Facts And Figures About The Religious Right In America

This is just a partial list of American Terrorist Groups (imo) that are just one of the threats to our country. Thanks to American's United for this list. Visit theit site for the complete list.

May 2011 Featured
By Rob Boston

The Religious Right in America is lavishly funded and politically well connected. While the men who lead the fundamentalist Christian political movement hold different opinions about theology, they share a deep and abiding hostility to the separation of church and state. They seek to inject religion into public schools, obtain taxpayer funding for religious schools and other ministries, roll back reproductive choice and deny civil rights to gay people. And they enjoy extraordinary influence in Washington, D.C., and in many state legislatures.

What follows is a survey of some of the nation’s leading Religious Right organizations. Collectively, these groups raise more than three-quarters of a billion dollars annually, the bulk of it tax-exempt. Budget figures are from public tax documents and are the most recent available, in most cases from 2009 and 2010.

The Pat Robertson Empire

Christian Broadcasting Network
Budget: $295,140,001
Location: Virginia Beach, Va.

Regent University
Budget: $60,093,298
Location: Virginia Beach, Va.

American Center for Law and Justice:
Budget: $13,375,429
Location: Virginia Beach, Va.

Christian Advocates Serving Evangelism
Budget: $43,872,322
Location: Atlanta, Ga.

TV preacher Pat Robertson has for many years overseen a sprawling Religious Right empire that includes a global television network, a university and an influential right-wing legal outfit. Robertson’s flagship operation, “The 700 Club,” is a daily television program that mixes news, faith healing, Christian lifestyle features and Religious Right politics. He calls church-state separation a “myth” and a “lie of the left.” Despite his extreme views, Robertson remains well connected with the GOP power structure in Washington, and congressional leaders and presidential candidates often appear on his show. House Speaker John Boehner, for example, gave an exclusive interview in February.

Religious Right attorney Jay Sekulow runs the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), a legal group founded by Robertson in 1991. Sekulow’s Christian Advocates Serving Evangelism, the ACLJ under a different name, serves a similar purpose. The combined annual budget for both entities exceeds $55 million.

Regent University was originally founded to offer graduate degrees in areas Robertson most wants to dominate: government, education, law, communications, psychology and ministry. It now offers undergraduate degrees as well (many of them online) and has a satellite campus in Alexandria, Va., a Washington, D.C., suburb.

The Falwell Empire

Liberty University
Budget: $395,898,255
Location: Lynchburg, Va.

Jerry Falwell Ministries
Budget: $4,208,989
Location: Lynchburg, Va.

Liberty Counsel
Budget: $1,371,795
Location: Orlando, Fla., and Lynchburg, Va.

The late Jerry Falwell, a television evangelist and founder of the Moral Majority, was a pivotal figure in the history of the Religious Right. Falwell died in 2007 and left his religio-political empire in the hands of his two sons, Jerry Jr. and Jonathan. Falwell Jr., who serves as chancellor of Liberty University, has followed in his father’s footsteps by advancing a partisan political agenda. In December of 2007, Falwell issued an e-mail on university letterhead endorsing Mike Huckabee for president. In 2009, he used university resources to engineer the defeat of the Democratic member of the House of Delegates who represented the Lynchburg area.

In April of this year, Liberty hosted “The Awakening,” a conference that featured former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), alongside Religious Right activists.

Liberty has experienced huge growth and now has an active online learning component. Despite Falwell’s anti-government rhetoric, Liberty students receive nearly half a billion dollars in federal aid every year.

Jonathan Falwell serves as pastor of Thomas Road Baptist Church and oversees the remnants of his father’s TV ministry.

Liberty Counsel is a Religious Right legal group originally founded by Mat Staver and based in Orlando, Fla. It is now a part of the Falwell enterprise and operates in conjunction with the Liberty University Law School, where Staver is dean.

Family Research Council/FRC Action/FRC Action PAC
Combined Budget: $14,569,081
Location: Washington, D.C.

The Family Research Council has become the nation’s top Religious Right group in Washington, D.C. Led by former Louisiana state representative Tony Perkins, the FRC seeks to merge fundamentalist Christianity with government. It opposes individual reproductive freedom, engages in gay bashing and lately has sought to join forces with the Tea Party to create a massive, far-right phalanx.

The FRC is so extreme that this year it was designated a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Perkins has a checkered political past. In 1996, while managing the U.S. Senate campaign of Louisiana state legislator Woody Jenkins, he paid former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard and notorious white supremacist David Duke $82,000 for his mailing list. In 2001, Perkins addressed the Louisiana chapter of the Council of Conservative Citizens, a white supremacist organization that grew out of the White Citizens Council.

Despite FRC’s unsavory reputation, the group sponsors an annual “Values Voter Summit” that draws leading GOP congressional figures and presidential hopefuls.

FRC maintains an “action” arm with a 501(c)(4) tax status that enables it to be more directly political. It also funnels money to candidates through a political action committee.

WallBuilder Presentations/WallBuilders
Budget: $1,091,531 (plus proceeds from a for-profit arm)
Location: Aledo, Texas

WallBuilders is an organization founded by David Barton, a Texan who makes his living promoting bogus “Christian nation” history to fundamentalist groups. Barton insists that church-state separation is a myth and was never the intention of the founders. He markets books, DVDs and other materials that promote this view and speaks in fundamentalist churches and other venues.

Barton helped rewrite Texas’ social studies standards, which downplay church-state separation and elevate the “Christian nation” view. Barton does not have a degree in history (his degree, from Oral Roberts University, is in Christian Education), but he poses as a historian.

Despite his lack of legitimate academic credentials, Barton’s profile has increased recently due to a number of appearances he made on the Glenn Beck program on Fox News Channel. Time magazine in 2005 named him one of the top 25 most influential evangelicals in America.

Mike Huckabee, former Arkansas governor and 2008 presidential aspirant, is a huge Barton fan. Addressing a Religious Right gathering earlier this year, Huckabee opined that all Americans should be forced “at gunpoint…to listen to every David Barton message.”

The budget figures for WallBuilder Presentations are somewhat misleading. This organization is a small non-profit Barton runs – but he makes most of his money through a separate organization called simply WallBuilders. This group, which is a for-profit business, is not required to make its financial statements publicly available.

In my opinion, the real threat to us is not the Religious Freaks, over there, with guns and bombs that like to fly planes into buildings. Its the Religious Freaks over HERE that have tax exemption status, disposible wealth and influence in our secular government, they are the real "Terrorists"!