This post has been updated
We were so looking forward to the One Nation Under God event organized by Champion the Vote, the national campaign that seeks to register evangelical Christians to vote. But now it seems our main reason for tuning in won’t even be there.
Gov. Rick Perry’s likeness and his name as an invited speaker have been scrubbed from onenationundergodevent.com, leaving Newt Gingrich as the only other Republican presidential candidate scheduled to appear.
If you’re unfamiliar with this event, it is billed as yet another The Response-type gathering. Except in this case there would be no mass gathering at a gigantic football stadium. Instead, One Nation Under God will be a DVD featuring religious-right activists like “forgotten history” propagandist David Barton, Focus on the Family Founder James Dobson and Gingrich, among others.
As was the case for The Response, One Nation Under God speakers are set to talk about the so-called crumbling of America because the country, they say, has turned away from God. From the One Nation website:
We’ve lost sight of our great heritage as a nation founded on Biblical truth, and the consequences are dire: schools are failing, the divorce rate is climbing, and our society is rife with scandal and corruption. It’s time to reclaim our Biblical heritage and bring God back to the center of American life. Where do we start?
So where did the governor go on this one? He’s always been willing to join religious-right extremists for this kind of event, either at a setting like The Response in Houston or Texas Restoration Project events or the upcoming Iowa Renewal Project. Whatever the reason for skipping out on this one, we’re still disappointed.
We’re left with only this as a memory of what could have been:
Update:
It turns out that in spite of being removed from the One Nation website as one of the invited speakers, Gov. Perry will be on the DVD. Our friends at Right Wing Watch pointed us to this blog entry in the Orlando Sentinel and to tweets by Florida Family Policy Council President John Stemberger indicating Gov. Perry did in fact participate in the making of the DVD. Gov. Perry gave a speech and took question via satellite.
We will, of course, report back on what Gov. Perry had to say.
