Coalition of African American Pastors launches national pro-marriage campaign

Here’s some good news from CNS News.

Excerpt:

The Coalition of African American Pastors (CAAP) announced at the National Press Club on Tuesday that  the grassroots group – comprised of the more than 3,000 members – is a launching a national campaign to support marriage between one man and one woman and to oppose the Obama administration’s efforts to advance same-sex marriage.

“The time has come for a broad-based assault against the power that be that wants to change our culture to one of men marrying men and women marrying women,” CAAP President William Owens said at the press conference, held to announce the Marriage Mandate campaign, which includes a petition seeking 100,000 signatures pledging support for traditional marriage.

“Mr. President, I’m not going to stand with you, and there are thousands of others across this country that are not going to stand with you with this foolishness,” Owens said.

In a press release announcing the campaign, Owens encouraged black pastors and the black community to “withdraw their support for [Obama].”

“Today we will be launching a nationwide campaign rallying black pastors and African Americans to voice their opposition to the president’s position on same-sex marriage, and withdraw their support from him,” said Owens, who told reporters he voted for Obama in the 2008 presidential election.

“We will see that the black community is informed that the president is taking them for granted while pandering to the gay community,” Owens said.

Bishop Janice Hollis, presiding Prelate of the Covenant of International Fellowship of Churches, called Obama’s support of gay marriage a “travesty” and said it reflects the “disorder in the highest office in the land.”

Owens said CAAP sent a letter to Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder in May asking for a meeting to discuss the gay marriage issue.

“We wrote the president and Mr. Holder May the second, requesting an audience with him to discuss this very issue,” Owens said. “He has not given us the courtesy of any reply.

“The Coalition of African American Pastors (CAAP) consists of 3,742 African American pastors, and he has totally ignored us,” Owens said.

He said Obama is ignoring the black community “because he feels that he has us in his pocket.”

“Well, we are not in his pocket,” Owens said.

In the 2008 election, black Protestants voted overwhelmingly for the pro-abortion and pro-gay-marriage Obama. (He had a radical pro-abortion record and had come out for gay marriage earlier, so this was all known then).

Which religions supported Obama most in 2008?

So 94% of African-American Christians voted for an abortion and gay marriage radical. NINETY-FOUR PERCENT.

I actually believed, based on this voting data, that American black Protestant churches were officially pro-abortion and pro-gay-marriage. I just considered them to be apostate denominations the same way that denominations like the Episcopal Church and the Presbyterian Church United States of America are apostate. (Note: this does not apply to non-American black churches, which are conservative).

These voting numbers confirm my experiences. For example, I remember one African American woman at work who was interested in me who could not understand why I would not join her in working on The United Way workplace partnership initiative. I took her aside in the hallway and told her that the United Way supported abortion and opposed the Boy Scouts, and she was like “So what?“. She attended church weekly and she supported Barack Obama. So I just figured based on these voting numbers and my personal experiences that most African-American churches were pro-abortion, pro-gay-marriage, pro-socialism, etc.

This action by the 3,742 black African-American pastors shocks me as much as if those gay bishops in the Episcopal church had suddenly came out in favor of defending traditional marriage. Maybe these 3,742 pastors will be able to begin to educate their flocks about what the Bible actually says on these issues so that these voting numbers change. I did know about the good African-American pastors like Harry Jackson and Ken Hutcherson who are pro-life and pro-marriage, but I just thought that there were only a handful of faithful black pastors. I guess I was wrong, at least on the marriage issue, and that’s a good thing. Color me surprised.

Filed under: News, Abortion, African-American, Apostasy, Apostate, Black, Christianity, Church, Gay Marriage, Pastor, Socialism

Useful idiot Jim Wallis accepts $150,000 more from leftist atheist George Soros

From World Magazine. (H/T Jay Richards)

Excerpt:

Last year Jim Wallis encountered a barrage of criticism when WORLD reported that his religious left organization, Sojourners, took $325,000 from the world’s most notorious billionaire, pro-abortion atheist George Soros (July 17 and Sept. 11, 2010). Now he’s at it again: In an email note to me, Wallis confirmed that Soros’ Open Society Foundation has just given Sojourners $150,000 more.

The donation is more evidence that Wallis and Sojourners are on the left, even though the organization appeals to young evangelicals by claiming to be apolitical—in Wallis’ summation, not left but “deep.” Sojourners has paid its bills through contributions from co-religionists but also with $250,000 from The Tides Foundation, $200,000 from the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, and additional sums from Barbra Streisand and others.

For some contributors, Sojourners is a useful tool in reducing evangelical support for conservatives. Others have grander motives: Soros himself has stated, “The main obstacle to a stable and just world order is the United States.”

I think all Christians should have a view of economics, because we need to understand how to be effective at helping the poor. It may sound like a good idea to raise the minimum wage, but economists understand that raising the minimum wage actually hurts the poor, especially the young. It never hurts to study and to understand the way the world works – in any area of knowledge. I think that Christians should know how Christianity relates to every area, from science to history to philosophy to ethics to marriage and family.

Related posts

• Peter Hitchens distinguishes the deserving and undeserving poor
• Should Christians support wealth redistribution as a way to alleviate poverty?
• Should Christians pray for the economy?
• Fiscal and social conservatives unite in new free e-book “Indivisible”
• First Things reviews Jay Richards’ Money, Greed and God
• Cato Institute talks with Jay Richards about Christianity and capitalism
• Christian professor of economics discusses capitalism, socialism and the Bible
• How I got interested in the relationship between Christianity and economics
• First Things reviews Jay Richards’ Money, Greed and God
• Ron Nash explains what should Christians believe about social justice

Filed under: News, Apostasy, Apostate, Brian McLaren, Emergent Church, Emerging Church, George Soros, Jim Wallis, Leftism, Leftist, Liberal, Liberation Theology, Open Society, Religious Left, Sojourners, Useful Idiot

Republican speaker John Boehner urges Iran to spare Christian pastor

Middle East Map

From AFP.

Full text:

US House Speaker John Boehner urged Iran on Wednesday to spare the life of an Iranian pastor reportedly facing execution for refusing to recant his Christian faith and return to Islam.

“I urge Iran?s leaders to abandon this dark path, spare Yusef Nadarkhani’s life, and grant him a full and unconditional release,” Boehner, a Republican and the number-three US elected official, said in a statement.

Nadarkhani, now in his early 30s, converted from Islam to Christianity at the age of 19 and became a pastor of a small evangelical community called the Church of Iran.

He was arrested in October 2009 and condemned to death for apostasy under Iran’s Islamic Sharia laws, which however allow for such verdicts to be overturned if the convicted person “repents” and renounces his conversion.

After his conviction was upheld by an appeal court in Gilan province in September 2010, Nadarkhani turned to the supreme court. His wife, who was initially sentenced to life imprisonment, was released on appeal.

In July, Nadarkhani’s lawyer told AFP that Iran’s supreme court and overturned the death sentence and sent the case back to the court in his hometown of Rasht — but fresh media reports this week said a provincial court in Gilan had again sentenced him to death.

“Religious freedom is a universal human right,” Boehner declared, saying the prospects Nadarkhani could be executed “unless he disavows his Christian faith are distressing for people of every country and creed.

“While Iran’s government claims to promote tolerance, it continues to imprison many of its people because of their faith. This goes beyond the law to an issue of fundamental respect for human dignity,” said Boehner.

He’s the top Republican, so his voice carries weight.

Filed under: News, Apostasy, Apostate, Christian, Iran, Islam, Martyr, Muslim, Pastor, Theocracy, Yusef Nadarkhani

Iran prepares to execute evangelical Christian pastor for apostasy

Middle East Map

From National Review.

Excerpt:

The American interfaith delegation — Catholic cardinal Theodore McCarrick, Episcopal bishop John Bryson Chane, and Council on American Islamic Relations director Nihad Awad — who made headlines when they traveled to Tehran and secured the release of the two American hikers last week should pack their bags again. They need to make a return trip. And they better hurry.

As early as this week, the British-based Christian Solidarity Worldwide reports, Iran may execute Pastor Yousef Nadarkhani for refusing to recant his Christian faith.

As my colleague Paul Marshall recently wrote, evangelical Pastor Nadarkhani was sentenced to death for apostasy because he converted to Christianity. He had been tried and found guilty a year ago, even though the court also found that he had never been a practicing Muslim as an adult. Nadarkhani, from Rasht, on the Caspian Sea, converted to Christianity as a teenager.

Iran’s Supreme Court, which upheld the verdict in June, ordered that the pastor be given four chances to renounce Christianity and accept Islam. Two hearings for this purpose took place yesterday and today. Two more are scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday.

The Pastor had been arrested in 2009 when he tried to register his church with authorities. His defense lawyer Mohammed Ali Dadkhah was himself sentenced in July to nine years imprisonment for “actions and propaganda against the Islamic regime.” He is now appealing.

I think the solution to this is to take a tougher foreign policy stand against Iran’s Muslim theocracy.

It is funny to me how many Americans make a fuss over executing convicted cop-killers, but no fuss at all over innocent Christian pastors getting the death penalty. Whenever stories like this come out, I think about how much ink is spilled by Western journalists crying about the convicted criminals, and how little is written about the plight of Christians facing persecution for their faith abroad. But I guess they don’t want to portray Christians as victims, otherwise that might interfere with their “Christians are evil, Muslims are good” narrative.

Filed under: News, Apostasy, Apostate, Christian, Iran, Islam, Martyr, Muslim, Pastor, Theocracy

Jay Richards investigates whether George Soros is funding Jim Wallis

In this post on National Review. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

In World magazine on July 17, Marvin Olasky called on “progressive evangelical” Jim Wallis to come clean and admit that he is not a non-partisan, as he likes to claim, but rather a devoted man of the Left. Olasky reported that Wallis’s organization, Sojourners, had received grants from George Soros’s foundation, the Open Society Institute (OSI), and had lent Sojourners’ mailing list to the Obama campaign.

[...]Among the documents I now have are pages from the OSI website that list two grants to Sojourners — one for $200,000 in 2004, “To support the Messaging and Mobilization Project: Engaging Christians on the Importance of Civic Involvement,” and one for $25,000 in 2006, “To support a branding assessment” for the purpose of merging “Sojourners and Call to Renewal into one organization.” I have physical copies of these pages, which is good, because these pages seem to have disappeared from the OSI website (I’m sure that’s just a coincidence).

[...]But there’s more to it. In two blog posts at Patheos published over the last week, Tim Dalrymple reported that he, too, was looking into Olasky’s charge, and in a thoughtful, unbiased interview published on August 9, he asked Wallis himself about Olasky’s charges.

Before responding directly, Wallis launched into bizarre invective against Olasky, claiming (among other things) that Olasky believes in a “sinless market.” This caricature is practically surreal to anyone familiar with Olasky’s actual views — actually, it’s beyond surreal, since surreal art has some illuminating connection to the original. Olasky is a Calvinist, which means he places particularly strong emphasis on human depravity in every area of human experience, including the market.

Wallis continued:

It’s not hyperbole or overstatement to say that Glenn Beck lies for a living. I’m sad to see Marvin Olasky doing the same thing. No, we don’t receive money from Soros. Given the financial crisis of nonprofits, maybe Marvin should call Soros and ask him to send us money.

So, no, we don’t receive money from George Soros. Our books are totally open, always have been. Our money comes from Christians who support us and who read Sojourners.

Well, as I said above, I’ve got physical copies of what appear to be grants to Sojourners from the Open Society Institute website, which have since been taken offline. Dalrymple does, too. In fact, until Wednesday, August 11, Dalrymple’s second blog post at Patheos had accompanying PDFs of the OSI webpages.

[...]According to Sojourners’ 990s (go here and search for “Sojourners” in “DC”), their total assets went from $513,896 in 2002 to $4,615,468 in 2009. Call me skeptical, but I’d be willing to bet that this windfall didn’t all come from humble readers of Sojourners magazine.

Wallis supports Barack Obama, a radically pro-abortion President. Abortion is the slavery of our age – a political movement based on pure greed, whose aim is to terminate the lives of a weaker class of humans because of the selfishness of a stronger class of humans. And yet Wallis tries to pass himself off as a Christian. So I know exactly who to believe when his testimony contradicts respected Christian scholars like Marvin O’Lasky and Jay Richards.

Filed under: News, Abortion, Apostasy, Apostate, Atheism, Atheist, Backing, Christian, Christianity, Democrat, Funding, George Soros, Jay Richards, Jim Wallis, Sojourners