‘God’s Warriors’: CNN Examines Worldwide Role Of Religion In Politics
Tonight CNN starts delving into the volatile mix of religion and politics.
At 9 p.m. EDT, “Larry King Live” will preview a three-part series called “God’s Warriors,” which is scheduled to start tomorrow evening on CNN. The series’ chief reporter, Christiane Amanpour, and a panel of guests, including Americans United’s Barry W. Lynn, will join Larry to discuss the impact religious fundamentalists are having on politics worldwide.
In a press release previewing the series, Amanpour says that “As I report around the world, people often ask me about the rise of religious influence on political power within the United States, but in fact this true worldwide.
“Wherever I go,” Amanpour continues, “what the believers do all have in common is that they want to bring the politics of faith into the very center of public life – we are seeing this now on almost every continent.”
Lynn will focus on this nation’s Religious Right groups and leaders who have spent decades trying to destroy the First Amendment principle of church-state separation in an ignoble drive to force all citizens to live within the fundamentalist movement’s rigid moral codes.
Religious Right activists continue to argue that America was founded as a Christian nation and that our laws should be based on their literal reading of the Bible. A Christian Reconstructionist gathering in Asheville, N.C., earlier this year included an array of speakers who trumpeted this line of thinking.
Just last week, Americans United was the target of a prominent Southern Baptist preacher who believes that lawmakers should be beholden to Christian fundamentalist strictures. The Rev. Wiley S. Drake of the First Southern Baptist Church of Buena Park, Calif., became highly agitated after Americans United asked the Internal Revenue Service to investigate his endorsement of Republican presidential candidate Mick Huckabee. In an Aug. 11 press release on church letterhead and later on his church-based radio show, Drake plumped for Huckabee, saying that the former Arkansas governor would listen to God.
“I believe God has chosen Mike for such an hour,” Drake said in his Aug. 11 statement, “and I believe of all those running Mike Huckabee will listen to God.”
Drake, like many among the nation’s Religious Right movement, is convinced that a fundamentalist form of Christianity must be the nation’s governing force, not the U.S. Constitution. And the California pastor isn’t some nobody. He’s a former denominational vice president and current candidate for the Southern Baptist Convention presidency.
When news reached Drake that Americans United had asked the IRS to look into his apparent violation of federal tax law, which bars all non-profits from endorsing candidates for public office, the pastor responded by urging his supporters to engage in “imprecatory prayer” (curses) against Americans United and some of its staff members.
The pastor’s calls for death or other horrific tragedy to come to Americans United staffers prompted the Huckabee campaign to denounce Drake’s actions.
The Amanpour documentary on “God’s Warriors,” is a wrap and prepared to air tomorrow, but Drake would have made a fine example of this nation’s strident religious voices intent on destroying liberty as we know it.