c. 2007 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) The religious right suffered major losses in the 2006 elections, but the movement is not dying or fading from the American political scene.

One goal of the religious right is to replace the teaching of evolution in public schools with either “creationism” that uses Genesis as a scientific proof text or the vaguer concept of “intelligent design,” the belief that the world is too complex to have developed without some sort of divine design.

Former Sen. Rick Santorum, who lost his Pennsylvania seat last year, asserted the No Child Left Behind education law made the teaching of alternatives to evolution compulsory: “Intelligent design is a legitimate scientific theory that should be taught in science classes,” he said.

Another GOP casualty of last year’s elections, Rep. John Hostettler of Indiana, a few years ago spoke of the “mythical wall of church-state separation.” He went on: “Like moths to a flame, Democrats can’t help themselves when it comes to denigrating and demonizing Christians.” He later retracted that statement.

Another religious right leader, former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, resigned from Congress in disgrace following serious ethical and legal questions about his behavior. In 2002, at the peak of his political power, DeLay declared, “Only Christianity offers a way to live in response to the realities that we find in this world.”

The other major setback last November came when the Rev. Ted Haggard, a Colorado megachurch pastor and president of the National Association of Evangelicals, resigned in a drugs-and-sex scandal.

Jerry Falwell’s once-potent Moral Majority no longer exists. Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition is in disarray. Last year, Ralph Reed, the Christian Coalition’s boy wonder in its heyday, lost his race for lieutenant governor of Georgia, in part because of ties to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

But they’ve never let a few scandals or electoral defeats stop them before.

The movement’s leaders have quietly regrouped and are once again working to impose upon 300 million Americans an exclusivist religio-political agenda that would effectively shatter our nation’s 220 years of church-state separation. If the religious right is successful, one particular version of Christianity would become the dominant force in an increasingly diverse country.

This month, three religious right leaders _ James Dobson of Focus on the Family, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council and Donald Wildmon of the American Family Association _ set their sights on the Rev. Richard Cizik, the Washington director of the National Association of Evangelicals, for what they called his “relentless campaign” against global warming.

The movement also scored a win in Georgia, where the Board of Education unanimously voted to allow high school-level courses in the Bible. The board is implementing the Georgia Legislature’s 2006 vote to provide “objective and non-devotional” Scripture instruction with “no attempt to indoctrinate students.”

But the murky language will create extraordinary problems for faculty, students and parents _ especially Jews, Catholics, Eastern Orthodox and mainline Protestants _ and will spawn church-state litigation. Many teachers will find it impossible to resist expressing their personal religious beliefs because the intensely devotional Bible is not akin to Shakespeare, the Greek tragedies or other great literature.

And it won’t be long until Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Mormons, cults, agnostics and atheists demand the study of their basic texts in public schools. Simply put, Georgia’s plan invites community strife and religious antagonism.

But none of this bothers religious right leaders who seek any “victory” _ sometimes at any cost _ following their scandals and electoral defeats.

(Rabbi Rudin, the American Jewish Committee’s senior interreligious adviser, is the author of the recently published book “The Baptizing of America: The Religious Right’s Plans for the Rest of Us.”)

KRE/PH END RUDIN

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