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Rdtf
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 Posted: Thu Apr 14, 2005 4:01 pm Post subject: UPDATED -Pt 3 added-Wash Times:Why Bush threatens secularism |
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http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20050414-124744-9798r.htm
| Quote: | Why Bush threatens secularism
By Julia Duin
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
April 14, 2005
Special Report: Second of three parts.
The weekend before President Bush's second inauguration, 60 humanists, atheists and ethical culturalists gathered at a hotel just off Dupont Circle for an "emergency meeting" organized by the American Humanist Association.
"The situation is now as bad as we'll ever see it," Roy Speckhardt, the group's deputy director, says afterward.
He predicts that Mr. Bush's evangelical Christian views would be folded into government policy on judicial appointees, abortion, social services and other issues.
"A slim [election] victory is being interpreted as a mandate on moral issues, so we are concerned," Mr. Speckhardt says.
One of the 20 organizations represented at the pre-inaugural strategy session was a group from Madison, Wis., called the Freedom from Religion Foundation. Group founder Anne Nicol Gaylor, 78, unable to attend because of failing eyesight, sent son-in-law Dan Barker in her place.
The foundation is the mom-and-pop operation among the four main organizations — the others being the American Civil Liberties Union, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and People for the American Way — that are leading the legal battles to push God from the public square and create a nation in man's image.
In 28 years, Mrs. Gaylor's foundation has filed about 25 lawsuits in addition to complaints that never made it to court. An early victory halted the 122-year history of prayers at University of Wisconsin graduation ceremonies in 1976 because of a complaint lodged by Mrs. Gaylor's daughter, Annie Laurie Gaylor, then a student. She is now the co-director of the foundation with her husband, Mr. Barker. In 1985, their group managed to stop the university football team's pre-game prayers.
"Sometimes all you have to do is complain," Mr. Barker says. "It's better that way, and cheaper. She asked the school why there's prayer, and they said, 'Gee, why is there?' "
Christianity and other religions are essentially harmful, in the view of the foundation, which claims 5,000 members, most of them atheists who make small donations.
"There is complete scorn on the part of the current administration as to the separation of church and state," the elder Mrs. Gaylor says in an interview. "There has never been any less respect in Washington for church-state separation, even though church-state separation is one of the things that made our country possible in the first place."
Many Christians and others of faith, however, see a growing threat that Mrs. Gaylor and her allies are intent on loosing the nation from its Judeo-Christian moorings.
Building the wall
On New Year's Day 1802, President Jefferson wrote a letter to a Connecticut association of Baptists that would change American judicial history and define the boundaries of religious freedom.
"I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' " Jefferson wrote, quoting the First Amendment.
"Thus," he continued, "building a wall of separation between church and state."
Although not part of the Constitution, those concluding 10 words are considered by many Americans to be authoritative on the subject. Jefferson's letter celebrated religious liberty, yet the courts have cited his "wall" to bar faith and its forms from government, including schools, public parks and buildings.
The nation's third president sought to reassure the Danbury Baptist Association of Connecticut, representatives of a minority denomination that refused to conform to the established Congregationalist and Episcopal churches. He actually intended his letter to convince the Baptists that a state-established church would not trample their beliefs.
Jefferson's phrase did not enter the lexicon of constitutional law until 1879, when Supreme Court Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite quoted it in Reynolds v. United States, in which Mormon polygamist George Reynolds argued that the First Amendment allowed him to commit bigamy. The Supreme Court used the wall metaphor to explain that the Constitution was not meant to support specific Mormon practices.
In 1947, Justice Hugo L. Black resurrected "the wall of separation between church and state" in writing for the majority in Everson v. Board of Education, a New Jersey case asking whether the state should subsidize bus service for Catholic children in parochial schools.
"That wall must be kept high and impregnable," Justice Black wrote. "We could not approve the slightest breach."
The high court nevertheless upheld the state subsidy. This infuriated many Baptists, who traditionally have been among the strongest supporters of separation of church and state. They regarded the decision as favoring Catholics.
In 1947, Joseph Dawson, executive secretary of the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs, founded Protestants and Other Americans United for the Separation of Church and State.
More than 50 years later, with the named shortened to Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the organization campaigns from its Capitol Hill offices against what it views as entanglements of religion and government.
Beliefs versus policy
Americans United prevented the Rev. Pat Robertson's Virginia Beach-based Christian graduate school, Regent University, from receiving $30 million from the sale of state construction bonds.
One of the group's several complaints last year to the Internal Revenue Service cited a pastoral letter from the Catholic bishop of Colorado Springs, in which he urged Catholics to vote for pro-life candidates. Other complaints targeted rallies in Pennsylvania and Ohio churches for Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry.
Americans United vigorously protested when Congress and Mr. Bush intervened in hopes of preventing the starvation death of Terri Schiavo, the brain-damaged Florida woman whose plight focused the nation's attention on end-of-life issues before her death March 31.
Even so, the group's executive director, the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, a minister with the United Church of Christ, among the most liberal Protestant denominations, maintains genial relations with conservatives. For four years, Mr. Lynn was co-host, with conservative commentator Oliver North, of a show on the Christian radio network Salem Communications. He is on the board of the American Civil Liberties Union and a regular analyst on Fox News.
"I do have very, very traditional religious beliefs," Mr. Lynn says. "Many people are surprised by that. That is something that's very much a part of who I am, but that shouldn't be a part of what government is."
Mr. Lynn is not easily painted as an "anti-Christian soldier." Government bans on abortion first galvanized him. As a freshman at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa., in the late 1960s, he discovered that his roommate had taken a girlfriend out of the country to terminate her pregnancy.
"All of a sudden, I realized that religious groups had now dictated what rights a woman has to make an intimate moral decision on her own," Mr. Lynn says. "And that was what triggered me, worrying about what damage it does for our country's fabric to have religious decisions guide a country's policy."
Mr. Lynn took issue with references to God and faith in Mr. Bush's inaugural ceremony and address in January and with the fact that only Christian clergymen participated.
"An event that is billed as a celebration for the entire nation should include everyone, even those who profess no faith," he says. "This inaugural sent a message that in order to be truly American, you must also be religious."
Mr. Lynn took umbrage at remarks that the president had made a week earlier in an Oval Office interview with editors and reporters of The Washington Times.
"I don't see how you can be president without a relationship with the Lord," Mr. Bush said, discussing the role of his personal faith in his public office.
"It offended many people because it seemed to suggest that as a matter of principle ... he thought he really couldn't be president, he couldn't imagine a person who was Muslim or Jewish who didn't have the Christian Lord as his leader," Mr. Lynn said Jan. 17 on "MSNBC Reports."
Another guest on the show, Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, teased Mr. Lynn.
Mr. Bush's comment "didn't offend three-quarters to 80 to 90 percent of Americans," Mr. Land said. "Barry Lynn is in an extreme secularist minority and he's running around with his hair on fire, and nobody's noticing."
Hollywood glitz
Television and film producer Norman Lear, together with Barbara Jordan, the former Democratic congresswoman from Texas, founded People for the American Way in 1981. Their purpose, according to their mission statement, was "to counter the growing clout and divisive message of right-wing televangelists, including Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and Jimmy Swaggart."
Mr. Lear hired lawyer and lobbyist Anthony Podesta — whose brother, John, would become President Clinton's chief of staff — as the founding president. The group, based in Southern California, made TV specials to spread its message as well as to fight efforts to return prayer to public schools and remove the theory of evolution from biology textbooks.
Hollywood celebrities were enlisted as board members, among them actor Alec Baldwin and songwriter Marilyn Bergman. The board also drew from the religious left, including the Rev. Robert Drinan, a Georgetown University professor and former Massachusetts congressman. President Ralph G. Neas, who declined to comment for this article, has identified himself as a Catholic.
"We have a different vision of religious freedom; we just don't want the government pushing it," says Elliot Mincberg, the group's vice president and legal director. "We think when it comes to religious free exercise, the Constitution says the government should get out of the way."
David Horowitz, who edits the idiosyncratic conservative Web site frontpagemag.com and is a former leftist, insists that People for the American Way "was organized as an anti-Christian group."
"On their Web site, they smear the [Christian] religious right," Mr. Horowitz says. "Why not the Jewish right? Why not the Muslim right?"
"Right Wing Watch" on www.pfaw.org does take note of some secular groups, but conservative Christians are the prime targets.
Mr. Mincberg lists three conservative Jewish organizations as troublesome: Toward Tradition, Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations and Agudath Israel of America.
"We've done plenty of battle with them as well," he says, "but it's the Christian right that's been out there much more aggressively."
Focus on the Family founder James Dobson is viewed as a major menace.
"If you had to pick one person who has the most power and influence nationally, you might pick him," Mr. Mincberg says.
People for the American Way criticized Mr. Robertson's 1988 presidential run; opposed the Supreme Court nominations of Robert J. Bork in 1987 and Clarence Thomas in 1991; and sponsored a 1998 advertising campaign against President Clinton's impeachment. More recently, it started a $5 million advertising campaign to pressure Senate Republicans to back down on reforms of filibuster rules that would hasten confirmation of Mr. Bush's judicial nominees.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit research group, the Lear organization's political action committee gave $177,802 in the 2004 election cycle, 98 percent of it to Democratic candidates, party committees and leadership political action committees.
The group's political action committee, Voters Alliance, donated a total of $42,500 to 18 Democratic House candidates and $54,000 to 15 Democratic Senate candidates. The largest contribution: $10,000 to the losing campaign of Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle.
'Out of a hat'
The Freedom from Religion Foundation issued a press release Sept. 13, 2001, calling the September 11 attacks by Islamist terrorists "the ultimate faith-based initiative."
The release went on: "Religion is not the answer, it is probably the problem."
And: "Prayer had its chance on September 11 and it failed."
September 11 "should have clinched the idea this is a naturalistic universe," group leader Mr. Barker says. "To stand by and do nothing makes God an accomplice. If He exists, why are we worshipping this monster?"
The fight against God and for abortion rights appear intertwined for Mr. Barker's mother-in-law, Mrs. Gaylor. She was born in 1926 in Tomah, Wis. A biography posted at the group's Web site, www.ffrf.org, says her mother died when she was 2 and her father, a farmer, found religion "embarrassing." She graduated as an English major from University of Wisconsin in 1949 and was married the same year.
After raising four children, Mrs. Gaylor, in 1972, founded the Women's Medical Fund, which has helped 14,000 poor women obtain abortions. In 1975, she published a book "Abortion Is a Blessing."
A friend, Anne Treseder, identifies the motivation behind Mrs. Gaylor's anti-religion activism in a letter dated that year: "She told me that after much soul-searching she had concluded that a woman's right to reproductive freedom, and to basic civil rights, would never be realized as long as religious dogma played such a huge role in government policy."
Mrs. Gaylor decided she needed the backing of an organization, so she began her foundation with three members in 1976.
"It was almost a joke," says Mr. Barker, 55. "Anne just wanted to complain to the media about prayers in public meetings. People asked her what her group was. So she pulled the name out of a hat."
Mrs. Gaylor's husband and children helped her build the organization with offbeat publicity stunts. In 1983, the group posted pink-and-black signs on buses in Madison, Wis., calling the Bible "a grim fairy tale."
'Fighting back'
Besides eliminating public prayer at the state university, her successes include ending Good Friday's status as an official state holiday in 1996; banning taxpayer subsidies (in the form of free Internet connections) to private schools in Wisconsin in 2001; and removing a Ten Commandments inscription from public land in Milwaukee in 2002.
Mr. Barker draws a distinction between the "public square," which he defines as anything owned by the government, and the "public sphere," where points of view are expressed.
"We think the government should be neutral — not advancing nor hindering religion — in the public square," he says. "In the public sphere, we are free to express our points of view."
Mr. Barker says he decided he was an atheist in 1983, about 20 years after he says he became an evangelist at 15. He began to question his faith, he says, after serving as a Quaker, independent charismatic and Assemblies of God pastor and after performing missionary work in Mexico.
Mr. Barker moved to Wisconsin to work for Mrs. Gaylor's foundation, marrying Annie Laurie Gaylor in 1987 and joining the family cause. A piano player who has accompanied Pat Boone and other Christian artists, he now recasts old hymns in humanist terms with titles such as "You Can't Win with Original Sin" and "God-Less America."
Julaine Appling, executive director of the Family Research Institute in Madison, Wis., frequently contends with the Barker organization. Most of its energy is spent challenging Christians, Ms. Appling says.
"When they go after religion, they go after Christianity aggressively," she says. "I don't see them going after other religions."
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click here for Part 1
Religeon Under a Secular Assault
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20050413-122937-3482r.htm
Last edited by Rdtf on Fri Apr 15, 2005 3:20 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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Rdtf
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Joined: 13 May 2004
Posts: 2209
Location: BUSHville
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| Posted: Fri Apr 15, 2005 3:18 pm Post subject: |
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Part 3
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20050415-124649-3229r.htm
| Quote: | Believers aim to 'reclaim' America
By Julia Duin
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
April 15, 2005
Third of three parts.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — The 5,200-pound slab of granite bearing a replica of the Ten Commandments rests in isolated splendor, set off by red and blue nylon sheets, on a flatbed truck parked on the front lawn of a church.
It's not just any church, either. Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church is a signature evangelical congregation in southern Florida — its gleaming white, 303-foot steeple visible for miles around.
This same Ten Commandments monument was famously installed by Roy Moore, then chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, in the rotunda of the Judiciary Building in Montgomery in the summer of 2001.
Justice Moore's monument is something of a piece de resistance in the renewed effort by Christians and others of faith to preserve the place of the Almighty in the public square.
On this February day, the Commandments in granite is a top attraction of the annual "Reclaiming America for Christ" conference that drew 942 faithful to Coral Ridge Presbyterian, also stop No. 130 on the monument's nationwide tour. During breaks, conferees surround the slab, taking pictures and admiring the Bible verses and patriotic quotes inscribed on all four sides.
They recall the federal court order in 2003 that the monument be removed because it violates the Constitution's prohibition "against the establishment of religion." They talk about how fellow justices had to sue to remove the defiant Justice Moore — whom they consider a godly man — from office.
Inside the palm tree-ringed church, Richard Land, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission for the Southern Baptist Convention, preaches on "A God-Blessed America: How It Could Happen and What It Could Look Like."
Loosed from its biblical moorings, Mr. Land tells the assembly that "a pagan America" can only become home to a legion of ills: harvests of fetal tissue and eggs from women's bodies, marriage redefined as any union with a variety of partners, single-parent families as the norm, a low age of consent for child-adult sex, hard-core porn on television.
Change will come when "a certain percentage of American Christians known only to God humble themselves and pray," Mr. Land says. "He will lean over from heaven and pour out a blessing, not only on Christians, but on non-Christian and Christian alike."
In such a "God-blessed America," he says, streets and schools would be safe, divorce and illegitimate children would be rare, and the elderly would live with their families and not in nursing homes.
"In an American society that preaches Judeo-Christian values, rooted in biblical theology, not all will be Christian, but they can at least live according to [shared] values," Mr. Land concludes.
The conference, designed to energize Christian activists, is the work of the Center for Reclaiming America (CRA), an eight-year-old public-policy group founded by Coral Ridge.
For two days, participants hear the words of rising stars in the politically active arm of American evangelicalism. One is the Rev. Rick Scarborough, former pastor of First Baptist Church in Pearland, Texas, and founder of Vision America, which seeks to involve pastors in public policy debates.
"All God is waiting for is for the church to show up," Mr. Scarborough says, in a message that earns him a standing ovation.
Standing firm
This series has examined the legal battles against religion in public life waged by a network of organizations that includes humanists, atheists and radical feminists as well as liberal or secular Jews and Christians.
The clashes highlight a growing determination of religious conservatives to stand firm for the Judeo-Christian principles of the nation's founding. People of faith are confronting the gathering tide of secularism and a coarser culture in a variety of ways.
A loose coalition of evangelical Protestants and conservative Catholics worked for President Bush's re-election in 11 battleground states, helping to make "moral values" a front-burner topic. Such activism is an essential part of any campaign to "reclaim" America "from those who have used the courts primarily to divorce America from her moral heritage," CRA spokesman John Aman says.
"We won the White House on pro-family values," explains Gary Cass, the group's new executive director, "but we're losing in the courts" on those same values.
But, he adds: "Since the late 1980s, the conservative movement has become more organized, better funded and more sophisticated. We're not going away. There is too much at stake for our children and grandchildren."
Mr. Cass, 48, moved to Fort Lauderdale last summer to add some muscle to the Center for Reclaiming America after pastoring churches in the San Diego area, serving on a school board there and recruiting evangelical Christians to run for office.
His group's Web site, www.reclaimamerica.org, is loaded for action. A string of petitions ranges from "Defund Planned Parenthood" to "Free Our Churches." The latter refers to a bill before Congress that would allow religious organizations — including pastors — to support or oppose political candidates without losing their tax-exempt status. Elsewhere are pleas for donations, lists of rallies and details on reaching Congress.
Another feature of the Web site is "A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing," an expose of the American Civil Liberties Union illustrated by a photo of a snarling wolf. The copy describes ACLU-inspired lawsuits and the organization's "war against religion."
The center last summer formed a lobbying group, Liberty's Voice, to be based in Washington and go head to head with the ACLU in disputes over religious liberty.
The group hopes to put a policy activist in 12 regional offices across the country. Another goal is to field activists in every congressional district, beginning with the key Electoral College states of Florida and Ohio.
Mr. Cass says his goal this year is to raise $2 million, including $1.2 million to finance the lobbying group and three other initiatives: media outreach, an online campaign called National Grassroots Alliance and a think tank, the Strategic Institute.
'Intellectually engaged'
The Strategic Institute, with a staff of five analysts, expects to enter the debate on pornography, homosexual activism, the creation-evolution divide and "life" issues such as abortion and stem-cell research. First to sign on is Kelly Hollowell, 40, a Virginia Beach patent attorney who taught bioethics at the University of Richmond and Regent University in Virginia Beach.
The National Grassroots Alliance began in 2001 as a lobby for Senate confirmation of John Ashcroft as President Bush's first attorney general. It now has an e-mail list of 400,000 names. Over two days in late February, 107,000 of them appeared on an online petition appealing for Florida Gov. Jeb Bush to save the life of Terri Schiavo, the brain-damaged Florida woman who would die of starvation March 31 after her husband successfully sought to have her feeding tube removed.
R. Albert Mohler Jr. is doing his part from Louisville, Ky., as a leading American evangelical and president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
In the past three years, Mr. Mohler dramatically increased his output of Internet and radio commentaries and newspaper op-ed pieces on topics such as stem-cell research, same-sex "marriage," human cloning and the definition of the family.
"There was an entire constellation of issues that demanded attention," Mr. Mohler, 45, says in an interview. "I wanted to mobilize Christians to become intellectually engaged and politically aware."
Across the country, evangelicals are forming a potent alliance, says Diane Knippers, president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, a watchdog group in Washington that monitors the religious left.
"Not just evangelicals, but Catholics, too, have some political clout and are getting respect," Mrs. Knippers says. "Some people in the Democratic Party are having to pay attention to us. They've realized they've overlooked an important constituency. A lot of people think it's wrong to have an entirely secularized society, with no room for acknowledging God.
"There's a quiet determination to draw the line," she says. "The religious left is all smoke and mirrors. In terms of the religious landscape right now, the initiative is ours."
Christians in court
Modern Christian legal activism got its start in 1982, when a 36-year-old lawyer named John Whitehead founded the Rutherford Institute.
Mr. Whitehead's initial investment was $200; he now operates with a $2.5 million annual budget. He asks a network of more than 500 lawyers to work pro bono on one case a year involving religious liberties.
"When I first started Rutherford, there was no cohesive litigation strategy," Mr. Whitehead, now 58, says from his home in Charlottesville. "A lot of these Christian lawyers thought, 'Would Jesus go file a lawsuit?' and they were debating this issue constantly.
"My main emphasis was [that] even if you lose, litigation often has great education value."
The Rutherford Institute gained new prominence in 1997, when it helped Paula Jones file a sexual-harassment and discrimination lawsuit against President Clinton.
Its recent court victories include decisions allowing prayer and other religious expression at the Alamo in Texas and permitting an 11-year-old Muslim girl to wear a head covering to an Oklahoma public school.
Another Virginia lawyer, Jay Sekulow of Virginia Beach, started going to court in the mid-'80s on behalf of religious liberty and the rights of Christians.
Today Mr. Sekulow, 48, is chief counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice, a District-based constitutional law firm. The Rev. Pat Robertson, the religious broadcaster, founded the center in 1990 as a Christian answer to the ACLU.
Mr. Sekulow successfully argued several cases before the Supreme Court to protect the free speech of pro-life demonstrators and allow public school students to form Bible clubs on campus.
The pivotal shift in strategic momentum for the center, Mr. Sekulow says, came when he stopped arguing from the establishment clause of the First Amendment that he views as guaranteeing free exercise of religion. He began arguing instead on free speech grounds against religious discrimination.
Both lawyers say they are optimistic, though cautious, about the future of religious liberties.
The country is seeing a "growing, strong, serious movement" of Christians, Jews and Muslims who are open and uncompromising about their faith, Mr. Whitehead says, even if that could spark a "backlash" in the public square.
Mr. Sekulow says much rides on the outcome of the "constitutional showdown" in the Senate over Democratic filibustering of President Bush's judicial nominees.
"This is going to impact every cultural issue we have right now because of the increased role the courts are taking," Mr. Sekulow says. "The next month is going to be the key month."
Joining forces
Separating church and state is in the interest of American pluralism, ACLU President Nadine Strossen argues. "Many people with deeply held religious beliefs don't want the government to interfere by having government sponsorship," she says in an interview.
"I fear the removal of the Judeo-Christian foundation of our society," Dennis Prager, a conservative Jew, wrote in his syndicated column after the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted last May to remove a tiny cross from the county seal because the Southern California ACLU threatened to sue. "This is the real battle of our time, indeed the civil war of our time. The left wants America to become secular like Western Europe, not remain the Judeo-Christian country it has always been."
Binyamin Jolkovsky, editor of the Web site JewishWorldReview.com, argues that the ACLU and other civil liberties groups act counter to Jewish principles in efforts they depict as protecting minority religions.
"Jews who take their Judaism seriously don't want God taken out of the public square," Mr. Jolkovsky says.
A loose network of conservative Protestant, Catholic and Jewish groups coalesced during the 2004 election season not only to send Mr. Bush back to the White House but to add Republican seats in both the House and Senate.
Shortly afterward, the Rev. Jerry Falwell, who founded the Moral Majority in 1979, announced that he would restart his pioneering organization to take on new challenges.
Mr. Falwell is re-entering the fray after a reawakening over the past decade of a theologically conservative movement in which religious groups quietly help, advise and emulate each other.
In early March, for instance, the Thomas More Law Center in Ann Arbor, Mich., a Catholic answer to the ACLU, sent out a fundraising letter that, with a few minor changes, could have come from the Center for Reclaiming America.
"America's greatness lies in our Christian roots," the letter reads. "To a great extent, the key to maintaining those Christian roots depends on the ability of the [Catholic] Church and our bishops to proclaim the truth on the great moral issues of our time. Our enemies at the ACLU and elsewhere know this as well."
The move to counter the secular left also has the attention of Christian leaders who are black. Some brokered first-time alliances during the recent election season with white evangelicals over the issue of same-sex "marriage."
The Rev. Harry Jackson of Hope Christian Church in Lanham joined other black pastors in Los Angeles in February to announce a "Black Contract With America on Moral Values," with the goal of promoting socially conservative legislation.
"Some of us in the evangelical community have been painted as mean-spirited and inarticulate," Mr. Jackson told 153 evangelical leaders during a March 10 gathering at the Hart Senate Office Building. Disarming such perceptions is simple, he said, adding: "The black community, with its needs, would team with the white evangelical community, with its power. We can change the way America thinks about religion."
From his vantage point in Louisville, Ky., Mr. Mohler agrees that more Americans are mobilizing against secularism but also has a warning.
"Some on the left are negotiating a way to use Christian language while keeping their liberal commitments," he says. "Evangelicals need to be more sophisticated in terms of looking past the language to what proposals are being offered."
Mr. Mohler intends to alert his audiences to such hidden hazards.
"Whether it's too little or too late is yet to be seen," he says. "Millions of Americans are awakening to the fact that something significant has happened in American society and unless they do something, the very future of the American experiment is threatened."
• Staff writer Jon Ward and researcher John Sopko contributed to this report. |
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