Renewal Projects: Copy, Paste, Repeat

The people behind religious-right activist David Lane’s Restoration/Renewal Projects are getting plain lazy to the point where they’re just hitting “copy-paste” on old material and distributing it in support of yet another Rick Perry political campaign.

The Iowa Independent reports members of the Iowa faith community recently received invitations from the Iowa Renewal Project to attend a “pastors’ policy briefing” to be held next month in Des Moines. The date will be less than two months before the state’s first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses at which Gov. Perry will rely heavily on votes from conservative evangelicals if he is to have a viable shot at the Republican presidential nomination.

TFN has for years been documenting the activities of the Texas Restoration Project, which was also organized by Lane appears to be almost a carbon copy of what the Iowa Renewal Project is now attempting. Restoration, Renewal, potato, po-tah-to.

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Coordinated Anti-Mormonism?

Mormonism, or the attacks on it, is in the news again this morning following a story in The Daily Beast that cites emails between a Christian radio executive and well-known religious-right activist David Lane.

The emails between Lane and Dick Bott of the Bott Radio Network seem to indicate the two were in cahoots to advance the anti-Mormon narrative that became controversial when Dallas pastor and Gov. Rick Perry supporter Robert Jeffress called the faith of Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney a cult and non-Christian.

The story posits that because Lane a long history as an important Gov. Perry supporter, perhaps the coordinated efforts were not between Lane and Bott alone, but also with Gov. Perry’s presidential campaign.

We’re not quite ready to take that leap. As Sarah Posner points out in another story published today in Religion Dispatches, the evidence for coordination between Gov. Perry’s campaign and Lane on this issue is thin right now. But there are other reasons to be distressed by these emails.

Submissive Wives and Presidential Politics

On the heels of its almost-endorsement of Rick Perry last week, David Lane and the American Renewal Project are back at it again. Our female readers might want to sit down for this one.

Lane is up in arms over a question asked of Michele Bachmann at a Fox News Republican presidential primary debate earlier this month:

“As President would you be submissive to your husband?”

It is a bit of a loaded question, but Lane isn’t arguing that the question is inappropriate or sexist — he’s upset that neither Bachmann nor any of the other candidates took the opportunity to make a case for full-blown wifely submission! So he decides to make the case for them.