First, a little current events lecture for the sake of everyone on the thread.
This article comes from the website TheocracyWatch.org, a project of the Center for Religion, Ethics and Social Policy (CRESP) at Cornell University. CRESP is a nonsectarian, action-based educational organization with its roots in religious dialogue, human rights advocacy, and ethical thought.
An outsider's view of a recent TheocracyWatch.org event can be found here, for a balanced view of the Cornell University-based orgnization.
It's leaders and staff are even more colorful. Here's some biographical info:
Joan Bokaer (founder) was a nuclear disarmament activist and national speaker in the 1980's....She joined several organizations of the Religious Right and spoke extensively with fundamentalists until she felt she understood their way of thinking...She organized A Global Walk for A Livable World - one hundred people who walked from Los Angeles to New York City in 1990 to raise awareness about environmental issues. Upon her return from the walk she founded EcoVillage at Ithaca, an environmentally sensitive community of sixty households that has plans to expand. She also co-organized the Third International EcoCity Conference in Senegal, West Africa in 1996. Ms. Bokaer wrote a play, the Chapel of Love to add fun and humour to what is otherwise a very disturbing subject. The play highlights the absurdity of the religious right in high places in government using real quotes from real people.
Susan McGreivy is a retired ACLU staff attorney, who won the 1981 "Harvey Milk Award" from the Christopher Street West Association, which produces "the annual Greater Los Angeles LGBT Pride Celebration hosted by the independent City of West Hollywood."
Chips Gagnon is an Assistant Professor in the Dept. of Politics at Ithaca College, whose "particular interest is the ways in which right-wing forces construct a fear of others -- both internal and external others -- to impose their agendas on populations."
Nancy Siemen and Susan Butros are both members of the Episcopal Peace Fellowship, whose mission is "To aid and encourage all Episcopalians to strive for justice and peace among all people and to bear nonviolent witness to Christ's call to peace....a commitment to renounce, so far as possible, participation in war and other forms of violence..."
Kathleen Daimani, PhD is President of the TheocracyWatch board of directors, and author of Sophia: Exile And Return, a paper about "awakening the fire" of the goddess Sophia in oneself. Dr. Daimani has written several other essays on Sophia, which can be found here.
Thanks for posting the link to Theocracywatch.org. I am already very familiar with their site but I do agree it is something that needs to be posted here for others to review.
"CRESP apparently decided that the presence of an equal number of religious conservatives would ruin the affair’s cozy, echo chamber-like atmosphere."
Yeah, this sounds like the beginning of a "balanced view of the Cornell University-based organization."
ROTFLMAO
Since you posted a link to Thocrocywatch.org I took the opportunity to spend some time over their today where I found the following little gem.
Rev. D. James Kennedy, pastor at the 9,000 member Coral Ridge Presbyterian and founder of the Reclaiming America for Christ movement reaches a viewing and listening audience of about 3.5 million people every Sunday morning. He talks about going beyond the destruction of the Berlin Wall to battering down
"the even more diabolical 'wall of separation' that has led to increasing secularization, godlessness, immorality, and corruption in our country."
At least this theocrat is coherent enough to understand that the founders put in place a wall of separation of church and state when they wrote the Constitution, a fact that is completely lost on most fundamentalists.