Republican manipulation of churches knows no bounds

February 18, 2006

In July 2004, the Bush-Cheney campaign caused quite a flap in the religious community by asking church goers to turn over church directories to the campaign and distribute partisan materials in their churches. The move was denounced throughout the Christian community — even the Southern Baptists said it was “appalling.”

A month later the Republican National Committee asked Bush-backing Roman Catholics to provide copies of their parish directories, too. Archdioceses balked at the suggestion.

Apparently, Republicans in North Carolina assumed enough time has passed for them to try the exact same stunt.

The North Carolina Republican Party asked its members this week to send their church directories to the party, drawing furious protests from local and national religious leaders. […]

Chris Mears, the state party’s political director, made the request in a Feb. 15 memo titled “The pew and the ballot box” that was sent by e-mail to “Registered Republicans in North Carolina.”

Mears said the “Republican National Committee has completed a study on grass-roots activity that reveals that people who regularly attend church usually vote Republican when they vote.” […] “I am requesting that you collect as many church directories as you can and send them to me in an effort to fully register, educate and energize North Carolina’s congregations to vote in the 2006 elections,” it said.

Churches aren’t exactly happy about the idea. The Rev. Richard Byrd Jr. of Cornerstone Baptist Church in Greensboro said anyone who sent in a directory “would be betraying the trust of the membership,” and the Rev. Ken Massey of the city’s First Baptist Church said the request was “encroaching on sacred territory.”

Here’s the thing pastors and religious leaders need to remember: when Republican Party leader look at a ministry, they don’t see a house of God, they see an opportunity for exploitation.

It’s not enough to simply campaign in the pulpits, which both sides do every year; the GOP wants to create a machine, turning ministries into a national squad of mini-political action committees.

Most believers see churches as religious sanctuaries and places for worship. The GOP doesn’t see anything unique or spiritually significant about a church — for them, they’re just easily manipulated institutions that might get Republican candidates a few more votes on Election Day.

Also keep in mind, churches are prohibited under federal tax law from helping political parties and intervening in campaigns. In a situation like this, the North Carolina Republican Party is asking the churches to take all the risk — putting ministries tax-exemption at risk — while the GOP gets all the gain.

In other words, as far the GOP is concerned, partisan political gain comes first, legal and moral consequences for the congregation comes second. Classy.

Remind me, which is the party that’s considered pro-religion?

Anytime the cross is wrapped in the flag, there’s trouble. Separation of Church and State didn’t begin with the First Amendment. It goes at least as far back as Matt. 22:21: “Then saith he unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.”

Here, as elsewhere, the Republicans know no limits, no checks and balances (including self-checking, restraint). Their one value is greed, their one modus operandi is to mow down everything that stands in their way and suck in all the rest. If they could get more votes by sodomizing their mothers, they’d do it cheerfully.

  • Like the nazis before them, building a faith-based patriotic party loyalty to the state with skilled propaganda based on fear and hatred of those who are different …..Substitue terrorists, gays, libertarians( prayer in schools), pro-choice advocates, and liberals…. for jews..

    Rove/Bush is spreading images betrayal and moral decline to those who fear change and are clinging to a mythical Norman Rockwell world of long ago.
    Hitler painted similar pictures of betrayal and moral decadence to frighten and anger his followers into loyal unquestioning support.

    Both Bush and Hitler use SECURITY ALERT so civil rights are gradually eroded until a point of no return is reached where the state is all powerful and then the faithful in the churches can be crushed too….

    Future generations will ask us as we do of the Germans…How did the American people let such evil take power?

    The answer is fear. Bush is the terrorist who uses terror and needs list of the terrified.

  • “Republican National Committee has completed a study on grass-roots activity that reveals that people who regularly attend church usually vote Republican when they vote.”

    Is that really true?

    I often feel that they are probably intensely interested in compiling a list of who all the people who actually vote democrat and who all the people who vote republican are– they would argue that as long as it’s done by other means, it’s not violating the secrect of the ballot– whether the alternate means are assembling church lists (or any other lists chosen from a list of reliable demographic factors), or hey, maybe even by asking NSA to violate FISA for you!

    The other way this cuts, though, is that maybe regular church attendance is not such a good predictor of party affiliation–

    however–

    Terror Management theory says that that when people are scared, they tend to reaffirm the world-view that they already hold. So, if part of the Bush cabal’s PR strategy really is to manipulate people through fear (which really seems to be the case) then they would want to make sure that their message dovetails w/, is coordinated w/, doesn’t class w/, people’s worldview. Stay in touch w/ the churches.

  • Also, notice how “moral values” was the big excuse for the ’04 election, when it’s turned out that was a specious conclusion– and Al Franken makes a really compelling case in his latest book that fear was really the deciding factor.

    But you don’t want people saying that. You don’t want people figuring out that they voted for some total loser doing a macho Elvis impersonation just because they were scared. So you give them a rationale to hold onto instead that makes them feel proud of why they voted– you hop it up that “he won because of moral values.”

    To help preserve that illusion, you’ve got to keep the churches as visibily close to your hip as possible. Even get people to think that they associate the Republican party w/ church.

  • No church’s tax exemption is at risk.

    The Republicans are in control of government, and the only churches they will go after, are liberal ones, and the point will be to illustrate for Democrats the risks of a vigorous enforcement of the law of church tax exemptions and political activity. We will end with no enforcement, just like we have ended with no independent prosecutor law.

    Republicans play hardball, and Democrats get hit with the ball, without even being put on base for their trouble.

  • Oh, yeah, the upshot of my comments above is that RNC may be telling activists that churchgoers are more republican, even if it’s not true. This gets R. activists to do the dirty work of RNC (towards the ends of what I described in comments #3 and #4), w/o thinking that they are involved in anything like a propaganda or a campaign of manipulation. It’s possible that some Repblicans might be offended, but more than that, the RNC wouldn’t want everybody out there to hear that they’re up to dirty tricks. So, don’t tell the activists the real reason. Tell them a reason that they’d like to believe is the real reason.

  • Glad this is out in the open. I think we should be sending letters to the editors of all local newspapers in area where the Republicans are doing this, reminding them, chapter and verse (so to speak!), what the IRS code says about the non-profit status of churches. (Copy to the church in California where an Episcopal priest got in trouble with the IRS for advocating peace — remember?)

    That might put us “on base.”

  • “bogie” has done it again. He has the correlation of forces driving the politics of these United States at his fingertips. I realize that he is rather busy with seminars for repentant Democrats, but his information concerning Democrat “walking about money” given to Colored Clergy-Men on Election Day would illuminate the incestous embrace of Church & State fostered by the Democrat Party. I had almost forgotten the exploition of the Funeral Services for Ms. Coretta Scott King, esteemed widow of the martyred Martin Luther King, Jr. That tribal shout was a scandal, almost rivaling the tasteless display recently at funeral services for a Senator, who is best forgotten, in Minnesota.

  • I was infuriated beyond words when I read this in the article, from Bill Peaslee, the party’s (NCGOP) chief of staff:

    “The Republican Party believes that people shouldn’t leave their moral and spiritual beliefs at the door of the polling place,” Peaslee said. “We’re just appealing to one of our constituencies, just as the Democrat Party does. … The Democrats may feel it’s more profitable to go and do voter registration drives at a homosexual convention. We feel more comfortable going to churches.”

    What is that all about??? I spent the first 32 years of my life as a Southern Baptist before becoming a Lutheran. I attend church almost every week and I am very active there – AND I’m a life-long Democrat! These people continually seek to divide people. I have never been taught, in church or elsewhere, that this is the way people are supposed to behave in their lives. The hypocrisy is unbelievable, and it is stunning that so many people seem so oblivious to it.

  • WIMP CAT PISS, Maybe King’s funeral was the only media coverage a Democrat speaking the truth about your fuhrer Shrub can even be heard at what with the iron fisted media control Herr Shrub is exerting. If your hero Shrub is such a stunning success why did the Shrub administration have to spend $1.6 billion to spin all of Shrub’s failures into something evenly remotely acceptable.

    I think most people while growing up have a “hero” or someone they would like to emulate or to have experienced what they did. For me it was Bob Ballard and Gene Kranz. I would say that your grand misleader with the IQ of 81 must have had a desire to emulate “Captain” Hazelwood of Exxon Valdese fame. You and your fellow Republican douche bags should congratulate your king for surpassing his hero.
    Finally in parting, I would like to again quote your ass bag co-leader,Dead Eye Dickhead, go f__k yourself troll. Isn’t your thesauras getting worn out by now? I know you expended your own vocabulary long ago.

  • TO: “tko”

    I decline.

    I believe that you soon will be ready to repent of you secular attachment to the “GOD WHO HAS FAILED”. Don’t give up hope!

  • Wimp Cat Piss, Why, are you and your party’s jack booted thugs going to be kicking my door in for mentioning what a f__king goof ball you are? You are the one not contributing anything useful to this site so as I said before, Go F__K yourself. Oh by the way, when will your party start the book burnings? Maybe you are an incompetent trying to get an appointment by your loyalty to your misleader. Incompetents seem to do so well in this administration. They all seem to work outside of reality. We hear what good accomplishments they do from the Shrublican media but the positive results never materialize. Maybe you too can be a total f__king dumbass (actually I think you already are) and your king can give you that ever sought praise. Heckuva job wimp cat piss.

  • Lord, there’s danger in this land
    You get witch hunts and wars
    When church and state hold hands

    F-it!
    Tonight I’m going dancing
    With the drag queens and the punks
    Big beat deliver me
    From this santimonious skunk

    We’re not fallen angels
    He’s not heaven sent
    How can he speak for the Prince of Peace
    When he’s hawk right militant?

    Joni Mitchell, from “Tax Free”

  • Here’s some chilling excerpts from an article on “political religion”
    from Wikipedia as applies to Nazis or to Rove.
    ********************
    differentiation between self and other, and demonisation of other

    a charismatic figurehead, with messianic tendencies;

    strong, hierarchical organisational structures

    a desire to control education, in order to ensure the security of the system

    a coherent belief system for imposing symbolic meaning on the external world, with an emphasis on security through purity;

    an intolerance of other ideologies of the same type

    a degree of utopianism and the aim of radically transforming society into an end-state (an end of history)

    the belief that the ideology is in some way natural or obvious, so that (at least for certain groups of people) those who reject it are in some way “blind”

    a genuine desire on the part of individuals to convert others to the cause

    a willingness to place ends over means – in particular, a willingness to use violence

    fatalism – a belief that the ideology will inevitably triumph in the end

  • To further elaborate on # 16.
    The unholy predatory exploitation of Evangelical patriotic fundamentalism by multinational economic private interests using sophisticated media propaganda = the scheme behind the dream
    The religious followers are unaware that they are being used to gain control of government institutions and they will be discarded when no longer needed.

  • Fascist in the church, fascist in the government: they are working hand in hand. It is the dimwits inside that give of themselves and their money, without questioning anything, that allows this crap to go on.

  • You should have bolded the following for emphasis and possible said it again just to make sure the point was made:

    when Republican Party leader look at a ministry, they don’t see a house of God, they see an opportunity for exploitation.

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