., a Southern California millionaire, and his wife, Roberta Green Ahmanson, in the plan. “Fundraising is a critical topic,” Chapman wrote. “But that topic itself is going to be affected directly by whether we have a clear, compelling forward strategy. I know that the Ahmansons are only going to be available to us if we have such a strategy and I think it would be wise to involve them directly in settling on it as the options clarify.” It was a logical pitch: As a key financier of the Christian right with a penchant for anti-gay campaigns, Ahmanson clearly shared the Anglican Council’s interest in subverting the left-leaning church. Moreover, Ahmanson and his wife were close friends and prayer partners of David Anderson, the Anglican Council’s chief executive, while Chapman and his political team were already enjoying hefty annual grants from Ahmanson to Chapman’s think tank, the Discovery Institute.

Are we getting the picture?

The institute is directed by Diane Knippers, an evangelical Episcopalian and writer who also happens to be a founding member of the Anglican Council and its acting executive director. She is the chief architect of the institute’s Reforming America’s Churches Project, which aims to “restructure the permanent governing structure” of “theologically flawed” mainline churches like the Episcopal Church in order to “discredit and diminish the Religious Left’s influence.” This has translated into a three-pronged assault on mainline Presbyterian, Methodist and Episcopal churches. With a staff of media-savvy research specialists, the institute is able to ply both the religious and mainstream media, exploiting divisive social issues within the churches.

[…]

The campaign against the Episcopal Church climaxed on Aug. 5 last year, just a day before the Rt. Rev. Eugene Robinson was scheduled to be elected as the church’s first openly gay bishop. In a column titled “The Gay Bishop’s Links,” Weekly Standard editor and Institute board member Fred Barnes alleged that the Web site of a gay youth group Robinson founded contained links to “a pornographic website.” Further, Barnes alleged, Robinson “put his hands on” a Vermont man “inappropriately” during a church meeting “several years ago.” The institute shopped the column to various cable news networks but only Fox News broadcast it. Barnes did not return calls seeking comment.

Though Barnes’ smear was discredited by a panel of bishops investigating the charges, it helped widen the rift within the Episcopal Church and isolate it from its global affiliates. Since Robinson’s Nov. 2 consecration, 13 dioceses affiliated with the Anglican Council have threatened to break with the Episcopal Church and form a renegade network. Though the network has yet to congeal, the momentum for a full-blown split continues to build. And the Nigerian and Southeast Asian churches, which, like the Episcopal Church, belong to the global Anglican Communion, have broken off contact with the Episcopal Church.

Once again you see the nexus between big right wing money, media and power — and not just in government, but all aspects of society. (I will talk about Wal-Mart’s stated desire to export its “culture” another time.) I’m not sure that there is anything the right does that is a true grassroots effort. When you peel away the layers you always find the same people spending a huge amount of money to buy off the leadership and brainwash the folks. Every time. Why, if I didn’t know better, I’d think a bunch of rich white people were looking to perpetuate an aristocracy.

And in other religious news, here’s a story in the NY Times today that just floored me:

Before David Paszkiewicz got to teach his accelerated 11th-grade history class about the United States Constitution this fall, he was accused of violating it.

Shortly after school began in September, the teacher told his sixth-period students at Kearny High School that evolution and the Big Bang were not scientific, that dinosaurs were aboard Noah’s ark, and that only Christians had a place in heaven, according to audio recordings made by a student whose family is now considering a lawsuit claiming Mr. Paszkiewicz broke the church-state boundary.

“If you reject his gift of salvation, then you know where you belong,” Mr. Paszkiewicz was recorded saying of Jesus. “He did everything in his power to make sure that you could go to heaven, so much so that he took your sins on his own body, suffered your pains for you, and he’s saying, ‘Please, accept me, believe.’ If you reject that, you belong in hell.”

The student, Matthew LaClair, said that he felt uncomfortable with Mr. Paszkiewicz’s statements in the first week, and taped eight classes starting Sept. 13 out of fear that officials would not believe the teacher had made the comments.

[…]

Greice Coelho, who took Mr. Paszkiewicz’s class and is a member of his youth group, said in a letter to The Observer, the local weekly newspaper, that Matthew was “ignoring the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which gives every citizen the freedom of religion.” Some anonymous posters on the town’s electronic bulletin board, Kearnyontheweb.com, called for Matthew’s suspension.

On the sidewalks outside the high school, which has 1,750 students, many agreed with 15-year-old Kyle Durkin, who said, “I’m on the teacher’s side all the way.”

While science teachers, particularly in the Bible Belt, have been known to refuse to teach evolution, the controversy here, 10 miles west of Manhattan, hinges on assertions Mr. Paszkiewicz made in class, including how a specific Muslim girl would go to hell.

“This is extremely rare for a teacher to get this blatantly evangelical,” said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a nonprofit educational association. “He’s really out there proselytizing, trying to convert students to his faith, and I think that that’s more than just saying I have some academic freedom right to talk about the Bible’s view of creation as well as evolution.”

Even some legal organizations that often champion the expression of religious beliefs are hesitant to support Mr. Paszkiewicz.

“It’s proselytizing, and the courts have been pretty clear you can’t do that,” said John W. Whitehead, president of the Rutherford Institute, a group that provides legal services in religious freedom cases. “You can’t step across the line and proselytize, and that’s what he’s done here.”

[…]

…Andrew Lewczuk, a former student of Mr. Paszkiewicz, praised his abilities as a history teacher but said he regretted that he had not protested the religious discussions. “In the end, the manner in which Mr. Paszkiewicz spoke with his students was careless, inconsiderate and inappropriate,” he wrote to The Observer. “It was an abuse of power and influence, and it’s my own fault that I didn’t do anything about this.”

One teacher, who did not give his name, said he thought both Matthew and his teacher had done the right thing. “The student had the right to do what he did,” the man said. As for Mr. Paszkiewicz, “He had the right to say what he said, he was not preaching, and that’s something I’m very much against.”

Where to begin? That last comment alone is stunning coming from a “teacher.” The man is recorded saying in a public school:

“If you reject his gift of salvation, then you know where you belong. He did everything in his power to make sure that you could go to heaven, so much so that he took your sins on his own body, suffered your pains for you, and he’s saying, ‘Please, accept me, believe.’ If you reject that, you belong in hell,”

If that’s not preaching, I can’t imagine what goes on in that man’s church. Clearly, this is completely unacceptable; even John Whitehead says so and he’s a raving. religious wingnut.

There are many things about this that are disturbing, of course — the fact that nobody said anything before this kid — the fact that everyone in the community seems to think this is just fine. But I think one of the things that disturbs me the most is that this guy is teaching the class that evolution is not scientific and that dinosaurs were aboard Noah’s ark. Dinosaurs were aboard Noah’s Ark. In a high school history class. And everybody is saying what a good teacher he is.

Am I nuts or have people become so religiously correct that they can’t say that a man who teaches his students that dinosaurs were aboard Noah’s Ark cannot, by definition, be a good history teacher?

Still, the kid has a lot of guts and he sounds like he’s tough enough to take all this. That’s not true of a lot of other kids who aren’t as temperamentally defiant and who will sit through that sermon and even participate just to fit in socially or get a good grade even though it goes against their own religious teachings (or their own knowledge that it has no basis in fact.) These kids are trapped in a church that’s being run by the government and that’s unconstitutional.

Still, even though Matthew is a bright kid who will do just fine, you have to feel a little bit sorry for him. High school is a terrible place even for the popular:

Matthew said he missed the friends he had lost over his role in the debate, and said he could “feel the glares” when he walked into school.

Instead of mulling Supreme Court precedents, he said with half a smile, “I should be worrying about who I’m going to take to the prom.”

It will be a girl with exceptionally good judgment and courage who agrees to go with him.

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