The Betsy DeVos-led American Federation for Children (AFC) and its core funders have spent more than fifteen million dollars in Pennsylvania over the last five years. The majority of the funding was in support of a Democratic state senator, Anthony H. Williams, who is a candidate in the Democratic mayoral primary for mayor of Philadelphia to be held on Tuesday, May 19.  While banking on Williams, AFC has quietly filed and begun to fund a new Pennsylvania political action committee (PAC) in preparation for their ongoing onslaught in the state.  Initial funding for the PAC has come directly from the DeVos family, the national leaders behind school privatization as well as major funders of the GOP and Religious Right causes. Thus far the only recipient is Williams.

[Photograph: Anthony H. Williams (left), Jeb Bush, and Kevin Chavous attend AFC's First Annual New York Gala on October 30, 2014.]

Back in the 1990s when I was regularly covering the antics of TV preacher Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition, one part of the job was particularly distasteful: listening to speeches by Rabbi Daniel Lapin.

Lapin headed a synagogue in Washington state and ran a small right-wing group called Toward Tradition, but he was best known for being the Religious Right's token Jewish supporter. Unlike "Messianic Jews" who are really just converts to evangelical Christianity who rip off Jewish rituals, Lapin, a South African expatriate, is actually Jewish. He was a regular speaker at the Christian Coalition's "Road to Victory" conferences, where his job was to convince attendees that real Jews love them some Religious Right.

The other day I stopped by Wal- Mart to pick up my medications.  Later on that day we heard a strange rumor that the super store was closing tomorrow.  Thinking it some strange gossip, few took it seriously until it hit the airways.  The store, with over 400 employees was closing until after Christmas.  The employees were not told until the day of the closing.  Rumor mills began waving all types of conspiracy banners.  One that gained a lot of momentum  was the idea this was connected with Jade Helm 15 and the store would be revamped to incarcerate Christians.

As marriage equality has advanced around the country, and the U.S. Supreme Court is set to rule on the issue in June, threatening language is escalating on the Christian Right.   If these culture warriors actually follow through with their threats, the story of our time may turn on terms like civil disobedience, martyrdom and even civil war.  The operative word here is, "if."

In recent years, we have repeatedly heard threats of civil disobedience from Christian Right Leaders - everyone from the signers of the historic, 2009 Manhattan Declaration (which included top Roman Catholic prelates and evangelical and organized Christian right leaders), to Rick Warren.

We have heard predictions of civil war, revolution, and martyrdom from the likes of Catholic thinker John McCloskey, theocratic evangelical intellectual Peter Leithart, and even Christian Right electoral activist David Lane.

We have also heard calls for political assassinations and secessionist civil war from White Southern Christian Nationalists, Michael Hill, David Whitney, and Michael Peroutka.

Most recently, some 200 Christian Right figures signed a renewed pledge of resistance to the anticipated Supreme Court decision favoring marriage equality.

At a press conference, they called this "A Bonhoeffer Moment in America." The reference is to the famous Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who resisted the Nazi regime and was hanged for his role in an unsuccessful plot to assassinate Adolph Hitler.

Bonhoeffer is increasingly invoked by Christian Right leaders as they compare the situation in the United States to Nazi Germany and cast him -- as they choose to define him -- as a role model for Christian Right resistance.

The new manifesto says that extending marriage to same-sex couples violates their religious freedom, and that they want to "respectfully warn the Supreme Court" that they would adhere to "higher law." Their language was (relatively) soft, but clear:  "Make no mistake about our resolve," they concluded, " ...this is the line we must draw and one we cannot and will not cross."

Some might say that the relationship between the conservative US Jewish community and Evangelicals is inviolable, with support for Israel being the cement that forever binds the two. However, a number of controversial social issues could threaten to alter a relationship that has historically been replete with awkward, and not so secret Christian objectives.

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments tomorrow in Obergefell v. Hodges, the marriage equality case.

In preparation for this, a sad collection of Religious Right leaders trooped to the microphone at the National Press Club on Friday to denounce marriage equality - again.

You don't have to be a Hillary hater (and I'm not) to recognize that Clinton and other Democratic Party leaders have had long and -- sometimes disturbing -- relationships with elements of the Christian Right.  

From the origins of Charitable Choice and its offspring, the Faith Based Initiative, the diversion of federal dollars into creating an infrastructure for service delivery by conservative Christian groups is a long term, bipartisan (arguably transpartisan) project.  Bogus gestures such as the effort to find common ground on abortion and claims of neutrality on abortion in public policy that marked the early years of the Obama administration diverted attention from the administration's secretive efforts to inexplicably direct federal funds, particularly in foreign aid, to religious groups that were hostile to the administration's stated agenda.  

The list goes on, and fortunately, Paul Rosenberg, writing at Salon.com, surfaces some of these contradictions in an essay titled Progressives can't trust Hillary Clinton: What's behind her bizarre alliance with the Christian right?:  Clinton's mixed record on social and cultural issues might be explained by surprising views on faith and politics

Rosenberg's essay recounts the origins of some of the conservative Christian exceptions to federal laws and policies, how they have evolved, and the role Clinton has played in this. She is certainly not the only one, but she is the one who happens to be running for president.

Bishop Robert W. Finn, the Opus Dei Bishop who was convicted by a Missouri court for failing to report suspected child abuse by a parish priest under his charge, has resigned his leadership of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Missouri.

I think there are two underreported features of the fallout from Indiana that we should make sure do not get lost in the hoo ha.  

One is that people are getting it that religious freedom does not and must not equal the right to discriminate. The other is that people are also broadening and deepening their understanding of what they basically already know:  the Christian Right's view on these things is not shared by all of Christianity.

Dr. James Dobson is talking about a second "Civil War." Rick Scarborough of Vision America Action is calling it "a Bonhoeffer moment," a reference to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German Lutheran pastor who resisted the Nazis. Other Christian leaders are complaining that gay activists are duping the masses.

As America awaits two and a half hours of oral argument at the Supreme Court set for the morning of Tuesday, April 28th, followed by its decision - likely in late June -- on the power of the states to ban same-sex marriages and to refuse to recognize such marriages performed in another state, the Christian right's doom and gloom squad is coming out of the closet in droves. And they're bringing the type of unrestrained rhetoric not heard since, well, those heady days last month when Indiana and Arkansas were forced to temper their strict anti-gay "religious freedom" laws.

One of the challenges in writing about the Religious Right and what to do about it is the matter of terms and definitions. That's why from time-to-time I revise and update this post.

From the earliest days of Talk to Action, we have written about how unfair labels and terms of demonization are not only inaccurate and opposed to basic standards of scholarship and journalism -- but conflict with the basic values of all people of good will. (They tend to be politically counterproductive as well.) The purpose of this post is not to go over all that again, but simply to highlight some useful resources on basic definitions and usage for those who are interested in trying to get it right.

Barry Lynn, the longtime executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, recently posted an important essay at Huffington Post. In it, he cheered the Obama administration's recognition of the recent anti-LGBTQ legislative bigotry in Indiana. But Lynn's main purpose was to highlight the practice, which has existed since the Bush administration, of allowing federal contractors to discriminate on the basis of religion.  The practice, he says, is justified by a flawed 2007 analysis from the Office of Legal Counsel of the Justice Department under president George W. Bush.  Lynn's organization and some seven dozen organizations have asked the president to rescind the Bush era memo as a basis for policy.

The letter's other signatories include the American Association of University Women, the ACLU, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFL-CIO), the American Jewish Committee, Hindu American Foundation, Human Rights Campaign, Muslim Advocates, Interfaith Alliance, the Council for Secular Humanism, Southern Poverty Law Center and the NAACP in and many more civil liberties watchdogs, women's rights groups and progressive religious organizations.

Last week I taped an interview with Sister Maureen Fielder, host of "Interfaith Voices," a popular radio program exploring religious issues that is carried by many NPR stations.

The topic of the show was Indiana's new "religious freedom" law, and appearing with me was Mollie Ziegler Hemingway, senior editor at The Federalist, a libertarian journal. We had a spirited but thoughtful discussion.

The recent endorsement of marriage equality by the Presbyterian Church (USA) seemed like a good moment to discuss the campaign to divide and conquer the mainline Protestant churches, at LGBTQ Nation -- FC

The Presbyterian Church (USA) has recently been in the news for its historic approval of marriage equality. But in these news stories, you may have noticed that Christian Right organizations that are unhappy with the outcome are promoting the idea that people are leaving this and other churches because of their support for equal rights, and for rejecting the Right's corrupt and redefined version of religious freedom.

As is often the case, the Christian Right's claims don't hold much water.

The 29th annual conference From Abortion Rights to Social Justice: Building the Movement for Reproductive Freedom will be held from April 10-12 at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts.  The event typically draws over 1,000 activists from around the country and the world. It is always remarkable, diverse, interesting and inspiring. It is also accessible and inexpensive. Student registration is free.  

I have had the honor of speaking at a number of these events over the years. This year, I will be speaking on a panel about knowing and resisting the Right.  (Anyone who happens to come, please say hello!)

Events like this are rare. And a national conference that takes the time to feature a discussion of the role of the religious and political right in order to develop sound understandings of the right in order to better advance social justice, is unfortunately, even more rare.