In the "Fort Worth Star-Telegram" column by Bud Kennedy, "Founding Faith Didn't Include a Secession Movement." Maybe Grassroots American needs to change their name to Grassroots Confederacy, Maybe Tea party 911 should change their name to Secession 911.

In the Fort Worth Star-Telegram there is a column by Bud Kennedy titled, "Founding Faith Didn't Include a Secession Movement." It is about a conference at an Arlington church in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex area of which Arlington is a part.

The link is:

http://www.star-telegram.com/2013/08/17/5087747/founding-faith-didnt-include-founding.html

What is interesting is that Lt. General Boykin, President of the Family Research Council has pulled out because he doesn't want to be associated with the League of the South and neo-Confederacy, but two black conservative groups still wish to attend, one which calls itself the Frederick Douglass Foundation and the other which calls itself the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Committee.

Two Tea Party groups are involved with this.  One is www.teaparty911.com and the other is http://gawtp.com .

This is their link to the conference. Perhaps Grassroots America needs to change their name to Grassroots Confederacy.

http://gawtp.com/founding-faith-conference

This is the Tea Party 911 link to promote the Conference

http://www.teaparty911.com/info/pdf/founding-faith-conference-2013-impact-your-nation.pdf

However www.impactyournation.com which is the website for the conference just has a password entry box.

The controversy is about Pastor David Whitney who is billed on the flyer as being with the Institute on the Constitution but the web page doesn't mention that the head of the Institute on the Constitution is Michael Peroutka, a board member of the League of the South and that Whitney is a pastor of the League of the South.

The High Point Church in Arlington has cancelled the event.

Up till now the Tea Party movement made sure it wasn't associated with neo-Confederacy. However with these comments by a Texas Tea Party leader you can see that secession has made inroads. Note the comment, "I don't think [secession] would be necessary at this time," by Sharon Kay Russell in the following interview by Kennedy with Russell.

The institute is co-sponsoring the faith conference with the local Tea Parties of Texas PAC.

The PAC was formed by leaders of 10 Tea Party groups including Bob and Donna Smith of the Grapevine-based NE Tarrant Tea Party and Barry Schlech of the Burleson-based Texas Patriots Tea Party.

PAC board chairwoman Sharon Kay Russell of Rowlett said the cancellations by Boykin and other speakers are “alarming.”

“I wonder if they were pressured,” she said.

Asked about the PAC co-sponsoring an event with pro-secession leaders, she called that a rumor.

“I don’t think that [secession] would be necessary at this time,” she said.

She said secessionists “have a right to speak out.”

Of course secessionists have a right to speak out. Russell is resorting to misrepresenting the issue. The question is whether your group wants to aid this position by enabling the organization. Since she doesn't reject secession she isn't concerned with enabling secessionists.

With this event we see the Tea Party is beginning to publicly include neo-Confederates. I have always suspect that the Tea Party groups in the former Confederate states must include many who have a Lost Cause mentality towards the Confederacy.

Also, Bud Kennedy raises the issue of the patriotism of the Tea Party groups when they enable neo-Confederates.  Kennedy closes his column stating:

They all say they want to restore the nation.

They just don’t say which one.

There is political competition across the political spectrum. Groups do compete for members, funding, influence. In this competition among Tea Party groups is support of secession and the Confederacy going to be a litmus test for being truly conservative? Interposition and nullification has already been take up by conservatives, is secession far behind? Counter to this trend is that Evangelical Christianity is currently concerned to be part of the world wide Christian movement which is multiracial with whites in a minority. The High Point Church has cancelled the event.

Notice: Warren Throckmorton is also covering events and reports at http://wthrockmorton.com/2013/08/texas-church-says-secessionist-speaker-doesnt-reflect-their-values/
 that the event has been cancelled.

Mr. Throckmorton has been tracking fairly ably the Institute on the Constitution and its mainstreaming neo-Confederacy into the conservative religious world.