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Christian Exodus sees Upstate as promised
land
Devotional: Frank
and Tammy Janoski and their children, Jonathan, 5, Joel 4, Justin, 11, and
Jennifer, 12, pray in their Greer home Monday. They are part of Christian
Exodus. It began quietly, in a house with white vinyl siding and a trampoline out back, in a subdivision between Greer and Simpsonville. That's where Frank Janoski, his wife Tammy, and their four children have come. They left Bethlehem, Pa., to be a part of the Christian Exodus. South Carolina may not be flowing with milk and honey, but it looks like the promised land to the leaders of this group, which hopes to relocate thousands of conservative Christian families like the Janoskis from across America to the Palmetto State. Their aim: to tip the political scales, which they see as already weighted heavily to the right, further in that direction. Secession "is a valid option," said Janoski, a "state coordinator" for the organization -- but he hopes it doesn't come to that. "If it's going to be ugly and bloody, nobody wants that," he said. The group is recruiting more pioneers for this journey of faith through its Web site and plans to hold a national conference in Greenville in October, which will include information booths of local real estate agents, employers and private schools -- all the nuts and bolts needed for relocation. The political strategy is to support candidates, first on the local level -- school boards and county councils -- and then on the state level. The Upstate has been chosen as part of the first phase of the relocation program, with a goal of having 2,500 members in two yet-to-be-named counties by Sept. 30, 2006. They have a long way to go. Only two other families have moved here since the Janoskis came five months ago, according to the 38-year-old self-employed electrical and computer engineer. The newcomers wouldn't run for office themselves but would help elect candidates who think like them on abortion (outlawing it), and homosexual marriage (making sure it never becomes legal here) and Christian religious expression in government settings (taking away all restrictions). The underlying theme, though, is not so much religious as political: "Interposing the State's sovereign authority," according to the group's Web site. Although many South Carolinians might agree with Christian Exodus' position on social issues, the idea of moving enough people here to institute a Bible-based government sounds like political pie in the sky to Dr. James Guth, a political science professor at Furman University who studies conservative Christianity's impact on politics. "Most people don't make decisions on where to live based on those kinds of considerations," he said. "Even if some people of that sort do move here, we have lots of people moving here from other parts of the country for other reasons." And the group's distrust of President Bush -- they believe he's been soft on abortion and homosexuality -- also is out of step with most South Carolina voters, Guth said. "Putting them in South Carolina is going to put them from the frying pan into the fire. Bush is pretty popular here," Guth said. According to the Christian Exodus Web site, the organization was founded by Jim Taylor and Cory Burnell in November 2003 "as a response to the moral degeneration of our nation and the lack of any determination by the Republican Party to return our nation to its constitutional moors. "ChristianExodus.org seeks a return to constitutionally limited government founded upon Christian principles, and has decided that the best strategy for achieving this goal is to reform the local and state governments. To accomplish this reform, we will relocate thousands of Christian constitutionalists to one particular sovereign State (South Carolina) so that our numbers will make an effective difference in electoral politics," the Web site says. Burnell, who lives in California and heads the operation, was in meetings Monday and unavailable for comment. The group's conference is scheduled for Oct. 14-16 at the Greenville Hilton. Space is limited to 210 attendees. Christian Exodus has more than 500 members, Janoski said, but membership is basically a matter of signing up on the Web site. The Rev. Tony Romo, pastor of South Point Baptist Church in Pelzer, said his church will hold a "leadership meeting" for Christian Exodus on Oct. 16. "Some people think it's some kind of whacked-out religious invasion. It's not that at all," he said. "These folks who are moving in, they're not really coming here to take over. They're coming to augment what's here." Romo said he is a contact person for people relocating to the Upstate because of Christian Exodus. He got involved in the organization seven or eight months ago after the director of the group, Burnell, held a meeting in Columbia. Robert B. Hayes, state director of the South Carolina League of the South, a group that supports Southern secession and state sovereignty, said he is in contact with the founder of Christian Exodus on a regular basis, and the two groups share many of the same goals. Some League of the South members are also members of Christian Exodus, but the league has no formal connection to the group, he said. "We're definitely supportive of them," Hayes said. But the idea of targeting one state and leaving the rest of the nation to slide further into moral decay isn't the best approach for some conservative Christians. The Rev. Tony Beam, director of the Christian Worldview Center at North Greenville College and host of a Christian talk show on His Radio, AM 660, said Christian conservatives should work within their own communities. "We still have the ability to effect change by bringing pressure to bear on representatives in Washington," he said. "It's just that we're not vigilant in getting that accomplished, and that's why we're frustrated." The concentration of like-minded conservatives coming here from other parts of the country has already been happening, though, whether under an organization or not, said Leola Robinson, a member of the Greenville County school board. But history shows it can be dangerous when people organize under the banner of religion to try to impose their political will, she said. "We're not some backwater town that can be influenced and manipulated to achieve some goal that perhaps even the promoters don't fully understand," she said. Janoski, the first settler, gathers his family around the kitchen table for Bible study daily. A cardboard cutout version of the Ten Commandments are posted nearby. Even the youngest child, Joel, 4, seems to enjoy the ritual, squirming from his chair only once or twice before being gently corrected by his parents. Janoski's first thoughts about relocating weren't out of a religious impulse, though. It was because of high taxes and restrictions on home-schooling in Pennsylvania. Someone at his church showed him an e-mail about Christian Exodus, "almost as a joke." But he began researching the group's Web site, Christianexodus.org, and was "very impressed by what they stood for and the kind of folks involved in it." He drove to South Carolina last summer to scout out the Upstate. He liked what he saw. Because he works out of a home office, he could live in any state he chose. For those without that degree of mobility, the organization is working to develop a sort of job-placement and home-finders network. The reaction from people he has talked with around the Upstate has been positive, he said. "Everybody we talk to says that's a great idea. Where do we find out more?"
Robert Hayes Speaks At Meeting For some, it's a states' rights issue as well as a moral one. South Carolina needs such an amendment to protect it against federal judges who might try to force the state to recognize same-sex marriages from other states, said Robert Hayes, state director of the League of the South. "South Carolina is sovereign, and it is time that our legislators recognize that fact and tell the federal authorities ... when they have overstepped their constitutional authority," he said. The Total Article Below
Marriage bill ignites passions Posted Wednesday, April 27, 2005 - 11:19 pm By Ron Barnett STAFF WRITER rbarnett@greenvillenews.com _____ Related Online extra * Poll: Should <http://www.greenvilleonline.com/news/#poll> the state's Constitution be amended to define marriage? Related Web site * Read <http://www.scstatehouse.net/sess116_2005-2006/bills/3133.htm%20> the bill * Learn <http://www.ncsl.org/programs/cyf/samesex.htm#DOMA> which states have a Defense of Marriage Act * ACLU of South Carolina <http://www.aclusc.org/> * League of the South <http://leagueofthesouth.net/index.php> While the state House of Representatives was debating a domestic violence bill and approving a bill that would do away with common law marriage in South Carolina, the battle lines were being drawn Wednesday in a separate but not unrelated fight over the definition of marriage. The House delayed voting on the domestic violence bill and voted 104-4 in favor of a bill that would end the legal concept that a man and woman who live together for a period of time without being married can be considered married under the law. That bill now goes to the Senate. The issue of whether the state's Constitution should be amended to define marriage as being between a man and a woman is up to you, the voter. Groups on both sides of that issue, ranging from the League of the South to the American Civil Liberties Union, are making plans to wage a campaign to capture your vote on a referendum on the issue, which was approved by the House on Tuesday. You'll have plenty of time to decide. The referendum isn't until November 2006, at the next general election. It will be an uphill battle for the opponents, said Bruce Ransom, a political science professor at Clemson University. "I think it's likely to be an issue that not only will, as you would expect, garner significant support from the evangelical Christian community in the state but I think it will cross racial lines," he said. "The only thing I can say is I would be shocked if it did not pass in South Carolina." Voters approved ballot initiatives designed to keep same-sex marriage from becoming legal in all 13 states where the question was on referendums, with most of them passing by overwhelming margins, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. The referendums in other states also had the effect of energizing conservative voters in those states, which spilled over into other political races, Ransom said. That would tend to give the Republicans an advantage in the gubernatorial race next year, he said. Thirty-three states, including South Carolina, already have statutes defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman, according to the conference. State Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter, D-Orangeburg, who was one of three House members voting against putting the proposed constitutional amendment issue to a referendum, said South Carolina's law defining marriage, which she also opposed, is sufficient to address the issue. She also voted against the bill that created that law. "I don't believe we ought to put discrimination of any sort into our Constitution," she said. "I've been married almost 30 years and I am not threatened at all by people of the same sex wanting to marry each other," she said. "What about the divorce rates?" Opponents don't harbor any illusions of being able to change the minds of the religious right, but they hope to win over enough people in the middle to kill the proposed amendment. "I think this is a positive time for our movement," said Mike McVicker, youth coordinator for a Greenville organization called Affirm, which offers support groups for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and "questioning" people between the ages of 16 and 22. "A lot has happened on the national level and it's about time it hit South Carolina." Her group plans to meet on Saturday with the South Carolina Equity Coalition, an umbrella organization of gay and lesbian rights groups in the state, to plan strategy, she said. "This is a civil rights issue just as it was with African Americans and the feminist movement," she said. "This is not in any way going to protect marriage. And what we need to do is make people aware that this is denying civil rights to a group of people based on ignorance and bigotry." On the other side is the state's largest religious organization, the South Carolina Baptist Convention, which considers this its No. 1 legislative priority. "We're certainly going to be talking to our churches, mobilizing our people to vote for the referendum," said Joe Mack, director of public policy for the convention, which encompasses more than 750,000 Southern Baptists in the state. Allowing same-sex marriage "would be the beginning of destroying our society," he said. The Rev. W. Melvin Aiken, pastor of Tabernacle Baptist Church, an independent Baptist church in Greenville, said he plans to use his pulpit and weekly radio program to encourage voters to support the proposed amendment. "The foundation of the family is at stake here," he said. "A family is a husband, wife and children. I think marriage between a man and woman is the way God established it in Genesis." The Rev. Jeffery Lamb, senior minister at the Greenville Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, has been at hospital bedsides and seen same-sex couples through times of crisis. "I've seen the deep commitment they have for one another," he said. "For myself this is a human rights issue," he said. "I think gays and lesbians should have the right to build long-term, lasting covenants with one another that have to be respected by the state." "I certainly don't expect other people of other religions to approve of that, but I do wish the state wouldn't discriminate against gays and lesbians in this fashion." Katrina Brayall, 34, of Greenville, hopes the measure doesn't pass. She said she and her partner are raising her son together. "What's the difference? We live together. We support my son together," she said. "We have everything that we need." One group that lobbied for the referendum is the Palmetto Family Council, which is aligned with Focus on the Family, the organization of conservative Christian psychologist Dr. James Dobson. "We think that this amendment is merely a part of a statewide movement promoting marriage as the cornerstone of our society," said Dr. Oran P. Smith, president of the council. Considering the vote in the Legislature - only four out of 170 lawmakers voted against having the referendum - he feels confident that South Carolinians will support it. For some, it's a states' rights issue as well as a moral one. South Carolina needs such an amendment to protect it against federal judges who might try to force the state to recognize same-sex marriages from other states, said Robert Hayes, state director of the League of the South. "South Carolina is sovereign, and it is time that our legislators recognize that fact and tell the federal authorities ... when they have overstepped their constitutional authority," he said. The Civil Liberties Union of South Carolina argued against the referendum before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee and expects that the measure will be challenged in the federal courts if it passes. Denyse Williams, executive director of the state ACLU, said the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution gives citizens the right to marry, among the "privileges or immunities" of citizenship. "So now what's going to happen is that the South Carolina Constitution is going to take away a right that's given in the U.S. Constitution," she said. In states where such measures have passed, judges have used it to rule that domestic violence laws don't apply to heterosexual couples who aren't legally married. "We are setting out on an education program to teach people what this amendment means to them, how it will create a second class citizenship for people who have gay and lesbian sexual orientation and how it will impact relationships in the straight community," she said. For some, this is an issue of reaffirming natural moral law and thousands of years of human history. "Marriage is ordained by God," said Brian Mershon, a member of Prince of Peace Catholic Church in Taylors. "It is a sacrament. It is not merely a convenient contractual relationship."
League of the South calls for Southern revolution
Posted Sunday, 4 May 2003 The years have mellowed the red brick streets of Abbeville, softening edges of this rural courthouse town. But history has a way of coming alive in such a place. Revolutionary ideas have been born and died here: The first mass meeting of South Carolinians clamoring for secession took place on a hilltop just above town in 1860. The last Cabinet meeting of the defeated Confederacy also happened here, 4½ tragic years later.
This is the state headquarters of the League of the South, a 100-year-old wooden-floored storefront stocked with all things Southern, from Maurice's barbecue sauce to Jefferson Davis coloring books. To members of the group, which made its presence known in Greenville during the fight over a Martin Luther King holiday, the palmetto and crescent flag outside is not merely the symbol of a small Southern state. It is the banner of a sovereign republic. South Carolina, like the other 13 original states, never ceded its power of self-rule at the end of the American Revolution, according to the League of the South. To this day, the League says, it is a state under federal occupation, overrun roughshod by a national government that is imposing its misguided policies and high taxes on the populace in violation of the U.S. Constitution. "This is pretty radical stuff," acknowledges one of the League's founders, University of South Carolina history professor Clyde Wilson. "But our main endeavor is to get people to thinking a little differently and to try to reclaim some of their freedom that we have lost in recent years, and their self-determination." A sovereign republic of South Carolina would be a much different place than the state now managed by Washington, in the view of Robert B. Hayes, state director of the League. Abortion would be illegal. Taxes would be much lower — 10 percent of a citizen's income at the most. There would be no government-funded public education system: The current one has proven government's ineffectiveness in the education business, he said. Hate or heritage? The right of free association also would be upheld, meaning private businesses could decide for themselves who they would serve — or not serve. That doesn't mean that the group advocates exclusion of anyone, Hayes said — such rules wouldn't apply to public facilities. It's strictly a matter of private property rights. "Now, it may be a very, very poor business decision to deny Catholics or deny Jews or deny whites or deny whatever group you want to deny," Hayes said. "But the owner of the property should have the right to decide who he has in his place of business." Because of such views, the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit organization whose purpose is to fight intolerance, has labeled the League of the South a neo-Confederate hate group. Mark Potok, spokesman for the Southern Poverty Law Center and editor of the center's Intelligence Report, said the group started quietly in 1994 as an intellectual movement but radicalized after the Confederate flag battle in South Carolina. "It developed into an organization that describes segregation as a policy designed to ensure the integrity of the races," he said. "It believes the South is fundamentally Anglo-Celtic, created by and for Christian whites and will allow others to live in the South as long as they know their place." The League won't say how many members it has, but Potok counts 9,000 members and chapters in 15 states. South Carolina has the most chapters, but there are chapters as far away as New York and Montana. League members question the credibility of the Southern Poverty Law Center, saying it profits financially by creating lists of hate groups. They say the League is being unfairly cast as a group of one-dimensional people focused on the race issue. It's not the League that keeps fighting the race issue but people like the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who raised the profile of the debate over a King holiday in Greenville County, they say. Like Jackson, Hayes has become a fixture at County Council meetings. Saying he was invited by members of the League from Greenville, he addressed the council again and again on King's marital infidelity, doctoral plagiarism and purported Communist ties, urging against establishing a holiday. Eventually, the council voted to let county employees decide which holidays to observe, a plan the League supported. But the issue stirred up racial strife, with black leaders vowing to continue to fight for a holiday to symbolize that Greenville County has joined the rest of the nation in recognizing the civil rights struggle. The power of symbols cuts both ways. Even in the League's own back yard, some locals have a distaste for the display of Old South symbols on Main Street. "I know it irritates a lot of people. A lot of blacks complain about it," said Mark Bobo, a 26-year-old textiles worker who was relaxing on a park bench in front of the Abbeville courthouse on a recent afternoon. "Why should they have something like that just right up on the square?" Such views are based on a misperception of what the League is about, members say. "Anytime anybody says something 'Southern,' then there are people who immediately start jumping up and down about how you want to restore slavery or segregation," said Wilson, who is the editor of John C. Calhoun's papers. "We're not talking about that. We're talking about the future." "We repudiate all forms of racism and we have taken great pains to exclude anybody who wants to preach that kind of thing," Wilson said, "and people who want to preach that kind of thing avoid us and criticize us." If hate is not the driving force of the League of the South, anger is certainly a factor. Anger against big government. Anger against the news media. Anger that reaches back to what they call the War Against Southern Independence, Lincoln's invasion of the South. Anger even against a sitting president in time of war. "The president has violated the Constitution, so why shouldn't anybody speak out against violating the Constitution?" Hayes said, answering why he had a Dixie Chicks T-shirt in the rack at the League building. And especially, League members feel anger against anything that threatens what they consider Southern culture. Egghead beginnings Jim Kibler, a professor of Southern literature at the University of Georgia, was among a group of about 40 college professors from across the South who decided in 1994 to combine their scholarly efforts in reaction to what they saw as a liberal agenda being pushed by many of their campus colleagues. They decided that rather than take second- and third-hand sources for their historical and literary research, they would go to the original documents. "We were, I guess, a bunch of scholar eggheads who wanted to do that kind of research for the sake of, really, what we considered truth," Kibler said. The League founders also wanted to put the South in a positive light — something that seemed to be disappearing in the popular view, he said. The news media, much of which is controlled by "South-hating" business empires, have created a racist stereotype of anyone who displays the Confederate flag or who talks about Southern heritage, Kibler believes. "That's the simplistic, propagandistic cultural Marxist approach" that even many Southern newspapers take, he said, and they are "aided and abetted by the Chamber of Commerce and all of the New South people who would sell Granny if they could get a buck for her hide." Kibler is particularly concerned about the "sprawl-mart mentality" he believes big business is pushing and the impact it's having on the South. "We're against the homogenizing. We like diversity. Nothing wrong with diversity," he said. "We want people to be who they are. We don't want our communities to all look the same." The distinctiveness of the South is in danger of being lost, he fears, through outside influences that seek only to make money or grab power that belongs to local communities. His purpose, as a member of the League of the South, is not to politicize his teaching and literary research but to celebrate the uniqueness of the region. "I'm more interested in literature and I'm more interested in the history of the South and its language and its front porches and its architecture and its gardens and its plants ..."
Political battles
But clearly, the League has political aims, foremost among them shaking off the shackles of the federal government. And that means secession. "Secession is neither premature, impractical, nor illegal," a position paper posted on the League's Web site states. "The time is right for separation and the establishment of local self-rule." If the 13 states of the old Confederacy were a nation, its gross national product would place it among the richest five or six nations of the world, the Web site says. "Its laws would better reflect the natural conservatism and Christian roots of the Southern people. Our laws on gun control, abortion, school prayer, and immigration would without question be different." Another civil war wouldn't need to be fought, either — if only the federal government would abide by the Constitution, the League says. Indeed, some scholars argue that the South did have the right under the Constitution to leave the Union in 1860, said Bill Steirer, a history professor at Clemson University. "But like anything, a right is yours only if you have enough power to take it and to keep it," he said. The League's claim that South Carolina is already a sovereign nation based on the peace treaty signed at the end of the American Revolution is more questionable, Steirer said. When South Carolina ratified the Constitution on May 30, 1788, the state gave the federal government the power to regulate trade between states, to have a court that's superior to all state courts, to mint coins, to provide for the defense of the nation and to set public lands policy, he said. "It does not seem to me that the powers that the state has left are those powers which anybody would think a sovereign nation has to have in order to be a nation," he said. Walter Edgar, director of the Institute for Southern Studies at the University of South Carolina, also said the state's sovereignty is a dead issue. "That has been decided both by the courts and on the battlefield," he said. If secession seems a stretch, the League believes it is already becoming a factor in state politics. It started a movement called No Votes for Turncoats after July 2000 when the Confederate battle flag was taken down from the Statehouse dome and legislative chambers and put on the grounds next to a Confederate monument. "We picked and choosed who we were going to go after — those that were in marginal districts," said Hayes, a former high school science teacher who runs the Confederate store as well as directing the state League's activities. Since that time, more than 50 officeholders on the state and local level have fallen, partly due to the League's influence, Hayes said. "We can't take full credit for defeating Beasley, nor can we take full credit for defeating Hodges. But we were certainly one of the most active groups out there," he said. Furman political science professor Donald Aiesi said the claim to throwing out 50 officeholders doesn't ring true. "They're delusionary if they think they have," Aiesi said. "They may have captured some of the same constituency that would have voted against those people anyway, and I doubt if they were pivotal in any races substantially." Hayes isn't ruffled by the skeptics. The cause, he believes, is worth the fight. "We have a message that we think is an important message, and that is self-government and that is state sovereignty," he said. "If we can convince enough people in South Carolina to agree with us and to politically move us in that direction, we are simply abiding by both the state Constitution and the U.S. Constitution and the political process. "If we can't get people to accept our message," he said, "then we're just going to fade away." Staff writer Jason Zacher contributed to this article. |
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