Tea-Publican ‘religious test’ for office rears its ugly head at Values Voter Summit

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

"[N]o religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States." – Article VI, United States Constitution

The Tea-Publicans like to beat their chests and loudly proclaim that they are "constitutionalists," but they believe in the cafeteria plan of picking and choosing only those provisions of the Constitution with which they agree — pretty much limited to the Second Amendment as only recently interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court, not its original intent.

Tea-Publicans openly reject the "religious test" clause of the Constitution cited above. The influence of fundamentalist religions on the Tea-Publican base is not something political reporters are comfortable reporting on, but the issue of religion in GOP politics exploded onto the stage front and center at the Family Research Council's 2011 Values Voter Summit in Washington, DC on Friday. Rick Perry backer Robert Jeffress: Mitt Romney not a Christian – POLITICO.com:

Texas evangelical leader Robert Jeffress, the Baptist megachurch pastor who introduced Rick Perry at the Values Voter Summit, said Friday afternoon he does not believe Mitt Romney is a Christian.

Jeffress described Romney's Mormon faith as a “cult,” and said evangelicals had only one real option in the 2012 primaries.

“That is a mainstream view, that Mormonism is a cult,” Jeffress told reporters here. “Every true, born again follower of Christ ought to embrace a Christian over a non-Christian.”

Asked by POLITICO if he believed Romney is a Christian, Jeffress answered: “No.”

Jeffress's comments represent the first major attack of the 2012 cycle on Romney over his membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, an issue that some Romney supporters believe cost the former Massachusetts governor in his last presidential run.

Here is video of Jeffress's introduction of Governor Goodhair Rick Perry at the Values Voter Summit. Around the final 30 seconds or so Governor Goodhair praises Jeffress for having "knocked it out of the park" with his introduction.

The Perry campaign predictably issued a statement saying that Perry doesn't personally believe Mormonism is a cult. It turns out that the Perry campaign approved Jeffress to deliver his introduction. Perkins: Perry camp approved Jeffress – POLITICO.com:

Rick Perry's campaign signed off on the choice of Texas pastor Robert Jeffress to introduce the governor at the Values Voter Summit, Family Research Council head Tony Perkins told POLITICO.

Perkins, whose group leads the annual social conservative gathering, said that FRC suggested Jeffress to the Perry campaign because he was a supporter of the Republican presidential candidate.

"He was recommended to us because Dr. Jeffress is a supporter," Perkins said. "We sent it to the campaign, they checked off on it. But it wasn’t somebody that they had sent to us.”

It is Tony Perkins from the Family Research Council who sums up Willard "Mittens" Romney's problem with the Tea-Publican fundamentalist base:

[Tony Perkins] the FRC president also said he believes that "Mormonism is not Christianity."

"For evangelicals who are looking at Mormonism versus evangelicalism from a theological perspective, they are different," Perkins said. "Mormonism and Christianity, I believe, are two different things."

These tensions are as old as the Mormon faith itself. In 1838, the Governor of Missouri ordered the expulsion of Mormons from the state of Missouri. On June 27, 1844, Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum were killed by a mob in Carthage, Illinois. For two years after Smith's death, conflicts escalated between Mormons and other Illinois residents. To prevent war, Brigham Young led the Mormon pioneers (constituting most of the Latter Day Saint movement) to a temporary winter quarters in Nebraska and then eventually (beginning in 1847) to what became the Utah Territory.

Fundamentalist faiths have always viewed Mormons as a cult, a false religion, or a demonic belief, even today (if you are not familiar with this, look it up). Jeffress told POLITICO.com:

Jeffress warned that in a race between Romney and Obama, he believes many evangelicals will stay home and leave the GOP nominee without their votes.

“I do not think evangelical voters are going to be motivated to go out and vote for Mitt Romney,” he said.

Fundamentalists calling Mormons a cult is a bit like the kettle calling the pot black. 

Those of you who are familiar with Jeff Sharlet's examination of The Family fundamentalist religious cult made famous by its C Street House, The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, or the New Apostolic Reformation fundamentalist cult which seeks to infiltrate politics and government, Texas Observer: Rick Perry's Army of God, know that the radical religious right Christian Reconstructionism and Dominionism movements that dominate the Republican Party base believe in "selection" and "divine right" to rule. They reject the revolutionary American concept that the authority of government is derived from the consent of the governed. They believe in a theocratic government.

Those of us who dare to point this out were recently criticized by the media villagers' favorite religious spokesperson, the  Rev. Jim Wallis, whom they characterize as a "moderate" (I disagree with this characterization). Jim Wallis Accuses Those Who Report on the Religious Right of 'Fomenting Hysteria':

I guess that's why he's now attacking the writers who have identified the very real threat of the Dominionist religious movements to our democracy. Rob Boston writes:

Today, several writers who report on the Religious Right are issuing an open letter to Jim Wallis, a moderate evangelical leader who runs the group Sojourners. Wallis has criticized the Religious Right in the past, but for some reason suddenly has a problem with those of us who write about the openly theocratic wing of the Religious Right – the Christian Reconstructionists, the Dominionists, those involved in the New Apostolic Reformation.

Wallis and Mark Pinsky, a former religion writer at the Orlando Sentinel, have accused us of fomenting hysteria.

Our open letter sets the record straight. Those of us who write about the Religious Right are not overreacting. Nor do we, as Wallis and Pinsky seem to think, believe that all evangelicals are theocrats. Indeed, we know that the theocratic wing is a minority – but we also know that a minority can have influence far beyond its numbers.

Christian Reconstructionists like the late Rousas John Rushdoony laid the intellectual groundwork for today’s Religious Right. Did everyone who read Rushdoony believe, as he did, that the U.S. government must operate under the Old Testament’s legal code? No. But I’ve attended enough Religious Right meetings and have heard enough demands for “biblical law” in America to know that these people are not fans of our secular government.

A fringe movement did not bring tens of thousands of people to a football stadium for Gov. Rick Perry’s prayer rally in August. A fringe movement did not remove three justices from the Iowa Supreme Court in 2010 because they voted for marriage equality. A fringe movement did not mobilize and pass anti-gay amendments in more than half of the states. A fringe movement did not mobilize fundamentalist churches and their congregants to push the Republican Party far to the right on social issues. A fringe movement did not pass anti-abortion laws across the nation,  intimidate public school science teachers into watering down the teaching of evolution and derail the Equal Rights Amendment.

The Religious Right did these things. It is a nationwide movement consisting of several large organizations backed by powerful television and radio ministries. It collects more than $1 billion annually in tax-free donations. Not all of its supporters are theocrats who burn to base American law on a narrow understanding of the Bible. But some certainly are.

One of these ministries is Tony Perkin's Family Research Council where the Tea-Publican "religious test" for office exploded onto the stage front and center at its 2011 Values Voter Summit. How the mainstream media covers this issue, if they bother to cover it at all, matters.