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US Christian Right Quiz | Detailed Political Quizzes
10. Who said the following in 1958? “The true negro does not want integration. He realizes his potential is far better among his own race. Who then is propagating this terrible thing?…We see the hand of Moscow in the background….[We see the] Devil himself.”
-Jerry Falwell: Best-known Christian Right leader in the 1980s, fundamentalist Baptist Pastor, and later founder of the influential Moral Majority. Falwell, who also defended the white apartheid South African government, was assuring “segregationists that God and the nation were on their side.” (Williams, 33.)
-To airbrush his past, Falwell, sometime after 1970, tried to recall “all copies of his earlier sermons warning against integration and the evils of the black race.” “In 1968, shortly after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., Falwell admitted the first African American family to his church.” (Hedges, 28, 87.)
-“The ties by Christian Right leaders…with racist groups highlight the long ties between right-wing fundamentalists and American racist organizations, including the Klan, which had a chaplain assigned to each chapter….By the late 1950s these radical Christians had drifted to the fiercely anticommunist John Birch Society…Many of the ideas championed by today’s dominionists—the bizarre conspiracy theories, the calls for unrestrained capitalism, the war against ‘liberal’ organizations…, along with calls to dismantle federal agencies that deal with housing or education—are drawn from the ideology of this rabid anticommunist enclave. Timothy LaHaye used to run John Birch Society training seminars in California.” (Hedges, 137.)
12. True or False: The Christian Right, respecting the sanctity of human life, opposes capital punishment.
-False. “The Religious Right’s opposition to abortion has been weakened…by its insistent refusal to be consistently ‘pro-life.’ Unlike the Roman Catholic Church…the leaders of the Religious Right have failed to condemn capital punishment or even the use of torture by the Bush administration….[In fact,] when the Republican-Religious Right coalition controlled [the Congress and presidency]…from February 1, 2006…until January 3, 2007…no attempt whatsoever [was made] to outlaw abortion….[Instead] the Military Commissions Act [was passed and signed into law]…which sought to legitimize the use of torture.” (Balmer, 70-1.)
-There is a danger to religion by associating it with the state. When religious leaders pursue political power they lose their spiritual integrity. The failure of the Religious Right to condemn the Bush administration’s policies on torture provides perhaps the most egregious example. “The very people who purport to hear a fetal scream turned a deaf ear to the real screams of fully formed human beings who were being tortured in the name of our government.”
Mainstream Baptist: May 2010
13. How many times does the word “God” appear in the US Constitution?
-Zero. The First Amendment to the Constitution does refer to religion but not in a manner that fundamentalist Christians desire. The First Amendment does not privilege Christianity; rather, it reads in part that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” As well, “Article 6, Section 3 states explicitly that federal officials ‘shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.’ The addition of the word ‘affirmation’ is significant because it meant that officeholders could not be compelled to take an oath on the Bible….[T]he founders, who did in fact live in an era when the states were peopled almost entirely by Christians, thought to include freethinkers and non-Christians…in their basic laws.”
How the religious right distorts history - The Spirited Atheist - The Washington Post
15. Are members of the Christian Right anti-Semitic?
-While dominionists regularly preach that Jews must rule the biblical land of Israel in order for Christ to return, they also believe but rarely state “that Jews who do not convert are damned and will be destroyed in the fiery, apocalyptic ending of the world.” Despite this blatant anti-Semitism, right-wing Jews embrace traditional evangelicals as such evangelicals lobby persistently for US financial, military and diplomatic support of Israel. (Hedges, 142-3.)
-Timothy LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins’s popular Left Behind series of Christian apocalyptic thrillers “provide the graphic details of raw mayhem and cruelty that God will unleash on all nonbelievers when Christ returns and raptures Christians into heaven. Astonishingly, the novels are among the best-selling books in America with more than 62 million in print….LaHaye [a Southern Baptist minister] has helped found and lead numerous right-wing groups, including the Council for National Policy, and he is…one of the dominionists’ most powerful propagandists.” (Hedges, 183-5.)
-It is ironic that most US evangelicals have never demonstrated the slightest interest in the welfare of Palestinian Christians (or Muslims) who live under Israel’s harsh and illegal occupation. In contrast, in 2012 “the United Church of Canada [the largest Protestant denomination in Canada]…voted to boycott products exported by Israeli settlements on the West Bank. The foray into Middle East politics was one of 13 resolutions the UCC adopted…The resolutions also single out Israeli settlements as a principal obstacle to peace in the region, call on Israel to suspend settlement expansion, and express regret for previously asking Palestinians to acknowledge Israel as a Jewish state.” United Church of Canada approves Israeli settlement boycott - The Globe and Mail
16. Who said the following at a major meeting of religious conservatives in 1980? “It is interesting at great political rallies how you have a Protestant to pray, a Catholic to pray, and then you have a Jew to pray. With all due respect to those dear people, my friends, God Almighty does not hear the prayer of a Jew….How in the world can God hear the prayer of a man who says that Jesus Christ is not the Messiah? It’s blasphemous.”
-Bailey Smith: Southern Baptist Convention president. “Falwell attempted to do damage control by arguing that God hears the prayers of all ‘redeemed’ Jews, which was what Smith had meant when he said that prayers must be offered in the name of Jesus to be acceptable.” (Williams, 190.)
-“Hatred of Jews and other non-Christians pervades the Gospel of John…Jews, he wrote, are children of the devil…” (Hedges, 4.)
17. Was it an American general or a Taliban commander who said the following after leading troops into battle? “I knew my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his God was an idol.”
-An American general, William Boykin, stated the above after leading American troops into battle against a Somalian warlord. “General Boykin belongs to a small group called the Faith Force Multiplier, whose members apply military principles to evangelism…Boykin, rather than being reprimanded for his inflammatory rhetoric, was promoted [in 2003] to the position of deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence. He believes America is engaged in a holy war as a ‘Christian nation’ battling Satan and that America’s Muslim adversaries will be defeated ‘only if we come against them in the name of Jesus.’” (Hedges, 29.)
-Many evangelical “leaders portrayed the terrorist attacks of 9/11 as a sign of Islam’s allegedly violent or ‘evil’ nature….‘We will rid the world of the evil-doers,’ Bush promised America…Evangelicals’ view of politics as a spiritual battle between good and evil led them to support not only the military’s actions in Afghanistan but also President Bush’s war in Iraq….[T]he evangelical population…was more supportive of the war than any other demographic group….Evangelical support for the war increased to 79 percent in May 2003, and it remained high long after other Americans had given up hope for success in Iraq.” (Williams, 255-6.)
19. Who distributed the following memo—titled, How to Participate in a Political Party—to his supporters at the Iowa Republican County Caucus? “Rule the world for God. Give the impression that you are there to work for the party, not push an ideology. Hide your strength. Don’t flaunt your Christianity. Christians need to take leadership positions. Party officers control political parties and so it is very important that mature Christians have a majority of leadership whenever possible, God willing.”
-Joan Bokaer, the Director of Theocracy Watch, a project of the Center for Religion, Ethics and Social Policy at Cornell University, was on a 1986 speaking tour in Iowa when she “obtained a copy of a memo Pat Robertson [a leading televangelist and Republican presidential candidate] handed out to followers at the Iowa Republican County Caucus.” (In September 1986, Robertson announced his intention to seek the Republican nomination for President. Robertson’s campaign got off to a strong second-place finish in the Iowa caucus.) The Christian Right and the Rise of American Fascism - The Christian Left Blog
-“The Reconstructionist movement, founded in 1973 by Rousas Rushdooney, is the intellectual foundation for the most politically active element within the Christian Right. Rushdooney’s…three-volume work, Institutes of Biblical Law, argued that American society should be governed according to the Biblical precepts in the Ten Commandments. He wrote that the elect, like Adam and Noah, were given dominion over the earth by God and must subdue the earth, along with all non-believers, so the Messiah could return….The religious utterances from political leaders such as George Bush, Tom Delay, Pat Robertson and Zell Miller are only understandable in light of Rushdooney and Dominionism. These leaders believe that God has selected them to battle the forces of evil, embodied in ‘secular humanism,’ to create a Christian nation….Pat Robertson…says he is training…students [at his Regent’s University] to rule when the Christian regents take power, part of the reign leading to the return of Christ.” Chris Hedges Article
-“Dominionists now control at least six national television networks, each reaching tens of millions of homes…” (Hedges, 10.)
-When some Christian Right activists became disillusioned with their lack of success in achieving substantive legislative gains they joined Rushdoony’s Christian Reconstructions movement. Rushdoony called for a replacement of American constitutional government with the revival of Old Testament law. “The Chalcedon Foundation, which he founded in 1965, advocated the reinstitution of slavelike indentured servitude and a restoration of the death penalty for homosexuals, adulterers, and ‘Sabbath-breakers.’…[Rushdoony] did influence a few prominent individuals in the Christian Right.” (Williams, 226.)
-The Bush administration “diverted billions of dollars…from secular and governmental social-service organizations to faith-based organizations, bankrolling churches and organizations that seek to dismantle American democracy and create a theocratic state….These groups can and usually do discriminate by refusing to hire gays and lesbians, people of other faiths and those who do not embrace their strict version of Christianity….In fiscal year 2004, faith-based organizations received $2.005 billion in funding—10.3 percent of federal competitive service grants.” President Obama renamed the office, White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. He also established an advisory council that is composed of religious and secular leaders and scholars from different backgrounds. (Hedges, 23.)
10. Who said the following in 1958? “The true negro does not want integration. He realizes his potential is far better among his own race. Who then is propagating this terrible thing?…We see the hand of Moscow in the background….[We see the] Devil himself.”
-Jerry Falwell: Best-known Christian Right leader in the 1980s, fundamentalist Baptist Pastor, and later founder of the influential Moral Majority. Falwell, who also defended the white apartheid South African government, was assuring “segregationists that God and the nation were on their side.” (Williams, 33.)
-To airbrush his past, Falwell, sometime after 1970, tried to recall “all copies of his earlier sermons warning against integration and the evils of the black race.” “In 1968, shortly after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., Falwell admitted the first African American family to his church.” (Hedges, 28, 87.)
-“The ties by Christian Right leaders…with racist groups highlight the long ties between right-wing fundamentalists and American racist organizations, including the Klan, which had a chaplain assigned to each chapter….By the late 1950s these radical Christians had drifted to the fiercely anticommunist John Birch Society…Many of the ideas championed by today’s dominionists—the bizarre conspiracy theories, the calls for unrestrained capitalism, the war against ‘liberal’ organizations…, along with calls to dismantle federal agencies that deal with housing or education—are drawn from the ideology of this rabid anticommunist enclave. Timothy LaHaye used to run John Birch Society training seminars in California.” (Hedges, 137.)
12. True or False: The Christian Right, respecting the sanctity of human life, opposes capital punishment.
-False. “The Religious Right’s opposition to abortion has been weakened…by its insistent refusal to be consistently ‘pro-life.’ Unlike the Roman Catholic Church…the leaders of the Religious Right have failed to condemn capital punishment or even the use of torture by the Bush administration….[In fact,] when the Republican-Religious Right coalition controlled [the Congress and presidency]…from February 1, 2006…until January 3, 2007…no attempt whatsoever [was made] to outlaw abortion….[Instead] the Military Commissions Act [was passed and signed into law]…which sought to legitimize the use of torture.” (Balmer, 70-1.)
-There is a danger to religion by associating it with the state. When religious leaders pursue political power they lose their spiritual integrity. The failure of the Religious Right to condemn the Bush administration’s policies on torture provides perhaps the most egregious example. “The very people who purport to hear a fetal scream turned a deaf ear to the real screams of fully formed human beings who were being tortured in the name of our government.”
Mainstream Baptist: May 2010
13. How many times does the word “God” appear in the US Constitution?
-Zero. The First Amendment to the Constitution does refer to religion but not in a manner that fundamentalist Christians desire. The First Amendment does not privilege Christianity; rather, it reads in part that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” As well, “Article 6, Section 3 states explicitly that federal officials ‘shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.’ The addition of the word ‘affirmation’ is significant because it meant that officeholders could not be compelled to take an oath on the Bible….[T]he founders, who did in fact live in an era when the states were peopled almost entirely by Christians, thought to include freethinkers and non-Christians…in their basic laws.”
How the religious right distorts history - The Spirited Atheist - The Washington Post
15. Are members of the Christian Right anti-Semitic?
-While dominionists regularly preach that Jews must rule the biblical land of Israel in order for Christ to return, they also believe but rarely state “that Jews who do not convert are damned and will be destroyed in the fiery, apocalyptic ending of the world.” Despite this blatant anti-Semitism, right-wing Jews embrace traditional evangelicals as such evangelicals lobby persistently for US financial, military and diplomatic support of Israel. (Hedges, 142-3.)
-Timothy LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins’s popular Left Behind series of Christian apocalyptic thrillers “provide the graphic details of raw mayhem and cruelty that God will unleash on all nonbelievers when Christ returns and raptures Christians into heaven. Astonishingly, the novels are among the best-selling books in America with more than 62 million in print….LaHaye [a Southern Baptist minister] has helped found and lead numerous right-wing groups, including the Council for National Policy, and he is…one of the dominionists’ most powerful propagandists.” (Hedges, 183-5.)
-It is ironic that most US evangelicals have never demonstrated the slightest interest in the welfare of Palestinian Christians (or Muslims) who live under Israel’s harsh and illegal occupation. In contrast, in 2012 “the United Church of Canada [the largest Protestant denomination in Canada]…voted to boycott products exported by Israeli settlements on the West Bank. The foray into Middle East politics was one of 13 resolutions the UCC adopted…The resolutions also single out Israeli settlements as a principal obstacle to peace in the region, call on Israel to suspend settlement expansion, and express regret for previously asking Palestinians to acknowledge Israel as a Jewish state.” United Church of Canada approves Israeli settlement boycott - The Globe and Mail
16. Who said the following at a major meeting of religious conservatives in 1980? “It is interesting at great political rallies how you have a Protestant to pray, a Catholic to pray, and then you have a Jew to pray. With all due respect to those dear people, my friends, God Almighty does not hear the prayer of a Jew….How in the world can God hear the prayer of a man who says that Jesus Christ is not the Messiah? It’s blasphemous.”
-Bailey Smith: Southern Baptist Convention president. “Falwell attempted to do damage control by arguing that God hears the prayers of all ‘redeemed’ Jews, which was what Smith had meant when he said that prayers must be offered in the name of Jesus to be acceptable.” (Williams, 190.)
-“Hatred of Jews and other non-Christians pervades the Gospel of John…Jews, he wrote, are children of the devil…” (Hedges, 4.)
17. Was it an American general or a Taliban commander who said the following after leading troops into battle? “I knew my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his God was an idol.”
-An American general, William Boykin, stated the above after leading American troops into battle against a Somalian warlord. “General Boykin belongs to a small group called the Faith Force Multiplier, whose members apply military principles to evangelism…Boykin, rather than being reprimanded for his inflammatory rhetoric, was promoted [in 2003] to the position of deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence. He believes America is engaged in a holy war as a ‘Christian nation’ battling Satan and that America’s Muslim adversaries will be defeated ‘only if we come against them in the name of Jesus.’” (Hedges, 29.)
-Many evangelical “leaders portrayed the terrorist attacks of 9/11 as a sign of Islam’s allegedly violent or ‘evil’ nature….‘We will rid the world of the evil-doers,’ Bush promised America…Evangelicals’ view of politics as a spiritual battle between good and evil led them to support not only the military’s actions in Afghanistan but also President Bush’s war in Iraq….[T]he evangelical population…was more supportive of the war than any other demographic group….Evangelical support for the war increased to 79 percent in May 2003, and it remained high long after other Americans had given up hope for success in Iraq.” (Williams, 255-6.)
19. Who distributed the following memo—titled, How to Participate in a Political Party—to his supporters at the Iowa Republican County Caucus? “Rule the world for God. Give the impression that you are there to work for the party, not push an ideology. Hide your strength. Don’t flaunt your Christianity. Christians need to take leadership positions. Party officers control political parties and so it is very important that mature Christians have a majority of leadership whenever possible, God willing.”
-Joan Bokaer, the Director of Theocracy Watch, a project of the Center for Religion, Ethics and Social Policy at Cornell University, was on a 1986 speaking tour in Iowa when she “obtained a copy of a memo Pat Robertson [a leading televangelist and Republican presidential candidate] handed out to followers at the Iowa Republican County Caucus.” (In September 1986, Robertson announced his intention to seek the Republican nomination for President. Robertson’s campaign got off to a strong second-place finish in the Iowa caucus.) The Christian Right and the Rise of American Fascism - The Christian Left Blog
-“The Reconstructionist movement, founded in 1973 by Rousas Rushdooney, is the intellectual foundation for the most politically active element within the Christian Right. Rushdooney’s…three-volume work, Institutes of Biblical Law, argued that American society should be governed according to the Biblical precepts in the Ten Commandments. He wrote that the elect, like Adam and Noah, were given dominion over the earth by God and must subdue the earth, along with all non-believers, so the Messiah could return….The religious utterances from political leaders such as George Bush, Tom Delay, Pat Robertson and Zell Miller are only understandable in light of Rushdooney and Dominionism. These leaders believe that God has selected them to battle the forces of evil, embodied in ‘secular humanism,’ to create a Christian nation….Pat Robertson…says he is training…students [at his Regent’s University] to rule when the Christian regents take power, part of the reign leading to the return of Christ.” Chris Hedges Article
-“Dominionists now control at least six national television networks, each reaching tens of millions of homes…” (Hedges, 10.)
-When some Christian Right activists became disillusioned with their lack of success in achieving substantive legislative gains they joined Rushdoony’s Christian Reconstructions movement. Rushdoony called for a replacement of American constitutional government with the revival of Old Testament law. “The Chalcedon Foundation, which he founded in 1965, advocated the reinstitution of slavelike indentured servitude and a restoration of the death penalty for homosexuals, adulterers, and ‘Sabbath-breakers.’…[Rushdoony] did influence a few prominent individuals in the Christian Right.” (Williams, 226.)
-The Bush administration “diverted billions of dollars…from secular and governmental social-service organizations to faith-based organizations, bankrolling churches and organizations that seek to dismantle American democracy and create a theocratic state….These groups can and usually do discriminate by refusing to hire gays and lesbians, people of other faiths and those who do not embrace their strict version of Christianity….In fiscal year 2004, faith-based organizations received $2.005 billion in funding—10.3 percent of federal competitive service grants.” President Obama renamed the office, White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. He also established an advisory council that is composed of religious and secular leaders and scholars from different backgrounds. (Hedges, 23.)
