The FundamentaList: This Week in the Religious Right:

[Joanne98]

This Week in the Religious Right: Wead and Copeland join to denounce Grassley, Copeland and Huckabee prevent a schism, and a new evangelical manifesto angers the religious right.

Sarah Posner | May 7, 2008 |

1. Former Bush Confidant Continues to Defend Televangelists

Appearing on televangelist and Grassley target Kenneth Copeland's program last week, former Bush family confidant and televangelist advocate Doug Wead once again defended his friend from that "elitist," Sen. Charles Grassley.

Wead, the architect of the evangelical outreach efforts of both the first and second President Bush, is intimately familiar with the theological disagreements among American evangelicals. Though he defends Copeland's prosperity gospel, he is also well aware of how doctrinally controversial it is. (Although Wead's tactics helped George W. Bush get elected and re-elected, he fell out of favor with the Bush family in 2005 after he released secretly taped conversations in which George W. Bush admitted to marijuana use.)

Copeland played a key role in Wead's strategy. As I detail in God's Profits, in 1985 Wead compiled a list of 1,000 "targets" -- religious leaders of influence that the elder Bush should become friendly with for political reasons. Copeland was in the top dozen, along with Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. Wead, in fact, seemed to think Copeland was more useful than Robertson and Falwell because they were divisive while he was more "discreet." And when George W. Bush was contemplating his own presidential run 13 years later, Wead told Karl Rove that Copeland "is arguably one of the most important religious leaders in the nation."

On the program last week, Copeland made sure that his viewers understood the political connections he and Wead share, somehow evading the obvious contradiction inherent in the idea that Copeland is at once under siege by an elitist senator and a confidant of presidents. "I had the privilege of discussing different things with you when you were an adviser in the Bush campaign and later in the Bush White House," he reminded Wead. Wead replied that Copeland has also met with presidents, but that few people know this "because those were meetings you kept private, and what was shared you kept private, but you've had your impact on this country, Kenneth, impact for good."

Wead played along as Copeland accused Grassley of "literally hat all six of us" (referring to the six televangelist targets), argued that "Satan is going to try his best to persecute" Pentecostals and charismatics, and wondered whether "the Devil stirred up senators ... because I'm not preaching Republican doctrine or the doctrine of the Democratic Party." Although Copeland claims to have no partisan affiliation, he says that God told him in the 1970s to read both parties' platforms and that God "asked me this question: Did you ever notice that the abortionists, the homosexual community, people that are on the far, far left side of everything, have you ever noticed they are very seldom divided against a candidate?" (Apparently God hasn't updated Copeland on this year's Democratic primary.)
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_fundamentalist_050708