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The “Religious Freedom” Long Game and the Santorum Surge

By Sarah Posner

…ss the ongoing battle over contraception coverage and the Rick Santorum surge. Was Darrell Issa’s hearing last week a political winner or loser? For religious conservatives, this battle is not about 2012, but a long game, as mapped out in the Manhattan Declaration. In this clip, Belz and I discuss the religious language Santorum uses, and what it means, in particular, his use of spiritual warfare terminology, and his 2008 claim that mainline Prote…

Gingrich, Frontrunner, Touts Personhood in 14th Amendment

By Sarah Posner

…. I’m watching right now, and just saw Newt Gingrich extol the proposal by Manhattan Declaration author and Princeton University professor Robert George that the 14th Amendment authorizes Congress to pass legislation declaring a fertilized egg a “person” entitled to civil rights. Although many of the other candidates have supported a Human Life Amendment—something long advocated by anti-choice groups—Gingrich maintained on Saturday that Congress h…

What the USCCB’s New “Religious Liberty” Initiative Took from Evangelicals

By Sarah Posner

…sed “religious liberty” issue became official with the 2009 release of the Manhattan Declaration, hailed by its authors as a glorious “ecumenism” because evangelicals, Catholics, and even some Eastern Orthodox Christians joined hands in protecting their freedom from the scourges of LGBT rights, reproductive freedom, feminism, and secularism. At the time, a handful of Catholic bishops signed the document. Now the USCCB seems to have been motivated…

Personhood Activists Regroup as “Next Civil Rights Movement”

By Sarah Posner

…And at a presidential candidate forum in South Carolina a few months ago, Manhattan Declaration author Robert George stunned even the GOP hopefuls with his question about whether, as president, they would “propose to Congress appropriate legislation pursuant to the 14th Amendment to protect human life in all stages and conditions.” That is, George was proposing not a human life amendment to the Constitution—something the right has long discussed…

Bachmann’s Constitutional Flameout

By Sarah Posner

…eton professor Robert George, drafter of the religious right manifesto the Manhattan Declaration and founder of the American Principles Project, befuddled the participants with a line of questioning about abortion and the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. Michele Bachmann, who has a law degree and is an old hand in anti-abortion politics, looked genuinely confused by George’s line of questioning. That’s because George was proposing not merely th…

The Republicans’ Dangerous Quest to End Nonexistent Taxpayer-Funded Abortion

By Sarah Posner

…es, an affiliate of the American Principles Project, which was launched by Manhattan Declaration author and Princeton professor Robert George. It’s a bill driven by a particular religious view, one that is undergirded by an ideology not just about the fetus (that abortion is murder) but about women and their divine role as wives, mothers, and members of society. The Guttmacher Institute is out with a compelling new video which highlights crucial f…

Values Voters Summit: Preaching Wins the Morning

By Sarah Posner

…one falling in lock-step with their “Judeo-Christian values.” It’s why the Manhattan Declaration is the religious right’s core document right now — and why they’d like tea partiers to get on board with it. Huckabee elaborated: “the bigger problem with the Democrats,” he said, “is not that they don’t share our values but that they don’t share our story” — in other words, not just their version of American history, and the intentions of the founders…

The Non-Existent Tea Party-Religious Right God Gap

By Sarah Posner

…e and now with Focus on the Family, implored his audience here to sign the Manhattan Declaration. (It is based on, he said, the recognition that religious liberty is our “first freedom.”) Or why Newt Gingrich referred derisively to “secular, anti-American values.” To Gingrich, those “secular” values represent the curtailment of (religious right) religious freedom. The your-rights-infringe-on-my-religious-freedom argument is the main one you’d hear…

Glenn Beck’s ‘Social Justice’ Heresies

By Sarah Posner

…visionist) to an Ivy Leaguer (Princeton’s Robert George, mastermind of the Manhattan Declaration) to a Republican candidate for Congress (the Rev. Stephen Broden, who gave a “benediction” at Rep. Michele Bachmann’s “Code Red” anti-health care rally). Broden claimed that “the social justice movement is built upon or predicated on the idea of liberation theology.” (They are, in fact, two separate religious movements.) “Liberation theology has its or…

Progressive v. Conservative Religion Writers

By The Editors

…on on that question, and on the meaning of conservative documents like the Manhattan Declaration and the National Association of Evangelicals’ recent Theology of Sex, they find agreement on another. Watch it here (divided into sections after the jump): Have Democrats abandoned faith outreach? (09:51) The National Association of Evangelicals’ “Theology of Sex” (07:13) Gay rights vs. religious liberties (11:43) Obama continues Bush’s discriminato…