Amendment (29 October): This post discusses a Katherine Harris/David Barton panel and the presence of Jeb Bush at a conference organised by Doug Giles back in April. However, the pdf agenda I found and commented on below does not tally with another agenda, from Giles’s old cached website. No sign of Jeb Bush, either. So at least some of the events discussed below, it appears, never came to pass.
Very old news, I know, but I’ve just stumbled across the agenda of the theocratic “Returning Christ to the Public Square2 conference held in the Biltmore, Coral Gables, back in April under the auspices of Doug Giles (Unfortunately, only a cached version is available). Doug’s new website makes no mention of the conference (which is curious: did no-one say anything worth recording?), although his old site made much of the presence of David Barton and David Limbaugh. But only the modest agenda page, which I overlooked at the time, noted a couple of other prominent speakers:
Friday 23 April…
18h40: Welcome — Doug Giles…
19h30: Introduction of Governor Bush – Doug Giles
19h35: Welcome & Godspeed – The Hon. Jeb Bush…
Of course, this was probably a brief courtesy appearance, or even a taped message, but it fits well with Jeb’s “faith-based” enthusiasms and reminds us why tax law is not a worry for Doug and his heavily-politicised ministry. And if Jeb wasn’t enough:
20h00: “Why We Are Here” – The Hon. Katherine Harris…
Saturday 24 April
10h20: Panel: “God in Government” – Katherine Harris & David Barton…
David Barton, VP of the Republican Party of Texas, is well-known. But this 1999 report from The Texas Observer is not, which is why I post it for the second time:
Barton’s lecture-cum-sermon on Christian-American history is much in demand among the fringe groups of the far right. In 1991, he spoke at a retreat in Colorado sponsored by Pastor Pete Peters, whose Scriptures for America ministry is affiliated with the racist and anti-Semitic Christian Identity movement. (According to a report by Rob Boston in the journal Church and State, Peters’ congregation at one time included members of a neo-Nazi group called The Order, the same local neo-Nazi group implicated in the 1984 murder of Denver talk-radio host Alan Berg.)
Harris’s support for theocracy is absent from her election website. But here’s the biggest shocker of all:
Sunday 25 Apri
08h30: Continental Breakfast…
Surely not? The macho Doug, nibbling on a croissant?
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