INTERFAITH ALLIANCE STATE OF BELIEF RADIO JULY 27, 2013 RUSH TRANSCRIPT: Peter Montgomery

Click here for video Click here for audio [REV. DR. C. WELTON GADDY, HOST]: Its the dog days of summer, and politics is the furthest thing from the minds of normal Americans pretty much everywhere except inside the Beltway But as it turns out, there are other places the focus is on the second oldest profession. Earlier this month in Iowa, Christian-nation advocate David Lane organized an event - he called the event Rediscovering God in America, and it drew the likes of Senators Ted Cruz and Rand Paul. Here to talk about why this is potentially a big deal is Peter Montgomery, a Senior Fellow at People for the American Way, a good friend of mine for may, many years. He has written some in-depth articles on this whole thing for rightwingwatch.org. Peter, welcome back to State of Belief Radio! [PETER MONTGOMERY, GUEST]: Thanks, I'm always happy to be here. [WG]: So, Im not sure how many people caught the quote from Ted Cruzs father, Rafael Cruz, that was making the rounds recently, where he referred to his son as the anointed one - a very humble guy. It would seem Cruz and several other potential candidates for the White House are looking for the anointing of David Lane, as well. Why is that such a big deal? [PM]: Well, David Lane has been trying really hard to make his chosen on the anointed one. Last time around, he tried very hard to do that with Rick Perry, and he was successful in generating a huge amount of coverage and enthusiasm for

Perry. Until Perry sort of tanked in the debates, it looked like he might have had some real momentum. And before that, Lane was able to deliver the Iowa Caucus in 2008 to Mike Huckabee, so he's really shown an ability to organize and turn out among the religious right base. [WG]: You've watched him function... What's the deal? I mean, what's the appeal? [PM]: Well he is a guy who likes to stay behind the scenes, and he's an organizer: he organizes events for pastors. He's done it - he says - for more than 10,000 pastors in 15 states, just since 2005. And these are all about getting a bunch of conservative pastors together and then haranguing them that they need to be more involved in politics, because he says the reason the country is going to hell is that there's not enough aggressively political preaching from the right which may be hard for some of your readers to believe. So that's him, and I, frankly, think that a lot of the politicians like him because he's not one of these guys who's competing with them for the limelight; he's very happy, generally, to stay out of it. [WG]: What about his role in opposing Mitt Romney? [PM]: He is, first and foremost, an activist for the Christian Nation - thinks the country was founded by Christians, for Christians, and he does not believe that Mormons qualify, and he says that it's a false God that Mormons worship. And so, he was cheerleading, back when there was a flap about one of Rick Perry's supporters making anti-Mormon comments about Romney and a lot of people were sort of backing off of that, and he was saying, "No, this is good, we have to draw the distinction; we have to remind people that this is a false God that Mitt Romney worships." So he was really, really unhappy that Mitt Romney was the nominee - and he's going to try to make sure nothing like that happens again. [WG]: Peter, you describe David Lane and his ilk as "Christian-Nation extremists." Just in case none of our listeners understand all of that, or some of them, what is it, and what is the ilk of these people? [PM]: Well, the ilk is that they believe that the nation was founded by Christians, for Christians - and that therefore their interpretation of the word of God, their interpretation of the Christian bible - should be the law of the land. And they're not particularly concerned about the rights of religious minorities, and they are aggressively trying to push back on separation of Church and State, which they say has turned America into a Pagan nation; and David Lane says this is the moment we have to decide if we're going to be a Christian nation or a Pagan nation. And his rhetoric on that is getting increasingly war-like: he complains that when Roe v. Wade was passed in 1972, he says the Church didn't make a peep when it should have been fomenting riots and revolution. So that's his mindset.

[WG]: So, when you hear of a Christian-nation type person like this, and an endorsement for a candidate from someone like this, you can pretty well be assured they trust the candidate to try and make Christianity the predominant religion - the state religion - of the United States. [PM]: Well, and that's why they're really working hard, that's why they're pushing hard, to push their candidates forward. It's probably why he worked so hard to get Rick Perry as the Republican nominee - because he doesn't trust the establishment Republicans; he does not think the Republican Party is sufficiently committed to his vision. And so that's why he's working really hard to push them along; and I think that people who go and embrace him should be held accountable for that. And people like Ted Cruz and Rand Paul - somebody needs to be asking them if they share this guy's vision of the country. [WG]: Well, that's where I was going to go: so, does the participation of prominent leaders like Ted Cruz and Rand Paul at David Lane events legitimize them - at least from his perspective - or does it just marginalize the politicians from the party? [PM]: Well, I think when you have someone like David Lane who has demonstrated his ability to, for example, help Huckabee with the Iowa caucus, who played a key role in having three Iowa Sate Supreme Court Justices voted out of office - people don't dismiss him. Because he has shown that he has some real ability to organize. Now, he can't do everything; he could not keep Romney from becoming the nominee last time around, but he really sees this as a war within the Republican Party as part of the larger war for the soul of the country, and he's fighting it. He's not going away. He's got a 12-state strategy for 2013 and 2014; he's backed by a lot of money from the American Family Association, which has deep pockets and a 200 radio station network, and he's connected to this other deep-pockets group called United in Purpose, which is conservative Evangelical money coming out of Silicon Valley - another thing that might surprise some people: there's a pot of money there that's hoping to do for rightwing candidates sort of what Obama's tech team did for him, last time around. [WG]: Gosh. We've seen some really extremist legislatures - state legislatures pass some really questionable, would-be-funny-if-not-serious legislation, just in the last little bit. In Texas, we saw that; there are initiatives afoot in North Carolina and elsewhere that are easy to call bizarre, but there's probably better words for it that we wouldn't use on the air. My question is: how much of that is potentially implementing the agenda of folks like Lane? I mean, Rick Perry received great support, as you've said, from Lane in his run for the White House; so, is Perry, in this legislation they've been passing in Texas - the anti-abortion legislation - is he qualifying himself? [PM]: Sure, I think the wave of that kind of legislation that we've seen around the country since 2010 is the best repudiation of all the mainstream media notions

that just because Obama won re-election, the religious right is doomed or dying as a political force. I mean, they elected a lot of really bad people to office, and those people have gerrymandered the legislatures, and now they're going to town, and people are going to be suffering in a lot of states because of that. And you know, Lane is part of a much bigger movement that has a huge infrastructure. [WG]: Do you - and I don't want to chase a rabbit here, but - is Lane's fingerprints on these state legislatures that have been making these crazy decisions? [PM]: I don't know how directly they are, but certainly in a lot of those states that were the battleground states in 2010 and 2012, he was organizing conservative pastors, telling them to mobilize their congregations. He was part of this "Champion the Vote" effort that United In Purpose, the Silicon Valley outfit, did, which was an effort to register and turn out five million additional conservative Evangelicals - so yeah, I think in a lot of states, they certainly helped elect a lot of conservatives, whether or not Obama or Romney happened to win that particular state. [WG]: You say that there is, certainly, a divide between Lane and the GOP, and I take it that he's proud of that, because he doesn't like where the GOP is; what kind of war is he waging against the GOP? [PM]: Well, it's kind of funny, because from my perspective, there's a lot less distance between him and the rest of the GOP than I would like to see. You know, the party itself has moved so far in his direction, but a lot of it boils down to that report the party did after Obama won re-election, and there was a lot of conversation about this sort of autopsy that they did, and some social conservatives took as a sign that the Washington consultant class were saying we should tone down the social conservative rhetoric, and that was interpreted by people like David Lane as a declaration of war against them from the party. And so they've been making very clear that they're not going to go away, and they are not going to let the party downplay the things that they care most about. And at the most recent Ralph Reed big gathering here in Washington, in the last couple of months, Reince Priebus came and made this, really, almost pathetic plea to the attending to say, you know, talk about what a great Christian he was; talk about how committed he was - because he does not want to be seen as fomenting a war with this religious right base that the party counts on. [WG]: My goodness. You know, my thoughts go back to someone like Paul Weyrich, and I know you've been in this a long time too, so you know those kinds of people - this guy seems beyond Weyrich. Lane seems almost more strategic, more passionate about the Christianization of the nation even than someone like the early Weyrichs did. [PM]: Yeah, I think you might be right on that. It's hard to say for sure, but he

certainly - his rhetoric, his goals - certainly are at the pretty far fringe. You know, when he talked recently about saying that he wants to force Republican candidates to agree to make the bible the principal textbook in public schools and return us to a Christian culture or he's going to go after them - that's pretty out there. [WG]: It certainly is. [PM]: And yet he's not a loner. He's working very closely with what we think of as more establishment religious right people - you know, David Barton, and Matt Staver from Liberty Counsel, and Jim Garlow - they're all part of his network. They're all allies. [WG]: How would you profile his agenda? What are the things he talks about most wanting to change? [PM]: Well, everything that he says that he thinks is a sign of a Pagan culture: one is certainly legal access to abortion - you know, he's out to criminalize abortion; the advance of LGBT equality is another thing that he sees as an abomination and against God's law. But he has also pretty much signed on to the whole agenda that a lot of right wing strategists have tried to sort of merge the religious right with the Tea Party: you know, anti-big government rhetoric, antidebt rhetoric, and - for him, particularly - this notion of pushing religion back into the public schools; pushing this notion of a Christian culture, and re-establishing, in his words, a Christian culture. I mean, those are his motivating forces. [WG]: Yeah. I mean, you think about it: we're sitting here in 2013; he's working toward 2016; you wonder how could it intensify, given where he started. [PM]: Well, that's true. I think for him, it's really about - I don't know, of his dozen states in 2013 or 14 - I don't know what he sees as sort of the most important battleground issues, people there in 2014; but you're certainly right that it's about establishing some more muscle within the party to try to do for whoever he chooses what he tried to do for Rick Perry. He's very clear that he does not want another McCain or Romney; and Ted Cruz would like to be that man, Rand Paul would clearly like to be that man, and I'm sure there's others who would like to be that man. [WG]: Well, Peter, you and I both know that your organization, People for the American Way, has always been at the forefront of trying to oppose these Christian Nation activists. What are you all doing on this? I mean, you've got great literature now; what's PFAW doing on this? [PM]: Well, I think part of what we do through Right Wing Watch, the blog, and our more in-depth reports is to try to put a spotlight on this, and try to call attention to it; and then we really also want to hold public officials accountable for

making alliances with extremists and giving the credibility they don't deserve. Of course it gives Lane credibility with these 600 pastors when he's got presidential hopefuls tromping through. It's the same reason we try to call out members of Congress when they go on Bryan Fischer's radio show - because it gives credibility to his extremism - he's one of the American Family Association's big spokespeople. So that's a big part of it. And we also have increasingly invested a lot of money in youth leadership programs to help get into the pipeline - from college progressives to young elected officials - to help make sure that we have people in office who have a different idea of the American way and the Constitution than David Lane does. [WG]: Yeah. Peter, when you started this research, I'm curious, did you think you were going to just confirm what you already thought? And did you do that, or did you also find more than you expected? [PM]: I actually found more than I expected. You know, David Lane was somebody who I hadn't followed super-closely; he would occasionally pop up and we would occasionally write a quick blog post about him, but I started seeing enough rhetoric that seemed really extreme that I would start throwing things into a file and say, one day I'm going to do a longer report on him. And the combination of seeing that he had these presidential hopefuls headed to Iowa and a particularly egregious piece that he published in WorldNet Daily, I sort of said, ok, it's time to go through that file; and I was surprised. I was surprised to hear him using such violent rhetoric, all this warfare rhetoric, and I was a little surprised to see how directly he was demanding the return of Christian teaching as the centerpiece of public education. [WG]: Peter Montgomery is Senior Fellow at People for the American Way, a leading organization fighting for progressive values in our country. Peter, you've made, I think, a very significant contribution with your coverage of these nefarious attempts to tear down the Wall of Separation; it's something that needs to be taken seriously, and we'll link to your writing on stateofbelief.com, our website. Thanks a lot for being here again. Every time you come, you bring us enlightenment that we may not like, but we need to know; and you inspire us to do something about it. Thanks. [PM]: Well, thank you. I'm always happy to be here.

State of Belief is based on the proposition that religion has a positive and healing role to play in the life of the nation. The show explains and explores that role by illustrating the vast diversity of beliefs in America the most religiously diverse country in the world while exposing and critiquing both the political

manipulation of religion for partisan purposes and the religious manipulation of government for sectarian purposes. Each week, the Rev. Dr. C. Welton Gaddy offers listeners critical analysis of the news of religion and politics, and seeks to provide listeners with an understanding and appreciation of religious liberty. Rev. Gaddy tackles politics with the firm belief that the best way to secure freedom for religion in America is to secure freedom from religion. State of Belief illustrates how the Religious Right is wrong wrong for America and bad for religion. Through interviews with celebrities and newsmakers and field reports from around the country, State of Belief explores the intersection of religion with politics, culture, media, and activism, and promotes diverse religious voices in a religiously pluralistic world. Author of more than 20 books, including First Freedom First: A Citizens Guide to Protecting Religious Liberty and the Separation of Church and State, the Rev. Dr. C. Welton Gaddy leads the national non-partisan grassroots and educational organization Interfaith Alliance and serves as Pastor for Preaching and Worship at Northminster (Baptist) Church in Monroe, Louisiana. In addition to being a prolific writer, Dr. Gaddy hosts the weekly State of Belief radio program, where he explores the role of religion in the life of the nation by illustrating the vast diversity of beliefs in America, while exposing and critiquing both the political manipulation of religion for partisan purposes and the religious manipulation of government for sectarian purposes. Dr. Gaddy provides regular commentary to the national media on issues relating to religion and politics. He has appeared on MSNBCs The Rachel Maddow Show and Hardball, NBCs Nightly News and Dateline, PBSs Religion and Ethics Newsweekly and The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, C-SPANs Washington Journal, ABCs World News, and CNNs American Morning. Former host of Morally Speaking on NBC affiliate KTVE in Monroe, Louisiana, Dr. Gaddy is a regular contributor to mainstream and religious news outlets. While ministering to churches with a message of inclusion, Dr. Gaddy emerged as a leader among progressive and moderate Baptists. Among his many leadership roles, he is a past president of the Alliance of Baptists and has been a 20-year member of the Commission of Christian Ethics of the Baptist World Alliance. His past leadership roles include serving as a member of the General Council of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, President of Americans United for

Separation of Church and State, Chair of the Pastoral Leadership Commission of the Baptist World Alliance and member of the World Economic Forums Council of 100. Rev. Gaddy currently serves on the White House task force on the reform of the Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Prior to the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), Dr. Gaddy served in many SBC leadership roles including as a member of the conventions Executive Committee from 1980-84 and Director of Christian Citizenship Development of the Christian Life Commission from 1973-77. Dr. Gaddy received his undergraduate degree from Union University in Jackson, Tennessee and his doctoral degree and divinity training from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.