Moon Shadows

Moon's minions were also intimately involved in the vote counting fiasco in Florida. On December 1, according to Church & State, the monthly publication of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, “Moon's American Clergy Leadership Conference (ACLC) sponsored a press conference in front of the Supreme Court to coincide with legal arguments before the justices over the Florida election results.” This event was another interfaith call to “unite upon the common ground of America's tradition of faith in God to prevent the continued partisan struggle over the election results in Florida from further polarizing the nation.”

Several fundamentalist Christian groups, including the Center for Christian Statesmanship (CCS), Intercessors for America (IFA), and individuals such as Pastor Dutch Sheets, are advocating turning Bush's one day of prayer declaration into 100 days of non-stop prayer.

According to Charisma News Service, a daily news update put out by Charisma magazine, “Christians who offered concerted prayers during the presidential election have been urged not to stop following the weekend's inauguration.”

The Center for Christian Statesmanship (CCS) is asking Christians to pray every day for the Bush administration through mid-April. The virulently anti-gay Florida-based evangelist D. James Kennedy, of the Coral Ridge Ministries, founded the Washington DC-based CCS. The organization is closely linked to several congressional representatives and their staffs who participate in meetings, events, personal ministry, and the distribution of the Center's materials. CCS director Frank Wright told Charisma News Service the first 100 days is a critical period especially since the nation is so divided. “It seems it would be a good time for God's people to pray for divine guidance and intervention and wisdom,” he said.

For the better part of four decades the Rev. D. James Kennedy's Coral Ridge Ministries has been flying beneath the radar of mainstream media, while building a multimillion-dollar media ministry and political operation. In 1998, the Ministries' Center for Reclaiming America initiated the campaign to reposition the Religious Right's anti-gay activities by asserting gay people could become ex-gays through the proper therapy and counseling.

Intercessors For America

One hundred days of prayer is supported by Intercessors for America, a major player in the relatively unknown intercessor prayer movement. The Leesburg, Virginia-based IFA was founded in 1973, to encourage effective prayer and fasting in support of the church and the nation (www.ifa-usapray.org).

Before the election, in a bit of inside the church-way politics, IFA got egg on its face after falsely accusing Pastor T.D. Jakes of partisan politics on behalf of Al Gore. Jakes, who runs the powerful Potter's House church in Dallas, Texas, a 26,000-member congregation with dozens of outreach ministries, quickly denied the charges. It turned out Gore had been one of the church's invited guests along with then Governor George W. Bush, who was unable to attend, at a dedication ceremony at Jakes's church. Partisan politics had not been involved and IFA was forced to apologize.

Although IFA claims its prayers are non-partisan, it's clear that its virulent anti-abortion and anti-gay politics mirror the agenda of the Religious Right. In a 1990 GroupWatch report by the Inter- hemispheric Resource Center, IFA was described as a prayer network serving the New Right's domestic and international agenda. IFA founder John Talcott also started the right-wing Plymouth Rock Foundation, and sponsored Third Century Press, a group set up by then-Congressperson John Conlan and the Campus Crusade for Christ's Bill Bright, to publish and distribute conservative political books based on the scriptures.

In April 1993, the Intercessors for America newsletter helped set the tone for what was to become the so-called era of incivility in Washington, DC—the changing of which George W. Bush has repeated over and over again. Commenting on President Clinton's support of Roe v. Wade and of gays in the military the newsletter stated: “The sun had barely set on the inauguration of President William Jefferson Clinton when pronouncements from the Oval Office cast dark shadows across America's faded moral landscape. With callous disregard for those who valiantly stood for life, the president chose the 20th anniversary of Roe v. Wade to strip away several rights of the unborn. He then sought to reverse the time-honored practice of restricting homosexuals in our armed services, ignoring the counsel of the nation's military leadership.”

During the period between election day and the Supreme Court's selection day, IFA issued “a plea to the youth of America to cry out to the God of Heaven and earth, that truth, justice, and righteousness would prevail.” IFA called on young people, youth workers, parents, and others to commit themselves to: (1) individual prayer and fasting until the election is resolved; (2) having youth groups join in united prayer for our nation; (3) 20 to 30 minute prayer gatherings around the flagpoles at school campuses on the day the Supreme Court meets.

Pastor Dutch Sheets is a national prayer leader and pastor of Spring Harvest Fellowship in Colorado Springs, Colorado. His Intercessory Prayer is a guidebook on the subject. It explains, “The power of intercessory prayer… [which] inspires you to pray with courage to a God who hears your words...before you even speak them.” Sheets says Christians need to “up the scale of prayer” or President Bush could “be overcome by the political machine…I think our job as a church is to go to a new level of prayer for this man, that God would literally anoint him to lead this nation.”

With Rev. Moon back on the A-list and casting himself as a “uniter, not a divider” and the intercessor prayer folks standing in the shadows, indeed the times they are a' changin'.                     Z

Bill Berkowitz is an Oakland, California-based freelance writer covering the Religious Right and related conservative movements.