The Obama presidency: 'War on religion' or 'Amazing Grace'?

The Obama presidency: 'War on religion' or 'Amazing Grace'?

He had done it before, after Tucson, Aurora, Fort Hood and Sandy Hook: taken on the mantle of the pastor-in-chief before a crowd of mourners for lives taken too soon by a man with a gun.

Where Do We Go from Here?

Where Do We Go from Here?

The 2016 election is history, and several things are clearer to us now than they were before. It turns out that vast swaths of Americans are comfortable voting for a presidential candidate who has said vile and hate-filled things about Muslims, Mexicans, African Americans, women, and the disabled.

Diverse Group of Christian Leaders Calls for Respect for Presidential Outcome

Diverse Group of Christian Leaders Calls for Respect for Presidential Outcome

A diverse group of Christian leaders - including Bishop Claude Alexander, Dr. Barbara Williams-Skinner, Rev. Joel Hunter, Rev. Traci Blackmon, Dr. Leith Anderson, Jim Wallis, and dozens more- issued a statement this afternoon calling for the presidential candidates and all Americans to respect the process and outcome of today's elections.

A Statement From Dr. Joel C. Hunter on Today's Supreme Court Decision Regarding Gay Marriage

For most people, including the church, today’s Supreme Court decision is no surprise. But we must not confuse the roles of church and state. It is the responsibility of civil government to defend the rights of all its citizens, and to define civil marriage; it is the responsibility of a religious group to interpret its scriptures and act accordingly, including defining the parties and parameters of holy matrimony.

Ultimately, it is our joy as a church is to welcome everyone seeking a closer relationship with God, no matter what their marital status or views on various issues.

— Dr. Joel C. Hunter

An Evangelical Christian Pastor Is Called to Support a Values-Aligned Bank

In March, Reverend Joel Hunter attended the Global Alliance for Banking on Values Annual Meeting in Paris in his role as a member of the board of directors of First Green Bank. Hunter is the...

Joel Hunter joins other faith leaders against terrorism

Joel Hunter joins other faith leaders against terrorism Joel Hunter joins other faith leaders against terrorism Central Florida’s religious community will be conducting a joint event to build compassionate communities on Saturday, Feb. 28, from 1 p.m.-3:30 p.m. The event will take place at the American Muslim Community Center, located at 811 Wilma Street, in Longwood, Fla.

Participants include Dr. Joel C. Hunter of Northland, A Church Distributed; Atif Fareed of American Muslim Community Centers; Rabbi Steven W. Engel of Congregation of Reform Judaism; Pastor Jim Mory, Longwood Hills Congregational Church; Ustadh Ali Ataie of Zaytuna College and other individuals and faith leaders. Together, they will focus on how to build compassionate communities and speak out against those seeking to tear down the human family.

"We strongly condemn violence against any innocent victims in the name of God, national or international interests. This shall include the murder, beheading, burning, rape or bombing of innocent people, whether Christians, Jews, Muslims or adherents of any other faith. Acts of domestic or international terrorism and the desecration or bombing of any church, mosque, synagogue or any house of worship are violations of divine principles and will not be condoned by any of the three Abrahamic faiths."

Central Florida Muslim leaders will also sign the Judeo-Christian-Islamic Peace Covenant. The Judeo-Christian-Islamic Covenant is an agreement between the three Abrahamic faiths and its leaders to adhere to common universal principles in a spirit of mutual respect, love and indiscriminate compassion for all innocent victims worldwide ... to stand against bigotry, hate, intolerance and cooperate in a spirit of brotherhood through dialogue and love, mutual trust and understanding.

The event is free and open to the public. Please RSVP by emailing rsvp@amccenters.org.

Oh come all ye faithful?

Oh come all ye faithful? Oh come all ye faithful? Obama rarely seen in church, but advisers say his beliefs remain strong.

President Barack Obama rarely goes to church and has spent just one Christmas morning of his presidency in the pews.

But that’s not for lack of faith, members of his small circle of religious confidants say. While church isn’t a regular part of Obama’s life, prayer and reflection are, whether he’s meeting with ministers in the Oval Office or spending a few minutes reading an inspirational passage. And, if anything, they argue, his connection with God has intensified during his time in the White House.

“The president’s faith has deepened in the second term; he’s said as much,” said Joshua DuBois, a longtime spiritual adviser to Obama who led the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships during the president’s first term.

“The president’s Christian faith is not connected to or dependent upon anyone else’s beliefs about him, any particular policy issue, any moment in the news cycle or anything else,” DuBois said. “The president’s faith existed long before the While House and will continue after he closes the door to the White House for the last time.”

Critics say that wouldn’t be readily apparent from watching his public comings and goings. After disavowing his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, and leaving Wright’s Chicago church during the 2008 campaign, Obama was widely expected to seek out a church in Washington that he’d attend with some frequency. Instead, he’s attended Sunday services only occasionally, visiting a patchwork of congregations 19 times in all since taking office, according to a POLITICO analysis of White House pool reports.

But the president embraces his faith in other ways, people who see this private side of him say.

DuBois, an ordained Pentecostal minister, and Joel Hunter, a Florida megachurch pastor, are Obama’s two closest religious advisers. A larger circle — which includes evangelical activist Jim Wallis and civil rights movement leader Joseph Lowery, among others — marks the president’s birthday each year, and many in the same group attend the Easter Prayer Breakfast and other White House events throughout the year.

Keeping up a practice that DuBois began during the 2008 campaign, they also send Obama daily devotionals — prayers, poems and other messages — that he reads on his BlackBerry.

“Reading scripture every day yields a certain amount of personal growth, and he’s done this every day for years,” Hunter said. At prayer breakfasts and other gatherings, Hunter has seen “a man who really enjoys talking about his faith” and who “seems at home.”

“It’s a good indication that he is growing in his faith,” he added.

Though Obama rarely discusses his faith, he has made clear that, if nothing else, being president has made him more attentive to it.

“I’m far more mindful of my own failings, knowing exactly what [Abraham] Lincoln meant when he said, ‘I have been driven to my knees many times by the overwhelming conviction that I had no place else to go,’” he said at the 2012 Democratic National Convention, drawing on a quotation attributed to the 16th president, though Lincoln may not have actually said it.

“The pressures of the office tend to lead presidents toward prayer. Those who have a reservoir of piety and theological understanding will draw on that, dip into that,” said Randall Balmer, a professor of religion at Dartmouth College and author of “God in the White House: How Faith Shaped the Presidency from John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush.”

Jimmy Carter, for one, would pray several times each day while in office, sometimes whispering to himself between meetings, Balmer said.

Early on in his term, Obama’s spiritual focus was on being the best possible president, Hunter said, but over the past few years he’s broadened his perspective, thinking more of his role not just as commander in chief but as a father and as a man.

“He has more paid attention to who he needs to be as a man and who other people need him to be as a person who is always trying to do the right thing but will always be blocked politically,” Hunter said.

“You never give up, you always try for political solutions, but you become increasingly aware … there isn’t a killer app, there’s not gonna be a huge move,” he added. “When problems get solved, they’re gonna be incremental, simply because that’s the only way things are being done these days in Washington.”

In addition to spending time reading and mulling over his daily devotionals, Obama occasionally talks by phone or meets in person with his spiritual advisers. There’s no formal schedule to when these conversations take place, just whenever the president wants them, advisers said.

“Every time we pray, I’ll ask him, ‘What do you want to pray for?’ And he says, ‘Well, let’s pray for the country,’” Hunter said. “The country is so on his mind. It’s not, ‘Let’s pray just for this group or just for this cause,’ it’s, ‘I want to pray for the country.’ That’s encouraging to see.”

In all, Obama has gone to services on about 6 percent of the Sundays of his presidency and just once on Christmas Day, in 2011, which also happened to be a Sunday. George W. Bush, by contrast, went to church on close to 30 percent of Sundays during his eight years in office.

All of this stokes criticism on the right, with some arguing that Obama’s professed Christian faith is a sham — or at least an overstatement — meant to make him more palatable to voters.

In an interview last fall, Fox News host Bill O’Reilly pushed DuBois on why the president “doesn’t go to church more often” and wondered whether there was any link between Obama’s departure from Wright’s church and the infrequency of his public worship. DuBois defended the president, saying Obama “leads with his relationship with Jesus” and goes to church several times a year.

One factor is that the first family is busy and prefers to use its free time to bond together at home.

“We try to go to church as much as possible, but when the kids get older, you know, Sunday is some kind of practice, rehearsal, birthday party, you know. So getting us all together on a Sunday is becoming more difficult now that the girls are getting older,” first lady Michelle Obama said in an interview on “Live with Kelly and Michael” timed to the annual White House Easter Egg Roll this year.

“But if we’re not going to church, we really try to use Sunday as family downtime where we can kind of breathe and catch up and maybe take a little nap every now and then if we’re not working,” she said.

But the key reason the president doesn’t go to church more often, DuBois and others close to him said, is because he worries that his presence detracts from other worshipers’ experience.

Obama found out how difficult it would be for him to go to church before he even became president, when he and his family were swarmed by well-wishers and photo-takers at Washington’s Nineteenth Street Baptist Church, one of the nation’s oldest black churches, on the Sunday before his 2009 inauguration.

“When folks see the line forming outside, a lot of folks who don’t attend that congregation go in,” DuBois said. “It displaces a lot of people who are members of that church or at least interrupts them.”

More than five years later, on Easter Sunday this year, the crowd at Nineteenth Street Baptist — located 3 1/2 miles up 16th Street from the White House — was enthusiastic but not overwhelmed by the Obamas’ presence. Still, the first family faced several minutes of what a reporter described as “crowd crush,” with worshipers jockeying for position as they pulled out their smartphones and tablets.

During the president’s Easter visit to the church — his only one so far this year — senior pastor Derrick Harkins acknowledged the first family’s arrival and offered prayers for them, asking that God give the president “every measure of encouragement” and “wisdom.” He also called on God to “tend to his spirit” under the weight of criticism.

After the first flurry of attention, the congregation was respectful, Harkins said. “Our members have wanted to make sure that the worship experience is one that is meaningful and supportive of [the president] and his family” and not one that overwhelms them.

And the Obamas appreciate it. “The president and the first lady are never hesitant to share that they found the worship time valuable to them,” Harkins said. “It’s absolutely genuine.”

To those who doubt Obama’s dedication to his faith, Harkins, a former adviser to the Democratic National Committee, added: “If we were to judge spiritual depth and fulfillment based on who went to church and who didn’t, there would probably be a lot of surprises. I never try to determine what the spiritual engagement of another person is. It’s an awfully pretentious thing to do about anybody, let alone the president.”

SOURCE: http://www.politico.com/story/2014/12/president-barack-obama-religion-113791.html

'We Have Something In Common' -- Obama's Spiritual Adviser On Iran Trip

'We Have Something In Common' -- Obama's Spiritual Adviser On Iran Trip

Joel Hunter, a spiritual adviser to U.S. President Barack Obama, recently spent about a week discussing religious tolerance with officials in Iran, a country often singled out by rights groups for its intolerance toward its religious minorities.

Hunter, a senior pastor of Northland Church in Florida who led a delegation of U.S. religious leaders to the Islamic republic, says he was invited by Iranian religious leaders and scholars to attend a conference.

The conference titled "World Free of Violence and Extremism from the Perspective of Abrahamic Religions" was held in Tehran on May 25.

Hunter, who describes himself as someone who helps Obama get closer to God, says he will brief the U.S. President on his trip, which included a visit to the holy city of Qom.

Hunter's visit to Iran is likely to be castigated by hard-liners in the country as well as critics in the United States who oppose engagement efforts with an Islamic establishment that has been accused of serious human rights abuses.

A conservative Iranian website questioned the trip on June 2 and asked authorities whether it had been coordinated with the country's security and intelligence bodies.

"Is this trip part of the project to make 'America look good' by the pro-Western faction to send positive impulses to U.S. officials?" Jahannews.com asked.

Despite the criticism, Hunter says the trip was worth it.

"That's part of how we make progress, is that those of us who know we're going to be blamed by some of the hard-liners, for even having these conversations," he said. "We believe it's worth the risk because we're not going to make progress as countries or even as religious communities for not talking to one another."

Path To Peace

Hunter said he met with Iran's parliament speaker, advisers to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, officials of Iran's academy of science, Christian and Jewish leaders, and Grand Ayatollahs in Qom.

He added that religious extremism and violence as well as a faith-based path to peace were among the main topics he discussed with Iranian officials.

Asked whether he raised the issue of Iranian state pressure on religious minorities, including Christian converts, Hunter said those subjects were discussed in "sidebar conversations".

In his latest report, Ahmed Shaheed, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Iran, noted that religious minorities in the Islamic republic, including Baha'is and Christians, face violations entrenched in law and practice. Sufis are reportedly also coming under increasing pressure by the Iranian establishment and hard-line clerics who describe the Sufi interpretation of Islam as deviant.

"We didn't go over there to confront people on certain issues," said Hunter. "But...we have built enough of a relationship to address those specific conversations and we talked through those together, and what steps we could do to build a better environment."

Pastor Hunter also said that he was aware that his trip could be used for propaganda purposes by Iranian officials who often claim that all the country's citizens enjoy the same rights.

"Everybody will use our trip for propaganda purposes," he said. "It's the nature of the beast, that's what politics is."

Decreasing Tensions

Hunter said he believes religious leaders can play a role in decreasing tensions between the United States and Iran.

Washington broke its diplomatic ties with Iran following the 1979 revolution and the hostage-taking of U.S. diplomats in Tehran. In the past 35 years, the two countries have been at odds over a number of issues, including Iran's support for terrorism and its controversial nuclear program.

In recent weeks, Iran and the United States, as well as other world powers, have been engaged in talks aimed at finding a lasting solution to the crisis over Iran's sensitive nuclear work.

According to Hunter, certain areas, including religious violence and persecution, can only be solved through dialogue among religious leaders.

"We believe that we have something in common and out of the commonality of our religious communities, we can build the kind of relationship and trust that politics simply can't," he said. "Only through religious leadership or the exchange of religious leaders, we believe peace is going to be successfully built between our two countries."

In an email to RFE/RL, a State Department official said that the United States is aware of independent initiatives by various U.S. religious figures to foster interfaith dialogue with Iranian religious scholars.

"We commend such efforts to promote interfaith tolerance and religious freedom, a foreign policy priority for the Department," the official said.

The official added that Washington was also aware that a small delegation of U.S. Catholics visited Iran in March, entirely independent of the U.S. government.

SOURCE: http://www.payvand.com/news/14/jun/1045.html