Tgk1946's Blog

From The Power Worshippers (Katherine Stewart, 2019) pp266-70

The Child Evangelism Fellowship in its current, massive, global form is really a creation of the Alliance Defending Freedom, the legal advocacy nexus of Christian nationalism in the United States today. It was the ADF that guided the CEF through the American court system and toward the game-changing 2001 Supreme Court decision Good News Club v. Milford Central School, which effectively pried open the doors of every public elementary school in the nation to any Good News Club that wishes to be there. The Gospel Coalition, too, has drawn on the firepower of the ADF in building its network in the United States; the ADF has helped clear the way for the establishment of TGC-affiliated churches in taxpayer-funded spaces such as public schools and community centers. Not surprisingly, the international expansion of these groups also comes at a time of expansion for the ADF and its network.

Through offices in Mexico City, Vienna, Brussels, Strasbourg, London, New Delhi and other locations, the Alliance Defending Freedom exports the revolution, showing considerable skill in adapting to new cultural environments and political frameworks. Legal concepts that are workshopped in the U.S. are disseminated throughout the world. The goals of ADF International are consistent with those within the United States and rely on some of the same novel legal arguments and conceptions of “free speech” and “religious liberty.”

ADF offices tend to be strategically located near centers of power. In Geneva, we focus our legal advocacy efforts at the Human Rights Council, the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights, and the different bodies that monitor human rights treaties,” according to the Alliance Defending Freedom International website.3′ In the U.S. the ADF’s Washington, D.C., office is strategically positioned to effectively engage with the OAS, which consists of Member States from Latin America, the Carib-bean, the US, and Canada.” New York offices, “just minutes away from UN headquarters,” provide legal expertise “to Member States to ensure that the UN upholds the inherent dignity of every human person. Our specific areas of focus are the General Assembly, the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), and the functional commissions.” The ADF also works “along-side a large network of allied lawyers throughout South Asia, Africa, and Oceania,” and partners with other organizations that share their “vision for transforming the legal culture. “

ADF International has had some success in shaping public conversation on certain key issues. In 2017 a debate over end-of-life care for Charlie Gard, a child in a vegetative state, dominated the English media for several months. The framing of discussion, centered on the value of human life at its most vulnerable, was highly reminiscent of the debate that took hold around Terri Schiavo, which stormed through American politics in the early 2000s. Behind the scenes in both cases, the Alliance Defending Freedom was instrumental in launching and orchestrating the flurry of activity.

The Alliance Defending Freedom joins with other right-wing groups in weaponizing the idea of “free speech.” In England, until quite recently, there was little public protest at women’s reproductive health clinics. But as antiabortion groups in the UK increase their visibility, protesters are becoming more aggressive and direct in their tactics. In 2018 a reproductive care clinic in Ealing, West London, was compelled to erect a “safe zone,” also called an “exclusion zone”, to protect clients from threats and intimidation. In England, that was a first. Opponents lost no time in casting the safety zone as discrimination against their right to free speech.

Joining the Alliance Defending Freedom in the global expansion are a host of other right-wing, ultrareligious advocacy groups with a global reach. They include the National Organization for Marriage, the International Organization for the Family, and Family Watch International. These U.S.-based groups are increasingly finding common cause with religious nationalist groups around the world, and they have begun to formalize their alliances through a variety of international organizations.

According to the Brussels-based policy and advocacy consultant Elena Zacharenko, there are hundreds of organizations pushing an ultraconservative agenda in courts and legislative tribunals across the European continent. Lobbying organizations include the European Center for Law and Justice (an international arm of the American Center for Law and Justice), which is active at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg and at the European Parliament in Brussels. Other key organizations include European Dignity Watch, World Youth Alliance Europe, Fédération Pro Europa Christiana, and Dignitatis Humanae Institute, which is devoted to “pushing back the tide of radical secularism” and has been closely affiliated with Steve Bannon. 4 The organizations support and sustain political careers for those who share their goals. And, as in the U.S., their agenda is kept alive thanks to a flood of cash from conservative religious hierarchies and wealthy individuals.

“It is the same individuals involved in many of the (seemingly) different organizations, which creates an impression of many different movements supporting this agenda from the grassroots, while this is not necessarily the case,” says Zacharenko. But over time, she points out, “the agenda has very much taken on a life of its own, and has unfortunately been adopted by some ‘mainstream’ politicians— in Poland, Hungary, Italy, Brazil, Croatia and elsewhere. It is therefore not something forcibly kept alive by a small number of radicals, but has entered and been embraced by some sections of the electorate.”

Such groups have a solid toehold in eastern Europe, where persistent economic challenges, combined with falling birth rates, have contributed to existential questions about the very nature of nationhood. The most obvious signs of influence often appear on the familiar turf of the culture wars. In Poland the antiabortion cause was taken up by an organization of conservative lawyers, the Ordo luris Institute for Legal Culture, whose president is legal scholar Aleksander Stepkowski. Abortion is already prohibited in Poland in most instances, but exceptions are in place for rape and incest, for gross fetal abnormality, and to preserve the life of the mother. Ordo luris and its allies have tried to push through a new law that dispenses with some of those exceptions and would add sweeping and punitive language to the existing prohibitions.

“Although a relative newcomer to the conservative Polish scene, Ordo Juris has very quickly emerged as the leading organization advancing a drastically retrograde agenda ranging from a complete abortion ban to decriminalizing some forms of domestic abuse,” says Neil Datta, executive director of the European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual & Reproductive Rights. “They are also very ambitious in reaching the highest levels of the Polish government and courts, and it would seem have plans to influence the EU and the UN. “

Efforts to impose further restrictions on abortion gave rise to massive protests. But the demonstrations, known as the “coat hanger rebellion,” 45 did little to derail the effort, which has the support of a small but vocal number of politicians as well as the backing of the Catholic hierarchies and appears to be part of a broader effort to change the culture. In 2018, new textbooks were introduced in Polish schools that present contraception as “dangerous” to women’s health. And the proceedings only enhanced the stature of Stepkowski, the Polish legal scholar. On February 20, 2019, Poland’s president appointed Stepkowski as a judge of the supreme court, which would make him the second Ordo Iuris activist already on the highest court of Poland. In 2019, CitizenGo launched a massive campaign in Poland to battle efforts to liberalize antiabortion law, spreading their message through billboards, mailings, and screenings of antiabortion films.

Europe’s current spate of conservative activism and legislation, which appears to reverse the trend toward universal human rights, is not a result of spontaneous uprisings from ordinary citizens fed up with “the gays.” In fact, this activism reflects an ongoing, well-funded, highly coordinated effort by multiple groups across states and even continents to roll back those rights in the EU and beyond.

American-origin groups like the Alliance Defending Freedom have been instrumental in shaping the emerging global movement toward reactionary religious nationalism. But there is another country that has played an exceptional role in the process, and that is Russia.

As on so many other fronts, Paul Weyrich got there first. Even before the collapse of the Soviet Union, Weyrich took a keen interest in Russian politics and religion. 4 He was among the first to grasp the potential for an alliance with religious conservatives in Russia and Eastern Europe. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Mr. Weyrich made multiple trips to Russia, eventually becoming a strong supporter of closer relations. As president of the Krieble Institute, a unit of another organization he cofounded called the Free Congress Foundation, Weyrich also supported democracy movements in eastern Europe, fostering political engagement and promoting the establishment of small businesses. In Hungary, he formed a partnership with Laszlo Pastor. After serving a prison sentence for his activities with a pro-Nazi party, Pastor made his way to the United States and took a key role in establishing the ethnic outreach arm of the Republican National Committee. + “The real enemy is the secular humanist mindset which seeks to destroy everything that is good in this society,” Weyrich said.

All told, Weyrich made more than a dozen trips to Russia and eastern Europe in the aftermath of the fall of communism. At the time of his death in 2008, even as he was riding high on a wave of plutocratic money in the United States, he was writing and speaking frequently in defense of Russia and facilitating visits between U.S. conservatives and Russian political leaders.”

Soon more Republicans began to experience a similar, extraordinary change of heart about their onetime enemy of all enemies. Around the time that Weyrich was first making contact with Russia, Brian Brown was growing up in the mainstream American world where the communist Soviet Union stood for the axis of all evil. But Brown’s views on Russia changed as he rose the ranks of the religious right. A leading opponent of marriage equality, he began to meet Russians at international conferences on family issues. He found many kindred spirits. As cofounder and, later, president of the National Organization for Marriage, along with membership in the Council for National Policy and other right-wing interest groups, Brown visited Moscow four times in as many years. During one of his trips, in 2013, he testified before the Duma as Russia adopted a series of anti-LGBT laws.

“What I realized was that there was a great change happening in the former Soviet Union,” Brown told the Washington Post. “There was a real push to re-instill Christian values in the public square.

As the Republican nomination battle intensified, the burgeoning alliance between Russians and U.S. conservatives came into focus. The growing dialogue among international (often Russian or Russia-connected) political figures and members of the American right came at the same time that the Russian government stepped up efforts to cultivate and influence far-right groups in Europe. Russian oligarchs, having effectively deployed religious nationalism to gain control over their own population, readily grasped that it could be used to shape events in other countries, too. “Pro-family” politics, which purports to aid families but is in its largest part aimed at suppressing women’s autonomy and LGBT rights, they understood, is an effective tool in uniting and mobilizing religious nationalists everywhere, which is in turn an excellent way to destabilize the Western alliance and advance Russia’s geopolitical interests.

In short, Russian leaders see America’s Christian right as a tremendously useful vehicle for influencing American politics and government in a manner favorable to Russian interests. Maria Butina, the Russian woman charged in 2018 with “acting as an agent of a foreign government, certainly understood the utility of the movement. When she set about “to establish a back channel of communication” with American politicians, it was not at all surprising that she would do so at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington. Alexey Komov’s dual interest in Americas Christian homeschooling movement and faith-based film industry would appear to fit the pattern.