Filtering by Category: Public Square,Justice
• Public Square •
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.
• Public Square •
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.
• Public Square •
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
• Creation Care, Public Square •
• Justice, Religious Freedom •
• Human Trafficking, Justice •
Raising awareness for child sex trafficking in Orange County Raising awareness for child sex trafficking in Orange County LONGWOOD -- The people who are involved in raising awareness about child sex trafficking in Central Florida count the Aaron George case as a victory.
George learned Wednesday that he will spend the rest of his life in prison after he was convicted on human trafficking charges.
A 16-year-old told the court that George threatened her to have sex with him and his "clients."
Tomas Lares is the founder of Florida Abolitionists, a group that is trying to prevent further exploitation and to raise awareness about this form of modern-day slavery.
"We had another case a few weeks ago in the U.S. Court where a gang member received almost 20 years in prison for trafficking a 14-year-old girl between the Florida Mall and the Mall at Millenia," Lares said, referring to the Xavier Villanueva case. "She was literally locked in a room, and the gang members would guard her 24 (hours a day), seven (days a week)."
These are just some of the harsh and heartbreaking truths Lares and other anti-child sex trafficking advocates shared with the congregation at Longwood-based Northland, A Church Distributed.
Anthony Davis. Sr. also shared his perspective. He is a former law enforcement officer and member of the Greater Orlando Human Trafficking Task Force.
"One thing we have to understand about this in law enforcement with this is we're fighting money," Davis said. "We're fighting greed and those that are looking at the fact that they don't think they can be prosecuted."
It's a problem that hides in the shadows, but child advocates said recruitment happens in the light of the day — at schools and online.
One 14-year-old survivor met her exploiter in downtown Orlando.
"That's when she met her pimp," Lares said. "She thought it was her boyfriend. A lot of these pimps will lure by becoming a friend and, eventually, a boyfriend. And really, their end goal is to exploit them and put them into a sex trafficking ring."
Several child advocates said human traffickers use social media, smartphones and even games with chat functions to recruit more victims.
There will be an informational meeting about child sex trafficking from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 24, at Lake Eola. For more information go to http://gohttf.org/.
You can report suspected child sex trafficking to 888-373-7888.
SOURCE: http://www.mynews13.com/content/news/cfnews13/news/article.html/content/news/articles/cfn/2015/1/10/child_sex_traffickin.html?utm_content=buffer0cb60&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer
• Public Square •
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
• Public Square, Religious Freedom •
Pastor Joel C. Hunter offered the opening prayer at the fifth annual Easter Prayer Breakfast at the White House.
• Interfaith Dialogue, Justice •
Evangelicals At The Crossroads A younger generation is pushing a more nuanced analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; should Jews be worried? 2/19/14, THE JEWISH WEEK, by Jonathan Mark, Associate Editor
Last December, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas sent Christmas greetings recalling the ancient birth of a holy child, a Palestinian child: Jesus, the “Palestinian messenger” of hope. Some in the West surely thought Abbas’ words as meaningless as a popular Arab song referring to Tel Aviv as a Palestinian city, or claims that a Jewish Temple was never on the Temple Mount. But in the little town of Bethlehem, the Bethlehem Bible College, an Evangelical institution, is preparing for “Christ at the Checkpoint,” a four-day conference that begins on March 10.
The conference will address, says its website, “the injustices in the Palestinian territories.” The previous conference, in 2012, issued a “manifesto” that turned Evangelical support for Israel on its head: “Any exclusive claim to land of the Bible in the name of God is not in line with the teaching of Scripture,” it read. The statement continued, “[The] suffering of the Palestinian people can no longer be ignored,” and “Christians must understand the global context for the rise of extremist Islam.”
For those asking, “What would Jesus do?” the answer, according to the conference website, is that Jesus would be alongside the “oppressed” Palestinians at Israeli checkpoints, and that’s where Evangelical support should be, as well.
This is not just the talk in Bethlehem. A December 2011 article in Relevant, a Florida-based magazine aimed at young American Evangelicals, gave a similar twist to the Gospel: There’d be no Three Wise Men if you “place an eight-meter-high wall between the Magi and Baby Jesus. … He’d be without citizenship. …
Considered to be a security threat from birth, he’d receive his green Palestinian ID at the age of 16. ... He would be prohibited from crossing the wall into Jerusalem only 15 minutes away.”
And yet the lineup for the “Checkpoint” in March is attracting some of the most influential Evangelicals in the West: William Wilson, president of Oral Roberts University; Geoff Tunnicliffe, secretary-general of the World Evangelical Alliance; and Joseph Cumming of Yale University’s Center for Faith and Culture. What happened to all that unquestioning Evangelical Zionism we thought we knew so much about? With the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement gathering steam, it’s a question that takes on added urgency as Israel becomes increasingly isolated on the world stage.
Evangelical Zionism, the political and spiritual heart of U.S. support for Israel, may have peaked, with an internal schism threatening to erode Israel’s most important foreign alliance, observers are beginning to say. Though Christian Zionists are still the dominant majority among America’s 50 million Evangelicals, a new wave of Evangelicals, the “millennials,” more interested in “social justice” than geopolitics. And they are advocating an “even-handed” approach to the Israel-Palestinian problem, with some more sympathetic to the Palestinians.
David Brog, executive director of Christians United For Israel (CUFI), an Evangelical Zionist group known for being enthusiastically supportive of Israel, told The Jewish Week that he sensed the left’s growing strength. “The last three or four years I’ve started to get that sinking feeling, they were making inroads …. influencing Evangelicals well beyond the extreme left. ... They are finding an interested audience" among the young. The “anti-Israel" message, said Brog, “is resonating. This generation is in play.” (CUFI, chaired by Pastor John Hagee, has ruffled some feathers in parts of the Jewish community for at times staking out positions to the right of Israeli and U.S. policy regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.)
Jews, said Robert W. Nicholson, an Evangelical writer, should know that what drives traditional Christian Zionism is not messianism or conversion but Scripture, “belief in the truth of God’s eternal covenant” with Israel; that God will “bless those who bless” Israel and “curse those who curse.”
However, younger Evangelicals are reportedly less “text-oriented” than their elders, so Israel — whose Evangelical support is driven by biblical text, with past and future promises — is at a disadvantage when juxtaposed with the Palestinian claims for social justice in the here and now.
In Mosaic, the Tikvah Fund’s online journal of Jewish ideas, Nicholson warns that some at the “Checkpoint” conference may express a concern for “peace, justice, and reconciliation.” But what this actually translates to, he says, “is unceasing criticism of perceived Israeli injustice, racism and occupation, peppered with special disdain for Evangelical Zionists who allegedly exacerbate the conflict” by supporting Israel.
The 2010 inaugural “Checkpoint” conference (held every two years) featured Palestinian Rev. Naim Ateek, who once sent out the Easter message, “Jesus is on the cross again with thousands of crucified Palestinians around him. ... The Israeli government crucifixion system is operating daily. Palestine has become the place of the skull.”
Rev. Joel Hunter is among the more centrist leaders in the “Checkpoint” camp. Pastor of an Evangelical megachurch called Northland, with 20,000 congregants at several locations in and around Orlando, Fla., he serves on the board of the World Evangelical Alliance (representing 600 million) and the National Association of Evangelicals (representing 30 million). Indicative of those Evangelicals who don’t want to be considered interchangeable with Republicans, he is the author of “A New Kind of Conservative,” advocating a nonpartisan approach.
A speaker at the 2012 “Checkpoint,” Rev. Hunter told The Jewish Week, “I’m well aware and regret the insecurities that this conference has brought about, some of it justifiable because of some of the participants, and we all get that. But the point of the conference is to identify and hear from Arab Christians. While I was there [at the last conference] I spoke to many people and did not hear one word about Israel as an enemy.” (Ateek didn’t speak at the 2012 conference.)
Everyone agrees, said Rev. Hunter, about the need for “the security and ongoing prosperity of Israel, which is our very good friend and important to our scriptures. But there has been a long theological strand that has been predominant in the loudest voice of the Evangelical movement, identifying the modern-day State of Israel with the [prophecies of the] Hebrew Scriptures. … Anything that would present a more balanced, more compassionate view for all those living in the land, and telling all of their stories was seen as a threat, as a heresy. As we learn more and more about the complications of the peace process, and of the legitimate and significant sufferings of those who have been limited for the sake of security, we want to include them. It doesn’t at all diminish our loyalty to Israel, but it does help us see the other side of the story.”
However, after the 2012 conference defended by Rev. Hunter, the Evangelical magazine Charisma magazine had its doubts, and headlined: “Did Christ at the Checkpoint Conference Undermine Israel?”
The home page for next month’s “Checkpoint” features a graphic depicting Israel’s security wall as a high, dark and foreboding prison wall. Dwarfed by the wall, a Palestinian is planting an olive tree, symbol of peace.
Lee Smith, a senior editor at The Weekly Standard, feared the negativity. He warned in Tablet, “If the ‘Christ at the Checkpoint’ camp wins out, the pro-Israel Jewish community that once looked warily upon evangelical support may come to regard that movement with nostalgia.”
And “bitter regret,” adds Nicholson; regret for the way Jews have been dismissive of Evangelical Zionists. “Christian Zionism cannot be taken for granted.”
Other than Orthodox Jews, American Evangelicals are still the leading supporters of Israel. A 2013 Pew survey found that 82 percent of Evangelicals believe that Israel was given to the Jewish people by God, but 18 percent are no longer certain; 42 percent of Evangelicals now believe that Israel and a Palestinian state can coexist peacefully; a minority opinion but a substantial one.
♦
Among the advocacy groups linked to the new Evangelicals is the Telos Group, founded in 2009 by Todd Deatherage and Gregory Khalil. Deatherage, an Evangelical Republican, worked as chief of staff for Sen. Tim Hutchinson (R-Ark.) and later for the George W. Bush state department; Khalil, a Christian Palestinian, is, according to the Telos website, a “longtime Democrat and a former adviser to Palestinian leaders on peace negotiations.”
Telos, on its website, states that peace would be more likely if Evangelicals were to “pursue the common good for everyone in the Holy Land,” Palestinians as well as Israelis.
Telos’ Deatherage told The Jewish Week, “People try to put us — and the whole situation — in a box, that you can’t be pro-Israel if you’re pro-Palestinian. I do think there can be another way that could encourage a positive difference, as long as it doesn’t devolve into a zero-sum approach. I see that as a dead end — for both peoples.”
Trips to Israel, sponsored by Evangelicals on both sides of the divide, underline the different narratives that have taken hold. The Evangelical Zionists, for example, promote the idea that the Israeli Christian population is the only one in the Middle East that is growing, whereas the Christian population in the Islamic-dominated Gaza and West Bank is shrinking.
On the other end, one of the “new Evangelicals,” who asked not to be named, told The Jewish Week, “I have met with a lot of Palestinian Christians through the years and I have never met a Palestinian Christian who said, ‘My family left here because of Muslim pressure or persecution. Never once. I’ve heard many of them say, ‘We left because it’s too hard to live here. I can’t get from here to there without going through checkpoints. I don’t have educational or economic opportunities. We only have water once a week in our home. That is the reason that Palestinian Christians have stated to me why they’ve left. Christians are not fleeing Bethlehem because of Muslim persecution.”
Yes, polls show that the Evangelicals, as a whole, are still very pro-Israel, but CUFI’s Brog warns, “I’m worried that what we’re seeing could translate, in a generation, to a real shift in the community.”
SOURCE: http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/national/evangelicals-crossroads
• Interfaith Dialogue, Public Square •
Interfaith prayer service honors Joel Hunter
One by one, members of different faiths and beliefs stepped forward Tuesday night to light candles in remembrance of loved ones they had lost.
In the procession of Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus and Buddhists, Northland Church Pastor Joel Hunter and his wife Becky lit a candle for their son, Isaac Hunter.
In the end, some 70 candles flickered in a small sanctuary of the St. James Catholic Cathedral in downtown Orlando during the hour-long Interfaith Prayer Service for Peace.
"Many of us faced losses this past year or unresolved losses," said Rev. Bryan Fulwider, a Congregational minister. "We are strengthened, we are healed, by standing together, walking together, being together."
Leaders of the major religions as well as representatives of the Sikh, Unitarian and Baha'i faiths, also said prayers.
The service was both an act of empathy for all who lost friends and relatives and a public show of support for Hunter, whose son died by suicide in December.
"This is a service designed to bring comfort to all that have had losses, but it's also a collective embrace of him and his family for their loss of Isaac," said Pastor James Coffin, executive director of the Interfaith Council of Central Florida.
Coffin said the idea of focusing on personal peace following a private tragedy came from Orlando Catholic Diocese Bishop John Noonan, who started the annual interfaith prayer service about three years ago.
Hunter is widely respected within the faith community for his commitment to building relationships with leaders of different religions.
One of his longest friendships is with Imam Muhammad Musri, president of the Islamic Society of Central Florida.
"He is an evangelical leader who got a lot of flak for going out and meeting with Muslims and other communities," said Musri, who sat beside Hunter.
"The least we can do is be with him and lift up his spirit."
That willingness to join in with other religions might have cost Hunter friends among evangelicals, but his commitment to interfaith cooperation is the natural extension of his Christian faith, said Fulwider, president of Building US, a nonprofit diversity consulting and training organization.
"He has become a friend to those in other faith communities because this is who Jesus calls him to be," Fulwider said.
"He is not a person who cuts off relations because you have a difference of understanding or belief or thoughts. To me that is the heart of the Christian gospel."
jkunerth@tribune.com or 407-420-5392.
Dr. Joel C. Hunter is the Pastor of Community Benefit at Action Church, a multi-site congregation based in Winter Park and his one-minute daily devotionals can be heard worldwide on Z88 radio. He is the Chairman of the Central Florida Pledge campaign; a call to action for residents of Central Florida who are tired of hateful discourse and want to create a safe and inclusive community for all. The pledge asks residents to commit to treating all people with kindness and respect, especially those with whom they disagree. To learn more: https://www.centralfloridapledge.com/
He is a nationally and internationally known advocate for the poor, the marginalized, and those dealing with disabilities. He served a three-year term as the Chairman of Central Florida’s Commission on Homelessness. And, after 32 years as the senior pastor of Longwood, Florida’s Northland Church’s congregation of 20,000, he spent five years leading a non-profit in networking with churches and local charities to locate available resources and benefit the struggling in our community. Orlando Magazine highlighted his efforts naming him as the #1 most powerful voice for philanthropy and community engagement. And listed him among “Orlando’s 50 Most Powerful” six years in a row.
Approaching today’s challenges in a biblical and balanced manner, Dr. Hunter is neither partisan nor politically oriented, but often relates to public officials in a pastoral role; he served as a spiritual advisor to President Obama during his eight years in office.
Dr. Hunter has served in leadership roles of the World Evangelical Alliance, serving more than 600 million evangelicals, and the National Association of Evangelicals, serving more than 40 denominations and thousands of churches.
Married for 53 years to his wife, Becky, he is the father of three sons, grandfather of seven, and great-grandfather of two.
