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What follows is one of my “Top 10” lists. This was a speech given to the annual dinner of the Texas Civil Liberties Union back in 2002.

As you will see after you read it, any church/state separationist could pretty much give the same speech with very current examples of the same reasons for distrust.

TEXAS: TEN REASONS TO BE SUSPICIOUS OF THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT 1

Thanks for the introduction; there are some places where I wouldn't get such a positive description. I was interviewed recently by a journalist who asked if I got hate mail. It was as easy to answer yes to that question as it would be for any of you to answer no to the question, “Does Florida have good voting machines?” I regret that my hate mail so often includes vulgarity and/or bad spelling. But it is even worse when it expresses abject ignorance. Here is a recent e-mail: “If the founding fathers of this country were alive today, they would have Lynn on trial for witchcraft.” I thought this country was founded to move away from such activities.

My daughter was actually kind enough to send me a website devoted entirely to attacking me. It has a message board. (I am not making this up.) One message read: “I used to be proud of my name—Lynn—but now I am embarrassed because people might think I'm related to Barry”; a few days later, “I've done some research—two boats of Lynn's came over from Ireland—Barry Lynn's relations were on the boat of ‘bad Lynn's,’ and your relatives must have been on the other one.” Thank Heaven for the Internet! It saved me a huge amount of money on genealogical research.

What I'd like to do this evening is something I rarely do: give a presentation called “The Top 10 Reasons You Should Not Trust the Religious Right.” Actually, this address is so inflammatory that I am only allowed to give it at ACLU dinners, library conventions, and meetings of the Religious Right—in the latter case, because they don't understand it!

Why distrust? First, the Religious Right sees things that aren't there! In the movie The Sixth Sense, the little boy saw dead people and they WERE really there. The Religious Right sees things that aren't really there. Let me explain. You probably know that the Right is obsessed with images. They are offended by all kinds of things. They don't like rap music; they don't like Playboy or Cosmopolitan covers to be visible in stores, so they keep demanding that brown wrappers be put over them; they don't like anything connected to Hollywood. But they also have found reasons to demand the censorship or destruction of things that many of us don't see as remotely controversial. Pastor Jack Brock of the Christ Community Church in Alamogordo, New Mexico, sponsored a book burning to celebrate the New Year. At this event at least thirty Harry Potter books were tossed into a bonfire. Although Brock admitted that he had not read any of the four J. K. Rowling fantasy novels about a young wizard, he nevertheless formally declared to CNN that “Harry Potter is the devil” who “is destroying people” and that the books are “a masterpiece of satanic deception…that encourage our youth to learn more about witches, warlocks, and sorcerers, and those things [that] are an abomination to God.” By the way, he also burned the Collected Works of William Shakespeare; wait a minute, that only makes sense—there are three witches in Macbeth alone! If this is all that Religious Right fundamentalists did, they might be the subject of David Letterman jokes, but the First Amendment would not face a serious threat. My only interest would be if my backyard was downwind of his fire. Regrettably, too many of these literal book burners are not satisfied with persuading people to do things; they seek to invoke the power of the state to stop everyone from exercising their own judgment. See, you didn't know. But it gets worse. The American Life League announced that in the video of Disney's Lion King the word SEX is visible in a cloud formation as the lion king is standing on a cliff. Ridiculous—I can't remember that. I've seen it a lot—just about every weekend I pick my wife up on Friday and we buy a bottle of wine and rent The Lion King.

Reason number two is that these folks do not always understand irony and have a startling lack of any sense of humor. We took out an ad in the Colorado Springs Gazette a few years back that just read, in block letters, “MAYBE WE SHOULD LET RADICAL RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISTS RUN AMERICA (AFTER ALL IT HAS WORKED SO WELL IN IRAN).” It then had a special 800 number we sometimes used—man, did we get some interesting messages the next day, most of them unrepeatable. My personal favorite was from a guy who said: “I'm just going to waste your money because I know you're paying for this. So I'll just keep on costing you money, by staying on the line.” Then he began to whistle. Then he put the receiver up to a radio playing really bad country music, and then up to a TV blaring a soap opera. Now, we have a cutoff after five minutes, but because he was having too much fun to hear it click off, I visualize that to this very moment there is a guy in Colorado still waltzing around his house holding his telephone up to household appliances—the trash compactor, the vacuum cleaner, the humming device in his wife's bottom drawer, still thinking he's on our dime.

Reason number three: They are careless. There is a minister out in Buena Vista, California, named Wiley Drake. For several years, he has been praying “imprecatory” prayers—basically prayers for my death. He decided to get a member of Congress—Congressman Jay Dickey of Arkansas—to hold a “pastors’ summit” in the Capitol, basically to pray for the election of Republicans. Somehow, Pastor Drake must have gotten his list of friends and enemies mixed up, and I ended up getting invited to attend the pastors’ summit. When I walked into that room and went up to Wiley Drake to say “hello” he nearly turned to stone, as if the largest skunk in this universe had just arrived at his family reunion picnic. See, that was just pure sloppiness—I wasn't supposed to be there. Congressman Dickey was a big hit, though, with these pastors—particularly when he explained that Satan was often on the floor of the House of Representatives causing members to cast bad votes. Attendees were constantly praying for Mr. Dickey (which is ok by me), until it shaded into praying for his reelection (that offends my personal view of the purpose of prayer). Just a footnote: On January 6, we began referring to Mr. Dickey as “former Congressman” Jay Dickey, since he lost his reelection Tuesday night. I do not wish to impose my religion on you: You can decide if God works in mysterious ways!

Reason number four: They are a tad hypocritical, and that makes them untrustworthy. The members of Congress supported by the RR often tote their perfect scorecards on “family issues” prepared by groups like the Christian Coalition and the Traditional Values Coalition, but sometimes have trouble explaining their own life choices. For example, in a five-year period, ending in 2002, Congress has spent almost $400 million on programs whose “exclusive purpose” is the promotion of abstinence and, in the words of the federal law, teach that monogamy in the context of marriage is the “expected standard of human sexuality.”2 I know what this guy over at that table is thinking! Who supported the standard? Yes, Newt “I used to be important” Gingrich, who was, of course, having an affair with a staff member during the entire period he was chastising the president for his sexual indecencies.³ Then there was Bob Livingston, who would have been Speaker of the House but for his numerous amorous escapades.⁴ And the list goes on; we need not belabor it. What is fascinating is not just the hypocrisy but the lameness of the excuses for it. Judiciary Chairman Henry Hyde, presider over Clinton's impeachment, admitted to an affair but described it as a “youthful indiscretion” at the tender age of forty.⁵ At least Bush uses thirty as the cutoff age for youth. And, of course, Georgia congressman Bob Barr is so “profamily” he's already had three of them!⁶

Reason number five: When the Religious Right doesn't get what it wants through the normal processes of constitutional democracy, they often try to get it through tactics of pressure, lawlessness, and intimidation. I have been having a running feud with a minister (I know it sounds like ministers don't like me) in Texas named Robert Jeffress because of his manner of dealing with books he doesn't like. He goes to the local library, checks out books he finds offensive, and never returns them. Normally, we call this theft: There is even one of the Ten Commandments directly on point—it is against it. What the pastor then does is goes to the city council to demand that the library not be permitted to repurchase the “lost” item⁷.

Reason number six: Their prognostications are often wrong. Recently, when the city of Orlando, Florida, allowed rainbow flags to be flown from city light poles and, when the Disney company had a “Gay Day” at Disney World, Pat Robertson went ballistic. He said on his syndicated TV show The 700 Club that Orlando could be hit by tornadoes, earthquakes, terrorist attacks, and “possibly a meteor.”⁸ We at Americans United were afraid that this prediction hadn't gotten its proper recognition, so we reported it in a press release titled, “Duck, Donald.” When all was said and done, Orlando didn't have any of these problems and was actually spared from disastrous forest fires that occurred in much of the rest of the state.

Reason number seven: They always have simple answers for almost every problem, but they are simply wrong. Following the Columbine tragedy two and a half years ago, Congress managed to avoid passing any legislation about guns or funding programs for troubled youth. The House, however, did pass a resolution supporting the posting of the Ten Commandments in all schools and public buildings. I doubt that Moses has been waiting for several millennia for this affirmation of his work. That's simplistic and useless. If placing holy words next to people turned them from sinners to saints, the mere presence of Gideon bibles in motel nightstands would have terminated adultery by now.

Reason number eight: The Religious Right really doesn't like most of us. Take Pat Robertson, for example. Here are a few of his observations about people of different faiths. On Hindus: “What is Hinduism but devil worship, ultimately?”9 On Muslims: “To see Americans become followers of, quote, Islam, is nothing short of insanity…. Why would people in America want to embrace the religion of the slavers?”¹⁰ What a remarkably short historical memory he has. Did he just forget that there were a lot of Christians piloting those boats from West Africa? He has suggested that the Roman Catholic understanding of Holy Communion is akin to cannibalism. He doesn't think much of fellow Protestants, noting: “You say, you're supposed to be nice to the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians and the Methodists and this, that and the other thing—nonsense! I don't have to be nice to the spirit of the Antichrist…. I don't have to be nice to them.”¹¹ His book The New World Order uses classic anti-Semitic sources and reeks of anti-Jewish sentiment.

It is not just religious bigotry for which he stands. He's not very high on women. He noted in one fundraising letter: “The feminist agenda…is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft and become lesbians.”¹² He later noted that he couldn't consider women the intellectual equivalents of men because they can't play chess as well.¹³ He didn't know that at the time we had a woman national chess master, and we've had a few since. I really don't think he's changed his mind. The facts rarely seem to matter to him. I have heard a rumor that he is checking into new competitive games for gender comparison—and is leaning toward bowling.

And what of race? Pat Robertson has tried to make inroads into the African-American community. Briefly, he even created something called the Samaritan Project to work with black churches; he, of course, dumped the project as soon as it made demands on his own bank account. Pastors were a little unhappy to learn that Robertson had been one of the last Americans willing to go on state television in South Africa to support apartheid, arguing that he wasn't sure that the rights of the white minority would be protected by a new system.14 If that is viewed by some of you as ancient history, his racial insensitivity continues. The keynote dinner speaker at his l998 Christian Coalition “Road To Victory” convention in Washington was Charlton Heston, representing both Moses and the NRA, I believe. Heston gave a barn-burning speech about how many things are wrong with the country, culminating in his prayerful lament, “Heaven help the God-fearing, law abiding, Caucasian middle class.” No criticism by the Coalition of that. The speech was noted, however, by fascist David Duke, who put the speech up on his own website, and asked readers why it was okay for Heston to say this, but if he said it he would be called a racist. Good question, David; although I think he and all of you would have different answers. Despite all the hate-filled rhetoric that we have had to endure from Robertson, one of the chief purveyors of religious bigotry in America, we now learn that he is to be rewarded with a 1.5 million dollar grant from the so called Compassion Capital Fund! Of course, the fact that Robertson had been a harsh critic of the program on the grounds that religious minorities such as the Church of Scientology and Hare Krishnas may receive tax dollars had no effect on his willingness to accept the cash.¹⁵ It appears that thirty pieces of silver was enough to change his mind.

Reason number nine: They aren't clear about their real agenda until they have suckered a lot of folks far down the primrose path. A major focus of their efforts toward restricting reproductive choices right now is on banning third-trimester abortions, or, as they characterize it, killing a fetus in the process of birth. And the procedure they describe is couched in some lurid language that even normally pro-choice folks sometimes decide to draw that line. Do you think for a moment that this is all the Religious Right wants? Of course not. The official question for candidates on most of those phony voters’ guides they distributed in churches the Sunday before election day was usually phrased, “Do you agree that abortion should be illegal under all circumstances?” Overturning Roe v. Wade is their goal; outlawing all abortions in each state is their next goal. Dr. James Dobson says women who have abortions have committed a “crime against humanity [that] will not go unpunished.”

Reason number ten: Inconsistency. Although they detest government, they want to use government power to promote their religion. The real enemy of the Christian Right is not Americans United or the ACLU; it is themselves.

I don't think the Religious Right understands that religion thrives best where government takes no sides and offers no “help.” There are two thousand different religious groups in the United States and tens of millions of Americans who choose no spiritual path. We all live in relative harmony. Look at Iran; look at Northern Ireland; look at Afghanistan—state-sponsored religion and the wars against other faiths it engenders should teach us all that we have a pretty good thing going here. In fact, the separation of church and state is probably the single best idea that our two-hundred-year experiment in democracy has engendered.

I don't want, or need, the help of government to pray the prayers I believe in. Politicians always talk about “nonsectarian prayers.” What do they say: “To a God or gods unknown. Thanks. Amen”? I think most people of faith want to pray in their own manner. I don't want the government giving out money or vouchers to corrupt the integrity of the ministries of the church I attend or any other faith community. I don't want to see a day when Methodists, Baptists, Catholics, Scientologists, and Christian Scientists battle for the biggest piece of funding for their religious missions.

Indeed, this is precisely what is so terribly wrong with the Bush initiative on “faith-based organizations”—it will amount to the funding of programs that are by their very character “religious.” You cannot be spiritual when a private dollar is in your hand and secular when it is a government dollar. By the way, George Bush really is being hypocritical about this. On the first Monday in office he reinstated the so-called “Mexico City Policy,” which barred all federal funds to family-planning groups that operated abroad if they—even with privately raised funds—counseled or performed abortion. Money is fungible; if the government buys the soup for the soup kitchen the religious provider can just buy more Bibles.

That's what Robertson thought he would achieve during the last election—a president to select and an overwhelming Republican Senate to ratify selections to the Supreme Court. The speech given by his spouse, Dede Robertson, to the Christian Coalition convention in September included the stern warning that without a new Supreme Court—and Dave Barry, I am not making this up—we would soon have “SEX IN THE STREETS”! (Talk about traffic tie-ups).

He didn't quite get what he wanted. If there are Supreme Court appointments to fill a majority of the Senate—Democrats and Pro-First Amendment Republicans—can stop bad appointments. Clarence Thomas, a man of no known intellect, did NOT have to be on the Court; spineless senators put him there. Bad proposals of George W. Bush—about public school vouchers, about prayer in school, about limits on reproductive choice—can be blocked through the procedures of the Senate if the will to protect the Constitution is there. Your senators aren't going to help, I know, but others have the power to do what one of the greatest defenders of the First Amendment in modern political history—former Republican senator of Connecticut Lowell Weicker—said was the Senate's greatest role: be the last best defender of the Constitution for the American people.

In 1999 I was having lunch with a congressman from Oklahoma named Ernest Istook. We had just had a debate in Texas about his proposal to bring government-sponsored prayer back to public schools. After finishing the main course, he says: “Barry, the conservative Republican caucus had a meeting the other day and we've solved the problem of the Y2K bug.” I can be a straight man, so I say, “Gee, so what did you guys decide.” He answers, “Well, when the computers can't recognize the year 2000, they flip back to l900, and we like it better that way.” There is a lot of sad truth in that joke. But, you know, I don't get the impression that most of you are willing to go gently back into that night when women couldn't vote and couldn't make reproductive choices; when those with mental and physical disabilities were shunted aside to basement classrooms as early as elementary school so their disability would be complete; when gays and lesbians were third-class citizens everywhere; and when the shame of racism was often celebrated as a virtue.

The bottom line—the Religious Right still wants to run your life from the moment of conception until the moment of “natural death”—as well as pretty much every moment in between. What a nation we'd have then.

IMAGINE THE RIGHT'S RELIGION 16

For decades I've been told by my adversaries in the Religious Right that they only seek a “place at the table” for their Christian worldview—well, their version of Christianity, that is.

But evidence has mounted recently that what they really want is something else entirely: to own the table, determine what goes on it, and force-feed everyone the same gruel they consume.

Consider the outcry over the US Air Force Academy's decision to alter the Honor Oath cadets take every academic year. It formerly concluded, always, with the phrase “So help me God.”

The problem is that some cadets didn't want to say a religious oath. Since it makes no sense to force a person to swear an oath that he or she disbelieves, academy officials made the eminently sensible decision to make the God part optional.

Religious Right groups immediately went ballistic. The Tupelo, Mississippi, based American Family Association is urging its legion of followers to write to the commandant of the Academy to “preserve religious liberty by defending the oath and recommending the Academy keep the current language intact.”¹⁷

The Family Research Council's Tony Perkins asserted in a radio broadcast that even giving nonbelievers the option not to say “God” would somehow reflect an “anti-Christian bias.”¹⁸ According to Perkins, making these four words optional would not be “inclusive” since it would not include military personnel like George Washington, whom he claims initiated that phrase. (Washington didn't do that, but that's another column.)

Think about this for a moment. How does it protect “religious liberty” in this multicultural and multireligious nation to force all cadets to affirm support for something an increasing number of them do not believe is true?

In fact, isn't it silly—and perhaps even blasphemous—to demand that newly minted defenders of the republic lie about their belief in God? This is an “honor code” after all. The pedestal on which to erect a system of moral commitment is probably not perjury. (Nevertheless, a member of Congress has actually introduced legislation to make it illegal for the military to alter such oaths without congressional approval.19)

Furthermore, since no one is told they cannot say “So help me God” how does this change to an individual option possibly harm some future military leader who is devout and includes the phrase as she or he is still permitted to do?

Perkins holds a so-called Values Voter Summit every autumn in Washington and has been known to actually have Jewish people on the platform. Does the fact that US House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) may bow his head but not pray in the name of Jesus mean that the assembled Christian masses at the conference are suddenly having their rights violated? Person A's decision to opt out of Person B's theology in no way lessens Person B's right to participate.

Our second table-grabber is Sarah Palin. She has returned to the talk-show circuit with a new book called Good Tidings and Great Joy: Protecting the Heart of Christmas. This tome asserts that our nation is at war with Christianity, with the secularist assault on Christmas becoming the bloody Antietam of the conflict.

According to the former governor, one of the many fronts in this anti-yuletide blitzkrieg is the tendency by in-store greeters and advertising executives at certain big box stores to replace “Merry Christmas” with “Happy Holidays.”

Like the oath defenders, Palin seems to assume that a retailer's failure to affirm a certain aspect of Christianity at every moment is somehow an assault on her faith. The horror she sees in “inclusion”—and her preposterous demand that non-Christians greet people with a religious sentiment alien to them—turns what is good about a diverse culture into some badge of shame.

Tables are especially important in public schools. They should be open to all there. Yet recent news reports from several Southern states have found a breathtaking level of “You are welcome at my table—as long as you'll pray with me” sentiments from public high school football coaches.

Mark Mariakis of the public Ridgeland High School in Georgia told the Chattanooga Times Free Press, “We as coaches fail if we only teach football, so we try to set an example of how a Christian man handles any situation.”20

Another coach boasted about the players he had converted to his faith through a Bible camp, asserting, “I want to win as much as anybody, but if I don't win a single football game this year I feel successful because of those twenty-one kids who became Christians. Nothing is more important than that.”²¹

Thus, in spite of numerous court decisions to the contrary, these coaches support official Christian team prayer, as did virtually every respondent to the newspaper's survey of coaches in Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia. No fig leaves of “nonproselytizing prayers” or rotation of prayers here; just good old Christian triumphalism every Friday night.

My final example concerns a table that, while privately owned, could be big enough for lots of people—if only its owners had a more charitable vision. According to reports in the Kansas City Star, the Kansas City Rescue Mission has decided not to accept the offer of the Kansas City Atheist Coalition to help with distribution of two thousand Thanksgiving meals to the poor and elderly.

The Mission apparently decided to include a religious message in this year's meal boxes, and it was unclear if the atheists would go along with that. It seemed irrelevant anyway, as the Mission made it abundantly clear that it didn't want the nonbelievers’ help, calling the partnership a bad fit. And that was the end of any communication.²²

That struck me as a missed opportunity. I'll bet that there are more than two thousand poor and elderly people in the area. Wouldn't it have been more polite, more decent, and more “Christian” even, to call the atheists, tell them what neighborhoods the Christians were not covering, and give them some advice about how to serve those who might otherwise go hungry? In other words, shouldn't the Mission have at least helped the atheists set up their own table?

Alas, to those who are fearful of other beliefs, there can be only one table, one place to sit, and one seatmate to converse with. Their world begins and ends in the confines of that tiny table.

I say let a thousand tables bloom. I encourage visiting every one. After all, a person can sometimes gain a whole new perspective by occasionally switching seats.

WHO IS THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT?

To preserve the separation of church and state, you have to spend a lot of time observing, debating, and interacting with the Religious Right. The Religious Right did not appear full blown from the head of some particularly repugnant Zeus in the 1970s. It had antecedents throughout American history, as biblical literalism and/or dogmatic patriarchal teaching joined political conservatism to create a regressive social movement.

When Americans United was formed in 1948, it saw the dangers posed by the very powerful Roman Catholic hierarchy of its day in all manner of battles. Archdiocesan officials were willing to “loan out” teaching nuns to financially beleaguered public school systems who, quite predictably, added “religion” to the “reading, ’riting, and ’rithmetic” of the curriculum. These were referred to as “captive schools” and the very first lawsuit that Americans United filed was a challenge to such an arrangement in New Mexico. The new organization, however, also fought organized efforts to stop the import of controversial films like the now-classic Italian film The Miracle. Longshoremen American “sons of Italy” refused to unload prints from ships in the New York harbor because the principal character had generated a religious fervor based on a less-than-miraculous birth. The charge against the film was “blasphemy” in its parallel to the New Testament tale of the immaculate conception. Catholic doctrine opposing all forms of “artificial” birth control also came under our scrutiny.

In the fifties, Protestant conservatives tended to be far less visible than today, banking on a generic national religiosity to keep the nation from dipping too far into a sea of moral decay. The idea of direct partisan political involvement was nearly unthinkable, with major preachers like Billy Graham rarely commenting publicly on specific controversies in foreign or domestic policy. Even the man who would become synonymous with partisan Christianity in the seventies, the late Dr. Jerry Falwell, eschewed any political engagement during his rise to prominence as a Southern preacher.

All this changed in the early seventies, when a group of secular Republican organizers decided that it would be highly beneficial to their party to have a face of moral potency growing right out of the Protestant community. They were turned down by a number of prominent preachers. Then, Falwell suddenly shifted his position from nonengagement with politics to leading the organization known as the Moral Majority. His leadership helped dramatically to unleash the clout of other reactionary Protestants, including those who were highly offended by a Supreme Court decision that ruled that private religious schools engaged in any forms of racial discrimination could be denied precious tax exempt status. After milking that issue, Falwell soon found common cause with Catholic officials in his unswerving opposition to abortion, largely legalized in 1973 in the historic case of Roe v. Wade, argued at the Supreme Court by Texas lawyer Sarah Weddington, who later became a member of the Board of Trustees of Americans United.

Falwell was an indefatigable presence on radio and television, clearly enamored of his personal magnetism and somewhat less concerned with local organizing. Into the organizational vacuum, however, came Pat Robertson, creator of the Christian Broadcasting Network and himself a Presidential candidate in 1988. After a rather stunning victory in the Iowa Republican caucuses that year—and then a precipitous tumble in later contests—Robertson ended his executive aspirations and gave his impressive fundraising mailing list to Ralph Reed, a young conservative activist, who used it to create the powerful Christian Coalition.

I attended almost all of the yearly Christian Coalition confabs in Washington. What follows are a few reminiscences of those trips as chronicled in my monthly columns for Church and State magazine.

UNEASY RIDER: CAR SICK ON THE “ROAD TO VICTORY” (1995)23

I spent the greater part of an early September weekend observing the Christian Coalition's “Road to Victory” Conference here in Washington. It was the Coalition's fifth conference, which means next year there will have been more “Roads” than there are sequels to “Rocky.”

A reporter called me the day after the event and asked me to “sum it up.” I replied, “Any conference where Pat Buchanan gives one of the more moderate speeches is a pretty extreme event.” I expected to hear some pretty harsh rhetoric from the parade of speakers who addressed the gathering. What I did not expect, however, was the disturbing, mean-spirited nature of the response of so many of the attendees. Let me give you a few examples.

When Texas senator Phil Gramm addressed the group, he got a lukewarm response to the first half of his speech, which was devoted to “family friendly” changes to the tax code and other economic issues. (There was a little burst of energy when he called for a flat tax.) But when he shifted gears to social issues, the room came alive. Gramm promised to make sure crime is dealt with harshly and promised to use capital punishment “regularly.” For this, he got whoops and cheers, a standing ovation, and the kind of response usually reserved for the words of heroes. People of goodwill can have differing moral beliefs regarding the propriety of the death penalty, but it was embarrassing to see religious people seem so happy about the grisly prospect of more death.

Now, you probably didn't see much of the crowd's response in the considerable network news coverage of the event. The only people I spoke to after the event who commented on the crowd were C-SPAN viewers who had been glued to the coverage provided there. The “Big News” outlets focused almost exclusively on the parade of Republican presidential candidates coming to pay homage to Pat Robertson's political power and legislative agenda.

Every Republican candidate was invited, with the notable exception of Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania. Specter has been critical of the Coalition's stranglehold on the GOP, and it was clear they didn't want to hear from a voice that might challenge their bogus rewriting of American history and constitutional law.

Indeed, I can't recall any of the candidates taking issue with anything on the Robertson agenda. No one had anything good to say about separation of church and state; no one suggested healing divisiveness and intolerance in the nation. There was only pandering to the pet peeves of the Robertson crowd.

Why do presidential candidates feel compelled to uncritically pay obeisance to an organization founded by a man who believes mainstream Protestants represent the “spirit of the Anti-Christ” and alleges that George Bush and Jimmy Carter may have “unknowingly and unwittingly” formed an alliance with Lucifer to create a “new world order”? The only justification is the perceived clout of Robertson's organization. During the conference, he noted claims that the Coalition is in control of eighteen state Republican parties and has significant influence in thirteen others. Robertson made it clear he is going for all fifty states.

Another low point of the event had to be Ralph Reed's request that delegates sign a pledge card. It contains such commitments as, “walk and talk in the manner of love, for God is love” and “refrain the violence of fist, tongue or heart.” In fact, it was based on a pledge card the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King asked members of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to sign. Another proviso: “Remember always that the movement seeks justice and reconciliation—not victory.” How ironic that such a pledge would be taken at a so-called “Road to Victory” conference.

“ROAD TO VICTORY” 1996: WHERE'S THE EXIT RAMP?24

I don't exactly go “undercover” to the Christian Coalition conferences anymore. People overhear me in the halls giving interviews to the media or just recognize me in sessions and often have plenty to tell me.

In general, they are trying to “convert” me, or at least “correct” me, by showing me the error of my ways. Sometimes things get nasty, but in general these are relatively civil exchanges. For example, a gentleman from Fairfax, Virginia, introduced me to one of his friends and said he admired my ability to articulate “those off-the-wall ideas of yours.” (I think this is safely characterized as being “damned by faint praise.”) Many people tell me they listen to the monthly two-hour religious liberty debates I have on Christian radio with former Rutherford Institute attorney Craig Parshall, or they tell me how much fun it was to listen to the old radio show I did with Pat Buchanan.

Speaker David Melton also predicted that we would “lose our religious freedom within ten years” if current trends continue. He then told the tragic tale of Miss North Dakota, who has already faced “religious persecution” (his words) because at one of the one hundred public schools in the state where she spoke she was not allowed to sing a Christian hymn during her presentation to students. My question, of course, is why a guest speaker was allowed to evangelize at the other ninety-nine public schools? Even if one agrees that she should be allowed to sing religious songs at a public school assembly with mandatory attendance—and I don't—does it honestly rise to the level of “persecution” if she is prevented from doing so?

Mr. Melton should read a history book to learn about real religious persecution. I direct him to the sections dealing with how Christians were treated in the Roman Empire before Constantine the Great or Henry the VIII's reign of terror against Catholics in sixteenth-century England.

NOT-SO-UNDERCOVER AT THE CHRISTIAN COALITION “ROAD TO VICTORY” (1998)25

It turns out I am one of the bigger “photo opportunities” at the annual “Road to Victory” Conference of Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition. Many attendees wanted a picture of me to take home. Some took them surreptitiously, but more often they asked for a posed shot. Why? Maybe to prove they survived a real-life demonic encounter.

One camera-wielding woman from Bucks County, PA, said she wanted to show the snapshot to her friends. She then proceeded to give me directions to her house in case I'd ever like to stop in for lunch.

Lest you think I am getting a swelled head over this, I have to admit that a few people did mistake me for a certain flat-tax-loving presidential candidate. One fellow had his friend take a photo with his brand-new, full digital camera. After the shot, he gushed, “I loved it the night you hosted Saturday Night Live!” (I still can't believe this guy confused me with Steve Forbes.)

Finally, after two days of listening to a variety of screeds against most of what I believe in, I had one final encounter with a “fan.” After one session, I spied a middle-aged woman barreling down the hall toward me. She rushed up and breathlessly demanded to know, “Why do you come to our events?” My response may not have been perfectly polite, but it was honest: “Because I get renewed energy with which to fight you.”

The Religious Right spent millions of dollars in the final weeks of Campaign ’98? What did it get them? Embarrassingly little, it seemed to me on the Wednesday morning after the election. But I wanted to hear their take on it, so I got up early that morning to go over to the National Press Club in Washington to listen to Family Research Council head Gary Bauer and Randy Tate, executive director of the Christian Coalition, “spin” the previous night's results. When I saw Bauer before his event and said I was there to hear him explain the election, he quipped, “I think I'm in trouble already.”

Half an hour later, I ran into Tate who, apparently forgetting that he has referred to me as a “thug” and a “so-called minister” over the past weeks, eagerly invited me to sit down and listen to his press conference.

At each event, I had the distinct feeling I was listening to an analysis of an election on some planet other than Earth. Bauer and Tate claimed that many GOP candidates lost because they were not clear enough on the “pro-family” agenda and therefore failed to excite the conservative Christian voters, who stayed home.

It just doesn't wash. If running on the Religious Right's issues will help a candidate win, then why did Pennsylvania's Republican pro-choice governor Tom Ridge get so many crossover Democratic votes that he was easily reelected, while in Iowa Republican Jim Lightfoot, who campaigned on the theme, “It's all about life,” lost dramatically?

Why did the two incumbent governors most clearly allied with the Religious Right agenda, Fob James of Alabama and David Beasley of South Carolina, lose their jobs? Opined Tate, “Some agenda beats no agenda every time.” In truth, voters heard Gov. James talk about prayer in school, the Ten Commandments in courthouses, and creation science in the science classroom ad nauseam and decided they'd had enough.

Tate and his Christian Coalition colleagues might have been a little less eager to have me sit in if they had known that I would be holding an impromptu press conference right in the hallway outside their press room. My message to the media was pretty straightforward. A significant portion of the electorate did send a message to the Religious Right and its political sycophants: “Sit down and be quiet.” Too close an identification with far-right causes may be the kiss of death in closely contested elections.

Back in 1998, the Religious Right threatened to defeat House members who voted against Rep. Ernest Istook's so-called “Religious Freedom Amendment?”26 Well, of the 203 members who voted against that amendment, two were not reelected—and one was defeated by someone more committed to church-state separation.

MY CHAT WITH PAT: EXCHANGING VIEWS WITH BROTHER ROBERTSON (1999)²⁷

You just never know whom you will run into in a Washington restaurant. The Thursday before the annual Christian Coalition “Road to Victory” Conference, I noticed Pat Robertson having dinner across the way from where I was chowing down. Since I saw him, I was relatively sure he saw me. After dessert, I thought I should go visiting, and even before I reached his table, he was rising to greet me, thanking me for coming to his event.

I noted that I wanted to “swell the crowd” and then mentioned that my mother actually is a viewer of the 700 Club, his daily syndicated television “news” and “information” show.

“Smart lady,” he responded.

Not wanting him to get too excited, I noted that Mom “doesn't understand why Pat Robertson says those nasty things about me.” He chortled that maybe she could come and visit him and they'd straighten things out.

The rest of the Christian Coalition conference went about as I expected. Republican presidential hopefuls showed up to woo the crowd, although no “straw poll” of favorites was taken. The display area had booths hawking expected wares, ranging from antipornography computer software to antiabortion bumper stickers.

This year, Y2K fears brought out some new dealers. Chesapeake, Virginia, meteorologist Jonathan Cash was there with his book, The Age of the Antichrist. (“It's fiction,” his wife said to me, which was helpful assurance that I hadn't missed something really big on CNN.) A gold-coin-dealer-turned-survival-food-vendor gave me a brown bag of turkey chili with a self-heating chemical around the food so that a simple pull of a string would activate a boil-up of the stew. (The cost for a family of four for a year is roughly $12,000, which may explain why he did not receive a single order for the product during the convention.)

As usual, I walked around the Coalition conference chatting with journalists and television reporters who were looking for “another side” of the event. Immediately after Robertson's opening address, I remarked to some news media representatives that it was “the most pro-Republican speech I have ever heard him give” and that he seemed “more interested in the G-O-P than G-O-D.” That line got picked up in many places. Even Robertson saw it.

I know he saw it because he sent me a lengthy letter on the topic, cast as an “explanation to your mother.” Robertson juxtaposed my comments with coverage of his speech by major media outlets. For example, he said, the Washington Post “listed line by line criticism of Congress” and CNN “played repeatedly my comments criticizing the Republican Congress.” He added that “roughly 40 percent of my remarks dealt with…world poverty, disease, hunger, and the disparate allocation of the world's wealth…” and 20 to 25 percent was about school vouchers.

Now, here is where it gets a little nasty. He concluded the epistle: “Barry, what you need to tell your mother is that, unfortunately, when you were a little boy, she didn't teach you to tell the truth, and this is the reason Pat Robertson says unkind things about you from time-to-time.”

It is one thing to call me a liar; it is something else to insult my mother's child rearing. So, naturally, I had to correct him by return mail.

I began pointing out that I wasn't giving a word-count analysis of his speech to reporters; I was telling them about its partisan tone. Here is a man who in past addresses has made the admittedly laughable claim that his is a “non-partisan” operation and who in press conferences has carefully labeled his voter-turnout campaigns as an effort to spur “pro-family” voters to the polls. By contrast, at this year's “Road to Victory,” he blatantly stated, “We are back. If we aren't in the field this coming election, the Republicans are going to lose. I don't think there is any question about it. We will be the margin of victory in the key races.”

I concluded my letter by noting that twice on his TV program he has quoted me as saying, “If your church is on fire, the municipal fire department is not allowed to put out the fire because of the separation of church and state.” I neither said nor believe this ridiculous statement.

Since Brother Robertson is so intrigued by “truthfulness,” I asked him to apologize on air for that fabricated quote. I'll let you know if I hear back. [Note: It is now 2015 and he has not yet corrected the record.]

By 1997, the Christian Coalition, minus Ralph Reed, was a shadow of its former self, allowing a new “superstar” Religious Right enterprise to emerge. This was the Family Research Council, headed by Tony Perkins. Perkins had been a local Louisiana politician most infamous for once allowing his campaign to buy a mailing list from notorious racist David Duke. This group replaced the Coalition in orchestrating Washington conferences, this time under the title “Value Voters Summits.” Of course, I had to attend these as well:

“THE ENEMY” WITHIN: MY STRANGE TREK TO THE VALUES VOTER SUMMIT (2006)28

I had a pang of nostalgia as I walked into the hotel hosting the recent “Values Voter Summit” in Washington and picked up my official delegate credentials at the registration booth.

This conference was sponsored primarily by Tony Perkins's FRC Action, but it brought back memories of my many similar visits to Christian Coalition conclaves held during its heyday.

One thing the Christian Coalition and its speakers never did was give much attention to their opponents. Although the ACLU or Planned Parenthood might get a fleeting reference, Pat Robertson, Ralph Reed, and other luminaries usually did not give their ideological adversaries the pleasure of being singled out by name.

Organizers of the Values Voter Summit felt differently. One of the first sessions was a dialogue featuring Perkins, James Dobson of Focus on the Family, and Alan Sears, chief lawyer for the Alliance Defense Fund. They began with general statements about how pastors needed to get involved in the political system. Dobson said he had some hesitancy about jumping into politics this year because he didn't think the Republicans had done enough on “pro-family” issues, but then quickly explained he changed his mind “because the alternative is terrible.”

That sure sounded like a clarion call to pull the Republican lever, touch the Republican part of the electronic screen, or check off the Republicans on your absentee ballot for all offices from city dogcatcher to US senator.

Although the session was long on rhetoric and I may have been nodding off, I came to full consciousness when I heard an attack on Americans United and me personally. As Dobson, Perkins and Sears were telling it, AU is trying to intimidate pastors and scare them into silence.

This was a reference to about 117,000 letters AU sent to religious leaders in eleven states, warning them about the Religious Right's efforts to politicize churches by offering them biased voter guides. Summit speakers were not keen on these letters. One even recommended using them to line bird cages.

But then Dobson surprised me. He told the crowds that he knew I had registered for the event and said he'd like to meet with me. He even called me a “nice guy.”

After such an invitation, I had no choice but to find a security officer and say, “I'm the guy Dr. Dobson said he wanted to see.” As arrangements for me to go backstage were being made, a gaggle of conference attendees had spotted me and many were pulling out their camera-equipped cell phones and were clicking away. It was a kind of rock star moment: The fans (or in this case, the non-fans) wanted proof they were there at some possibly historic event.

I met with Dobson, his wife Shirley (head of the National Day of Prayer Task Force), and Perkins around a circular table. We examined specific “voter guides” put out in the past by some of FOF's associated state groups. I had complained about misleading questions, inflammatory rhetoric, and the obvious (to me and any literate person) fact that these were designed to get voters to go GOP.

Dobson disagreed. He insisted they were all fairly written questions and said the guides were good for church distribution. It was a largely amiable forty minutes, but I left confident there would be no fall bonfires with the voter guides crackling on the fire.

The next day, during a panel on religion and politics, the Rev. Herb Lusk (whom we once reported to the IRS for his pulpit endorsement of George W. Bush during the 2000 GOP convention) had another take on me. Rising from his seat and pounding on the podium he said: “The enemy is out there. I know that name is Barry. But we won't mention his name today or ever again. We know who our enemy is. The more you call the enemy's name, the larger he becomes.”

RIGHT-WING REUNION: WHAT I SAW AT THE “VALUES VOTER” SUMMIT (2007)29

The 2007 gathering was exceptional for me just for the sheer number of past adversaries (and occasional allies) I bumped into. For the first time in a decade, I chatted with Don Wildmon of the American Family Association, a procensorship advocate I first locked horns with when I worked for the ACLU. We agreed that we were both aging and both “men of principle,” although each of us views the other's principles as derived from a different Constitution and perhaps alternative universes.

Former education secretary William Bennett advocated jailing reporters who publish information deemed classified by our leaders. If Bennett had his way, the Pentagon Papers would never have seen the light of day, and Watergate would still be just the name of a hotel. More than one speaker advocated impeaching federal judges for the “crime” of handing down decisions the far right does not like.

Listening to these folks outline their plans for our country, it seemed like one of my press comments may have been literally true: “This may be the biggest collection of theocrats in one room since the Salem Witch Trials.”

The most dangerous idea I heard in the last weekend, though, was one expressed by a few members of the press: The Religious Right is probably dead. Those of us who know about the Religious Right's finances, organizing ability, grassroots presence, and other resources know that obituary was issued prematurely at other times in history.

If we want to stay the course to stop advocates of theocracy, we'll need to do more than whistle past a nonexistent graveyard.

FAITH, FREEDOM, AND FRONT-ROW SEATS: I'M A “VALUES VOTER,” BUT NOT THE KIND I MET AT THESE EVENTS (2010)30

What goes around comes around. Last year I had to miss the big Religious Right conclave in Washington held each September because I was attending my son's wedding. In penance, I had to attend two Religious Right gatherings this year.

One weekend it was Ralph Reed's Faith & Freedom Coalition's first conference and strategy briefing; the next, the Family Research Council's Values Voter Summit.

They both started out in somewhat odd ways. At Reed's event, the first speaker was Tucker Carlson, whose checkered TV career has sprawled over four networks.

Arriving early, I had taken a chair in the front row to get the best possible view. Carlson recognized me as soon as he walked out. He said, “Barry Lynn! Holy smokes! Folks, I'm sorry, my mind is blank. The great Barry Lynn! I'm amazed you're here.”

This led the audience to applaud, apparently thinking he had said “Barry Goldwater” or something. Tucker quickly joked, “No, you don't need to clap, I wouldn't clap,” then went on to say I was actually a nice fellow whom he enjoyed debating on television.

The following Friday, I got to the Values Voter Summit pretty early. When I asked one of the security folks when the conference ballroom would be opened, he replied, “Are you Barry Lynn?” I acknowledged that I was (my name badge even proved it), and he asked me to stand away from the doors with him.

I thought maybe I was getting special access. Nope. When the doors did open for the gathering crowd, another security guard blocked me from entering! I had to slip in another door just a few feet away. I even managed to snag another front-row seat.

These two weekends were a lot like events I used to attend nearly twenty years ago when TV preacher Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition held conferences in Washington, DC.

For example, people still wanted to take pictures with me, to prove to the folks back home that even though their trip to the nation's capital didn't lead to a photo op with Sarah Palin or Glenn Beck, they did get a snapshot or video with one of Satan's imps.

One woman even brought her twelve-year-old son over to me and said, “Now if you ever see Mr. Lynn on television, don't believe a word he says.” I responded with: “Listen to your mother.” She missed the irony.

OK, they don't like me much. I can live with that. But what really bothers me about these events—dripping with appeals to recapture America, defend the Constitution, and stop overregulation of American life—is the bizarre spin they give on what “values” they are trying to recapture. They talk about “freedom” and “liberty” and “the Constitution” but ignore any reference to things that most of us really care about.

US Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell of Delaware warned of overregulation of water flow in toilets and demands by some municipalities for “greener” light bulbs. Several speakers ominously prophesied that military hospitals soon might be required to pay for sex-change operations.

Are these the concerns that keep you up at night?

Both of these events featured strong efforts to link the demands of the old Religious Right (prayer in the public schools, school vouchers, anti-gay policies, restrictions on reproductive choice) with the economic principles of the Tea Party crowd.

These movements are not synonymous, but there is enough overlap to be concerned that their goal of seizing power across the political spectrum might be achieved. There are pure libertarian strains in the Tea Party that certainly hate what they call “big government” but are also appalled at the prospect of “big religion”—a powerful sectarian movement that will try to regulate them from birth to death.

The message from the two weekends was: Let's take control and we'll sort out our differences later. As I told National Public Radio's Ari Shapiro, “What we see today is that people in the Religious Right are saying, you need us, and you need our issues. And in the next fifty days or so, you really need us.”

Whether this marriage of convenience between these two ideological strains is long-lasting or short-lived remains to be seen.

ALWAYS ON THEIR MIND: VALUES VOTER SUMMITEERS FIXATE ON AMERICANS UNITED (2012)31

You could have gotten the impression that everybody was talking about Americans United during the recent Values Voters Summit in Washington, DC.

Literally seconds after I sat down for the opening session on my yearly pilgrimage to this major Religious Right gathering, I heard a fellow behind me making chitchat with the woman next to him. He was talking about “some group” that was trying to “intimidate pastors” by telling them they can't endorse candidates from the pulpit. [More on illegal electioneering in the next chapter.]

Since I had just sat down and hadn't turned around, I don't think he said this because he recognized me. I'll just have to assume it was the world's worst pickup line.

On Saturday, when AU's Rob Boston was covering the day's events, he attended a workshop on pulpit politicking organized by the Rev. Rick Scarborough. The Vision America president told the crowd, “I keep waiting for my friend Barry Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State to pop in. He usually comments on what I have to say.”

I have debated Rick on numerous occasions, and he actually showed a video of a media appearance we did some years back. Again, I would have come if I had been invited—and I don't hide my identity. I sign up; I wear a suit for the occasional “alternative” viewpoint television interview; I got spoken to (almost always politely) by attendees.

This year, FRC President Tony Perkins even mentioned me in a speech to a National Press Club luncheon two days before the Summit. AU's Legislative Department tuned in on C-SPAN, and one of them yelled to me, “Tony Perkins just gave you a shout-out, and it wasn't even snarky!”

Indeed, Perkins noted that I always go to his event. He recalled that one year I said the Summit is “not a gathering of GOP consultants looking for their next contract” but mainly attended by “people new to the political process who want to participate in their country's affairs.” Perkins said he agreed with me there.