Mat Staver suggested on Janet Mefferd’s radio show Monday that governments have no constitutional authority to place limitations on church services even during an emergency like the COVID-19 pandemic.
Peter Montgomery at RWW:
Mat Staver suggested on Janet Mefferd’s radio show Monday that governments have no constitutional authority to place limitations on church services even during an emergency like the COVID-19 pandemic. Staver, who heads the religious-right legal group Liberty Counsel, recently compared enforcement of social distancing restrictions against churches to the treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany.
Liberty Counsel has declared this Sunday, May 3, to be “ReOpen Church Sunday,” and has urged all churches to reopen in some way. When Mefferd asked how that would work given the wide variation in state and local guidelines now in place, Staver said it would vary from place to place, but also suggested that churches have to decide whether “that’s the hill for them to die on,” seemingly confirming our suspicion that “ReOpen Church Sunday” is designed to spark new conflicts that Liberty Counsel can use to promote the religious right’s political narrative that Christians are facing persecution in the U.S.
From the 04.27.2020 edition of Bott Radio Network’s Janet Mefferd Today:
Janet Mefferd Today · 04 - 27 - 20 - Janet - Mefferd - Today - Mat Staver (ReOpen Church Sunday) - J. Sikkenga (Education)
A prominent AFR host has resigned just a few months after American Family Association shuttered its outreach ministry for Christian communities of color
Alex Patterson at MMFA:
Extreme anti-LGBTQ group American Family Association (AFA) has stopped airing significant amounts of its American Family Radio (AFR) programming in the past three months, including losing host Janet Mefferd and its entire dedicated Urban Family Communications network.
AFR is a right-wing evangelical radio network that regularly pushes misinformation and hate about the LGBTQ community. It broadcasts more than 60 shows to nearly 200 stations and affiliates across 35 states and airs 24/7 as a part of AFA’s larger media apparatus, which also includes news website OneNewsNow. AFA is an extreme anti-LGBTQ group that also launches dubious anti-LGBTQ petitions, tries to affect corporate behaviors regarding LGBTQ and other social issues, engages in dehumanizing rhetoric, and endorses extreme policies such as Russia’s anti-LGBTQ “gay propaganda” law.
AFA is unique for being an anti-LGBTQ group with its own media apparatus. This gives it the ability to spread misinformation to various audiences, contributing to a broader ecosystem of right-wing evangelical media outlets that can create viral content, get influential figures on the record, and even air TV programming in countries across the world.
American Family Radio has lost a prominent host and an entire outreach ministry since June
On August 30, Mefferd, the host of the AFR program Janet Mefferd Live and one of the radio network’s most prominent hosts, abruptly resigned from AFR. She claimed that she resigned due to a need “to lighten my heavy daily workload of hosting two national radio shows for the last three years.”
Mefferd’s other daily Christian talk radio show, Janet Mefferd Today, will continue to air on Bott Radio Network, a Christian radio network with a smaller reach than AFR at 120 stations across 15 states, and the show currently reruns on select AFR stations on Saturdays. Mefferd’s seemingly sudden resignation came just hours after her final AFR Janet Mefferd Live broadcast, which she concluded without announcing her departure, saying, “Thanks a lot for all of your calls and for listening today. We’ll see you next time right here on American Family Radio.”
Just over two months prior to Mefferd’s resignation, on June 24, AFA consolidated its Urban Family Communications ministry into AFR’s broader radio lineup. Several Urban Family Talk radio shows have stopped airing on AFR's networks as a result. Created in 2013, Urban Family Communications was AFR’s outreach ministry targeted toward Christian communities of color and consisted of six radio stations that were known as Urban Family Talk. In addition to its radio network, Urban Family Communications’ outreach efforts included a pastors network and a marriage, family, and life conference.
AFA’s decision to shut down Urban Family Communications resulted in four Urban Family Talk shows being completely removed from AFA's radio programming: Back 2 God, The BSAC Radio Show, Equipped with Chris Brooks, and Stacy on the Right. At least one of these shows has continued to air elsewhere since the network's consolidation.
In June, AFA claimed that four Urban Family Talk shows -- Airing the Addisons, The Awakening with Bishop E.W. Jackson, The Hour of Intercession, and Lion Chasers with Lonnie Poindexter -- would “officially join the AFR lineup” beginning “with Airing the Addisons starting the week of July 1, 2019, and the other programs as soon as possible.” However, Lion Chasers with Lonnie Poindexter has yet to join the AFR lineup, and The Awakening with Bishop E.W. Jackson was only brought to the network on September 3 as a replacement for Janet Mefferd Live.
We reported last week on a press conference held by a group of extremely anti-LGBTQ leaders calling themselves the Gone Too Far Movement.
Peter Montgomery at RWW:
We reported last week on a press conference held by a group of extremely anti-LGBTQ leaders calling themselves the Gone Too Far Movement. Religious Right radio host Janet Mefferd, who had promoted the event in advance, followed up by telling listeners she had watched the whole event, which she declared was “fabulous.”
Last Thursday she broadcast snippets of the press conference on her show, choosing clips from Oklahoma pastor Dan Fisher, who promoted the group’s Proclamation for Morality, and “ex-homosexual” Stephen Black.
“Immoral behavior is not a civil right,” said Dan Fisher in a clip Mefferd cued up. “Immoral behavior is not a civil right.”
From the 02.07.2019 edition of Bott Radio Network’s Janet Mefferd Today:
Trump-Worshiping Pastor Wonders If Trump's Critics 'Take The Bible Seriously' (AUDIO)
Trump-Worshiping Pastor Wonders If Trump’s Critics ‘Take The Bible Seriously’ (AUDIO)
As of the close of the first week of the new year, Donald Trump’s average approval rating, as measured by FiveThirtyEight, stands at 38.2 percent–easily the lowest of any newly-elected president at this early stage of his presidency.
But Trump is lucky to even be that high. From the looks of it, one big reason that he hasn’t completely cratered is that the religious right is still solidly behind…
Trump-Worshiping Pastor Wonders If Trump's Critics 'Take The Bible Seriously' (AUDIO)
Trump-Worshiping Pastor Wonders If Trump’s Critics ‘Take The Bible Seriously’ (AUDIO)
As of the close of the first week of the new year, Donald Trump’s average approval rating, as measured by FiveThirtyEight, stands at 38.2 percent–easily the lowest of any newly-elected president at this early stage of his presidency.
But Trump is lucky to even be that high. From the looks of it, one big reason that he hasn’t completely cratered is that the religious right is still solidly behind…
Religious Right Radio Host: Obama Was Under 'Communist Influence' And Couldn't Have Been A Scout (AUDIO)
Religious Right Radio Host: Obama Was Under ‘Communist Influence’ And Couldn’t Have Been A Scout (AUDIO)
In the wake of Donald Trump’s bizarre and unhinged speech to the 2017 Boy Scout Jamboree, a number of observers have drawn sharp contrasts with Barack Obama’s scouting history. While Trump never spent a day in scouting, Obama spent part of his childhood in Indonesia as the equivalent of a Cub Scout. But a prominent religious right talk show host scoffed at the idea that Obama had been a Scout.…
Religious Right Radio Host: Obama Was Under 'Communist Influence' And Couldn't Have Been A Scout (AUDIO)
Religious Right Radio Host: Obama Was Under ‘Communist Influence’ And Couldn’t Have Been A Scout (AUDIO)
In the wake of Donald Trump’s bizarre and unhinged speech to the 2017 Boy Scout Jamboree, a number of observers have drawn sharp contrasts with Barack Obama’s scouting history. While Trump never spent a day in scouting, Obama spent part of his childhood in Indonesia as the equivalent of a Cub Scout. But a prominent religious right talk show host scoffed at the idea that Obama had been a Scout.…
Russell Moore and the School of ‘The Prophets of Shame’
Russell Moore and the School of ‘The Prophets of Shame’
Some glaring fault lines have appeared in the conversation about Russell Moore, many of which were exposed by the recent essay in The Federalist written by one of Moore’s fans, Nathan Leamer of the R Street Institute. Since being crowned head of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) in 2013, Dr. Moore has been no stranger to controversy, much of which he brings upon himself. His…
