{"id":90,"date":"2008-11-06T10:35:30","date_gmt":"2008-11-06T10:35:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/lynnvsekulow\/2008\/11\/religious-right-one-door-shuts.html"},"modified":"2008-11-06T10:35:30","modified_gmt":"2008-11-06T10:35:30","slug":"religious-right-one-door-shuts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/2008\/11\/religious-right-one-door-shuts.html","title":{"rendered":"RELIGIOUS RIGHT: ONE DOOR SHUTS; FIFTY OPEN"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Before I suggest that readers take a look at a more detailed post-election document, I wanted to note something about your last post.&nbsp; If prayer is to be taken seriously, we have to know what the praying is for.&nbsp; I&#8217;m always skeptical of signing on to a prayer train when I don&#8217;t know where it is going.&nbsp; Does the prayer campaign you suggest include Obama changing his mind on reproductive rights or the dozens of other issues with which he and conservative evangelicals disagree about?&nbsp; If so, count me out.<\/p>\n<p>Now, to more mundane matters.&nbsp; Jay, the access to the White House by the Religious Right will, I hope, be severely curtailed in the new Administration.&nbsp; I don&#8217;t object to President-elect Obama meeting with people with diverse viewpoints, but I think he has a mandate to move in a new direction on judicial appointments, the faith based initiative, reproductive justice, and dozens of other matters.&nbsp; The sooner, the better.<\/p>\n<p>The Right had some big victories in states on election night, however.&nbsp; I feel miserable about the fact that three states wrote religiously-based definitions of marriage into their constitutions.&nbsp; I was glad to see that Proposition 8 in California is <a href=\"http:\/\/edition.cnn.com\/2008\/POLITICS\/11\/06\/hostin.qanda\/\">already being challenged <\/a>in the state courts.<\/p>\n<p>Those victories though probably point to the most likely place for Religious Right activists to go in the near term.&nbsp; More initiatives in more states; more legislative activity in state capitals; and more local school board controversies will likely be the&nbsp;thrusts of their next campaigns.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, I strongly urge our readers to take a look at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.au.org\/site\/PageServer?pagename=fld_election_2008_analysis\">report on the election <\/a>that our Americans United staff completed yesterday.&nbsp; Your thoughts, as always, would be appreciated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Before I suggest that readers take a look at a more detailed post-election document, I wanted to note something about your last post.&nbsp; If prayer is to be taken seriously, we have to know what the praying is for.&nbsp; I&#8217;m always skeptical of signing on to a prayer train when I don&#8217;t know where it&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":164,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,2,3,12,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-90","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-abortion","category-courts","category-election-08","category-the-states","category-white-house"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>RELIGIOUS RIGHT: ONE DOOR SHUTS; FIFTY OPEN - Lynn v. Sekulow<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/2008\/11\/religious-right-one-door-shuts.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"RELIGIOUS RIGHT: ONE DOOR SHUTS; FIFTY OPEN - Lynn v. 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Lynn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/2008\/11\/religious-right-one-door-shuts.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/2008\/11\/religious-right-one-door-shuts.html","name":"RELIGIOUS RIGHT: ONE DOOR SHUTS; FIFTY OPEN - Lynn v. 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Lynn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/32b\/32b0f12cad840c65bff61ad01e2664aax96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/32b\/32b0f12cad840c65bff61ad01e2664aax96.jpg","caption":"Rev. Barry W. Lynn"},"description":"Since 1992, the Rev. Barry W. Lynn has served as executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a Washington, D.C.-based organization dedicated to the preservation of the Constitution's religious liberty provisions (www.au.org). In addition to his work as a long-time activist and lawyer in the civil liberties field, Lynn is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, offering him a unique perspective on church-state issues. An accomplished speaker and lecturer, Lynn has appeared frequently on television and radio broadcasts to offer analysis of First Amendment issues. News programs on which Lynn has appeared include PBS's \"NewsHour,\" NBC's \"Today Show,\" Fox News Channel's \"O'Reilly Factor,\" ABC's \"Nightline,\" CNN's \"Crossfire,\" CBS's \"60 Minutes,\" MSNBC's \"Countdown with Keith Olbermann,\" Fox News Channel's \"Hannity & Colmes,\" ABC's \"Good Morning America,\" CNN's \"Larry King Live\" and the national nightly news on NBC, ABC and CBS. On the radio, Lynn serves as host of \"Culture Shocks,\" a daily look at various issues affecting society and the culture. In the 1990s he served for two years as regular co-host of \"Pat Buchanan and Company\" and after that did a weekly syndicated radio program, \"Review of the News,\" with Col. Oliver North. Lynn is a regular guest on nationally broadcast radio programs, including National Public Radio's \"All Things Considered,\" \"Morning Edition\" and \"Talk of the Nation,\" as well as having appeared on national networks such as CBS Radio, CNN Radio, ABC Radio and AP Radio. Lynn began his professional career working at the national office of the United Church of Christ, including a two-year stint as legislative counsel for the Church's Office of Church in Society in Washington, D.C. From 1984 to 1991 he was legislative counsel for the Washington office of the American Civil Liberties Union. In 2006, Lynn authored Piety & Politics: The Right-Wing Assault On Religious Freedom (Harmony Books). In 2008 he coauthored (with C. Welton Gaddy) First Freedom First: A Citizen's Guide to Protecting Religious Liberty and the Separation of Church and State (Beacon Press). Lynn writes frequently on religious liberty issues, and has had essays published in outlets such as USA Today, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Nation. Lynn also has op-eds published frequently by the McClatchy and Scripps-Howard newspaper chains. A member of the Washington, D.C. and U.S. Supreme Court bar, Lynn earned his law degree from Georgetown University Law Center in 1978. In addition, he received his theology degree from Boston University School of Theology in 1973. Lynn, who was born in Harrisburg, Pa., and raised in Bethlehem, Pa., lives in Chevy Chase, Md., with his family.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/author\/blynn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/164"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}