#Paul Weyrich

[oldshowbiz]

Life and Liberty for All Who Believe (1982) is a documentary produced by Norman Lear's People For the American Way.

It features Burt Lancaster trashing Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and Heritage Foundation founder Paul Weyrich for their extremism and bigotry.

The film chronicled the first massive meeting of the religious right, held in Dallas, Texas in 1980, where Paul Weyrich famously proposed voter suppression as winning tactic for far-right Republicans.

[odinsblog]

One of the most durable myths in recent history is that the religious right, the coalition of conservative evangelicals and fundamentalists, emerged as a political movement in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling legalizing abortion. The tale goes something like this: Evangelicals, who had been politically quiescent for decades, were so morally outraged by Roe that they resolved to organize in order to overturn it.

This myth of origins is oft repeated by the movement’s leaders. In his 2005 book, Jerry Falwell, the firebrand fundamentalist preacher, recounts his distress upon reading about the ruling in the Jan. 23, 1973, edition of the Lynchburg News: “I sat there staring at the Roe v. Wade story,” Falwell writes, “growing more and more fearful of the consequences of the Supreme Court’s act and wondering why so few voices had been raised against it.” Evangelicals, he decided, needed to organize.

Some of these anti- Roe crusaders even went so far as to call themselves “new abolitionists,” invoking their antebellum predecessors who had fought to eradicate slavery.

But the abortion myth quickly collapses under historical scrutiny. In fact, it wasn’t until 1979—a full six years after Roe—that evangelical leaders, at the behest of conservative activist Paul Weyrich, seized on abortion not for moral reasons, but as a rallying-cry to deny President Jimmy Carter a second term. Why? Because the anti-abortion crusade was more palatable than the religious right’s real motive: protecting segregated schools. So much for the new abolitionism.

Today, evangelicals make up the backbone of the pro-life movement, but it hasn’t always been so. Both before and for several years after Roe, evangelicals were overwhelmingly indifferent to the subject, which they considered a “Catholic issue.” In 1968, for instance, a symposium sponsored by the Christian Medical Society and Christianity Today, the flagship magazine of evangelicalism, refused to characterize abortion as sinful, citing “individual health, family welfare, and social responsibility” as justifications for ending a pregnancy. In 1971, delegates to the Southern Baptist Convention in St. Louis, Missouri, passed a resolution encouraging “Southern Baptists to work for legislation that will allow the possibility of abortion under such conditions as rape, incest, clear evidence of severe fetal deformity, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother.” The convention, hardly a redoubt of liberal values, reaffirmed that position in 1974, one year after Roe, and again in 1976.

When the Roe decision was handed down, W. A. Criswell, the Southern Baptist Convention’s former president and pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas—also one of the most famous fundamentalists of the 20th century—was pleased: “I have always felt that it was only after a child was born and had a life separate from its mother that it became an individual person,” he said, “and it has always, therefore, seemed to me that what is best for the mother and for the future should be allowed.”

Although a few evangelical voices, including Christianity Today magazine, mildly criticized the ruling, the overwhelming response was silence, even approval. Baptists, in particular, applauded the decision as an appropriate articulation of the division between church and state, between personal morality and state regulation of individual behavior. “Religious liberty, human equality and justice are advanced by the Supreme Court abortion decision,” wrote W. Barry Garrett of Baptist Press.

So what then were the real origins of the religious right? It turns out that the movement can trace its political roots back to a court ruling, but not Roe v. Wade.

In May 1969, a group of African-American parents in Holmes County, Mississippi, sued the Treasury Department to prevent three new whites-only K-12 private academies from securing full tax-exempt status, arguing that their discriminatory policies prevented them from being considered “charitable” institutions. The schools had been founded in the mid-1960s in response to the desegregation of public schools set in motion by the Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954. In 1969, the first year of desegregation, the number of white students enrolled in public schools in Holmes County dropped from 771 to 28; the following year, that number fell to zero.

In Green v. Kennedy (David Kennedy was secretary of the treasury at the time), decided in January 1970, the plaintiffs won a preliminary injunction, which denied the “segregation academies” tax-exempt status until further review. In the meantime, the government was solidifying its position on such schools. Later that year, President Richard Nixon ordered the Internal Revenue Service to enact a new policy denying tax exemptions to all segregated schools in the United States. Under the provisions of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which forbade racial segregation and discrimination, discriminatory schools were not—by definition—“charitable” educational organizations, and therefore they had no claims to tax-exempt status; similarly, donations to such organizations would no longer qualify as tax-deductible contributions.

On June 30, 1971, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia issued its ruling in the case, now Green v. Connally (John Connally had replaced David Kennedy as secretary of the Treasury). The decision upheld the new IRS policy: “Under the Internal Revenue Code, properly construed, racially discriminatory private schools are not entitled to the Federal tax exemption provided for charitable, educational institutions, and persons making gifts to such schools are not entitled to the deductions provided in case of gifts to charitable, educational institutions.”

Paul Weyrich, the late religious conservative political activist and co-founder of the Heritage Foundation, saw his opening.

In the decades following World War II, evangelicals, especially white evangelicals in the North, had drifted toward the Republican Party—inclined in that direction by general Cold War anxieties, vestigial suspicions of Catholicism and well-known evangelist Billy Graham’s very public friendship with Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon. Despite these predilections, though, evangelicals had largely stayed out of the political arena, at least in any organized way. If he could change that, Weyrich reasoned, their large numbers would constitute a formidable voting bloc—one that he could easily marshal behind conservative causes.

“The new political philosophy must be defined by us [conservatives] in moral terms, packaged in non-religious language, and propagated throughout the country by our new coalition,” Weyrich wrote in the mid-1970s. “When political power is achieved, the moral majority will have the opportunity to re-create this great nation.” Weyrich believed that the political possibilities of such a coalition were unlimited. “The leadership, moral philosophy, and workable vehicle are at hand just waiting to be blended and activated,” he wrote. “If the moral majority acts, results could well exceed our wildest dreams.”

But this hypothetical “moral majority” needed a catalyst—a standard around which to rally. For nearly two decades, Weyrich, by his own account, had been trying out different issues, hoping one might pique evangelical interest: pornography, prayer in schools, the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution, even abortion. “I was trying to get these people interested in those issues and I utterly failed,” Weyrich recalled at a conference in 1990.

The Green v. Connally ruling provided a necessary first step: It captured the attention of evangelical leaders , especially as the IRS began sending questionnaires to church-related “segregation academies,” including Falwell’s own Lynchburg Christian School, inquiring about their racial policies. Falwell was furious. “In some states,” he famously complained, “It’s easier to open a massage parlor than a Christian school.”

One such school, Bob Jones University—a fundamentalist college in Greenville, South Carolina—was especially obdurate. The IRS had sent its first letter to Bob Jones University in November 1970 to ascertain whether or not it discriminated on the basis of race. The school responded defiantly: It did not admit African Americans.

Although Bob Jones Jr., the school’s founder, argued that racial segregation was mandated by the Bible, Falwell and Weyrich quickly sought to shift the grounds of the debate, framing their opposition in terms of religious freedom rather than in defense of racial segregation. For decades, evangelical leaders had boasted that because their educational institutions accepted no federal money (except for, of course, not having to pay taxes) the government could not tell them how to run their shops—whom to hire or not, whom to admit or reject.

The Civil Rights Act, however, changed that calculus.

(continue reading)

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Mark Sumner at Daily Kos:

The large red fingerprints of the Heritage Foundation seem to be everywhere in the news. The group authored Project 2025, which would empty the federal government, populate it with MAGA loyalists, and, in its own words, “deconstruct the administrative state.” As The New Republic puts it, Project 2025 is “a remarkably detailed guide to turning the United States into a fascist’s paradise.” They’re thrilled by the Supreme Court’s recent immunity ruling, deeply involved in attacks on diversity and equity initiatives, and obsessed over strange things like Prince Harry’s visa.  And they promise not to kill all leftists—as long as we sit quietly and acquiesce to their dominion over the nation.

The Heritage Foundation so kindly offering to let us have our lives in exchange for our freedom is a malignancy that has festered in the group for decades. Though it benefits from a name and a network of donors stretching back five decades, today’s Heritage Foundation is a much more dangerous beast.  It has wealth. It has connections. And it has democracy in its sights. The Heritage Foundation was founded in 1973 by the founder of Coors Brewing and conservative strategists Paul Weyrich and Ed Feulner. They thought that President Richard Nixon had moved too far to the left and that other Republican organizations were too timid. They promoted a strong anti-communist message and a social conservatism that didn’t recognize a wall between church and state, and pushed for a smaller government.  The group quickly gained power under President Ronald Reagan, who embraced its “Mandate for Leadership”—a 1,100-page document of policies—and distributed it among his staff. Much of what came to be known as “the Reagan doctrine,” both domestically and internationally, was a repackaging of this product from the Heritage Foundation.

[...] Like many organizations, Heritage has seen turnovers in leadership, staff purges, shifts in philosophy, and difficulties in maintaining its place in a changing political environment. But the Heritage Foundation that exists today is practically a toddler. With a razor blade. This iteration of the Heritage Foundation dates to the pandemic, when the group's previous leader, Kay Coles James, made the mistake of trying to follow safety guidelines, including closing the group’s offices for an extended period and putting up signs that encouraged masking. That led to her replacement by conspiracy theorist Kevin Roberts, who had been on Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's COVID-19 task force and immediately pushed Heritage into suing to stop any vaccine mandate.

The architect of the radical right-wing policy guide Project 2025 is The Heritage Foundation. The organization’s hard MAGA turn began under the leadership of Kevin Roberts.

[filosofablogger]

Worth Fighting For ...

Sweden, unlike the United States and other more restrictive nations, believes that every person over the age of 18 has a right to vote for the people who will make and carry out the laws of their country.  Elections are held on Sunday (the 2nd Sunday in September), and every citizen is automatically enrolled (registered), with proof of registration material sent to the homes of every eligible…

[whatisonthemoon]

Moonstruck: The Reverend and His Newspaper

Preface

I became  interested in the Reverend Moon and The Washington Times while reporting on the Clarence Thomas Senate hearings for Vanity Fair in 1991. The Washington Times aggressively covered the Thomas hearings both on the front page and in its editorial pages--with multiple stories about the identity of the suspected leaker of Anita Hill’s explosive testimony. During this period, I learned that Times’ reporter Dawn Weyrich Ceol, daughter of the conservative icon, Paul Weyrich, had resigned from the paper claiming that her coverage of the Hill/Thomas hearings had been re-written and politicized by her by editors.

I was further interested when I learned that the paper’s deputy editor at the time, Josette Shriner, hailed from the same town in New Jersey that I had. I remembered well her father,  James Sheeran, a former WWII paratrooper and FBI agent and the Republican mayor of our town, West Orange. Few could forget his public anguish during his campaign with the Unification Church to win back his three daughters who had become converts. Indeed, it was Mayor Sheeran’s tenacity that triggered  investigations into Moon--with Senate hearings in 1977 and later tax evasion and perjury charges that eventually sent the Reverend to prison. The fact that the fiercely proud Irish Catholic patriarch had won his battle against Moon- but lost his daughters  [though Josette reportedly left the Church a few years ago]- was the stuff of Greek tragedy.

My editor Tina Brown seemed keen on the story--and dispatched me back to Washington. I spent nearly a month there--at some expense--interviewing dozens of staffers as well as boosters and critics of the newspaper. The conventional wisdom that reporters, famously thin-skinned, resist the spotlight when turned on themselves, proved not to be the case with this story. It seemed that everybody in Washington wanted to talk about The Washington Times--including the paper’s staffers. But, the most generous and garrulous sources turned out to be among the most influential players in the conservative establishment.

I spent another two months doing research into Moon and his Church. It was within his Church that I encountered the veil of silence—with the exception of former Moonies. But some of the stories from former Church members were as bizarre as science fiction. Hence, I had made the decision to tape all interviews relating to the story.

Because of the tapes, I thought I was home free. But alas, as I would learn in ten years on staff at Vanity Fair, there is no guarantee of publication until the magazine hits the stands. Stories were sometimes killed even after they went to “blues” - an advanced and expensive stage of print production.

I was never given a specific reason why this story was killed. However, reservations were expressed about litigious Moonies. I think it is fair to say that taking on a billionaire mogul, especially one who happens to believe he’s the Messiah, with powerful pals in the White House, and more money (and lawyers) than God, was the primary, and perhaps, only factor.

MOONSTRUCK: The Reverend and His Newspaper

In  May, The Washington Times will celebrate its tenth anniversary as  "the conservative alternative to the Washington Post," with a month long party. While launching a second newspaper in a major city is an extraordinary achievement in ordinary times, sustaining it through a recession that has silenced dozens of newspapers nationwide, is nothing less than astonishing. Not only has the paper survived, it has carved a niche for itself inside the Beltway, championed by no less than a current and  past President. "Quite simply, life would be hell in Washington without it," says William F. Buckley, founder of the National Review and the guardian of American conservatism. However, the existence of the Times owes virtually nothing to its circulation numbers or advertising revenues, the traditional criteria  of a newspaper's health, but rather to the munificence of its owner, the controversial Reverend Sun Myung Moon.

Though the Times is technically  a part of News World Communications, a media conglomerate owned by Moon’s Unification  Church, few doubt who the power is behind the checkbook. Nearly a decade of public relations' work assuring the public that the Times had no ties to the Reverend flew out the window last July when the 72 year old Moon made a surprise appearance at a party at the newspaper's downtown headquarters.

The Reverend, who has described himself as the Messiah, addressed some 200 staffers, wearing a beige suit and a snug-fitting silk shirt. According to one guest,  Moon spoke to the gathering in "rapid-fire, high-pitched peals of oratorical Korean alternating with incomprehensible English," with both languages requiring the translation services of Moon's close ally, Times President, Bo Hi Pak. Bristling with emotion while thumping the podium, he told a stunned audience that he had already poured a staggering  $830 million into the Times. Moreover, he said that he personally raises the $7 million dollars each month needed to keep the newspaper afloat.

If Moon’s figures are correct, they are a record-shattering sum for the newspaper business, surpassing previous estimates of $35 to $50 million annual losses for the paper. Time-Life pulled the plug on The Washington Star when its losses hit $30 million while The Dallas Herald owners closed their doors after less than $20 million had seeped into the red. Nevertheless, Moon told his audience that it was his privilege to fund a newspaper which was part of the fight for a new, moral, and Christian America-- one free of drugs, crime, and homosexuality.          

According  to John Podhoretz, an editor at the paper at the time, the evening's most embarrassing moment came when  Reverend Moon demanded of his audience of paid employees, "Do you like me?...Some people don't like me...You don't like me, do you?...Do you want to see more of me here?" After a protracted silence, a scattering of applause broke out,  primarily from the two dozen Church members present. His remarks concluded, Moon vanished into his Rolls Royce limousine.

For the editors and staffers who have doggedly pursued respectability and acceptance in the nation's capitol, it was a demoralizing evening. Once again, they would have to face charges of being a Church-controlled organ and hear their newspaper, which even Times’ critic Michael Kinsley describes as "perhaps graphically the most beautiful paper in America,” contemptuously dismissed as "the Moonie-paper." Their fears were soon confirmed. Six months later, a PBS Frontline segment on Moon hurled a volley of charges--the most serious being that the paper is in violation of the Foreign Registration Act, as a political entity financed by Korean and Japanese money.  Nor was it the first time the charge has been made.

Worse,  credible rumors persisted that  Reverend Moon, despite his boasts to the contrary, had recently taken some mighty punches with record losses in several segments of his empire. How long can the Reverend throw away $84 million annually on a newspaper that has yet to turn a profit?  

The paper's birth in 1982 could not have been more auspiciously timed, only months after The Washington  Star, the sole challenger to the Post's supremacy, had died. Conservatives, at the apex of their power with Reagan's presidency, lamented the Star's demise and hungered for an alternative newspaper that spoke to them.  Although many had misgivings over Moon's ownership of the paper, the hiring of veteran editor James Whelan from the eminently conservative Sacramento Union, owned by right wing crusader Richard Mellon Scaife, did much to soothe jitters. Whelan says he signed an ironclad contract which stipulated "there could be no direct contact between any of the editorial staff and the Moon organization," and was able to assure staffers that "Church officials understand the only way The Washington Timescan become anything is for them to keep their hands off of it."  

To further bolster credibility,  Smith Hempstone, whose venerable Republican family had once owned The Star, was brought on board as executive editor. When asked at the time whether  he had  misgivings working for a Moon-owned enterprise, Hempstone quipped, "I've worked for lots of publishers who thought they were God."      

Soon, an extraordinary romance bloomed between right wing ideologues and Church members--a courtship fueled not by common interests but by a common enemy: the dragon of communism. In 1982, communism was still, if not a national obsession, a Republican one. Ronald Reagan was lambasting the former Soviet Union as "the evil empire," while Reverend  Moon was telling followers that communism was the earthly manifestation of Satan.

As no one else was about to fork over the bucks to start a major newspaper, there was a great urgency to make the marriage work. According to Arnaud de Borchgrave, who later became the Times editor-in-chief, "I went around cap in hand all over the country to raise funds after The Star folded and I talked to the one hundred wealthiest people in America. All everyone wanted to know was when they were going to get their money back."

At the Times’ lavish debut gala, held at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, some 2000 Washingtonians showed up for lobster and crab claws. While protestors outside picketed  the event with placards reading, "You've been Duped by The Moonies," and  "The Washington Times is a Moonie Paper," inside staffers and Church officials were rubbing shoulders with conservative heavyweights of the day like Moral Majority co-founder Richard Viguerie and S. I. Hayakawa, the late Republican Senator from California.

From the outset, no expense was spared on the paper. More than twenty million dollars was spent converting a shabby warehouse on the outskirts of D.C. into a sparkling ode-to-God office building, replete with marble floors and walls,

bronze fittings, oversized doors, cathedral windows and a state-of-the-art, computerized newsroom. "The office joke is,” noted one staffer, “that if the newspaper fails, they can always turn the building into a Church." With unlimited funds on tap, Whelan and his staff were able to put out an impressive, lively, well-illustrated newspaper. In its early months, the paper didn't

even solicit advertisers. Free introductory subscription offers drenched the nation's capitol and bright orange boxes selling the daily sprouted up at every street corner--right next to the Post’s boxes. A host of toys and ploys were offered to new subscribers including a raffle for free Caribbean vacations.

But  persistence had its rewards and circulation grew--slowly but steadily  to roughly 100,000, where it remains  today. Although never a threat to the Post, with a circulation of 830,000, the Times established itself as a voice and presence to be reckoned with.

The paper's most powerful booster, President Reagan, let it be known that he "reads the  Times first thing every morning at breakfast." It quickly became apparent that the Reagan Administration was doing more than just reading the paper; the Times became the enviable recipient of numerous leaks and exclusives, including coveted interviews with Reagan. The paper was the first to report the President’s  intention to seek re-election, the resignation of James Watt, and the defection of KBG honcho Vitaly Yurchenko, among other scoops.

Although its critics charged that the paper was little more than a house organ for Administration policy, the Times was the first to break the story that former Reagan aide Michael Deaver was lobbying former contacts with unprecedented greed-- charges that led to Deaver's conviction--and even investigated charges about an alleged callboy ring servicing high-level Republicans (the charges proved unfounded).

Among the ace journalists currently on staff are foreign correspondents Paul Bedard and whiz-kid Warren Strobel, national  reporters George Archibald and Rowan Scarborough, who broke the Navy’s scandalous handling of the explosion on the battleship Iowa which killed 47 sailors, and Metro writers Patrick Boyle and the eagle-eyed Paul Rodriguez who dug out stories on the House check-cashing scandal months before it became news elsewhere.

Notable among  early hirees were the children of conservative luminaries,  a

group dubbed the "mini-neocons.” They included John Podhoretz,  whose

parents Norman  Podhoretz and Midge Dexter are a veritable conservative institution, Liz Kristol, Irving's daughter,  Danny Wattenberg, son of Times’ columnist Ben, and Dawn Weyrich Ceol, daughter of conservative icon, Paul Weyrich.

Podhoretz, 30, who left the Times last October after five years as a columnist and an editor, describes his tenure at the paper as a "wonderful and extraordinary opportunity." Known for his encyclopedic memory (he was a five time Jeopardy winner) , Podhoretz says he had little patience with colleagues who complained about the Church owners, who, he says, stayed clear of the editorial side "99% of the time. There was exceptional freedom at the paper, but the price of working there was that sometimes you had to carry water for a madman."

Podhoretz spent time with the "madman" on four separate occasions, including the July party where Moon spoke for nearly 45 minutes. "He was ranting and pacing  behind  the podium," remembered Podhoretz. "He wanted credit for the paper and wanted to be thanked and no one felt very grateful. He was saying things like, `Maybe I should shut this place down?' in this rhetorical style and then he'd say, `But I'm not going to!' He started telling us this parable with nautical imagery about how he was the fuel of our boat but then he tripped over the parable so it made no sense. He was more histrionic than just whining. There was a pall of embarrassment over the room. Basically, he was there to remind us how grateful we should be."      

Podhoretz describes his decision to leave the Times as a "personal one which I will not discuss." However, some of his colleagues say that he was deeply troubled upon his return from an Alaskan fishing trip he took with Moon last August. Moon used the occasion, say sources, to expound on his "Zionist conspiracy theories" and what Podhoretz perceived to be undiluted anti-Semitism.  Indeed, some of Moon's teachings contend that the Jews have "suffered 4000 years of punishment for killing Christ."

"Everyone knows there's a price for working at the Times," said former staffer Mary Belcher. A  current staffer notes that the newspaper “knows they have to offer more to get people to work here. I don't know anyone who wouldn't leave for a job at the Post, " despite generally higher salaries at the Times. Jack  Shafer, editor of D.C.'s alternative  weekly, City Paper,  and a longtime Times' critic, derided the broadsheet’s payroll  as "Moon welfare."

Charlotte Hayes, who wrote a hilarious and snarky memoir  in The New Republic entitled "I was a Moonie Gossip Columnist" about her tenure at the paper, still laments the loss of her generous expense account. "This is on the Rev," Hayes, a thoroughbred conservative,  would tell sources as she lunged for meal checks. “The Times,” she added drolly, “is a place for free-market conservatives to escape the free market."      

Despite the financial perks, many reporters have been unable to make the leap. Jan Ziff, a top Mideast  correspondent for the BBC,  remembers being offered the prestigious job of Deputy Foreign editor several years ago while she was between jobs.  "The money was fabulous, just fabulous,"  she said, "and I was practically out of money. It was very, very tempting but the more I thought about it, I just couldn't work for the Moonies."  

In July, 1984, founding editor James Whelan discovered that he could no longer work for the Moonies either. "The rule was that there had to be a wall separating the paper and  the Church,"  says Whelan, "and they were constantly challenging it."  He objected to Moon’s newsroom visits and he said he felt harassed by complaints from Bo Hi Pak—the Reverend’s right hand man--about  the paper's reporting on Church matters.

Until quite recently, all coverage of the Church and/or Moon was conducted via the wire services to avoid charges of conflict of interest. Church officials, says Whelan, were especially miffed by the lack of a positive write-up on Moon's mass wedding of 2075 couples at Madison Square Garden in 1982, an event that included 75 staffers. Then there was the paper's reliance on AP reporting of Moon's appearance before a Senate subcommittee concerning charges of tax evasion and perjury filed against him in 1982 by federal prosecutors. "We might as well give our money to the Washington Post!" Pak hollered at Whelan.

"I have blood on my hands," Whelan says of his tenure at the Times. Lately, he has made something of a career out of Moon-bashing. He says that the newspaper's owners agreed they would never use the Times’ building for any Church-sponsored business. "A week after my leaving, they broke that rule, "  lamented Whelan, who noted that the building has since become a veritable dance hall for social functions for the Church's hundreds of front organizations. "Another rule was that we would not have any Moonie officials at any of our tables at any events such as White House Correspondence Dinners," said Whelan. "There is almost a bidding war to see which news organizations can seat the greatest number of heavy hitters at their tables. Well, a year after I left, that rule went out the window and a very startled  Donald Regan, then Chief of Staff, found himself seated next to Bo Hi Pak." Ronald Godwin,  the current  President of the Times, disputes all of Whelan's charges, adding that "Whelan was asked to leave."

After a brief stint as editor by Smith Hempstone, Whelan's shoes were filled by Arnaud de Borchgrave, who says he has read "a  confidential  file," and concluded that Whelan was simply  "very greedy. He was asking for a limo around the clock, a driver on standby.  He thought this was an endless source of welfare for himself. And it's very convenient when people don't get what they want to shout `the Moonies have taken over.'"  Though de Borchgrave was not the first or even fourth choice for the job, he proved to be a match of, well, divine inspiration.

A veteran of Newsweek, the indefatigable de Borchgrave was a legend of sorts, having covered a dozen wars including seven tours of Vietnam where he was twice wounded. But in 1980, he was fired for politicizing his reporting with his fervent anticommunism. Born in Belgium and educated in English public schools, he has been nicknamed "the short Count" for his eccentricities and upper class drawl.  Famous for his year round tan, the George Hamilton of the Beltway has been said to go into combat zones carrying a sun reflector. Although an irrepressible name dropper, he is nonetheless regarded with bemused affection by most staffers. "Arnaud has no hidden agenda," says Mary Belcher, "he wears everything on his sleeve."

I caught up with the jet setting journalist at his father-in-law's condo in Los Angeles, a pit stop on his return from a vacation in Acapulco. "I've never worked for Moon in my life," he began, clinging to the notion that businesses owned by the Church, such as The Washington Times, are not Moon-controlled.

"If it was owned by Reverend Moon," he insisted, "I wouldn't have been there. I've never known such freedom in my 45 year career. I fired 25 people who were members of the Unification Church without  ever knowing they were members and I never got a phone call saying you can't fire so-and-so."

De Borchgrave literally lived at the newspaper for much of the first three years of his watch. "I installed a bed in my office and worked around the clock," he says proudly, "to turn this damn thing around and put it on the map." In addition to

revamping the newspaper, plastering the newsroom with his personal memos known as  "Arnaudgrams," he started the weekly magazine Insight after shutting down a short-lived national edition of the newspaper.  

As one of the capital’s marathon party goers, de Borchgrave's social connections opened significant political doors for the newspaper. Republican luminaries, including the Reagans, former CIA chief Bill Casey and Senator Bob Dole, became frequent dinner guests at the de Borchgrave Georgetown home.

Though de Borchgrave's first year at the helm coincided with Reverend Moon's time in federal prison for tax evasion and perjury, de Borchgrave says he was untroubled by the matter. "I investigated through the Justice Department exactly what led to his conviction," he says, "and five assistant attorney generals recommended against pursuing the case.  He can barely speak English. Obviously, he is not filling out his own tax returns. He knows nothing about it.

“I don't fill out my own tax returns."

Convinced of Moon's innocence, de Borchgrave became one of the guru's most outspoken champions. In August 1985, following Moon's release from Danbury Federal Penitentiary, de Borchgrave gave a rousing speech for 1700 of the Reverend's supporters at a welcome home bash. Months later, he published an open letter in the Times, arguing for a presidential pardon for Moon.

De Borchgrave denies publishing the letter at Moon's behest but concedes that "a pardon is very important to him." Podhoretz, who described de Borchgrave "as a force of nature," says "the letter was entirely Arnaud's  show. I don't think he takes prodding from anyone."

Asked whether the letter didn't make him a target for critics charging that he was pandering to his boss, de Borchgrave retorts, "Let them take a shot at me. Who cares?  I've survived much worse, including 17 wars."          

Indeeed, de Borchgrave shrugged off the resignation of four editors in 1987 who accused him of being a "lackey" of the Church owners. William Cheshire, who was the paper's editorial page editor of three years, issued a statement that "it is no longer possible for the Times to maintain independence from the Unification Church under the editorship of Mr. de Borchgrave." At stake was a planned editorial that criticized South Korean President Chun Do Hwan for a crackdown on human rights and a retreat from democracy. Cheshire, who became editor of The Arizona Republic, claims that after de Borchgrave made a visit upstairs to Sang Kook Han, the senior vice president of News World and longtime Moon pal,  the editorial was rewritten "changing its essence 180 degrees."  

De Borchgrave doesn't deny speaking with Han, who once served as the Korean Ambassador to Norway and Finland, but says he saw no impropriety about incorporating an owner's input. "It was a personality thing," says de Borchgrave, "Cheshire hated my guts. He felt he should have had my job."

As for the undiluted conservative slant of the paper's coverage, de Borchgrave makes no apology.  "I'm not a rightwing fruitcake," he says.  "I'm a Republican. Ben (Bradlee)  says, `I'm an independent.'  Well, that's hog wash. Ben is a liberal Democrat. There's nothing wrong with that at all. What's wrong is to conceal where one is coming from."  

De Borchgrave even  wrote a passionate editorial denouncing the termination of U.S. financial aid to the Contras and ran it on the front page. Inserted at the end was an announcement that the Times owners were donating $100,000 to a newly created fund, the Nicaraguan Freedom Fighters, to keep the Contras armed.  De Borchgrave denies reports that he was in cahoots with Oliver North, whom he claimed he barely knew at the time, explaining that he was simply "trying to raise money for the Contras. I had nothing to do with running the fund. I just had the idea for starting it."  Nor did he see any ethical problem for a newspaper to solicit funds for a guerrilla group seeking to topple a government. When asked how he would have responded if Ben Bradlee had solicited $100,000 for the Sandinistas, de Borchgrave is uncharacteristically quiet.

The one blunder he admits to was running a page one story under a banner headline during the 1988 election asserting that Democratic Presidential candidate Michael Dukakis saw a psychiatrist after his brother's death. The story, attributed to the candidate's sister-in-law, turned out to be false, and prompted the resignation of reporter Gene Grabowski. "The Dukakis story was bogus," says conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post, "and it really hurt their credibility."  

“It was a deadline rush. I admitted I goofed and apologized,” says de Borchgrave. “How many people admit they goof in this business?! No one!’

Unlike his predecessors, mixing newspaper functions with other Church businesses did not trouble de Borchgrave. “He's appeared at every Church picnic, conference, symposium, seminar, and clam bake under the sun," says Whelan. De Borchgrave doesn't deny having socialized with Moon and Church officials, and admits to taking fishing trips with the Reverend, even flying to Seoul to attend Moon's 70th birthday party. "The (editorial) wall was very important," says de Borchgrave, "but I didn't go out of my way to insult the owners, which is what Whelan did. I went out of my way to be diplomatic with them."  

While de Borchgrave views the Times as just one of the many businesses owned by the Unification Church, many regard it as the crown jewel of Moon's empire. Moreover, says Whelan, it is the medium for Moon to garner the necessary respectability to accomplish his goals which, he adds, are nothing less than “the conquest of global power in order to establish a  totalitarian theocracy headed by Moon."  

Reverend Sun Myung Moon is a man of no small ambition. The entrepreneurial guru claims that Jesus Christ visited him when he was 16 years old on a North Korean hillside on Easter Sunday, 1936.  According to Moon's teachings, Jesus told the young man that he was to be sent on "an important mission to accomplish the fulfillment of God's providence."  In 1990, Moon went even further, telling a stunned San Francisco audience that the world was in search of its "true parent, the Messiah. To fulfill  this very purpose, I have been called upon by God."    

To accomplish his destiny, Moon created his own religion, founding the Unification Church in 1954, a theological stew of Christianity, Taoism and Oriental mysticism.  For his anti-communist and religious activism, Moon says he did three stints in a North Korean jail, though the government of South Korea, where Moon found refuge in 1950, claimed his crime was draft evasion, a charge denied by the Church. A French journalist has also charged that the last arrest in 1955 was for adultery and bigamy, which Church officials say is "absolutely untrue."

In 1960, the 40-year-old Moon remarried for the fourth and last time, to 18 year old Hak Ja Han. They have thirteen children. In Church theology they are regarded as the "True Parents" of the entire human race and are addressed by their followers as  "True Mother" and "True Father." Marriage is crucial to spiritual development according to Moon, whose teachings state that Christ failed in his mission by getting crucified and also by having never married. Moon has been reputed to speak for sixteen hours at a time and according to James Baughman, president of the American Unification Church, True Father is in contact with the spirit world.  Asked to be more specific, Baughman claims that Moon has direct channels to Adam, Jonah and Lucifer.

Unification missionaries first came to America in 1960 and laid the foundation for Moon's arrival in 1971.  Followers were encouraged to call themselves "Moonies," and did so until quite recently when the term was abandoned because  it had acquired a pejorative connotation. The Church's aggressive recruitment techniques created a public relations disaster, not unlike that of rival Scientology. Scores of parents claimed that their children had been kidnapped and brainwashed into evangelical robots spewing the miracles of Moon; travelers  in the 1970s often had to dodge clusters of young Moonies at airports peddling flowers and handing out Church literature.

Then there were the mass weddings. In 1982, almost 11,000 devotees who had never met each other, were paired off by Moon and married en masse at Madison Square Garden and in Seoul.  Church officials claim that today their flock comprises more than three million members, with the great majority living in Japan and Korea. Although the Church says they have 5,000 American members, congressional sources say the figure is less than 3,000.

In late 1982, the bubble burst for Moon when he was convicted on four counts of perjury and tax evasion. He eventually served 11 months of an 18 month sentence followed by two months in a halfway house.  

Despite his criminal record, Moon decided that he wanted to be a world leader, not just an evangelist--and he was willing to pay for it.  Some insiders contend that the Unification Church was the number one contributor to conservative causes throughout the 1980s. In  1984, the Church gave $750,000 to the Conservative Alliance, a group spearheaded by the late Terry Dolan. It was a transaction riddled with irony: the Church fiercely condemns homosexuality and Dolan, a closeted gay man, was already sick with AIDS.   Two years later, the Church bailed direct mail king Richard Viguerie out of financial trouble by buying his Virginia office  building for a whopping $10 million dollars. Observers saw the transaction as a reward for a longtime friendship; Viguerie has handled the Church's direct mail business since the late 60's. In 1988, the Church made a $50,000 contribution to President Bush's re-election campaign.

In pursuit of a Presidential pardon for himself, Moon spread even more money around. Paul Laxalt, Reagan's best friend and the former senator from Nevada, was put on a retainer of $50,000 a month plus expenses to lobby Reagan while Sen. Orin Hatch became the point man for the "pardon team." Moon was said to be prepared  to offer a half million dollars to anyone willing to  guarantee him a  pardon from Reagan. Rory O'Connor, who produced the Frontline documentary on Moon, believes that  it was  Nancy Reagan who terminated speculation about any such deal.

From the start, the Times PR team made sure everyone knew it was not the only church-owned paper around, citing The Deseret Times of Salt Lake City, funded by the Mormons, and the well respected Christian  Science Monitor.  "I can't say that the Unification Church is much loopier than some of the tenets in the Mormon Church,” noted Times critic Jack Shafer. “The difference between a cult and a religion seems to be about a hundred years."

However, while there are other Church-owned newspapers, The Washington Times is the only one that is also foreign financed. "To date, the Times has hidden behind freedom of press and freedom of religion," says Lars Erik Nelson, a New York Daily News reporter who has investigated Moon's finances, "but there's no excuse for them not registering under the Foreign Registration Act." That legislation, created in World War II  to prevent the dissemination of German and Japanese  propaganda, specifically states that any newspaper financed by a foreign principal must be registered with the State Department.  

Currently, such diverse organizations as the British Information Services and the Japanese Auto Owners Association,  which publishes sales bulletins, are registered. However, despite the fact that Church officials have admitted that  most of the Times financing comes from Korea and Japan, the newspaper has never been required to register. Registration under the Act, which requires all entities to disclose the source and amounts of its financing, would quickly demystify Moon's empire. Critics contend that the Reagan-Bush Justice Department turned a blind eye to the conservative newspaper's finances and possible violation of the law. Calls to John Martin, whose division at the Justice Department enforces the Act, were not returned.

Seeking to divine the source of the Church's vast wealth, I met with Ronald Godwin, senior vice president of the Times for the last six years, and Tony Webb, their new general manager. The interview was held in Godwin's third floor office at the newspaper, a sparsely decorated room, save for an American flag standing next to Godwin's desk.

Godwin, who was sporting a Rolex and hunting boots, prefers being called Doctor Godwin in deference to a  PhD. he earned at Florida State in planning and management. He is a wiry Southerner in his 50's who previously worked for Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority. "I've made a career working for controversial religious leaders," he said. Godwin says he was recruited by Moon’s top aide, Bo Hi Pak, also a supporter and generous contributor to Falwell.

Asked about reported frequent sightings of Moon in the newsroom, Godwin dismisses them as rumor, and asserts that Moon has visited the paper "maybe ten times in ten years. Total." Although Godwin says "there's been no lessening of commitment to the paper, it's fair to say that our owners are expecting an increase in revenue. I don't want to be a foundation publishing house.”

Godwin, who dismissed the Frontline documentary as "the Geraldo show” and a “prostitution of the journalistic process," was particularly irked by the program’s speculations concerning Church's finances. Asked why the Times’ owners haven't revealed their funding to silence their critics, Godwin said, "They regard it as a private business, which it is, and frankly it's none of anyone's business."  In any event, says Godwin, it would be "an exercise in futility" to open up the Times’ books. "As Bill Clinton has learned, the questions would never stop." Webb said that after viewing the Frontline segment, he wanted to know "what the hell is wrong with democracy, the fight against communism, and supporting the troops and Desert Storm?"  

Forty-five minutes into the interview, Webb asked pointedly.  "What's the tone of your story? What's your angle?" Told that the story would  be a profile of the newspaper and its benefactor, Godwin's eyes narrowed. "I didn't fall off of a pumpkin wagon yesterday," he grumbled and signaled that the interview was over. All previously scheduled interviews with other staff members were suddenly canceled. The Washington Times was no longer available to answer questions.  

                                              ***

In July, 1991 de Borchgrave handed over the reins to managing editor Wesley Pruden and became the paper's editor-at-large. Although observers talked of  feuding between the two very different men--the imperial de Borchgrave and the reclusive Pruden, a Baptist from Arkansas--de Borchgrave dismissed such reports. "I simply adore Wes,"  he said. Pruden, who has been in the trenches at the Times since its inception, is best known for his hands-on aggressive editing, known in the newsroom as "Prudenizing," a process that invariably insures that stories have the correct conservative spin.    

Jim Whelan says that he hired Pruden at the urging of Smith Hempstone despite the fact that Pruden had been fired as a staff writer from the now defunct National Observer magazine, according to Whelan and others, for having “doctored” quotes . (Pruden refused repeated requests for an interview.) "He had been on the beach for almost five years," says Whelan. "I hired him and put him on probation for the first year." Eight years ago, he began a thrice weekly column, Pruden on Politics, which he continues to write in addition to running the newspaper. His reign began auspiciously enough with a lunch date on day one with President Bush and then chief of staff, John Sununu.

Directly under Pruden is deputy managing editor, Josette Shiner, perhaps the most enigmatic member of the Times family.  Shiner, an attractive woman of 37, is frequently described as the "number one  Moonie" at the paper.  Some, in fact, regard her as the "de facto power," and one recently departed staffer says that "Josette runs the paper more than Wes." Following Whelan's departure in `84,  Shiner and another Church member, Ted Agres, were made assistant managing editors. While staffers are known to snicker over "the mindless cheerfulness" and "vacant eyes," of some Church colleagues, Shiner gets consistently top marks for her work, even from snipers who call her "the Ice Queen." Recently, she was invited to join the Council of Foreign Relations, nominated by de Borchgrave. "She simply breaks the mold," says Dawn Weyrich Ceol, "You would never know she's a Moonie."

In 1975, 21 year old Josette made headlines when her distraught father, James Sheeran, then the New Jersey State Commissioner of Insurance, charged that he, his wife and 14 year old son had been beaten up by Moon followers when he tried to find Josette and her two sisters at the Church's 200 acre compound in upstate New York. Sheeran, a decorated World War II paratrooper and former FBI agent, had been a two term Republican Mayor of West Orange, New Jersey where he raised his large Irish Catholic family.

Following the lead of her older sister Jamie, Josette had dropped out of the University of Colorado in late 1974 and joined the Church. A third sister, Vicki, signed up with Josette. "I have seen personality changes in my daughters," an anguished Sheeran said at the time. "They seem to think that there's a Communist under every bush and they're seeing God all the time. I really love them, but Moon's got them selling peanuts and other stuff on the street while brainwashing them into thinking that no assault took place."      

Two weeks after the assault, the three blue-eyed Sheeran girls, flanked by Bo Hi Pak and other Church officials, read a prepared statement at a press conference saying "we love our parents very much," but stating they had no intention of leaving the Church. They also denied being brainwashed. In 1982 Josette told The Washington Post that she “joined the church full well knowing it is something not yet understood by society. For me, it has an intellectual appeal."

Although the assault charges were later dropped, the publicity generated by the Sheeran family's distress galvanized state and federal investigations into Moon and his Church, culminating in Moon's eventual indictment for tax evasion in 1982. Despite his war against Moon and the Unification Church,  Sheeran failed to win back his daughters into the family fold and faith. Several years later, however, a family truce was declared, though Sheeran says hopefully, "I still believe the Moon organization will fall by the wayside by its own weight."

Josette eventually returned to college. Upon graduation, she went to work in 1976 in the Washington bureau of the now defunct News World, a Moon owned daily. She was one of the principal forces behind The Washington Times, and some staffers believe that the idea of starting the paper was hers. The Church, however attributes the paper’s founding "to a vision of our Heavenly father," meaning Moon.

Although Josette has a cool, efficient demeanor, she is also a woman of

considerable charm. According to staffers, she is the only Church member at the paper who regularly socializes with non-Church  staffers and editors. Nevertheless, no one doubts her devotion to Moon and the Church.  

In October 1982, the Sheeran sisters were among those married off at the famous Madison Square Garden wedding ceremony to spouses selected for them by Moon. Vicki, who runs a struggling photo agency for the Times, was matched up with a maintenance man at the paper, and Josette was married to Whitney Shiner, who recently completed a doctorate in theology at Yale.

However, former staffer Lisa McCormack said that Whitney was not the first candidate proposed  by Moon. According to another ex-staffer, "Josette was able to nix the first one because she had enough clout with the Church." The couple now have two daughters  and, according to close friend de Borchgrave, "it's a terrific marriage."

Some staffers believe that the wall separating editorial from the Church owners has eroded considerably under Pruden's watch. He has abandoned the practice of relying on wire service copy to cover Church or Moon news, and has published columns and editorials flattering to Moon and his businesses. Pruden has taken a defensive stand on the subject, telling a Post reporter, "No one can find a single word of Church propaganda in this paper."  However, in  January, the paper ran an editorial by Nicholas Eberstadt celebrating the meeting of Moon and North Korean strongman, Kim Il Sung, and chastising the South Korean government for its irritation with Moon's visit.

But  there was no explanation in the column or anywhere else in the Times for the sudden fondness that Moon, the great Cold  Warrior, now feels toward Kim, the world’s most despotic communist dictator. Then there are Moon's other new pals, the Red Chinese, with whom he has invested $250,000 in a Panda car factory.

"Moon was willing to do whatever was necessary to suck up to the Chinese for business and evangelical reasons," says Andrew Ferguson, a speechwriter for President Bush and a former editor of The American Spectator, where he penned a tract critical of the conservatives' alliance with the Unification Church. "[Moon’s] only credential as a conservative was being an anti-communist and now that's shot. It proves that, fundamentally, he's an opportunist."  But the greatest embarrassment for Pruden came three months into his stewardship when Dawn Ceol quit.

Dawn Weyrich Ceol has the kind of fresh-faced, all-American blonde good looks featured in soap commercials.  In 1988, she was hired by the Times at the age of 24 with very little experience.  "After a year on Metro, they promoted me to the national desk,” she said. “It was a tremendous opportunity. I knew I was doing something that people wait fifteen years to do."

Concerned about the baggage of being the daughter of conservative think tank founder Paul Weyrich, she decided to use her married name, Ceol, as her byline. "Because I'm Paul Weyrich's daughter, there's a kind of wariness about  me,"  she  said, "especially from liberals. I have been very careful  and circumspect to have balance in my stories."  For nearly three years, Ceol had smooth sailing in the newsroom--personally unaffected  by office or Church politics. She had not even been “Prudenized" --not until she was assigned to cover the Clarence Thomas hearings.

Ceol had her first whiff of trouble after she filed a story about Anita Hill's initial appearance at Senate hearoings.  Late that night, remembers  Ceol, she got a message from her line editor telling her she might want to check out her story. "I went into the  computer and saw what had happened," says Ceol,  "The story had been completely rewritten and had a new head and lead.  Next

to the changed copy was Pruden's computer password. I had Anita

Hill's testimony in the lead. After Wes rewrote the story, you didn't see her testimony until the eighth paragraph. It was all about Clarence Thomas. "

Distressed, Ceol called her editor, Fran Coombs, at home who took a look at the revised story. "He told me, `Dawn, you're really tired. You're working really long hours and you're overreacting. I think it's a good story,'" recalls Ceol. "So I thought to myself, `Maybe he's right. I am real tired.' The next morning after a night's sleep I looked at it again and I knew I was right and I made a promise to myself that it would never happen again."

Days later, the panelists at the Senate hearings for both Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas testified. "I wrote another story and structured it like a tennis match, going back and forth between the two sides," said Ceol. "In the first edition, my copy went out  untouched." The headline of the first edition was, "Thomas Accuser Lauded, Assailed." Ceol began another story while watching the hearings. "John Doggett, that wacko, was testifying," she said, referring to the bombastic Thomas witness who characterized Hill as a woman who deluded herself that men, including himself, were romantically interested in her. "My impression was that Doggett was not a credible witness," said Ceol, with a roll of her eyes.

Wes Pruden felt otherwise. "My editor, Alan Bradford, called me saying, `Wes told me that he thinks Doggett is a fantastic witness and he wants you to do a write thru for the second edition,'" remembered Ceol. "I said, `I don't think so. I don't think he deserves more than a paragraph or two.'" Because Ceol was so busy, Bradford suggested that another reporter write up the Doggett paragraphs. Ceol said fine.

Sometime after midnight, Ceol decided to check on the story in her computer. "I saw a slug that said ‘new Thomas head' and next to it was Wes' password,"  recalled Ceol. The headline was now "Miss Hill Painted As Fantasizer," and the first eight paragraphs were devoted to Doggett. Ceol was furious. "There were also factual errors," says Ceol, "which really upset me because I'm a stickler on facts. Because of my last name, I feel  I really have to do excellent work. I read the story and I was crazed. I called up Alan  Bradford and said, `if you don't get my byline off of this,  I'm resigning.’" Bradford made some calls then got back to Ceol saying it was too late, the story had been plated. Ceol said she told him, "’I don't care.’  I was in the Senate press gallery with several colleagues around when I had made the call," says Ceol. "When he told me it was too late. I started screaming, `Then accept my resignation!'"

At  two in the morning, she wrote and sent a two line  letter of resignation through the paper's computer. The following day, she sent another resignation letter, this time calmly citing her reasons.  "The story in today's final edition not only gives an unbalanced impression of yesterday's testimony," wrote Ceol, "there  is not one mention that four witnesses generally corroborated Miss Hill's statements...In many ways, I  believe this paper has gotten an unfair shake, but this kind of activity does not help dispel our reputation."

Ceol says she got more than fifty calls of support from her colleagues at the Times, "from the copy desk to the editors -everybody but the glass offices. People were very upset because this was happening a lot. As a result, they wanted to start a union to protect the writers from exactly this."

The resignation of Ceol was humiliating for the Times. There was no way to blame the mess on liberals. Not only was Ceol a blue blooded conservative, she was also a known admirer of Clarence  Thomas, having first met and interviewed him during his Congressional hearings for the Court of Appeals.

Ceol was thrown a farewell party by her friend, Peter Baker, one of the few  Timesstaffers to be hired  away by the Post. “At the party, according to Ceol, "somebody put out  some union literature, just as an  afterthought."   The following  Sunday, Pruden took out a full page "Message From the Editor" ad in the Times declaring as "FACT" that  "a Washington Post reporter hosted a union organizing party for Washington Times employees," and accusing the rival paper of setting out "to destroy us from within."

Pruden informed staffers that Ceol's charges were "a total lie," and that her father, Paul Weyrich, had advised her not to quit and had tried to change her mind. It was a charge that infuriated Ceol. "My father gave me 100% support for what I did," she said.

The Ceol affair hardly helped boost morale that was already flagging from budget cuts. Austerity had finally hit the Times. A wage freeze was announced after more than 80 staffers had been fired in the previous year. Finally recognizing that Insight was never going to be TIME and was losing subscribers like a sieve, the glossy magazine was downsized from 80 to 30 pages and made into the paper’s Sunday supplement.

To some, Insight’s very future is in doubt, with one former staffer betting that the magazine will not survive the year. The unlimited expense accounts and lavish lunches are history.  Even more chilling were the whispers that the Reverend, like so many tycoons of the 80s, may have hit the financial skids.    

Few of Moon's American holdings have ever been regarded as big  moneymakers.  News World, which  publishes the Times as well as several Hispanic and Korean language papers in the U.S., and a 700 page monthly magazine called The World and I, has always required a massive subsidy. The Church's successful American businesses are believed to be fishing enterprises in Massachusetts and Alaska, extensive real estate holdings, and numerous video production companies in the D.C. area.

The bulk of Moon's wealth has always come from his businesses in Asia, principally Tong-Il Ltd., an extremely lucrative South  Korean corporation that manufactures automobile parts, machinery, and military hardware. Additionally, Japanese church members are believed to have poured millions into Moon's coffers through the selling of religious relics and icons, a business which came under government scrutiny for its massive margins. It is also believed that many Moon devotees in Japan and Korea have turned over substantial assets to the Church.

One sure sign of unrest in the empire was the recall of Bo Hi Pak back to Korea to oversee  Moon's businesses. Pak, once a Lt. Colonel  in the Korean army, began his career in the Korean CIA, which some believe supplied money to Moon and the Church to aid his anti-communist crusade.  Pak's devotion to Moon is seemingly boundless. In 1984, his daughter, Hoon Sook Pak, a ballerina with the Church-owned Washington Ballet, was married to the spirit of Moon's dead son who was killed in a car crash a month earlier.

She is now known as Julia Moon. This became somewhat problematic

four years later, when the Reverend announced that his son’s spirit had been reincarnated in the body of a visiting "black brother" from Zimbabwe. After it was clarified that the African was only the vessel of the son's spirit, it was decided  that cohabitation would be unnecessary for the two.

The ever faithful Pak is said to be attending to such debacles as the loss of some  $250 million in the Panda car company in China and the Church's diminished standing with the Korean government.  There has even been some unusual infighting within the Church. In 1984, a high ranking Japanese Church member, Yoshitazu Soejima, broke with the Church, telling a Washington Post reporter that Moon was no  longer  "working for the world, but for himself."  Several months after leaving the Church, while preparing an article critical of Moon,  Soejima was attacked outside his home and repeatedly stabbed. He survived the assault and the article was published in a Japanese newspaper.

“Business is bad for the Moonies," suggested Andrew Ferguson. "Col. Pak made numerous financial commitments to conservative causes that he couldn't fulfill." Lars Erik Nelson of the Daily News, who has tracked Moon’s finances for years, noted that “all of Moon's businesses, here and in Korea and Japan, are losing money."  Still, no matter what perils Moon may be facing, it is unlikely that he will ever sell the Times.“The Times was the top priority of the Unification Church," said Soejima. He adds that Japanese  Church members, responding to the exhortation of  Moon, sent a monthly $2.5 million to the U.S. specifically earmarked for the newspaper.

Whatever misgivings they have regarding the Unification Church, even some of the Times' detractors, say they would mourn the paper's demise. Notwithstanding the reservations I  have," said Ferguson, "it would be a disaster, just horrendous for Washington, if it died."  If nothing else, he said, the Times has kept the Post awake at the wheel.

Most liberals disagree.  "I'd hate to see any newspaper go out of business,” said Crossfire’s resident lefty, Michael Kinsley, “but if I had to pick one, it would be The Washington Times." Not even the specter of the nation’s capitol being a "one paper town," leavens the negatives of the Times for some. “If the choice is between a monopoly press or intellectually dishonest journalism," said Howell Raines, The New York Times Washington Bureau chief, "I'd go with the monopoly. It's more unhealthy for journalism to be financed by churches with a political agenda.”

The Washington Times’ impact on the city's pulse generates more raucous debate. One Bush administration staffer said that "everybody in the White House, in the media and all the players in town read the Times."   Kinsley concedes that it has "a certain amount of influence,” drolly adding, “plus the cachet of letting us peer into the conservative heart of darkness." Nevertheless, Charles Krauthammer, of the Post, contends that while the Times " has  largely transcended its origins and is now the town's conservative voice, it is not required  reading like the Post, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.”

"It's a must read for people who want to be well informed," counters Jeanne Kirkpatrick, the conservative columnist and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations under Reagan. "At one time, it had more foreign coverage than the Post…It also has great food pages and a lot of life in its Life section and it scoops the Post from time to time. Of course, the Post scoops the Times all the time but it's still a very good newspaper."

For Ferguson and many other conservatives the ideal solution would be for the Church to sell the paper. "Their primary purpose is to get legitimacy for the Church," said Ferguson. "They should realize they're never going to get it and sell the paper to some media megalomaniac like Murdoch." A sale would certainly be a relief for many fretful conservatives. "Are we really going to depend on South Korean philanthropy to fund a newspaper?" asks an incredulous William F. Buckley.

But the Times remains the most important weapon in Moon's public relations arsenal. "He needs it to impress the Koreans, Japanese and Chinese governments that he's a serious player in the nation's capitol," Whelan points out. Without the Times,  he notes,  Moon would never have been able to chat up former Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev in a private audience in 1990 nor have been a VIP guest at Ronald Reagan's inaugural  ball.

For a pudgy Korean evangelist with a global dream in his heart, it seems that $830 million has been worth the price of admission.                        

About the Writer

Ann Louise Bardach won the PEN/USA Award for Best Journalism in 1995.

She  is the author of CUBA CONFIDENTIAL: LOVE AND VENGEANCE IN MIAMI AND HAVANA (Random/Vintage) which was a finalist for Best Nonfiction  for the PEN/USA Awards and the New York Public Librar’s Helen Bernstein Award. She is also the editor of CUBA: A TRAVELERS LITERARY COMPANION (Whereabouts  Press). She has covered Cuba for the New York Times and Vanity Fair where she was a Contributing Editor for ten years. She is a Visiting Professor of International Journalism at University of California at Santa Barbara.

Original post: https://www.bardachreports.com/moonstruck-the-reverend-and-his-newspaper

[offbookkeeping]

okay this is semi obscure but i will now be listing off my favorite off book episodes that you should absolutely listen to right now

(not in any particular order)

• 277. wine from the hospital floor with addie weyrich

• 165. one two tree with eliza skinner

• 146. bachelor quest with the 2 johnnies

• 118. barn of darkness with paul sabourin

• 87. what's in thrift store with sasheer zamata

• 13. attorney at love with nicole parker

• 4. curses curses curses with jamie denbo

• 283. all black everything with ross bryant

• 229. breadtime: who will survive with rachel bloom

• soap opera! with kelly marie tran

• 224. the other scottish play with katie berry

• 83. night at the natural history museum with janet varney and steve berg

• 247. a single pull up to save the president with peter benifaz

• 209. non stop socks! with lilan bowden

• 275. this book only happens when you read it with rashawn scott

• 270. PMS: perpetual mischief season with gilli nissim

• 196. get haim to the greek with shaun diston

• 189. anything goes: in montana with demi adejuyigbe

• 198. can i compare you to a cheese? with sherry cola

• 177. trashassic trash with nick mandernach

• 161. clear eyes, full hearts with arden myrin

• 114. billionaires and future children with carl tart

• 23. o little town of doggywood with paul f thompkins and nicole parker

• 21. murder on the picturesque express with scott aukerman

• 299. clueless: a paints mcspectrum mystery with scott aukerman

• 102. love island: normal edition with elliot glazer

• 29. reborn in the fire with rachel bloom

248. cowminal house (animal house where the animal is a cow) with brendan dowling

• 88. tacoma valley with douglas widick

• 213. moms, bombs, and dante's gone with laci mosly

• 271. kisses to my critics with tim murray

• 250. intermission! with alice stanley jr

• a seastar is born with jeff hiller

• 80. candy crushin' it with mark mcconville

• 81. sean cullen live at sketchfest

• 99. mirage à trois with lucas hazlett

• 102. the cat five and the bad boys with heather anne campbell and nick wiger

• 73. The Dr & the Beast with D'Arcy Carden

• 74. actually, love with matt rogers

• 291. every place i cry live at permanent records

• 110. keeping pace with pace with the cooties

• 75. a cup of christmas with paul f thompkins and nicole parker

• 66. we object to fear

• 228. mariah who are ya? with matt rogers

• 34. zigging through time with ross bryant

• 96. summer stock: the musical with joel kim booster

• 290. the podcast about a ride about a show about YOU with tony rodiguez

• 6. wolf/tuck:LIVE! with d'arcy carden and paul scheer

• 11. shift your north: LIVE! with griffen newman and michael cruz kayne

• 18. touched by a gabriel with ashley ward

[jkottke]

Books to Read to Understand Where Project 2025 Came From. “Shadow Network is the best book I’ve read that explains the Republicans’ strategy over the last 50 years. You will come to hate Paul Weyrich, and rightfully so.”

[sophieeeikli]

“Matthew’s Passion”

By Tony Kushner. Tw for homophobia, homophobic murder, hate crimes. 

When Trent Lott heard the news about the murder of Matthew Shepard, the first thoughts that flashed through his mind were all about spin. Trent Lott worried about how to keep his promise to the religious right, to speak out against the homosexual agenda, without seeming to endorse murder. Trent Lott endorses murder, of course; his party endorses murder, his party endorses discrimination against homosexuals and in doing so it endorses the ritual slaughter of homosexuals.

Democracy is a bloody business, demanding blood sacrifice. Every advance American democracy has made toward fulfilling the social contract, toward justice and equality and true liberty, every step forward has required offerings of pain and death. The American people demand this, we need to see the burnt bodies of the four little black girls, or their sad small coffins; we need to see the battered, disfigured face of the beaten housewife; we need to see the gay man literally crucified on a fence. We see the carnage and think, Oh, I guess things are still tough out there, for those people. We daydream a little: What does that feel like, to burn? To have your face smashed by your husband's fist? To be raped? To be dragged behind a truck till your body falls to pieces? To freeze, tied to a fence on the Wyoming prairie, for eighteen hours, with the back of your head staved in? Americans perfected the horror film, let's not kid ourselves: These acts of butchery titillate, we glean the news to savor the unsavory details.

And then, after we've drawn a few skin-prickling breaths of the aromas of torture and agony and madness, we shift a little in our comfortable chairs, a little embarrassed to have caught ourselves in the act of prurient sadism, a little worried that God has seen us also, a little worried that we have lazily misplaced our humanity, a little sad for the victims: Oh, gee, I guess I sort of think that shouldn't happen out there to those people, and something should be done. As long as I don't have to do it.

And having thought as much, having, in fact, been edified, changed a very little bit by the suffering we have seen, our humanity as well as our skin having been pricked, we turn our back on Matthew Shepard's crucifixion and return to our legitimate entertainments. When next the enfranchisement of homosexuals is discussed, Matthew Shepard's name will probably be invoked, and the murder of gay people will be deplored by decent people, straight and gay; and when the religious right shrills viciously about how the murder doesn't matter, as it has been doing since his death, decent people everywhere will find the religious right lacking human kindness, will find these Gary Bauers and Paul Weyrichs and Pat Robertsons un-Christian, repulsive, in fact. And a very minute increment toward decency will have been secured. But poor Matthew Shepard. Jesus, what a price!

Trent Lott endorses murder. He knows that discrimination kills. Pope John Paul II endorses murder. He, too, knows the price of discrimination, having declared anti-Semitism a sin, having just canonized a Jewish-born nun who died in Auschwitz. He knows that discrimination kills. But when the Pope heard the news about Matthew Shepard, he too worried about spin. And so, on the subject of gay-bashing, the Pope and his cardinals and his bishops and priests maintain their cynical political silence. Rigorously denouncing the abuse and murder of homosexuals would be a big sin against spin; denouncing the murder of homosexuals in such a way that it received even one-thousandth of the coverage his and his church's attacks on homosexuals routinely receive, this would be an act of decency the Pope can't afford, for the Pope knows: Behind this one murdered kid stand legions of kids whose lives are scarred by the bigotry this Pope defends as sanctioned by God. None of these kids will ever be allowed to marry the person she or he loves, not while the Pope and his church can prevent it; all of these kids are told, by the Holy Catholic Church, and by the Episcopalians and Lutherans and Baptists and Orthodox Jews: Your love is cursed by God.

To speak out against murdering those who are discriminated against is to speak out against discrimination. To remain silent is to endorse murder.

A lot of people worry these days about the death of civil discourse. The Pope, in his new encyclical, Fides et Ratio (Faith and Reason), laments the death of civil discourse and cites "ancient philosophers who proposed friendship as one of the most appropriate contexts for sound philosophical inquiry." It's more than faintly ludicrous, this plea for friendship coming from the selfsame Pope who has tried so relentlessly to stamp out dissent in churches and Catholic universities, but let's follow the lead of the crazies who killed Matthew Shepard and take the Pope at his word.

Friendship is the proper context for discussion. Fine and good. Take the gun away from the head, Your Holiness, and we can discuss the merits of homosexual sex, of homosexual marriage, of homosexual love, of monogamy versus promiscuity, of lesbian or gay couples raising kids, of condom distribution in the schools, of confidential counseling for teenagers, of sex education that addresses more than abstinence. We can discuss abortion, we can discuss anything you like. Just promise me two things, friend: First, you won't beat my brains out with a pistol butt and leave me to die by the side of the road. Second, if someone else, someone a little less sane than you, feeling entitled to commit these terrible things against me because they understood you a little too literally, or were more willing than you to take your distaste for me and what I do to its most full-blooded conclusion, if someone else does violence against me, friend, won't you please make it your business to make a big public fuss about how badly I was treated? Won't you please make a point, friend, you who call yourself, and who are called, by millions of people, the Vicar on Earth of the very gentle Jesus, won't you please in the name of friendship announce that no one who deliberately inflicts suffering, whether by violence or by prejudice, on another human being, can be said to be acting in God's name? And announce it so that it is very clear that you include homosexuals when you refer to "human beings," and announce it so that the world hears you, really hears you, so that your announcement makes the news, as you are capable of doing when it suits your purposes? Won't you make this your purpose too? And if you won't, if you won't take responsibility for the consequences of your militant promotion of discrimination, won't you excuse me if I think you are not a friend at all but rather a homicidal liar whose claim to spiritual and moral leadership is fatally compromised, is worthnothing more than...well, worth nothing more than the disgusting, opportunistic leadership of Trent Lott.

A lot of people worry these days about the death of civil discourse, and would say that I ought not call the Pope a homicidal liar, nor (to be ecumenical about it) the orthodox rabbinate homicidal liars, nor Trent Lott a disgusting opportunistic hatemonger. But I worry a lot less about the death of civil discourse than I worry about being killed if, visiting the wrong town with my boyfriend, we forget ourselves so much as to betray, at the wrong moment in front of the wrong people, that we love one another. I worry much more about the recent death of the Maine antidiscrimination bill, and about the death of the New York hate crimes bill, which will not pass because it includes sexual orientation. I worry more about the death of civil rights than civil discourse. I worry much more about the irreversible soul-deaths of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered children growing up deliberately, malevolently isolated by the likes of Trent Lott and Newt Gingrich than I worry about the death of civil discourse. I mourn Matthew Shepard's actual death, caused by the unimpeachably civil "we hate the sin, not the sinner" hypocrisy of the religious right, endorsed by the political right, much more than I mourn the lost chance to be civil with someone who does not consider me fully a citizen, nor fully human. I mourn that cruel death more than the chance to be civil with those who sit idly by while theocrats, bullies, panderers and hatemongers, and their crazed murderous children, destroy democracy and our civic life. Civic, not civil, discourse is what matters, and civic discourse mandates the assigning of blame.

If you are lesbian, gay, transgendered, bi, reading this, here's one good place to assign blame: The Human Rights Campaign's appalling, post-Shepard endorsement of Al D'Amato dedicates our resources to the perpetuation of a Republican majority in Congress. The HRC, ostensibly our voice in Washington, is in cahoots with fag-bashers and worse. If you are a heterosexual person, and you are reading this: Yeah yeah yeah, you've heard it all before, but if you have not called your Congressperson to demand passage of a hate crimes bill that includes sexual orientation, and e-mailed every Congressperson, if you have not gotten up out of your comfortable chair to campaign for homosexual and all civil rights--campaign, not just passively support--may you think about this crucified man, and may you support--may you think about this crucified man, and may you mourn, and may you burn with a moral citizen's shame. As one civilized person to another: Matthew Shepard shouldn't have died. We should all burn with shame.

[steamedtangerine]

Just a reminder...

that Pat Robertson is still dead and buried (and probably burning) along with Tim Lahaye, Jerry Falwell, and Paul Weyrich...

[neondarklight]

Yes, people convicted of felonies in the United States don't have the right to vote (although, I do believe that people convicted of misdemeanors still have the right to vote, but I may be wrong on this). Given that the United States has a federal system, the way things work is different in each state. In some states, people who are no longer imprisoned still don't regain the right to vote. I'm not entirely sure which state is which (except for Florida, where people formerly imprisoned might not regain their right to vote), but it can depend on things such as whether or not someone is on parole, whether or not someone is on probation, etc.

Speaking of Florida, some really fucked shit happened there before the 2020 Presidential Election that I'd argue is the main reason why Trump won Florida in 2020. Hold on, I'm going to quote a research paper about the 2020 Presidential Election that I did for a class. To quote myself, "in Florida, a law was signed that mandated that all former prisoners must pay all of their court debts in order to regain the right to vote. In effect, this was a poll tax that disenfranchised approximately 1 million Floridians. Trump won Florida by 371,686 votes."

"According to the ACLU, 'across the country, 1 in 16 Black Americans cannot vote due to disenfranchisement laws;' 'counties with larger minority populations have fewer polling sites and poll workers per voter;' 'in 2018, Latinx and Black Americans were twice as likely as whites to be unable to get off work while polls were open;' and 'geographic isolation is a major barrier to Native American voters due to the inaccessibility of nearby polling locations in many reservations. In South Dakota, 32 percent of Native voters cite travel distance as a factor in deciding whether to vote.'"

To illustrate my point as best as I can, I am going to quote Paul Weyrich, the co-founder of the right-wing Heritage Foundation. "[He doesn't] want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of the people. They never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, [the Republican Party’s] leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down."

This ties into why these restrictions on voting exist: if you have a party that doesn't have a majority of support from most, if not all minority groups, and you want to win elections at all costs, you will do anything in your power to prevent those people from voting. You could enforce laws more harshly, create laws that disproportionately target them, you could redraw legislative districts to limit the power that they have (while racial gerrymandering is de jure illegal in America, partisan gerrymandering crucially isn't in most states), you would imprison them at a much higher rate to prevent them from voting if inmates can't vote, etc.

[oldshowbiz]

The Heritage Foundation vs. Judy Blume

[grothendieckalt]

I don’t think people realize how dangerous Project 2025 is. I know how dangerous it is because the Heritage Foundation has already succeeded at creating a program to unravel the tattered remains of American democracy; they published a document in 1981 called mandate for leadership, which outlined the policy measures necessary to obliterate the middle class and introduce right-wing zealotry to the United States. Reagan ended up taking 60% of his policies from that document. And it is not hyperbole when we call these people N@zis. Paul Weyrich, one of the founders of the Heritage Foundation, elected Laszlo Pasztor, a convicted war criminal at Nuremberg for crimes related to the Holoc@ust, as ethnic outreach coordinator. From this position he siphoned the rat lines to recruit every single former N@zi he could find to the GOP. This is the reason that the policies pushed by the Republican Party in the last 45 years are eerily similar to the strategies of a certain German dictator. Donald Trump claims he is unaware one of the most dangerous documents ever produced regarding public policy, but if we know one thing about Mussolini Jr. is that he cannot be trusted. His seemingly uncoordinated tactics, more succinctly denoted “dogwhistle politics”, is the apparatus by which he gathers the support and influence of the far-right while maintaining a plausible deniability that allows him to remain popular. It is unbelievably dangerous because it is extremely effective. We cannot allow the scourge of far-right authoritarianism and f@scism to once again entrench itself in the inner workings of the American government.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Peter Montgomery at RWW:

As the aggressive Christian nationalism that infuses the MAGA movement and Republican Party intensifies, journalists and filmmakers are paying closer attention to the threat this political ideology and its adherents pose to freedom in America. A must-watch new documentary, “Bad Faith: Christian Nationalism’s Unholy War on Democracy,” will be available for streaming on AppleTV, Amazon Prime, and Google Play beginning Friday, April 26. Directed by Stephen Ujlaki and Christopher Jacob Jones and narrated by Peter Coyote, “Bad Faith” makes masterful use of archival and current footage of Christian nationalist religious and political figures, infographics, and interviews with scholars, religious leaders, political analysts, and even a former Trump administration official. The film draws a compelling through line from the scheming power-building of Paul Weyrich, the right-wing operative who recruited Jerry Falwell and other evangelical preachers to create the religious-right as a political movement in the late 1970s, to the institution-destroying antidemocratic ambitions of MAGA insiders like Steve Bannon, as well as Donald Trump’s dominionist “prophets” and “apostles” and the Jan. 6 insurrectionists they inspired.

[...]

“Bad Faith” explains how that transformation happened, documenting the role played by the Council for National Policy, a partnership between anti-regulation, economically libertarian oil barons and the religious-right leaders who intended to remake the Republican Party, take over the Supreme Court, and use their political power to enforce “traditional” views of family, sexuality, and gender on the rest of the nation. The Koch brothers poured tens of millions of dollars into “a state-of-the-art political data platform” that Council for National Policy groups use to collect personal information—including personal mental health, behavioral health, and treatment data—and use that information to micro-target individuals. (In “God & Country,” another documentary released earlier this year, Ralph Reed is shown bragging that his organization tracked “147 different data points” on the conservative Christians they targeted for turnout operations.) [...]

As “Bad Faith” makes clear, religious-right leaders viewed Trump as a powerful blunt weapon in a long-term political and spiritual war against the federal government and institutions dominated by progressive forces. “The Council’s gambit had paid off,” the film notes about Trump’s time in office. “Christian nationalists were firmly embedded at the highest levels of government. The Supreme Court had an absolute majority of justices poised to overturn landmark civil and women’s rights decisions. Paul Weyrich’s vision of a Christian nation was becoming a reality.” That explains why Christian nationalist leaders were willing to dismantle democracy to keep Trump in power. Members of the Council for National Policy and its political action arm went into “full combat mode” to promote Trump’s big lie, and, as Right Wing Watch documented, they supported his efforts to keep power after the 2020 election, portraying it as a holy war between the forces of good and evil. As Samuel Perry notes in the film, viewing politics as spiritual warfare between the forces of God and Satan makes it easy for those who see themselves on God’s side to “justify just about anything.”

The Bad Faith: Christian Nationalism’s Unholy War on Democracy documentary comes out today on streaming platforms such as Amazon Prime, Apple TV, and Google Play today. Bad Faith focuses on the history of Christian Nationalism and its very real threat to democracy.

[odinsblog]

Ronald Reagan is definitely a good indicator of when the Southern Strategy + “white grievance” politics (or some variation thereof) began its ascendancy/ubiquity in modern day politics, but nearly every serious problem America is dealing with today—from racist policing + mass incarceration, to the never ending housing crisis, to profitized education & healthcare—can be traced directly back to anti-Black racism and how this country has, since reconstruction, contorted itself into knots in an effort to appease conservative white supremacists.

America will never fix the root problem if we refuse to name or even acknowledge it.

One of the most durable myths in recent history is that the religious right, the coalition of conservative evangelicals and fundamentalists, emerged as a political movement in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling legalizing abortion. The tale goes something like this: Evangelicals, who had been politically quiescent for decades, were so morally outraged by Roe that they resolved to organize in order to overturn it.

This myth of origins is oft repeated by the movement’s leaders. In his 2005 book, Jerry Falwell, the firebrand fundamentalist preacher, recounts his distress upon reading about the ruling in the Jan. 23, 1973, edition of the Lynchburg News: “I sat there staring at the Roe v. Wade story,” Falwell writes, “growing more and more fearful of the consequences of the Supreme Court’s act and wondering why so few voices had been raised against it.” Evangelicals, he decided, needed to organize.

Some of these anti- Roe crusaders even went so far as to call themselves “new abolitionists,” invoking their antebellum predecessors who had fought to eradicate slavery.

But the abortion myth quickly collapses under historical scrutiny.

In fact, it wasn’t until 1979—a full six years after Roe—that evangelical leaders, at the behest of conservative activist Paul Weyrich, seized on abortion not for moral reasons, but as a rallying-cry to deny President Jimmy Carter a second term. Why? Because the anti-abortion crusade was more palatable than the religious right’s real motive: protecting segregated schools. So much for the new abolitionism.

👉🏿 https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-107133/

[filosofablogger]

From Then To Now ... The Path To Today

Ever wonder how today’s GOP strayed so far from the original “Party of Lincoln”?  It didn’t happen overnight, wasn’t the result of just one incident or Supreme Court Ruling, but a series of events starting back in 1964.  Political analyst Thom Hartmann tells the story and it is one that is definitely worth your time and effort to read … it was an eye-opener for me. “How Come Everything the…

[dankusner]

Rise of Christian nationalism Make America Christian again?

Texas bought in to toxic mix of religion and politics, and the founding fathers would not be amused

Politics and religion at the dinner table?

Never!

So goes the adage.

The very first article in the Bill of Rights enshrines the separation of church and state.

“Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or the free exercise thereof.”

Our Constitution was a revolutionary document.

Breaking ground at the time, it declared that power comes from the people, made no mention of God or a monarch, and banned religious tests for public office.

But now religion and politics, a toxic mix, are served up at dinner tables and in pulpits, classrooms and law books throughout the country, driven by the rapidly increasing activism of those who want to establish Christianity as our national religion.

Our own state of Texas is playing an outsize role nationally, led by its most prominent statewide elected officials, high-profile Baptist ministers and West Texas billionaires.

Meanwhile, neighboring Louisiana and Oklahoma are in a race to out-preach Texas, the governments there requiring Bibles and Ten Commandments posters in public schools. Rise of Christian nationalism

During my time as a member of the White House staff under President Richard Nixon, and later in the U.S. Congress, there were few issues that inspired any sort of religion-based activism on the part of Republicans, other than the Roe vs. Wade decision, decided the first year of my first congressional term.

I announced my support of the Roe decision and received little, if any, blowback from my constituents.

The long slippery slope to where we are today began with the formation of the Moral Majority organization by a Virginia-based Baptist minister, Jerry Falwell, who saw an opening with the rightward drift of the party leading to the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.

Aided and abetted by his co-founder, Republican activist Paul Weyrich, he started endorsing and opposing candidates on the basis of their willingness to support a set of issues supported by him and his organization.

Seeing the threat, Billy Graham, a Baptist and arguably the greatest evangelist in American history, said in 1981:

“It would disturb me if there was a wedding between the religious fundamentalists and the political right. The hard right has no interest in religion except to manipulate it.”

All of this mixing of politics and religion is part of the rise of an ideology commonly called Christian nationalism.

As defined by the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, which notably opposes this movement, Christian nationalism is a cultural construct and political ideology that promotes the idea that America was divinely appointed as a Christian nation, that our founders wanted to establish it as such, that America has a special place in world history and in biblical prophecy, and that there should be no separation between church and state.

Baptists’ surprising role

Growing up Baptist and attending Baylor University, I was schooled in the principle of church-state separation and proud of the role my denomination played in support of this most important of constitutional guarantees.

The authors of our founding documents, especially Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, were influenced by John Leland, a prominent Baptist evangelist of the time.

Leland, Jefferson and Madison were all Virginians, and deliberated on ideas of church and state that became the language of the first amendment.

In fact, the famous phrase “wall of separation between church and state” arose from just such a deliberation with Baptists.

It appeared in a letter from Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Association in 1802.

“Guard against those men who make a great noise about religion, in choosing representatives,” Leland said that same year.

“If they knew the nature and worth of religion, they would not debauch it to such shameful purposes.”

On the steps of the U.S. Capitol in 1920, George Truett, pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas, said,

“Indeed, the supreme contribution of the new world to the old is the contribution of religious liberty. This is the chiefest contribution that America has thus far made to civilization. … It is the natural and fundamental and indefeasible right of every human being to worship God or not, according to the dictates of his conscience, and, as long as he does not infringe upon the rights of others, he is to be held accountable alone to God for all religious beliefs and practices.”

It is noteworthy that the current occupant of that pulpit, Robert Jeffress, has written a book titled America Is a Christian Nation and is politically active on a number of partisan fronts.

The founding documents

The Constitution contains no mention of Christianity or Jesus Christ.

It refers to religion only twice:

in the First Amendment, which prohibits state-endorsed religion, and in Article VI, which prohibits religious tests for public office.

The Declaration of Independence recognizes God-given rights of “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness” and contains three other mentions: “Nature’s God,” “creator” and “divine Providence.”

The Articles of Confederation discuss the “Great Governor of the World.”

In these papers, the foundation of the Constitution, the only mention of religion is an admonition to keep religion from government, and government from religion.

The Treaty of Tripoli states plainly: “As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion … it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.”

The movement today

Today, mainline denominations largely support First Amendment protections.

Some, while supporting the separation, do encourage their members to vote and be active in political and civic affairs.

Support for the Christian nationalist agenda is most pronounced among older Americans who feel threatened by changing demographics and growth of nonwhite and non-Christian populations, cultural and political threats from secular and progressive ideologies, and changing social norms.

In other words, Christian nationalism is more about identity politics than biblical faith.

In her testimony before a U.S. House committee in December 2022, Amanda Tyler, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, said, “Christian nationalism is anti-democratic and a threat to our constitutional republic.”

The role of Texas

Texas has become a key center of gravity for the national movement.

The governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general are all high-profile supporters, along with Sen. Ted Cruz.

West Texas billionaires Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks are pouring enormous amounts of dollars into both the national and Texas effort.

Gov. Greg Abbott has enlisted pastors and bishops to endorse his school voucher plan from the pulpit.

On the agenda in Texas and a number of other states are school vouchers for private religious education, mandatory school prayer, teaching creationism, restricting abortion access, opposing LGBTQ rights and enshrining Christian values in law.

Which means the Christian nationalist agenda differs from the one many Texans would prefer: protecting children, educating our workforce, ensuring religious freedom for all and limiting attempts at social engineering from government.

Alan W. Steelman is a former Republican member of Congress who represented Texas’ 5th District from 1973 to 1977.