Joe Conason: Is Glenn Beck mobilizing the religious right for November?

[RamboLiberal]

If Glenn Beck's Washington extravaganza seemed strangely empty of political content, filled with vacuous pieties and fetishes rather than protest, then perhaps it should be seen as the opening act in a renewed campaign to assert the power of the religious right. A series of four mass prayer events, featuring many of the most prominent figures in the Republican Party's theocratic wing, will occur between Labor Day and Election Day, starting with an arena rally in Sacramento, Calif., and ending with perfect symmetry on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

Behind these events, under the rubric "Pray and A.C.T.," is Newt Gingrich's organization, Renewing American Leadership, although the frontmen for this particular initiative are former Watergate conspirator Charles Colson and evangelist Jim Garlow, who now works for Gingrich. Endorsers include top evangelical and political leaders such as Focus on the Family's Jim Daly, who took over from James Dobson; Princeton University professor Robert George; Fox News host and former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee; Cindy Jacobs of the Generals of Intercession; Southern Baptist leader Richard Land, who attended the Lincoln Memorial rally at Beck's invitation; Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council; and Tim Wildmon, who is taking over the American Family Association from his father, Don. Also among the endorsers of Pray and A.C.T. or Renew America are Alveda King, the niece of Martin Luther King Jr., who was featured at the Beck rally, and David Barton, the pseudo-academic who argues that America was founded as a "Christian nation" and is often touted by Beck on television (and who headlined Beck's "Divine Destiny" pre-rally Friday evening at the Kennedy Center in Washington).

The tenets of Pray and A.C.T. are straightforward and traditional: opposition to gay marriage and any manifestation of tolerance for homosexuality; opposition to reproductive rights for women, especially abortion; and opposition to anything that violates "religious liberty" as defined by Christian ultras (which evidently doesn't cover the right to construct an Islamic center on Park Place in Manhattan).

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If that isn't clear enough, the schedule for Pray and A.C.T.'s pre-election crusade starts with a sports arena prayer service, led by the radical theocrat Lou Engle, and then moves on to a countdown event at a church in Washington on Sept. 12, followed by an official launch event in Washington on Sept. 19, concluding with the Lincoln Memorial rally on Oct. 30 -- two days before Election Day.

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/joe_conason/2010/08/30/pray/

[Cobalt-60]

1. It's really all they've got

The naked fascism and financial anti competence of the Republican Party are obvious to all but
those who will not see.
These willfully ignorant individuals vote the way their preacher tells them to.
And their preachers are compensated to tell them to vote Puke.

[Demeter]

2. If the Wheels Don't Come Off Before Then

and if he can find at least 3...

[jimshoes]

3. It's stupefying that the religious right

should be taking their queues from a Mormon. I mean, didn't the nutzoids shun what's his name from Massachusets, Mittens Romney?

[enuegii]

4. Mormons, conservative Catholics and hardcore Protestants,

all coming together as one.

What could possibly go wrong?