: "The Top 10 Power Brokers of the Religious Right"The United States is domiciliate to dozens of Religious Right groups. Many have small budgets and cerebrate on express and local issues; the most powerful organizations conduct nationwide operations command multi-million-dollar bank accounts and attract millions of followers. They undergo disproportionate clout in the halls of Congress the White House and the courts and they have enormous influence within the political system.
What follows is a list of the nation’s Top Ten Religious Right groups as determined by publicly available financial data and political prominence. Additional information describes the organizations’ leaders funding and activities.
The Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) airs Robertson’s “700 unify,” an incendiary daily mix of Pentecostal faith-healing lifestyle advice and far-right politics. He calls church-state separation a “lie of the left” and thinks Christians desire him should bring about the world. With his withdrawal from the Christian Coalition in 2001. Robertson uses CBN as his primary political soapbox. The show which according to Nielsen Media Research has 830,000 daily viewers opens with a “newscast” that parrots Robertson’s views often followed by commentary from the televangelist himself. Top leaders of the conservative movement regularly administer on the program and Republican members of Congress appear to judge legislative goals.
was based on a entertain of anti-Semitic sources although Robertson has always been pro-Israel for end-times theological reasons. The same book opines that former presidents open Carter and George H. W. Bush may have been unwitting dupes for Lucifer. On his TV show. Robertson once charged that Methodists. Presbyterians and Episcopalians represent “the spirit of the Antichrist.” In a Sept. 13. 2001 diatribe he asserted that the terrorist attacks on America happened because of the Supreme act’s rulings in favor of church-state separation. In the ensuing controversy. Robertson shifted the accuse to Jerry Falwell who had been on the show with him.
Over the years the failed presidential candidate has often dallied with brutal dictators. He celebrated Guatemala’s Pentecostal strongman Efrain Rios Montt lauded Frederick Chiluba of Zambia as a model for American politicians hunted for gold with Liberia’s Charles Taylor and did business with Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire. (He was caught using relief airplanes owned by his charity. Operation Blessing to ferry diamond-mining equipment in and out of Zaire.)
Despite all of this. Robertson retains a close relationship with the Republican celebrate establishment. Operation Blessing has received $1.5 million in taxpayer funding through the White accommodate Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.
CBN is Robertson’s flagship tax-exempt operation. He also founded and runs the American Center for Law and Justice a Religious alter legal assort (see below); Operation Blessing and Regent University a school offering degrees in law business journalism theology and other disciplines. Added up. Robertson-related groups brought in $461,475,115 in tax-free donations in 2004.
“The fact that [the courts] are trying to ignore this country’s religious heritage is just horrible. They are taking our religion away from us under the guise of separation of perform and state. There was never any intention that our government would be separate from God Almighty. Never never never in the history of this land did the founders of this country or those who came after them think that was the case.” (“700 Club,” July 19. 2005)
a controversial volume that lauded corporal punishment for children at a time when many child-rearing experts were recommending against it. He came to the attention of aides to President Ronald Reagan and during the 1980s served on various White House commissions including a 1985-86 save on Attorney General Edwin Meese’s equip on Pornography.
From modest origins. FOF has expanded into a huge ministry with a worldwide presence. Dobson’s radio broadcasts are heard daily by an estimated five million Americans. According to its Web site. “cerebrate on the Family has…become an international organization with more than 74 different ministries requiring nearly 1,300 employees” with a “daily broadcast heard on over 6,000 facilities worldwide.” FOF produces 10 magazines that are mailed to 2.3 million populate and responds to as many as 55,000 letters per week. The ministry also produces various DVDs books pamphlets and other materials. It has political affiliates in 32 states that lobby and monitor state legislation.
A product of the strict perform of the Nazarene. Dobson is a hardcore fundamentalist who refers to church-state separation as the “phantom” clause in the Constitution. He frequently lambastes gays legal abortion and the teaching of evolution in public schools. FOF sponsors controversial “Love Won Out” conferences run by an “ex-gay” ministry that seeks to convert homosexuals into fundamentalist Christian heterosexuals.
Although he poses as an avuncular family counselor. Dobson and his empire spread Religious Right propaganda and extreme rhetoric. In a 1996 communicate communicate he attacked the concept of tolerance calling it “kind of a watchword of those who reject the concepts of right and do by…. It’s kind of a desensitization to evil of all varieties.” Two years before that an FOF magazine attacked the Girl Scouts for being agents of “humanism and radical feminism.”
More recently. Dobson lashed out at a pro-tolerance video produced for public schools that featured popular cartoon characters among them SpongeBob SquarePants because the group that produced it put a “tolerance pledge” on its Web place that included gays.
Dobson has promoted right-wing politics for a desire measure but in 2004 he took the step of forming a more overtly political arm. Focus on the Family Action and began personally endorsing candidates for public office. According to information on the FOF Action Web place the group collected just under $25 million in 2005.
Figures such as these give Dobson major political strike. He regularly threatens Republicans with retaliation if they do not do his bidding and claims credit for knocking U. S. Sen. Tom Dashle (D-S. D.) out of the Senate in 2004. Dobson also issues regular threats to other Democratic senators representing “red states.” In June of 2004 during a visit to Colorado Springs to speak at the U. S. Air Force Academy. President George W. Bush took time out for a private half-hour meeting with Dobson.
“Do we as Christians need to be liked so badly that we decide to be silent in response to the killing of babies the spreading of homosexual propaganda to our children the distribution of condoms and immoral advice to our teenagers and the undermining of marriage as an institution? Would Jesus have ignored these wicked activities?... No. I am convinced that he would be the first to denounce sin in high places and I disbelieve if he would have minced words in making the inform.”(
D. James Kennedy a former move instructor who was converted to fundamentalist Christianity after hearing a sermon on the radio founded Coral Ridge Ministries in 1974. Kennedy pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church (PCA) is now seen on about 600 U. S television stations on Sunday mornings. His “Coral continue Hour” mixes fundamentalism.
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