Proposition 8 : A Proving Ground For The New 'Rainbow' Right

By Bruce Wilson Sat, 4/04,09

It was a both a proof-of-concept and a prophetic warning for the Democratic Party. In the minds of many on the American left, the GOP, dominated by the Christian right, is a dwindling revanchist bastion of retrograde white supremacy. Although that faction still is significant it is well on the way to political irrelevancy within the party because, in 2008, an emerging ethnically and racially inclusive form of the Christian right flexed newfound electoral muscles and won. The left has not noticed, and so the new tendency appears to be laying plans for a Republican resurgence in the 2012 presidential election. As described in Charisma Magazine, "Noting that the black and Latino vote was critical for passing Proposition 8, California pastor Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, said the ballot measure was a perfect example of the power churches have when they work across ethnic lines." "Here's what this election demonstrates--white evangelicals by themselves cannot win elections," Rodriguez said. "White evangelicals by themselves cannot preserve a biblical world view or a biblical agenda within American political and public policy arena. It is impossible. 2008 said it is over." Indeed - because Rodriguez helped make it happen and, over the course of the next three years, the new tendency will probably come to prevail within the GOP and then launch the second bid, from Third Wave and New Apostolic Christianity, for the United States presidency.

[map, below: the Proposition Eight push was most notably fronted by "Renewalist" Christians. Here's a definition of that term, from World Christian Trends AD 30 - AD 2200 : "The largest and best-known renewal today is often described by the single word Pentecostal, but is more accurately depicted by the title the Pentecostal/Charismatic Renewal in the Holy Spirit. In this survey we also term it, even more accurately, the Pentecostal/Charismatic/Neocharismatic Renewal. This refers to its 3 massive historical surges -- First Wave, Second Wave, and Third Wave."]



General wisdom from the left now holds that the right will work to whip up populist discontent. But, neither Democratic Party nor progressive political activists on the left seem fully aware of the nature of an emerging threat, that Republicans will increasingly gain support among ethnic groups which have traditionally voted for the Democratic Party.
Sammy Rodriguez is an exceptional powerful public speaker who has, it would seem, studied at length the oratory of Martin Luther King Jr. and intends to try brand the anti-abortion movement as equivalent to the Civil Rights Movement. The leadership of his NHCLC is on most issues except immigration hard right and so Rodriguez' organization serves to pull the 10 million Hispanic evangelicals and 5 million Hispanic charismatic Catholics the NHCLC purports to represent in towards right-wing ideological positions.

Many commentators have focused on Mormon activism and Mormon funding as important in passing

California's Proposition Eight and support, by Catholic leaders, for anti-gay marriage initiatives is generally taken for granted.

But there was another force in play which may have had a greater impact in Florida, Arizona, and California, in getting religiously based social conservatives to the polls - including evangelical and Catholic charismatic constituencies that swung towards Barack Obama in the 2008 election but also voted in opposition to gay marriage.

Strange?

A number of news stories covered efforts by evangelist, prophet, and founder of The Call, Lou Engle, to pass Proposition Eight in California. A few even noted the catalytic role played by Jim Garlow of the Skyline Church in La Mesa, California, in pulling together a network of pastors who formed the broad national coalition which blocked gay marriage in California and two other US states in the 2008 election. But both the gay activist press, the wider alternative press, and mainstream media as well almost fully missed the specific nature of the anti-gay marriage effort.

Signed onto The Call's advisory board was much of the top leadership of the New Apostolic Reformation and Third Wave Christianity in America, as well as the top leadership of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference which claims to represent roughly ten million Hispanic American evangelicals and five million charismatic Catholics. Samuel Rodriguez has suggested that abortion will be, in future elections, a much more salient issue for his voting block.

Because pro-gay marriage activists were not fully aware, if they were aware of its existence at all, of the makeup of Engle's and Garlow's coalition they did not capitalize on it's inherent deep fissures in order to disrupt the effort. The New Apostolic Reformation leadership is virulently anti-Catholic to the point of claiming that a global demon spirit blocks Catholic prayers, it is structurally anti-Jewish and spreads anti-Semitic conspiracy theory, and it considers the Mormon faith to be "cultic".

Nothing has really changed much since the 50s or 60s with the evangelicals except that they are better organized than they were then. They still hate Catholics, Jews and Mormons, it seems. Of course, now the Muslims are in their cross-hairs as well. I grew up around these kinds people in the deep South in the 50s and 60s. They love the idea of Israel, but they have no use for Jews, except for cannon fodder at Miggido. (Armageddon). They are counting on Muslims to be the cannon-fodder for the other side. Many of the call the Roman Catholic Church, the Whore of Babylon. Mormons are simply fake, pretender Christians. 

If there is a Progressive, Moderate or Liberal out there who does not recognize by now just how dangerous these people are, they really need to wake up. Much like the fanatics of Islam, there are fanatical Christians in our own midst, not to mention all over the world, who are just as religiously insane. Scary though it may be, everyone should listen to them every chance they get. Everyone needs to hear what they are saying, not just in public but when they think no one is listening.

As a teacher of mine once told me; pay attention to what people do, not so much to what they say. When it comes to the religiously insane, pay attention to both. Beware of a storm of cognitive dissonance.

The antigay marriage coalition which successfully helped to pass gay marriage bans in Florida, Arizona, and California was launched, in July 2008, during a several hour conference call in which organizers outlined a multilevel campaign that utilized existing church infrastructure, viral marketing, Internet marketing, New 

Apostolic prayer networks, traditional Christian conservative media, and a range of methods, and communications channels, both traditional and unorthodox.

The November 1st, 2008 anti-gay marriage Qualcomm Stadium rally in San Diego was the public capstone of the antigay effort in California for the national coalition pulled together by New Apostolic prophet Lou Engle, California charismatic Methodist pastor Jim Garlow and leaders of the currently obscure but enormous, global and rapidly growing New Apostolic Reformation movement which so far has almost completely escaped media scrutiny despite having fielded a vice presidential candidate reported to be in a prayer network under the religious authority of the man who in 2001 founded the NAR: C. Peter Wagner.

Towards the end of The Call's stadium event, a speaker called for acts of Christian martyrdom to reverse what Engle, Garlow and other event speakers had depicted as an immanent moral apocalypse in America that would call down the wrath of God.

The effort in California represented the emerging face of a new type of fundamentalism in America that is multiethnic, multiracial and, because of that, can appear pseudo-progressive but which is in many ways farther right than traditional fundamentalism. The new axis of bigotry is no longer defined by racial and ethnic distinctions. It is religious supremacy.

All who will not submit to the New Apostolic and Third Wave Christian demon-haunted version of Christianity will be cast as demonic or under the sway of demons - by a new 'rainbow' fundamentalism that is informed by far right conspiratorial ideology characteristic of the John Birch Society, bitterly opposed to gay and reproductive rights, and bent on expelling all the demon spirits and witchcraft that its leaders claim lie in the way of achieving political power to establish a Utopian Christian theocratic government, and a millennial age of heaven brought to Earth.

[note: next week I'll be releasing specific, detailed evidence concerning the little-chronicled effort, from the Protestant Christian right, which provided massive volunteer and infrastructure assistance for the successful pro Pro 8 effort.]

Relevant Background : In my new story, Fighting Demons, Raising the Dead, Taking Over the World, published by Religion Dispatches, I describe Sarah Palin's strange new Christianity, which is rapidly becoming the face of the new, globalizing Christian right. In tandem with the story, Religion Dispatches also features my recent interview with Bill Berkowitz, The New Christianity: What the Mainstream Media Has Missed

Let The Sun Shine In......