June 5 2020

Shadow Network: Media, Money and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right (2019)
By Anne Nelson

Veteran journalist Nelson delves into how the evangelical movement became aligned with big oil, the NRA and gun rights, and the war against civil rights and the planet.  In part, it's a deal made among those who need access to the media (developed by the fundamentalists through radio stations in local areas abandoned by newspapers), those who need funding (provided by big oil, who in turn want EPA rollbacks to protect the fossil fuel industry, as do wealthy neo-cons like the Devos and Prince families, who also endorse a radical fundamentalism), and those who need organizing/technical skills (Republican tacticians like Paul Weyrich and Richard Viguerie, who create strategy groups with pro-democracy sounding names like Center for National Policy [CNP] and Citizens for Community Values).  As to the NRA, it's all of the above - appealing to the rural/mostly "evangelical vote" and well-organized and well-funded.

The Southern Baptist church began in 1845, as a reaction to slave-holders being barred from missionary service.  They were confined mostly to the confederate states, but grew in power, assuming the concept of church control to extend to school and state.  By 1967, wealthy Paul Pressler III had teamed up with pastor Paige Patterson to foment a fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Church. The would soon employ tactics to elect far right conservative congressmen, using their tax exempt church as a power base.  Initially enthusiastic over Jimmy Carter, the fundamentalists abandoned him for supporting the ERA and civil rights.  By 1988 the religious right and the political right had formally wed, per Nelson.  The new organization, People for the American Way, endorsed corporal punishment and said gays were deserving of death, a theme that became a lynchpin of conservatism.

Paul Weyrich, Republic "pawnbroker" and TX fundamentalist, was invited to a pastors' meeting by Jerry Falwell Sr, a southern Baptist preacher who endorsed Pressler and Patterson's movement.  He would become a founder of the powerful CNP, which would recruit and train fundamentalist activists,  use political technology and dispense with "the need to be right".  One of their early activities was to raise funds to support the Contras fighting against the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua, garnering huge amounts through their church network (because the federal would not fund the effort) and leading to the death of Archbishop Oscar Romero, an advocate for the poor.

Just as the CNP was seeking a platform to promote their far-right tactics Christian broadcasters had started to move into the news vacuum created by the retreat of local newspapers in the midwest and southern states.  Salem Christian Broadcasting, in particular, whose media star was James Dobson (of Focus on the Family), teamed with Weyrich, giving the far right and CNP a mouthpiece that would grow in number of outlets and power.  The Christian broadcasters and organizers worked with financiers, many from big oil, particularly the Koch family (but also including the criminal Cullen Davis).  THE NRA became another financial partner, thus uniting fundamentalism, climate change deniers who wanted no restrictions on the fossil fuel industry, and gun rights advocates.  The platform sought to fight abortion, LBGT rights, gun control and any efforts to save the planet.  Their women's group, Concerned Women for America, even opposed the Violence Against Women Act of 2012, saying that it created "protections for homosexuals".

Grooming Ted Cruz as their ideal candidate in 2016, the CNP instead ended up with Donald Trump.  Offering their support for his compliance on issues such as appointing conservative judges and rolling back climate controls, Trump's campaign notably greed to every element in the CNP's platform.

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"And here we are," as foreign affairs specialist Fiona Hill once famously said.  It seems to me that the very same goals that Christians are - or should be - pursuing, like good health care for families, gun control, racial equality, and better living standards for marginalized populations - are the very things that the CNP/fundamentalists are fighting against.  While there have been Christians who rejected the fundamentalist position, like Jimmy Carter and Billy Graham, their message of loving God and loving others was eventually squelched by the fundamentalist position.  I don't get it.  No wonder some people think we Christians are a bunch of hypocrites.