According to Amazon, Tuesday was the launch date of Islam is of the Devil, a book published by Creation House and written by the now-notorious Pastor Terry D. Jones of the Dove World Outreach Center in Florida. As with Fred Phelps, Jones has a particular obsession with one subject which he has distilled into a slogan, and he uses stunts such as his planned "Burn a Koran Day" to attract media interest. However, while Phelps is confined to the fringes of fundamentalism, Jones is better-connected: Creation House is one of the biggest conservative Christian publishing houses in the USA, and it is an imprint of Strang Communications, which publishes Charisma magazine. In 2005 Stephen Strang, who heads the company, was named by Time as one of the "25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America". Further, Jones was involved with the controversial "Maranatha Ministries" in the 1980s, along with a number of figures who are today influential in the neo-Pentecostal "Third Wave".

Yesterday, New York City's Landmarks Preservation Commission voted unanimously to allow construction of an Islamic center in lower Manhattan. Immediately after the vote, TV preacher Pat Robertson's American Center for Law and Justice announced that it would file suit to block the move.

Why is an organization that purports to promote religious freedom suing to stop construction of house of worship?

Zeek has published my article on the current propaganda campaign encouraging Jewish communities to embrace Christian Zionists.  In cities across the nation, rabbis and Jewish leaders are having to decide if they will participate in Christian Zionist sponsored activities including the events hosted by John Hagee's Christians United for Israel (CUFI).  CUFI has become particularly aggressive about countering any bad press in Jewish journals and blogs.  This should be of concern to anyone supporting peace in the Middle East, but the attempt to draw Jews away from their traditional support of progressivism can also impact the U.S. in other ways.

The American Catholic Right in recent years has been dominated by neo-conservatives.  But the Catholic Right now seems to be in transition as the neoconservative philosophy of empire and behind-the-scenes philosopher elites is sinking faster than a box of tea in Boston harbor.  There is also evidence emerging that movement conservatives now switching over to the bumptiously paleo-conservative Tea Party movement.

If the trend continues, it would constitute an historic shift for American politics as well as global Catholicism.

Sex in the Religious Right has a fascinating historical record.  The topic has had its scandals, strange theories and the use of sex as a political movement

[editor: here's Chris Rodda's take on David Barton's claim that a substantial number of the Founding Fathers were ministers:

"Barton cleverly uses the word 'seminary' to dupe his followers into thinking that 29 signers of the Declaration of Independence had theology degrees and were ministers, when in reality the word 'seminary' just means college, although its use today is almost always to refer to a theological seminary. The truth is that only four of the 56 signers of the Declaration went to college to study theology, and only two, John Witherspoon and Lyman Hall, stuck with it and became ministers, but Hall was booted out of his church for some moral indiscretion and decided to become a doctor instead of a minister. Of the other two, one became a lawyer and the other became a merchant."]

This week's class at Beck University was the second class taught by "Professor" David Barton, and, as expected, the class was packed with quite a few of Barton's pseudo-historical lies and distortions. In fact, Barton managed to get over a dozen separate lies into this single half-hour class.

Consider the following short video documentary (see full story), which presents what it calls the "transformation" of Newark. Initiated by New Jersey residents Lloyd and Joanna Turner in early 2008, the Pray For Newark effort involves a consortium of church volunteers who are working closely with Newark's police and the mayoral administration of Corey Booker. The effort claims to be able to field an entire army of volunteers, one for each street in the city, organized by city ward - almost like a neighborhood watch.

Neighborhood watches have been shown to be effective at reducing crime. So what's not to like ? Well, as I documented in my story Movement Behind Uganda's "Kill the Gays" Bill Organizing in Newark, Pray For Newark is closely tied to a an international evangelical ministry whose leaders are in the forefront of opposing gay rights in Hawaii and are closely allied with Ugandan leaders who are leading the push in Uganda for the so-called "kill the gays" bill that would in effect legislate an entire segment of Ugandan society out of existence. As a simple point of fact, the Uganda Anti Homosexuality Bill is harsher than any comparable anti-gay legislation passed, prior to World War Two, in Nazi Germany. The movement can't currently aim so high in the United States but in Hawaii, where it is highly influential in the executive branch of government, gay rights activists are being treated as second-class citizens whose civil rights can be determined by majority vote.

[ correction: I apologize for mistakenly citing Bruce Wilson's claim that Haim Saban Univision network broadcasts the programs of John Hagee. Upon further investigation Wilson has told me that no such connection exists. I should have done a better job in my own research - Bill Berkowitz ]

Billionaire Hollywood mogul, Haim Saban, jumped on Olive Stone's recent comments, and compared the Oscar-winning filmmaker to mad Mel Gibson. Saban, who owns Univision, which broadcasts the anti-Semitic ravings of Pastor John Hagee, has some `splaining of his own to do!    

As one of America's greatest and most controversial filmmakers, Oliver Stone inspires both rapturous praise, and torches and pitchforks. Andrew Breitbart's bighollywood.com's Kurt Schlichter, who is firmly ensconced in the latter camp, recently wondered "Why this pretentious clown still gets taken seriously?"  

Last week, a fairly major controversy involving Stone erupted when, while in London for the British premiere of his new documentary on Hugo Chávez, he was asked in an interview with the Sunday Times of London why there was "such a focus on the Holocaust," Stone replied: "The Jewish domination of the media." He added: "They stay on top of every comment, the most powerful lobby in Washington. Israel has f****d up United States foreign policy for years." He also noted that "Hitler did far more damage to the Russians than [to] the Jewish people."

Zondervan, the Christian book publisher, is (was) planning a Sarah Palin biography aimed at tweens called "Speaking Up: The Sarah Palin Story".

You know the story: She ran for vice president, and lost; she was governor of Alaska, and quit halfway through her term; her book, "Going Rogue: An American Life," was a best-seller; she's a commentator on the Fox News Channel; she will soon be sharing Alaska in a series for The Learning Channel; she's in great demand as a speaker, and gets handsomely paid for her appearances.

She tweets; she Facebooks; she endorses candidates; and now, Sarah Palin will have her life story told in a biography specifically earmarked for Christian evangelical tweens. Maybe!  

Originally scheduled for publication in October - just prior to the mid-term elections - the book's publisher, Zondervan, a wholly owned subsidiary of HarperCollins (which published Palin's "Going Rogue"), which in turn is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, made a surprise announcement a few days ago saying that publication of the Palin tweener bio had been put on indefinite hold.

Dove World Outreach Center has been featured on Talk2Action before for their visible anti-Islamic protests. (Photo is Rifqa Bary rally in Ohio, 2009.) In an ironic twist, their pastor, Terry Jones, testified in 1997 U.S. congressional hearings on religious freedom in Europe, where he complained of intolerance and revocation of the tax-free status of his charismatic church in Cologne, Germany.

Members of the Livingston Parish School Board in Louisiana may be on the verge of making a huge mistake - one that could cost their community a lot of money.

During a recent meeting, several board members went off on a tangent about teaching creationism. During this public session, they openly discussed their desire to bring religion into the classroom. It was not a wise move.

The claims that the Religious Right is dead and that the Culture Wars are over are as ubiquitous as they are poorly supported.  We have debunked such claims many times here at Talk to Action. (Most recently, Frank Cocozzelli took on one such prominent claim.)

Over at Religion Dispatches, I have an essay about all this. You'll find a sample after the jump -- followed by a quiz featuring ten prominent examples of statements claiming End of the Culture Wars and/or the Religious Right is Near.

Fox News's favorite commentator and Religious Right darling Newt Gingrich has come up with a new popular book.  The Late Jerry Falwell welcomed Newt back on the political circuit after unseemly revelations about his marriage.  A frequent guest of the Christian Coalition, the historian is hinting he might be in the mix to run for President.

Will the recently released video showing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stating that he conspired, against US President Bill Clinton, to undermine the Oslo Accords have the sort of political blowback it truly ought to have ? Shot nine years ago, the video shows Netanyahu boasting that he destroyed the peace process and stating, "America is something that can be easily moved. Moved to the right direction... They won't get in our way ... Eighty per cent of the Americans support us. It's absurd."

The video has the potential to undermine Netanyahu's credibility in the US but there's another aspect to the story that could undermine Bibi Netanyahu's credibility with Jews in Israel and internationally - Netanyahu's key, close ally in undermining peace negotiations, Christians United For Israel founder and head John Hagee, has a ugly history of distributing, on a global scale, vile anti-Jewish propaganda including Adolf Hitler's favorite conspiracy theory, the canard that Jewish bankers rule the world.

In his most recent  New York Times op-ed columnist Frank Rich declared über-traditionalist Catholic movie star Mel Gibson's fall from grace to be "good news" -- suggesting that  as goes one downwardly spiraling Hollywood star, so goes the Religious Right.Too bad the facts don't support the pundit's pronouncement.