Malachi Smith's List: GOVERNMENT vs RELIGION

• Arkansas compound raided in child porn case
• By JON GAMBRELL, Associated Press Writer   2 hours, 56 minutes ago
• FOUKE, Ark. - Federal authorities conducting a child-porn investigation raided the headquarters Saturday of a ministry run by a convicted tax evader once labeled by prosecutors as a polygamist who preys on girls and women.
• Social workers interviewed children who live at the Tony Alamo Christian Ministries complex, which critics call a cult, to find out whether they were abused.
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  AP Photo:  The outside of Tony Alamo Christian Church is seen, Saturday, Sept. 20, 2008 in Fouke,...
• The two-year investigation involves a law that prohibits the transportation of children across state lines for criminal activity, said Tom Browne, who runs the FBI office in Little Rock.
• "Children living at the facility may have been sexually and physically abused," Browne said.
• The raid, conducted by state and federal authorities, started an hour before sunset at the complex in tiny Fouke, in southwestern Arkansas.
• Armed guards regularly patrol the headquarters, but there was no resistance as agents moved in, state police said.
• No one was arrested, but U.S. Attorney Bob Balfe said before the raid that he expected an arrest warrant for Alamo to be issued later.
• The federal investigation centered on the production of child pornography, while state police were looking into allegations of other child abuse, he said.
• In a phone call to The Associated Press from a friend's house in the Los Angeles area, Tony Alamo — who was also once accused of child abuse — denied involvement in pornography.
• "Where do these allegations stem from? The anti-Christ government. The Catholics don't like me because I have cut their congregation in half. They hate true Christianity."
• "We don't go into pornography; nobody in the church is into that," said Alamo, 73.
• About 100 state and federal law officers raided the 15-acre compound housing the ministry, which the Southern Poverty Law Center describes as a cult that opposes homosexuality, Catholicism and the government.

  • Oh, the Southern Poverty Law Center calls Alamo's organization a "cult."
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• The law center monitors the activities of extremist groups in the U.S.
• The ministry's Web site says it is "dedicated to spreading the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and the winning of souls worldwide."
• John Selig, head of the Arkansas Department of Human Services, said state workers were talking to children.

  • Just as in the not too long ago, Texas authorities were "talking too" the children of the group of LDS parents whom some were accusing of criminal activity in their compound. Is the Government practicing for much bigger and more legitimate fish later?
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• A passenger van with about 12 people inside left the compound heading for Texarkana with a police escort shortly after 8 p.m.
• It appeared some of those inside were children, but Selig said he didn't know whether any children would be taken into state custody.

  • Considering the "Franklin Coverup" also of not too long a time ago, I would doubt very seriously if the unfortunate children caught up in these religion vs government vendettas are not in as much danger if not more from the predators in government.
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• Police said the Alamo church complex would be allowed to open for Sunday services, although officers did not indicate when the search would end.

  • Well, thank you, Oh Great Ones!
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• Alamo's church is in a single-story building that used to be a convenience store. A white cross stands atop the structure, with a small steeple to the right side.
• Alamo and his wife Susan were street preachers along Hollywood's Sunset Strip in 1966 before forming a commune near Saugus, Calif.
• Susan Alamo died of cancer in 1982 and Alamo claimed she would be resurrected and kept her body on display for six months while their followers prayed.
• In 1988, following a raid near Santa Ana, Calif., three boys whose mothers were Alamo followers were placed in the custody of their fathers. Justin Miller, then 11, told police that Alamo directed four men to strike him 140 times with a wooden paddle as punishment for minor offenses. Alamo was later charged with child abuse but prosecutors dropped the charge, citing a lack of evidence.
• Alamo was convicted of tax-related charges in 1994 after the IRS said he owed the government $7.9 million. He served four years in prison.

  • And given the recent bailouts of banks and Wall Street by the government and their buddies over at the Fed Reserve, how much money does the Government owe the American people and when will it be prosecuted?
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• Prosecutors in the tax case argued prior to sentencing that Alamo was a flight risk and a polygamist who preyed on married women and girls in his congregation.
• Alamo told the AP that he believed Saturday's raid was part of a push by the federal government to make same-sex marriage legal while outlawing polygamy.
• Alamo said he thought polygamy was allowed in the Bible but said he did not practice it himself. He also said that "consent is puberty" when it comes to sex.
• There had been complaints about the ministry since Alamo arrived in Fouke in the late 1990s, said Terry Purvis, mayor of the town of about 850 residents. He has gotten calls from former ministry members with allegations of child abuse, polygamy and underage marriage, he said.
• Purvis said he turned over all the complaints to the FBI.

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• David Gibson

    

  Columnist
• A Catholic Court? Let the Arguments Begin
• Posted:

   

  10/4/09
• The new session of the Supreme Court of the United States opens Monday with a slate of important cases looming -- and a novelty that some worry is more than a historical curiosity:
• namely, with the addition of the newest justice, Sonia Sotomayor, six of the nine justices on the high court are . . . Roman Catholics.
• John Grisham, where are you? Do we need to call Dan Brown? Or has this issue already moved well beyond the realm of popular fiction? Some would say so.
• The five Catholic justices that Sotomayor joins -- Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Anthony Kennedy and Chief Justice John Roberts -- already represented a historic high, and now Catholics will comprise two-thirds of the bench.
• This is well out of proportion to the 24 percent or so of the general American population that is Catholic. The question is, does it matter?
• In a column penned after Sotomayor's nomination, Joyce Appleby, a distinguished historian emerita from UCLA, argued that because the Catholic Church has taken strong stands on issues such as abortion, gay marriage and the death penalty, "it raises serious questions about the freedom of Catholic justices to judge these issues."
• Her suggestion is that they ought to recuse themselves from such cases.
• "Surely ingrained convictions exert more power on judgment than mere financial gain," Appleby wrote in the Tallahassee Democrat. "Many will counter that views on abortion, same-sex marriage, and the death penalty are profound moral commitments, not political opinions. Yet who will argue that religious beliefs and the authority of the Catholic Church will have no bearing on the justices when presented with cases touching these powerful concerns?"
• There are counterarguments, to be sure.
• For one thing, the preponderance of Catholics on the high court today still leave Catholics underrepresented, historically speaking.
• All told, there have been 11 Catholic justices out of 108 in U.S. history, just 10 percent of the total.
• By themselves, Episcopalians and Presbyterians have accounted for 50 percent of all Supreme Court justices, even though, as of the year 2000, those two denominations accounted for less than 5 percent of the population.
• Unitarians have been most overrepresented, historically; and Jewish justices now account for two of the three non-Catholic seats on the high court -- a 22 percent share that is much greater than the 1.5 percent of the population that Jews would be accorded by proportion, and a higher percentage even than the current overrepresentation of Catholics.
• But few are citing those disproportionate numbers today, nor were there complaints in the past about having too many mainline Protestants on the high court.
• And if Catholics should recuse themselves from certain cases, why was this never an issue during the 150 years when there was generally just one Catholic justice? Theoretically, the principle would have applied all the same.
• Yet It seems likely that the Catholic question will continue to percolate during the coming term given the number of high-profile cases on the docket.
• Already, on Wednesday, the court will hear arguments in Salazar v. Buono, which will decide challenge to the presence of an eight-foot-tall cross on federal land in the Mojave National Preserve in California.
• The ruling by the justices is likely to have a lasting impact on the many controversial displays of religious symbols on public land around the country.
• In addition, cases regarding the regulation of executive compensation, the constitutionality of life sentences for juvenile offenders, and parental custody statutes will all reveal something about the beliefs and temperaments of the various justices.
• Add to that the fact that John Roberts is expected to start shaping the court even more vigorously as he enters his fifth year as chief justice, and Samuel Alito is also expected to begin putting his stamp on decisions; both men are conservative Catholics, and Alito replaced the more moderate Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman to serve on the high court. (Sotomayor is only the third -- talk about underrepresentation!)
• But it is the numerical weight of Catholics that seems to spark the concern.
• In 2007, when all five Catholic justices voted in a 5-4 decision in Gonzales v. Carhart to uphold the constitutionality of a federal ban on late-term, or so-called partial-birth, abortions, University of Chicago Law School Professor Geoffrey Stone wrote a blog post, "Our Faith-Based Justices," arguing not only that the majority was dead wrong, but pinning the reason on their religion:
• "Here is a painfully awkward observation: All five justices in the majority in Gonzales are Catholic. The four justices who are either Protestant or Jewish all voted in accord with settled precedent. It is mortifying to have to point this out. But it is too obvious, and too telling, to ignore. Ultimately, the five justices in the majority all fell back on a common argument to justify their position. There is, they say, a compelling moral reason for the result in Gonzales."
• (Cartoonist Tony Auth also sparked controversy with a caricature of the five Catholic justices wearing bishops' miters.)
• And that morality, Stone argued, was based on their sectarian Catholic views.
• In the wake of Sotomayor's confirmation, Stone reprised his views in a Huffington Post essay, noting that his longtime friend Scalia had objected strongly to Stone's arguments. But Stone persisted, and tried to bolster his thesis while at the end admitting "none of this necessarily 'proves' anything."
• Scalia would no doubt agree with that last statement. He has for years protested that his faith has no impact on his decisions, nor should it:
  

   

  "There is no such thing as a 'Catholic judge,' " Scalia said in a 2007 speech. "The bottom line is that the Catholic faith seems to me to have little effect on my work as a judge. . . . Just as there is no 'Catholic' way to cook a hamburger, I am hard-pressed to tell you of a single opinion of mine that would have come out differently if I were not Catholic."
• In 2002, Scalia went so far as to argue that any Catholic judge who opposed the death penalty because they believed it to be immoral "would have to resign. . . . You couldn't function as a judge."
• Scalia speaks, as do Clarence Thomas and, to a certain extent, the other conservative Catholics on the bench, from the point of view of an "originalist," or one who argues that justices must decide cases only according to the original intent of the framers of the Constitution.
• (Originalism is an updated -- and some argue improved -- version of "strict constructionalism.")
• Divining the original intent can itself be a matter of debate, so some argue it is unrealistic to say there is a fixed and correct answer to every case that judges can call like an umpire.
• Cast in the opposing role is the concept of the "living Constitution,"-- that is, the view of the Constitution as a dynamic document that must be interpreted to meet evolving standards and new developments (such as what constitutes "cruel and unusual punishment," or when something is obscene, or whether racial segregation is illegal or abortion legal).
• This debate does have a clear "religious" parallel in that it underscores a common dynamic at play in both American jurisprudence and Roman Catholicism (as well as other faiths) -- that is, whether or how much the Constitution, in the first instance, and religious doctrine, in the second, can or should change.
• Arguments over whether churches should ordain openly gay clergy or permit same-sex marriage seem open-and-shut cases (in the negative) to religious "originalists," while those who embrace the notion of the "development of doctrine" note that Christianity has changed its teachings on slavery, usury, capital punishment, religious freedom and, in some cases, the ordination of women.
• Some Catholics might take one side (Scalia, e.g.) while others (perhaps Sotomayor) would have another view. In other words, there are Catholics and there are Catholics.
• How else to explain this coincidence: On April 16, 2008, the day Pope Benedict XVI arrived for a historic visit to the United States, during which he would repeat the church's opposition to capital punishment, the Supreme Court upheld the lethal injection method of execution and all five Catholic justices combined to back a decision that goes against Catholic teaching.
• This division between enforcing established principles and applying developing doctrine was at the heart of the "empathy" debate swirling around Sotomayor's nomination, and the propriety of her remarks that her experience as a "wise Latina woman" would lead her to reach different conclusions on cases than other justices. President Obama has also said he wanted to nominate justices with "empathy," who would understand the plight of the little guy in court cases.
• The "empathy argument" outraged many conservatives, who tend -- like Scalia et al. -- to be originalists who would oppose the "activism" that such feelings could lead to.
• Ironically, some conservatives are uneasy about justices checking their beliefs at the door, as that could lead to an affirmation of, for example, gay marriage as a matter of constitutionally protected equal protection rather than something barred by longstanding social custom and religious belief.
• In First Things, a conservative journal, Joe Carter argued recently that everyone has religious beliefs that influence their views, and so sectarian believers -- like Catholic Supreme Court justices -- should not retreat from invoking those specific beliefs.
• Otherwise, he wrote, "the result is that certain religious beliefs (e.g., those that are reductionist and based on materialism) are welcomed while others (any religion that relies both on general and special revelation) are excluded."
• In the end, the arguments from both sides as to whether the court is too Catholic, or the justices too strict in their rulings, or too empathetic, come down to where one stands politically, and where different people want to court to go, politically. That can include justices. And beyond the relatively few easy calls, the Constitution is what the justices say it is.
• That explanation doesn't satisfy everyone, however.
• On Sunday morning, in fact, at the Catholic cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle in Washington, hundreds of lawyers and judges and politicians gathered for an annual rite called the "Red Mass," a service held on the Sunday before the opening of the Supreme Court session to invoke "God's blessings and guidance in the administration of justice under the power of the Holy Spirit."
• Last year at this time, Marci Hamilton, a legal scholar at Yeshiva University's law school and a lawyer who represents victims of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy, pointed up not only questions of "propriety" about the attendance of six Supreme Curt justices at the Red Mass (five Catholics and Justice Breyer, who is Jewish -- go figure) but also about the none-too-subtle influence the rituals could have on their minds, and ours.
• "The Red Mass is a public affair intended to reinforce the ties between government and the Church," she wrote.
• Five Catholic justices were there, including Sotomayor. But Clarence Thomas was not. And Breyer came again!
• Alas, it was hard to figure out what was behind this year's agenda.
• Vice President Biden was there, to boot, along with two Cabinet secretaries and hundreds of legal professionals. But in his homily at the Mass, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, the newest U.S. cardinal, preached about the scriptural example of adding "a tone of sympathetic understanding and a message of consolation" to legalistic pronouncements, and the duty to work for a "reversal of injustice and a merciful uplifting of the poor and those of no account."
• Formal, specialized legal knowledge, the cardinal said, "frequently becomes semi-mechanical and distancing."
• "A person can forget that the basis of that knowledge is something much more natural in the human condition, that the law and lawyers are around because justice among human beings is always an issue. There are always smoldering wicks and bruised reeds needing our human attention, an attention that cries out and says that even sophisticated, knowledgeable 'human' lawyers need reminding, need a purifying divine fire from the Lord, both in their personal lives and in their profession itself."
• That sounds suspiciously close to empathy. Maybe Sotomayor is the Catholic everyone should be worried about.

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• Saturday, November 21, 2009
• Religious leaders vow civil disobedience on anti-life issues
• Declaration opposes forced participation in any 'anti-life act'
• By Julia Duin
• More than 150 leaders across a spectrum of conservative Christianity on Friday released a 4,700-word document vowing civil disobedience if they are forced to take part in "anti-life acts" or bless gay marriages.
• Called the "Manhattan Declaration," the six-page, single-spaced document was drafted by Prison Fellowship founder Charles Colson, an evangelical,

  • His wife is Roman Catholic
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• and Princeton University professor Robert P. George, a Roman Catholic, and included a bevy of Catholic, Anglican and Orthodox bishops, archbishops and cardinals as signatories along with dozens of clergy and laity.
• Archbishop of Washington Donald W. Wuerl is one of the signatories.
• "Throughout the centuries, Christianity has taught that civil disobedience is not only permitted, but sometimes required," says the document which cited civil rights icon Martin Luther King and his willingness to go to jail for his beliefs.
• "Because we honor justice and the common good," it states, "we will not comply with any edict that purports to compel our institutions to participate in abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide or euthanasia or any other anti-life act; nor will we bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriages or the equivalent, or refrain from proclaiming the truth, as we know it, about morality and immorality and marriage and the family."
• When pressed to say what sorts of civil disobedience the writers were proposing, its originators were vague on the details at Friday's news conference during which the document was released.
• "We certainly hope it doesn't come to that," said Mr. George, who added that he has represented a West Virginia resident who has refused to pay a portion of her state income tax that funds abortions.
• "However, we see case after case of challenges to religious liberty," such as compelling pharmacists to carry abortifacient drugs or health care workers to assist in abortions, he added.
• "When the limits of conscience are reached and you cannot comply, it's better to suffer a wrong than to do it," he said.
• There are at least 224 million Christians in the United States, according to the Web site Adherents.com.
• The document, which was drafted over the summer, is being released at a time of high stress for many of the groups that signed it.
• The Archdiocese of Washington is under fire for saying it will not comply with a pending D.C. law that would force the Catholic Church to give health benefits or adoption services to same-sex couples.

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• Saturday, November 21, 2009
• Religious leaders vow civil disobedience on anti-life issues
• Declaration opposes forced participation in any 'anti-life act'
• By Julia Duin
• Archbishop Wuerl, who attended the news conference, said it was a "joy" to welcome the religious leaders at the news conference and emphasized that their task "is to change human hearts. That is how society is changed."
• Philadelphia Cardinal Justin Rigali, one of the signers, said people's consciences must be formed first.
• "The institution of marriage is at risk of being redefined at its very essence," he said. "Justice demands that we not remain silent in face of these threats."
• However, he twice dodged a reporter's question about whether it would be a mortal sin for a politician to vote for a national health care bill that obligates taxpayers to pay for abortions.
• Several speakers said the document was moral, not political, in nature and that the bulk of it defines three core issues: life, marriage and religious liberty.
• "This is truly a matter of the heart," said the Rev. Robert Sirico, founder of the Michigan-based Acton Institute. "To portray it as something other is to mischaracterize our intentions."
• But the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Washington-based Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said the document was very political.
• "I am optimistic that the people in the pews will not heed their leaders' misguided call to action," he said
• "Polls show that most churchgoers do not want to see their faith politicized. But I am also well aware that religious leaders have vast lobbying power that cannot be ignored."
• The document does portray a gloomy picture of the current political situation, citing the "pro-abortion ideology [that] prevails today in our government."
• It adds, "The present administration is led and staffed by those who want to make abortions legal at any stage of fetal development and who want to provide abortions at taxpayer expense. Majorities in both houses [of Congress] hold pro-abortion views."
• The first 148 signatures include Southern Baptists, Anglicans, the Orthodox Church of America (OCA), members of Reformed, evangelical, Hispanic Protestant, Church of God in Christ, Antiochian Orthodox and Evangelical Free Church traditions plus the executives of numerous parachurch ministries.
• There were only a handful of Presbyterians, United Methodists and Pentecostals, and no apparent signatories from Seventh-day Adventist, Messianic Jewish and Episcopal churches.

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• Christian leaders take issue with laws
• DEFENSE OF BELIEFS URGED
  Same-sex marriage measure in spotlight
• By Michelle Boorstein and Hamil R. Harris

   Washington Post Staff Writer 
   Saturday, November 21, 2009
• Conservative Christian leaders unveiled a declaration Friday calling on Christians not to comply with rules and laws forcing them to accept abortion, same-sex marriage and other ideals that go against their religious doctrines.
• The declaration urges Christians to practice civil disobedience to defend their convictions, even though some signers of the document backed away from the strong language.
• The Catholic Archbishop of Washington, Donald W. Wuerl, was among the first signers of the Manhattan Declaration.
• He appeared at a news conference in the District on Friday to announce it, even as the Church was considering a city-proposed compromise on its same-sex marriage measure.
• Church officials say the bill, as it stands, would require faith groups, such as the church-run Catholic Charities, to extend benefits to married same-sex partners, an example of what the declaration's authors see as a violation of religious liberty law.
• "We are Orthodox, Catholic, and evangelical Christians who have united at this hour to reaffirm fundamental truths about justice and the common good, and to call upon our fellow citizens, believers and non-believers alike, to join us in defending them," the declaration says.
• It lists the "fundamental truths" as the "sanctity of human life, the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife, and the rights of conscience and religious liberty."
• The declaration is signed by more than 125 Orthodox, Catholic and evangelical leaders.
• Other leaders at the news conference at the National Press Club included Cardinal Justin Rigali, outgoing chairman of the U.S. Catholic bishops' Committee for Pro-Life Activities; Pentecostal leader Harry Jackson, pastor of a Beltsville church; and evangelical activist Tony Perkins.
• Other signers include evangelical leader and Watergate-era figure Chuck Colson and academics Timothy George and Robert George.
• The leaders are urging the public to sign the online document.
• The declaration notes that Christianity has taught over the centuries "that civil disobedience is not only permitted, but sometimes required."
• People who signed the declaration, however, were vague about how they hoped Christians would respond to it.
• Wuerl's office played down the civil disobedience wording, saying he wasn't urging Catholics to "do anything specific," said his spokeswoman Susan Gibbs. "That wasn't something we had talked about."
• Asked if appearing at the news conference seemed at odds with the spirit of negotiation over the same-sex marriage measure, Gibbs said no.
• "There's a difference between working out language in a bill and compromising our belief system."
• The declaration was more than a year in the making, starting with meetings in Manhattan, and comes amid other efforts by conservative religious leaders around the world to coalesce.
• The most obvious sign of that came this fall, with an overture by Pope Benedict XVI to orthodox Anglicans who have left the Episcopal Church over the issue of homosexuality.
• Some political activists said the declaration was evidence of evangelical leaders trying to lure back Catholics who voted Democratic in 2006 and last year.
• "Privately they're saying, 'Look what happened when we let Democrats, even pro-life Democrats get into power,' " said R. Randolph "Randy" Brinson, a conservative activist who founded Redeem the Vote, a national effort to get young evangelicals to vote. "They're trying to re-poach that territory."
• Although the declaration's positions are hardly new for religious conservatives, it says social ills have been exacerbated by the election of President Obama, an abortion rights advocate, as well as a general erosion of what it calls "marriage culture" with the rise of divorce, greater acceptance of infidelity and the uncoupling of marriage from childbearing.
• Staff writer Tim Craig contributed to this report.

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• List of Religious Leaders Signatories
• List of Religious Leaders Signatories
• Dr. Daniel Akin
  President, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary (Wake Forest, NC)
• Leith Anderson
  President of National Association of Evangelicals (Washington, DC)
• Kay Arthur
  CEO and Co-founder, Precept Ministries International (Chattanooga, TN)
• Dr. Mark L. Bailey
  President, Dallas Theological Seminary (Dallas, TX)
• Gary Bauer
  President, American Values; Chairman, Campaign for Working Families (Washington D.C.)
• Rev. Michael L. Beresford
  Managing Director of Church Relations, Billy Graham Evangelistic Assn. (Charlotte, NC)
• Galen Carey
  Director of Government Affairs, National Association of Evangelicals (Washington, DC)
• Chuck Colson
  Founder, the Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview (Lansdowne, VA)
• Jim Daly
  President and CEO, Focus on the Family (Colorado Springs, CO)
• Dr. James Dobson
  Founder, Focus on the Family (Colorado Springs, CO)
• Rev. Jonathan Falwell
  Senior Pastor, Thomas Road Baptist Church (Lynchburg, VA)
• Jerry Jenkins
  Author (Black Forest, CO)
• Dr. Richard Land
  President, The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the SBC (Washington, DC)
• Dr. Duane Litfin
  President, Wheaton College (Wheaton, IL)
• Josh McDowell
  Founder, Josh McDowell Ministries (Plano, TX)
• David Neff
  Editor-in-Chief, Christianity Today (Carol Stream, IL)
• Dr. J.I. Packer
  Board of GovernorsÕ Professor of Theology, Regent College (Canada)
• Tony Perkins
  President, Family Research Council (Washington, D.C.)
• James Robison
  Founder and President, LIFE Outreach International (Fort Worth, TX)
• Joni Eareckson Tada
  Founder and CEO, Joni and Friends International Disability Center (Agoura Hills, CA)
• Ravi Zacharias
  Founder and Chairman of the board, Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (Norcross, GA)

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