One of Bill Moyer's best pieces, "God and Politics" gets at the heart of Christian Reconstructionism and

[lees1975]

white, Christian nationalism, when the Southern Baptist Convention was taken over by this cult group.

https://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-57eab77ad52

It's been called a holy war: America's largest Protestant denomination locked in a battle for the Bible. The stakes are not only
theological; the battle for the Bible is also political, a battle for church and state, a
battle for America.

Baptists were born fighting for freedom, and they suffered for it. In Europe they lost their lives for insisting on the right to interpret the Bible for themselves. In colonial America, they were beaten or sent into exile for preaching the gospel their way, and for refusing to pay taxes to support an official religion. Baptists joined in the American revolution, and then agitated for writing freedom of religion into law. With others, they lobbied the Philadelphia convention for Article VI of the Constitution: "No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification 10 any office or trust of the United States." And just to be safe, they agitated for a bill of rights guaranteeing the free exercise of religion. "Soul freedom," they called it -freedom
of conscience. Baptists spread like wildfire throughout the land and carried with them a flaming commitment to the free choice of faith symbolized by baptism.

Being Baptists, they split and split, and split again. Over slavery, the Bible, theology and just about everything else. That's why there are so many different kinds of Baptists -from Martin Luther King, Jr., who fought segregation, to Jerry Falwell, who defended it; from Jesse Helms to Jesse Jackson; from Jimmy Carter, who was president, to Pat Robertson, who wants to be president. Out of the five major Baptist groups in this country, Southern Baptists are by and far the largest. While other mainstream Protestant churches have drifted to the theological left and watched their numbers diminish, Southern Baptists have remained conservative in belief and arc still growing: 37,000 churches, with 14.5 million members. [on camera] Until the 1940s, Southern Baptists were locked in the segregated South, where their influence was powerful, but parochial. Now they have churches in 50 states and exert influence nationwide -more influence than you're probably aware of. But something's been happening to Southern Baptists, something alien to my experience growing up in this church, something, well, not quite Baptist.

One sizable faction of fundamentalists, feeling disenfranchised by more moderate leaders, set out to take over the denomination. That's not new. What's new is their determination to make one view of the Bible -their view -the test of religious and political truth. For Baptists, that's radical, and for America it's political dynamite, because how Baptists read the Bible affects how they cast their ballots. No one understands that better than the man who triggered this battle of the Bible 10 years ago, from the pulpit of the biggest Southern Baptist church in the world, three hours due west from here in Dallas, Texas.

[lees1975]

1. Great footage in here, and interviews documenting the exact moments when this right wing extremist cult began what it is

now wrapping up with Project 2025. And they've done it at both ends with Presidents who were, by their own personal confession, not Christians. Lyng Reagan and now pathologically lying Trump.

[jmbar2]

2. Great interview - thanks for posting.

When I read of Moyers' passing this week, it was like a gut punch. He was one of America's most prescient and moral thinkers.

Interesting insights into Paul Pressler, who was a mentor to our current House Speaker Mike Johnson. He is very firm that it's possible to completely separate his politics and personal life from his religion. Seems pretty convenient in retrospect, given his later controversies over sexual abuse of young men.

Closing thought. The 1980s were one of America's most terrible eras in terms of hair styles.