* James Dobson’s Focus on the Family took in $142.2 million in 2006, a $4.4 million increase over the previous year. (In addition, Dobson’s Focus on the Family Action took in $14.6 million in 2006.)<\/p>\n
* Tony Perkins’ Family Research Council took in $10.3 million in 2006, an increase of over $900,000 over the previous year. (FRC Action, an affiliated group, took in $1.1 million in 2006.)<\/p>\n
* Don Wildmon’s American Family Association took in $16.9 million in 2006.<\/p>\n
* Alan Sears’ Alliance Defense Fund took in $26.1 million in 2006, an increase of $4.1 million over last year.<\/p>\n
* TV preacher Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network took in $236.3 million in 2005, a $49.8 million increase over the previous year.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
And that was last<\/i> year, before Dobson, Robertson, & Co. could use a Democratic Congress to scare the bejeezus out of its donors.
\n
\nMy friends at Americans United for Separation of Church and State argue that these flush bank accounts reflect a movement that is far from dead.<\/p>\n“I wish I could say the Religious Right is dead,” said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. “In fact, it may be more powerful than ever.<\/p>\n
“The top Religious Right groups are taking in huge amounts of money,” he continued. “They are also quietly organizing churches into a partisan political machine. Now they just have to find a presidential candidate who will carry out their agenda.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
That sounds about right. I frequently wonder whether the movement is on its last legs, but the people who write the checks that keep the religious right afloat clearly haven’t gone anywhere. They’re still true believers, they’re still active, and they’re still willing to pony up when the latest Focus on the Family pitch arrives in the mail.<\/p>\n
Indeed, I’m amazed by those numbers. Looking at just last year, the combined fundraising total of Focus, FRC, AFA, ADF, and CBN was nearly a half-billion<\/i> dollars. That, in a time when one might expect the religious right’s fundraising would suffer because the movement had what it wanted — a right-wing Congress and a right-wing White House.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Given the political climate, it would appear the religious right movement is at a crossroads. Whereas its political power and influence were once unquestioned, there’s ample reason to believe these groups, leaders, and activists may soon be an afterthought on the landscape. Key religious leaders have died recently (Jerry Falwell, D. James Kennedy), some major […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13257\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}