In Minnesota, the publisher of Religion Gone Bad, the Jeremy Tarcher/Penguin Group, selected the Wayzata Community Church for my talk/Q&A session/book signing. The church hosts a distinguished author series every year featuring at least 12 authors and their latest books.

For clergy or laity shopping for a creative new idea to reach out to your community consider launching an author’s series of your own. Publishers provide (without cost) an author already on tour. A local bookstore delivers and sells books and even uses their customer mailing list to advertise your event. And you pack your sanctuary with people who have never darkened the door of your church and might never come for any other reason.

After snacking with the pastoral staff, including one of my students from those long ago and far away days when I taught preaching at Fuller Seminary, I entered the modern (and very attractive) sanctuary and found it packed with members of the larger Minneapolis Community who applauded enthusiastically and then purchased over 100 copies of Religion Gone Bad.

Driving back to the residence of Randi and Phil Reitan, my hosts for the weekend in Minneapolis, we spoke enthusiastically about the “evening’s success.” There was reason to celebrate. Selling 100 books at one signing is a record for me. The next morning, I learned that James Dobson, Tony Perkins, Gary Bauer and other fundamentalist gurus would soon hold a rally in downtown Minneapolis to support an amendment to the state constitution that would deny gay and lesbian couples the civil rights and protections of marriage.

Get this. The first 8,000 people who attend the Dobson event will be given a free copy of his book dehumanizing our relationships and calling for Americans to deny us the 1,047 rights and protections of marriage. Not only is Dobson’s “save the family” dog and pony show scheduled for the largest auditorium in Minneapolis, but in the weeks before the November 7 election they are taking their fear-mongering campaign to major cities all across the nation.

Just when we think we’re making progress, the Christian right sets out to recruit millions of voters and tens of millions of dollars using the so called “gay agenda” to create fear and loathing of sexual minorities across the US. I’m dragging my old body across the nation appearing in book stores to a handful of people while Dobson and his crew fill the largest arenas in America with Christians cheering his toxic rhetoric against us. While I’m celebrating the sale of 100 copies of Religion Gone Bad, Dobson is giving away 8,000 copies of his false and inflammatory booklet to the first 8,000 people who attend each of his political crusades.

When will we realize that how dangerous it is that we are out-numbered, out-financed, and out-organized by fundamentalist Christians on their way to claiming total power over church and state alike?

Last night on an LA NPR affiliate the Rev. George Regas told the story of the current IRS attack on All Saints Episcopal Church for his remarks the Sunday before election that the war with Iraq is not a so called just war and that President Bush hasn’t told the truth about the war and its tragic consequences to the American people. Now the IRS is trying to strip All Saints of its tax deductible status.

The NPR station then spent an hour with me describing what Jerry Falwell said on that same Sunday. Here’s a sample of his words from his sermon that day.

“This election is clearly light against darkness. Vote Christian and it doesn’t take a lick of sense to know what that means. Until this year, the Amish haven’t voted. This year they will vote for George Bush. I’m taking my plane immediately after this service and picking up Sean Hannity, Bill Bennett, Ollie North and Zell Miller. Together, until midnight tonight, we will do Pennsylvania for George Bush. For the past weeks we’ve done Ohio and Florida. May God bless America one more time…

“Osama Bin Ladin was used of God (see Psalm 76:10) when he threatened the Bush family on Thursday because it will stir up a few extra millions Americans to vote for someone who will not be soft on terrorism, who will hunt down and kill this evil man. If we lose on Tuesday, I will spend the next years raising up another extra million voters to guarantee that Hillary will not get it.” (In Religion Gone Bad: The Hidden Dangers of the Christian Right, pp 223-224.)

The IRS is NOT threatening Falwell or his massive congregation’s tax exemption rights. But they are making a full out attack on Regas and ASC for simply using the words of Jesus to condemn this unjust war.

Lessons: that the dangers of the Christian right are real, that we are living in a defacto theocracy, and that gay Americans, Muslim Americans, women Americans, immigrant Americans, and everyone else who disagrees with the fundamentalists must stand together against their war to make this “a Christian nation once again.”

Action: Join me in sending an email to the IRS including Falwell’s quote above, DEMANDING that the IRS go after pastors and churches on the Christian right who politicize religion and use their pulpits regularly to support candidates determined to deny us our civil rights and drive us back into the closet.

Apparently, there is a way to file complaints through the Treasury Inspector General: http://www.treas.gov/tigta/