As someone who works for a living on campaigns I know first hand of the value of volunteers and the hours that they put in on behalf of the candidate.  They are the gears that make a campaign move forward.  The more you have the faster your campaign is going to move and progress towards an Election Day victory.  

That’s why I am thoroughly impressed with the new campaign initiative from Tom Perriello’s bid for Congress.  They just launched a 10% tithe of volunteer hours to go back towards the community and service projects around the district (Devilstower beat me to it).  The campaign kick started the idea with 42 volunteer hours over the past weekend by constructing a house for Habitat for Humanity in Charlottesville, participated in a food drive and serving food to the hungry at a church.

In the interview that I had with Tom a few weeks back I was struck by this:

Q: How has your faith tradition helped shaped your political and social views?

A: I grew up in a church that preached the social justice message of the Gospels and called me to the teaching of Mathew 25. Sunday was a time that we heard about poverty, torture, and war and our moral obligation to care for and love our neighbor. My political views and my efforts to live a life of service were shaped by the prophetic call in Micah to serve the least among us and to "do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God." As a Catholic, I know I will always fall short of this aspiration, but it remains my guiding light.

With this new initiative it seems that Tom and his campaign are further practicing what they preach.  They are actually taking time away from campaigning to help out in the community.  Granted the community service is good publicity for the campaign and is in a way campaigning the overall effects are moving towards the common good in Virginia’s fifth district.  I think it's a testament to the kind of representative that he would be in D.C.

I recently sat down for a one on one interview with Illinois Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky.  Instead of my typical interviews that are done by phone or email this one I was able to record it and would like to share it with you.

In the first part of the interview we spoke about faith in politics delving into how her Jewish faith informs her political values as well as Senator Obama’s active faith outreach.  So take a look.

In later parts we discuss the war in Iraq, the 2008 elections and poverty which I will post on Faithfully Liberal in the coming days.

We have been putting pressure on former Governor Huckabee for the last few weeks through our campaign, and as Pastor Dan noted its time to take it up a notch.  This is especially true since we finally heard from Huck PAC’s Executive Director Sarah Huckabee in regards to two simple questions:

1. Will you affirm the Christian faith and the American principles of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness by signing the Evangelical Declaration Against Torture?

2. Will you require the candidates supported by your PAC to take a stand against torture?

In my multiple efforts to get these easy questions answered by Huck PAC and Ms. Huckabee (the Governor’s daughter for anyone keeping score) my final response from them was:

My dad does not fill like it is appropriate to sign a pledge since he is not a candidate but he is against torture. Sorry for the delay in getting back to you.

First, there are so many things to take issue with on this statement from the Executive Director.  I will ignore the typo of fill, which should be feels, because I have my fair share of them as well.

Yes, Mr. Huckabee is not a candidate, as of now.  But in a few short months he could very well be John McCain’s running mate for the White House as he campaigns with McCain.   We deserve to know more details and to have a pledge from a potential VP candidate when it comes to torture: a heinous act that has been used by the current administration.

Regardless of Mr. Huckabee’s candidacy, his new political action committee places him within a distinct leadership position within his party, his followers as well as a new leader in the Christian Right.  Mr. Huckabee’s influence has far reaching potential to be a great leader on this moral issue, an issue that also addresses the sanctity of life that so many in the Christian right pride themselves on.

He is raising money and doing appearances for candidates that have supported the use of waterboarding as I have demonstrated before.  Instead of taking the moral high ground and ask them to end their support of this practice in order to gain his backing he has opted to stay silent.

We are calling on him to publicly support the Evangelical Declaration Against Torture by signing onto the statement through a petition.  His leadership would be instrumental in bringing about real change in a bipartisan manner.  Because this should not be about which political party you belong to, it’s a matter of standing up for what is right.

We ask that you join us by asking Mr. Huckabee to also sign on.  You can do so by signing and submitting the petition.  The more people that do it the more they will know how much we care he joins us.  But Mr. Huckabee would not just be teaming up with: Leith Anderson, Rich Cizik, Joe Carson, Rev. Randall Balmer, Joel Hunter, Becky Garrison, Brian McLaren, David Neff, Chrstine Pohl, and hundreds of others.

I will leave Mr. Huckabee with the challenging words of David Gushee to take a stand:

I believe that no evangelical leader has moral credibility who does not oppose torture unequivocally. I invite Governor Huckabee to sign our "Evangelical Declaration Against Torture" and to help end evangelical ambivalence about this issue. Based on statements he has made on this issue, I am hopeful he will do so. That will be real moral leadership!

So sign onto the petition, make your voice heard, and press Mr. Huckabee to show some real moral leadership.

Cross posted at Faithfully Liberal.

Last week I asked a few faith leaders their thoughts on former Governor Mike Huckabee’s newfound leadership in the Christian right and how it correlates to torture.  After hearing back from Faith in Public Life’s executive director Rev. Jennifer Butler and UCC President Rev. John Thomas essentially saying that Huckabee can represent a bridge on this issue, we hear a little different from another leader.

Again the question:

As a faith leader yourself, and someone who has adamantly opposed torture, what do you believe former Governor Mike Huckabee's role in condoning or opposing torture is in regards to his newfound leadership in the religious right?

David Gushee, president of Evangelicals for Human Rights, addressed torture at the recent Compassion Forum to Senator Barack Obama.  He has some strong words for the former governor.

I believe that no evangelical leader has moral credibility who does not oppose torture unequivocally. I invite Governor Huckabee to sign our "Evangelical Declaration Against Torture" and to help end evangelical ambivalence about this issue. Based on statements he has made on this issue, I am hopeful he will do so. That will be real moral leadership!

Mr. Gushee’s remarks are in my opinion right on the mark.  If Mr. Huckabee wishes to take on the role as the next leader of the Christian right with his newfound PAC, or as a few pundits have remarked – to be the vice presidential nominee, then he needs to show true moral leadership and take a stand against torture.  He needs to join the thousands of people who are standing together to say that it is illegal and it is immoral.

That is what this campaign is all about – religious bloggers taking a stand and asking a leader to join us.  We do not do this to score political points.  We do this to say no more to a practice that threatens our nation’s standing around world as a beacon of freedom and democracy.  Simply torture is un-American.

Mr. Gushee has invited Mr. Huckabee to sign the Evangelical Declaration Against Torture just as we have.  It truly would be a sign of real moral leadership.

Crossposted on Faithfully Liberal.

While we await a response from Mike Huckabee and Huck PAC in regards to Pastor Dan’s two simple questions (I should state here that I have been in contact with someone and will hopefully get a response):

1.  Will you affirm the Christian faith and the American principles of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness by signing the Evangelical Declaration Against Torture?

2. Will you require the candidates supported by your campaign to take a stand against torture?

I wanted to share with you a great answer regarding torture from a faith perspective.  It comes from Tom Perriello, a Democrat running for Congress in Virginia’s 5th Congressional District.  Tom is a stalwart in the progressive faith movement as he helped found Faithful America and Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good.

Q: In 2004 as co-director of Faithful America you aired commercials on al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya featuring prominent religious leaders apologizing for the treatment of prisoners in Abu-Gharib. Why did you feel that was necessary to come from religious leaders and should they be apologizing for actions taken by military officials?

A: Torture is immoral and, in my reading, an act of blasphemy against the image of God in another human being. When our leaders make the decision to condone torture, something powerful in the soul of our country is suffocated.

Torture also undermines our national security, produces bad intelligence, and puts our troops at risk. The images from Abu Ghraib became powerful propaganda weapons for Osama Bin Laden to use in recruiting a new generation of terrorists to threaten our great nation. Terrorism is fundamentally immoral and a grave threat to our country, and one purpose of our ad was to blunt the recruiting bonanza that Bush handed to Al Qaeda in the wake of those images. One of the many things this Administration has never understood about the threats we face is how to fight back successfully against their propaganda battle. I am proud that we were able to produce an ad that spoke to America’s highest principles and helped make us safer at the same time.

As for whether one can ethically apologize for someone else’s actions, the theologians and faith leaders involved in this ad were careful to make it an expression of regret, and not an apology in order to clarify the lines of culpability. Our great nation could use a boost of people taking personal responsibility seriously, so it is distressing to see this Administration refuse to step up to the plate. In the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal, it has repeatedly had our men and women in uniform take the blame without taking its own responsibility for this disaster. The religious leaders in our ad exemplified what moral leadership looks like.

From a faith perspective, conservative or progressive, torture is, as Tom says, immoral and against the image of God in ourselves.  As for politically, Tom states the obvious reasons against the use of torture, hurting our world image and it being a way to recruit more terrorists.

Tom seems like a guy that we could really use in D.C. and if you don’t believe me please read the rest of the interview.

We need to hear the voices of political, religious, and cultural leaders on this issue, but more importantly we need to look into our own hearts and our own conscience from there we must realize that torture is wrong.

With a proper name in place: NEVER: Religious Bloggers Against Torture

Its time to know exactly what we are fighting against.  We have all seen the graphic pictures from Abu Gharib; torture that was supposedly conducted by a few bad apples.  But the revelation that President Bush knew and approved of "enhanced torture techniques" and meeting to discuss them in the White House Situation Room means that we need to know what fellow human beings are enduring because of this administration.

The Associated Press reported earlier that senior Bush administration officials took care to insulate President Bush from a series of meetings where CIA interrogation methods, including waterboarding, which simulates drowning, were discussed and ultimately approved.

However, ABC News is now reporting that President Bush himself was aware of the discussions and approved the controversial interrogation tactics himself.

"Well, we started to connect the dots, in order to protect the American people." Bush told ABC News. "And, yes, I'm aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved."

This man of a so-called "compassionate conservativism" political ideology approved of the disturbing use of waterboarding, which you can see simulated in the following video (warning: graphic and disturbing):

The video was created by Amnesty International and their new unsubscribe-me campaign to end torture.

Sometimes seeing the truth of our leaders’ actions can be more than what we want to admit.  But that is what we are fighting to put an end to this by asking prominent leaders to come out against.  We have started to put pressure on former Governor Mike Huckabee with his new PAC and we will continue.  Please visit his website (yes I am encouraging you to do so) and ask variants of the following questions:

1. Will you affirm the Christian faith and the American principles of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness by signing the Evangelical Declaration Against Torture?

2. Will you require the candidates supported by your campaign to take a stand against torture?

Let’s keep the pressure up.  It matters!

Cross posted at Faithfully Liberal for prime coverage of this topic

Adam Green from MoveOn liveblogged Senator John McCain's appearance on This Week with George Stephanopolous.  After George's embarrassing performance last week during the Democratic debate he was given a chance to try to pin down the Republican nominee.  After Senator Obama was so vehemently condemned by the right I have been intrigued by McCain's active courting of Pastor John Hagee's endorsement.  The only real news angle that happened in regards to Hagee's endorsement of McCain was the fact that he scored a big conservative Christian leader's endorsement.  

At the time McCain says he didn't know about the controversial stuff that Hagee has said.

McCain said on his campaign plane that he was not familiar with Hagee's writings. "I think he's a fine leader and I appreciate his commitment to Israel," McCain said.

But now we have this from Adam's hard work:

So he tries to make amends to the Catholics by condemning Hagee's remarks about them and their faith citing the Catholic Church as "the great whore" and compares the Church to Hitler.

But McCain doesn't condemn Hagee's remarks concerning Jews, gays and Islam.  Some examples:

called for Jews to be treated as "Christ killers".

"those who live by the Qur'an have a scriptural mandate to kill Christians and Jews... it teaches that very clearly."

Hurricane Katrina was an act of God, punishing New Orleans for "a level of sin that was offensive to God."

Senator McCain... you still need to condemn Pastor Hagee's remarks on Jews, gays and Islam.  I call on you to do just that.  These are hateful and hurtful remarks made by a man that you sought out an endorsement from.

Oh by the way George, why didn't you ask Senator McCain why he wasn't wearing a flag lapel pin... in fact why aren't you George?

Cross posted at Faithfully Liberal

I imagine when Mr. Huckabee and his lot sat down to hammer out their new promotional video, it went a little something like this...

The whiny breathless voice of the next era of Religious America declares... I have no freaking clue what it means to be Christian.  So I will let my inexperienced youth pastor tell me how to vote and to tell you how to vote.

I gave him this script:

Huck PAC is founded on the principles that make America great: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. And because we believe our Republican Party embodies these ideas and is best suited to lead America forward, we are committed to supporting Republican candidates who are passionate advocates for tax reform, a strong national defense, real border security, life, the family, less government and individual liberty.

But he just kept talking and all I got in return was this shitty video that ends with the sun being clouded over as we push for keeping America strong...  I wonder if God is telling me something here?  Is the glare symbolic?  Is it a sign from the Lord?

May be there is another important issue that concerns Americans that we are leaving out?  It can’t be that, I have covered everything from keeping our own money with the Fair Tax plan; traditional family values and I have wrapped it all nicely with the cross and the American flag.  Hell, I even stole the key phrase out of the Declaration of Independence.

Deciding they were in the right they let it be and ran with the video as well as a political ideology that leaves out the real meaning of life and liberty.  Repeated phone calls to Huck PAC have gone unanswered and thus the questions that Pastor Dan brought up have also gone unanswered.

1.  Will you affirm the Christian faith and the American principles of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness by signing the Evangelical Declaration Against Torture?

2. Will you require the candidates supported by your campaign to take a stand against torture?

So Mr. Huckabee if you and your colleagues can catch your breath in the aftermath of forming your new PAC can you please answer these questions.  They deserve to be answered by the next leader of the religious right.  You can bring the movement into a whole new realm of leadership if you can an unequivocal stand against torture in all its forms.  So if you are out there, reading this please email me and I will keep calling on you to answer; we all will.

Just as Pat Robertson corralled conservative Christians around abortion and lowing taxes to form the Christian Coalition it seems that former Governor and presidential candidate Mike Huckabee will be forming his version of the next generation of conservative Christians.  Tonight I listened into a conference call featuring the former Governor as well as Steve Strang, publisher of New Man Magazine and Charisma Magazine and named one of the top 25 most influential evangelicals in America.  

According to Strang roughly 6,000 people listened into what turned out to be a blatant sales pitch for Strang’s magazines and few books including one that calls Islam "a religion conceived in the pit of hell"

I was hoping the call would reveal some more details on what’s next for Governor Mike Huckabee.  I have been previously intrigued in what he will do next.

While the call did not reveal any hard facts of what his next move will be or what the political action committee will entail, the direction of the questions that were selected underscore some of my thoughts below.  The real nature of the PAC will be disclosed with the launch of his website MikeHuckabee.com.  As of right now the site is "Coming Soon" with a countdown, launching timely on April 15th (tax day).

In my observation the most attention was paid to the issue of the tax structure in the U.S. (besides the self-promotion of Charisma Magazine).  Huckabee has been an advocate of the Fair Tax.  He touted the fair tax as a structural change that would reward productivity and boost the U.S. economy. A small snipet of the plan from Wikipedia:

The sales tax rate, as defined in the legislation, is 23% of the total amount paid, which includes the tax payment itself. U.S. state sales taxes have historically been expressed as a percentage of the original sale price or pre-tax amount, which would be a tax rate of 30%. The effective tax rate for any household would be variable due to the fixed monthly tax rebates that are used to "untax" purchases up to the poverty level. The tax would be levied on all U.S. retail sales for personal consumption on new goods and services. Critics argue that the sales tax rate defined in the legislation may not be revenue neutral (that is, it would collect less for the government than the current tax regime), and thus would not yield enough money for the government.

The 16th Amendment might get in the way of the plan but I think Hucakbee is utilizing this aspect of his agenda to gain more national attention with the subcontext of traditional conservative ideas such as abortion, gay marriage, possibly illegal immigration (that one came up a little bit in the call but gay marriage did not).

I am sure the PAC and his next steps will be to support selected Republicans running for office, including Senator John McCain, whom he said he plans on supporting.  Evidently, he is awaiting instruction from the McCain camp on how he can be of more use for the campaign.  When he brought up Senators Clinton and Obama he believes they will both raise taxes. At this point he nearly compares taxes as moral issue as to slavery, but he stopped just short of making a direct comparison.

This is intriguing because a later question asked about taxes whether "we would continue to be slaves of the IRS?"  Strang once spoke about Lincoln being from the Republican Party and the Democrats were the ones that wanted to continue slavery, with the added caveat that it was 150 years ago.  So, what’s up with the slavery references?

So, it seems that when the nation’s taxes are due, Mike Huckabee will be launching a national political action committee pushing the fair tax plan with some additional maneuvering of traditional conservative Christian values.  While he will probably be helping Senator McCain versus the eventual Democratic nominee he will also more than likely be helping some other members of his party to gain some good will for another run in 2012 if Senator McCain loses in November.  Should be an interesting development to follow in the coming months.

There is a nice independent movie that came out a few years ago called "Latter Days" that came out a few years ago.  It centers on a young Mormon missionary who finds himself falling for a promiscuous young man.  The movie was banned by some theaters in Utah, as was the movie "Brokeback Mountain."

It was primary prompted by the state’s strong conservative leanings stemming from its majority population of the Church of Jesus Christ and Latter Day Saints, or Mormons.  In fact 61% of the state’s population identifies itself as such.  That is why I think the following, while a small step, is so significant.

After receiving repeated requests, LDS officials have agreed to discuss church policies on homosexuality with representatives of Affirmation, a support group for gay Mormons.

Affirmation officially requested the meeting in February, shortly after Thomas S. Monson became president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said Dave Melson, Affirmation's assistant executive director, who lives in Maryland.

The LDS Church will have representatives actually meet with Affirmation.  So what it’s a meeting right?  They haven’t even had it yet.  Well it matters because the new president of the LDS Church has recognized the fact that members of Affirmation belong at the same table.  It’s a step in the right direction that will hopefully be the beginning of the recognition that all people are equal.  While that road may be a far away. Affirmation’s voice will be heard.

What do they want LDS to hear out?  A change in attitude says Melson and to stop describing homosexuality as a disease or lifestyle choice and stop supporting anti-gay policies.  

"If we can counsel church members more effectively and reduce some of the anti-gay rhetoric, it will be easier for gay men and women in the church to live their lives and to make celestial choices," Melson said. "And it will be easier for the church to get on with activities it should be concentrating on."

We will have to wait and see what happens when the meeting takes place in August.  I hope that the Church will be able to listen to the group constructively and some good will come out of it.

Cross posted at Faithfully Liberal.

Personally, I believe that one of the main reasons justice is not accomplished more often in the political sphere is the astounding influence of money.  Donations from PACs and lobbyists that in return have their voice heard.  I mean how many influential PACs are out there making strides on behalf of the poor or the sick?  

Instead we have banking and pharmaceutical lobbyists getting much of the legislation passed how they want it.  It is problematic in that the common good is not always the first goal of legislation but the special interests that have the ear of some lawmakers.  Lawrence Lessig aims to change that with his initiative called Change Congress.  If you have a little time you can watch his introduction for the organization with the video here because I cannot get it to embed properly.

He brings up three pivotal common sense ideas in which money from special interests have gotten in the way of legislation for the common good.  Thus Change Congress is dedicated to four guiding principles for candidates and elected officials.

1. No money from lobbyists or PACs

2. Vote to end earmarks

3. Support reform to increase Congressional transparency

4. Support publicly-financed campaigns.

It is an interesting push and candidates are able to sign onto the intiative and support one or all four principles.  Congressman Jim Cooper has already signed onto planks 2, 3, and 4.  Former Iowa state legislator Ed Fallon, who is challenging "Bush Dog" Congressman Leonard Boswell, signed onto to support all four.

So my question is what do we make of it as a community composed of people of faith?  I mean is something that can be a part of the solution to making our elected officials respond to us and the common good?

First I want to give a hat tip to Hopeful in NJ in Open Left’s quick hits section.

Article 4 in the United Nations’ Declaration of Human Rights

No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.

Benjamin Skinner spent four years uncovering a dark reality that gets little to no attention and with the release of his book "A Crime So Monstrous" Salon sat down to interview him.  The modern-day slave trade.

A recent estimate puts the total figure at 27 million worldwide.  It is easy to put a number figure to something.  4,000 U.S. soldiers dead.  30,000 die of extreme poverty every day.  But the truth is these are people not mere numbers.

27,000,000.

Imagine your brother, sister, friend, son, or daughter being caught up in, as Hillary Clinton called it, "the dark underbelly of globalization." Being a victim of it.  

It is all too true for far too many relatives in countries like Sudan, India, even Romania, or how about the Netherlands, and yes it does happen in the United States.  They are not just for the sex slave trade but also out of debt bondage and forced domestic servitude.

Skinner goes under cover to tell the real stories of people participating or victimized by the underground slave trade.  In Romani he finds himself being offered a young woman with Down syndrome who he states was clearly trying to kill herself to rid herself of the pain from daily rape.

When I was offered this young woman in trade for a used car at the Romani brothel in Bucharest, I could have done one of a few things: I could've paid to redeem her. I was with a couple of guys and I could've fought physically with the traffickers to get her out. Or I could've gone to the police the next day to tell them, which is what I did.

The response was typical of a corrupt system that continues to oppress the downtrodden of their community.  And for punishment from the UN for violation of the 4th article?  A slap on the wrist he calls it.

Mixed with the absolute horror of this practice, my mind went to the idea of this as a campaign issue.  The interviewer of course went there.  Skinner's response:

Listen, I'm not going to give Obama a pass on this. It's not clear to me that he cares about modern-day slavery -- he hasn't said a word about it. And Hillary has, certainly in the last couple of years. Though not on the trail.

But I think it is a mistake to make this a campaign issue. I think it has to be a big piece of our American foreign policy platform. It needs to be fundamentally a central piece of any meaningful new American foreign policy.

In the Hebrew Bible, the Israelites were enslaved by Egypt and the book of Exodus tells the story of Yahweh’s relationship with the chosen people and securing their freedom.  According to my faith, we are all God’s chosen people.  Well we sit here with more than 27 million of our brothers and sisters enslaved around the world.

As a community dedicated to faith and politics, social change comes about, as people demand change from elected officials and we encompass this as a community.  

Please consider petitioning your elected officials to tackle the injustice of the modern slave trade as central piece to a more just foreign policy.  Too many of our brothers and sisters are being treated like they are a baseball card that is made to be bartered for profit.  Please consider learning more about it as well as taking small steps to make the necessary change.  I mean if we are to be interested and involved in politics, then we must pressure our leaders to change the laws.