The events don’t appear on Huckabee’s public schedule. They are not open to the media. Attendees say little or nothing about them in public.
A shadowy collection of Religious Right fat cats appears to be working behind the scenes to encourage churches to promote the presidential candidacy of Mike Huckabee.
For months, Americans United has been receiving reports about state-based groups with names that include words like “renewal” and “restoration.” The idea seems to be to bring together fundamentalist pastors for closed-door meetings that, organizers say, discuss social issues.
If that’s really all they are doing there would be no problem, at least as far as the tax question goes. Tax-exempt religious groups can take stands on political and social issues.
But there’s another wrinkle to this that is more problematic: These groups keep scheduling Huckabee to speak to them – Huckabee and only Huckabee. And Huckabee doesn’t seem to want it to be known that he’s speaking. The events don’t appear on his public schedule. They are not open to the media. Attendees say little or nothing about them in public.
Events were held in Iowa before the caucuses there, and now some are being held in South Carolina with others planned for Florida. Eve Fairbanks, a writer for The New Republic’s blog, tried to crash one in Columbia recently at the Metropolitan Convention Center. She was not successful but did note the pro-Huckabee slant of the event’s speaking roster.
“One lonely Romney surrogate, South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint, will give some remarks this afternoon,” Fairbanks wrote. “Besides him, though, the schedule is a roll call of prominent Huckabee backers: There’s Dr. Laurence White, a pastor whose writings are posted on Huckabee’s campaign blog, doing most of the introductions and welcoming remarks; he founded the Texas Restoration Project, a drive to organize pastors for a gay marriage amendment. There’s Tim LaHaye, the author of the “Left Behind” books, and his wife Beverly, founder of Concerned Women of America, both big Huck boosters. There’s former Ohio congressman and pro-family speaker Bob McEwen; he helped host a Huck fundraiser in November. Don Wildmon, the influential family-values warrior at the head of the American Family Association who gave Huckabee his nod, isn’t speaking, but he apparently takes the lead in putting the Renewal Project conferences together. Dr. Mat Staver, a member of Huckabee’s “Faith and Family Values Coalition” and the head of an organization that advises churches how to legally get more political, has shown up to give the conference’s final address.”
Fairbanks also noted the secrecy of the event, writing, “Roaming around the Metropolitan Convention Center after last night’s session was over, looking for the event’s principals, I felt like I’d accidentally wandered into a meeting of the Masons, where a hilariously intense aura of secrecy, whispers, and special handshakes is deliberately cultivated.”
Organizers insist they have invited other candidates to speak. Yet AU has received complaints that this is not the case. Are we to believe that other candidates were invited and turned it down? That seems odd during a time when Republican hopefuls are eager to court evangelical voters. Something is not right here.
More questions arise: Who started these groups? Where did they get the money to put on glitzy events in fancy venues for hundreds of pastors and their spouses? In Texas, the Texas Freedom Network investigated the Texas Restoration Project and found that its funding was being laundered through another non-profit group and that most of it came from a handful of wealthy businessmen who used the organization to line up pastors behind Gov. Rick Perry’s 2006 re-election campaign.
Educating religious leaders about the issues of the day is one thing. Laboring to use churches as a force to help elect a certain candidate by mobilizing their congregations is quite another. There’s more than enough here to attract the interest of the IRS.
P.S. We received a heads-up about this matter by reading Melissa Rogers’ blog. Melissa writes cogently about the intersection of religion and public affairs. Visit her blog here.
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