Below find an excerpt from Bill Moyers'
Setting The Record Straight
“Consider the scene just a few weeks ago when your Gov. Perry, surrounded by cheering God-folk, showed up at a pep rally in Fort Worth for yet another cleverly staged bashing of gay people, contrived to keep the pious signed on for the culture war so they won’t know they are losing the class war waged against them in Austin by the governor and his rich corporate patrons. The main speaker was none other than the Rev. Rod Parsley of Ohio. Keep your eyes on Rev. Parsley. He is the new incarnation of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, that devout duo who channeled Elmer Gantry into a new political religion driven by an obsession to punish people on account of sex. Parsley runs a multimillion-dollar-a-year televangelism ministry based in Columbus, Ohio, with access worldwide to 400 TV stations and cable affiliates. He describes himself as neither Republican nor Democrat but a “Christo-crat” —a gladiator for God marching against “the very hordes of hell in our society.” But he shows up with so many Republicans that he has been publicly described as the party’s “spiritual advisor.”
The “advice” he offers is the same old stuff peddled by Robertson and Falwell in their own rise to the top of the dung heap of religious bigotry and bile. Parsley demonizes other faiths (“The god of Islam and the god of Christianity are not the same being”) and rouses the partisan faithful to fever pitch by tossing them the red meat of radical disinformation: “The church in America is under oppression.” “The separation of church and state is a lie perpetrated on Americans—especially on believers in Jesus Christ.” So intense is his scapegoating of gays that one cannot help but think of the 1930s when the powerful and the pious in Germany demonized Jews and homosexuals in order to arouse and manipulate public passions. Watching the two of them together, you have to wonder if Gov. Perry and Rev. Parsley have ever read a history book detailing how Heinrich Himmler organized a special section of the Gestapo to deal with homosexuality and abortion, exhorting his country to remember that “Germany’s forebears knew what to do with homosexuals. They drowned them in bags.” You want to believe the governor and the preacher are surely ignorant of such horrors, horrors you know they would never condone, but you want to grab them by the lapels and shake them and tell them their loathing of other people is the kindling of evil.
Ohio newspapers report that Parsley has launched Reformation Ohio to bring “spiritual revival and moral reformation” to the Buckeye state by using pastors and their churches to register at least 400,000 new voters motivated by “Bible-based values.” It’s a familiar agenda: deny women freedom of conscience in the difficult personal choices affecting pregnancy, discriminate against gay people who seek the commitments of marriage, outlaw stem-cell research no matter the lives it might save, and overturn a provision in the U.S. tax code that prohibits non-profit churches from endorsing political candidates. (At one recent rally, Parsley and former U.S. Sen. Zell Miller delivered “fiery speeches” as more than 1,200 pastors were handed thousands of mail-in petitions to spread among their congregations urging the Senate quickly to confirm John Roberts to the Supreme Court.)
Rev. Parsley is a master of mass psychology. He sees the church as a sleeping giant with the ability and the anointing from God to transform America. At a rally in July he proclaimed: “Let the Revolution begin!” And the congregation answered: “Let the Revolution begin.”
So what was it that brought Rev. Parsley to Austin recently to meet with Gov. Perry? Both showed up for a “Pastors’ Policy Briefing” sponsored by the Texas Restoration Project (not to be confused with Reformation Ohio, unless you think of kissin’ cousins). Once again the aim is to sign up “Patriot Pastors” who will call on their congregations to vote the Lord’s will on Election Day. Also present in Austin was Ohio’s secretary of state, Ken Blackwell. You will remember him as the overseer of the election process in Ohio last year when a surge of conservative Christian voters narrowly carried Bush to victory there. Yes, the same Ken Blackwell who had modestly acknowledged that “God wanted him as secretary of state in 2004” because it was such a critical election. Now, apparently, he has been divinely designated for higher office. One wonders what Blackwell, Perry and Parsley were really talking about when they got down on their knees here in Austin. We will never know, because the praying and preaching and politicking were closed to the press, as befits the stealth salvation they are plotting for Texas.
Who paid to bring preachers from all over the state to town for this politically religious camp meeting? That, too, is a big secret. Two Texas oligarchs were spotted at the closed-door sessions—James Leininger and Bo Pilgrim— and they may have dropped something into the offering plate. But no one will say who put up the half million shekels it cost to bring the brethren to town and provide for them more than a few loaves and fishes”.
