Little Brother Forum

By Jeremy Leaming/Church and State/July 2, 2007

A recent conference held by American Vision, a radical ministry that toils away to “help Christians build a truly Biblical worldview,” displayed the growing organization of the dangerous Reconstructionist movement.

Tucked away a few miles off Interstate 40 just outside Asheville, N.C., the LifeWay Ridgecrest Conference Center provides Southern Baptists with a remote place to facilitate the nurturing of “Biblical Solutions for Life.”

The sprawling 1,300-acre compound in the Blue Ridge Mountains is made up of chapels, a book store, café, guest housing, drab-colored brick buildings, fences topped with barbed wire and plenty of wooded grounds for religious contemplation or recreation. It is not easily or quickly located; its address cannot be found via a Google Maps search or traced on a Global Positioning System (GPS).

Despite its isolated location, during the last week of May hundreds of Religious Right activists and their families made their way there for a four-day “Worldview Super Conference.” They came to hear fundamentalist Christian speakers rail about the nation’s moral confusion, claim the public schools are bastions of secular humanism and warn that Christians, especially their type of Christians, are in danger of being persecuted by America.

The gathering, dubbed “Preparing This Generation to Capture the Future,” was hosted by American Vision, a ministry that has been toiling away since 1978 to “help Christians build a truly Biblical worldview.” In a conference handout, American Vision states that “By God’s grace, we will work together to make America a truly Christian nation for our children’s children.”

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Text of a letter Thursday from White House counsel Fred Fielding rejecting congressional subpoenas for documents in the firings of eight U.S. attorneys:

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June 28, 2007

Dear Chairman Leahy and Chairman Conyers:

On June 13, 2007, the White House received two subpoenas from your Committees requesting documents relating to the replacement of United States Attorneys, calling for the documents to be produced by June 28, 2007. I write at the direction of the President to advise and inform you that the President has decided to assert Executive Privilege and therefore the White House will not be making any production in response to these subpoenas for documents. In addition, Chairman Leahy subpoenaed documents from former Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of Political Affairs Sara M. Taylor, with the same return date of June 28, 2007. Chairman Conyers has subpoenaed documents from former Counsel to the President Harriet E. Miers, with a return date of July 12, 2007. Counsel for Ms. Taylor and Ms. Miers have been informed of the President’s decision to assert Executive Privilege and have been asked to relay to Ms. Taylor and Ms. Miers a direction from the President not to produce any documents.

With respect, it is with much regret that we are forced down this unfortunate path which we sought to avoid by finding grounds for mutual accommodation. We had hoped this matter could conclude with your Committees receiving information in lieu of having to invoke Executive Privilege. Instead, we are at this conclusion.

At the outset of this controversy, the President attempted to chart a course of cooperation. It was his intent that Congress receives information in a manner that accommodated Presidential prerogatives. The Department of Justice, for its part, has produced or made available for review more than 8,500 pages of documents, including scores of documents containing communications with White House personnel. In addition, the Attorney General, Deputy Attorney General, Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General, Attorney General’s former Chief of Staff, former White House Liaison, and other senior Department officials have testified in public hearings and, in some instances, submitted to interviews with Committee staff. As a result, your Committees have received an extraordinary amount of information regarding the U.S. Attorney replacement issue by way of accommodation.
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An Excerpt from Tempting-Faith-Inside-Political-Seduction by David Kuo, copyright 2006, The Free Press. The book’s author, David Kuo, was deputy director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives and is now Beliefnet’s Washington Editor.

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US News & World Report/June 25, 2007

In 5-to-4 votes, the Supreme Court today backed the president’s faith-based initiative and ruled in favor of the suspension of a student for displaying a controversial banner at a rally.

In one, a group called the Freedom From Religion Foundation Inc. sued eight Bush administration officials for blurring the line between church and state. Group members argued they had the ability to sue thanks to a 1968 Supreme Court decision that allowed taxpayers to contest government programs that promoted religion.

Today, the court said they didn’t. The faith-based initiatives were initiated by the president, not Congress, and thus the organization did not have standing, the court ruled.

In another case that U.S. News reported onin March, a high school student was suspended after displaying a 14-foot-long banner at a school event that read, “Bong Hits 4 Jesus.” He said it was his freedom of expression. The court today said not so, since he was clearly advocating drug use. The court ruled that the student’s First Amendment rights weren’t violated when school officials stepped in and confiscated the banner and suspended the student.

–Nikki Schwab

by Rachael Zoll, 3/12/07
(AP) - The National Association of Evangelicals has endorsed an anti-torture statement saying the United States has crossed “boundaries of what is legally and morally permissible” in its treatment of detainees and war prisoners in the fight against terror.

Human rights violations committed in the name of preventing terrorist attacks have made the country look hypocritical to the Muslim world, the document states. Christians have an obligation rooted in Scripture to help Americans “regain our moral clarity.”

“Our military and intelligence forces have worked diligently to prevent further attacks. But such efforts must not include measures that violate our own core values,” the document says. “The United States historically has been a leader in supporting international human rights efforts, but our moral vision has blurred since 9-11.”

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Mormonism teaches that God used to be a man on another world and that he became a god by following the laws and ordinances of his god on his home world. He brought his wife to this world, a woman he had married on the other world. She is, essentially a goddess. In his present god-state, he rules our world. He has a body of flesh and bones. Since god and his wife are both exalted persons, they each possess physical bodies. In their exalted states as deities, they produce spirit children that grow and mature in the spiritual realm. The first spirit born was Jesus. Afterwards Lucifer was born along with the rest of us. So, Mormonism teaches that we all pre-existed in the spirit realm having been produced from the union of god and his goddess wife. Therefore, we all existed in spirit form before coming (more…)