Faith-Based Advisers: We Found 'Meaningful Common Ground'

WASHINGTON – We have different opinions, admitted the White House's faith-based advisers on Tuesday when they presented their recommendations. But we were able to find “meaningful common ground,” they added.

After a year of work, the 25 members of the first Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships presented a report that included more than 60 recommendations for six issues - economic recovery and domestic poverty, fatherhood and healthy families, environment and climate change, inter-religious cooperation, global poverty and development, and reform of the Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

The proposals provide suggestions on how the government can better work with faith-based and community groups to tackle major social issues.

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“We are a diverse group,” stated Melissa Rogers, chair of the council, at the onset of the event for the report's release. “We differ on matters of faith. We differ in our political perspectives and our philosophical approach. We differ in matter of theology even within our particular faith traditions.”

Yet despite their diverse and strong opinions, she said, the advisers “really listened” to one another and found “meaningful common ground” that went beyond the “lowest common denominator.”

Rogers’ sentiments were echoed by Pastor Joel C. Hunter, an adviser on the taskforce for inter-religious cooperation.

Hunter, who sits on the board of directors for the World Evangelical Alliance and the National Association of Evangelicals, told The Christian Post frankly that he is not usually attracted to such interfaith dialogues.

“I’m a conservative evangelical,” Hunter stated matter-of-factly. “I kind of always shied away from general ecumenical, let’s-all-just-be-nice-to-one-another, kumbaya stuff. Well, that’s not this. This is [about] 'How do we maintain our distinctions, make them even more clear, but at the same time cooperate in a way that makes the world safer?'”

The Florida megachurch pastor said these types of conversations are essential to national security because they marginalize the violent extremists among the people of America and give people who want to be fully engaged in their faith an alternative.

Throughout the event, high-level members of the Obama administration joined the panel for the presentation related to their department. The officials listened to the report and then gave feedback on recommendations and how they plan to use the report.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius joined for the report on the economic recovery and domestic poverty recommendations. In her response, she shared about how schools serve as feeding sites for needy children during the school year. But a current problem the country is facing is how to provide meals for the children during the summer. Sebelius said she would like to work with churches and other community organizations to make sure children have somewhere they can receive meals during the summer.

“It (the report of recommendations) won’t just be a document on a shelf,” said Sebelius. “I promise you this document will become an active action plan in the Department of Health and Human Services.”

Though the report, in general, has escaped any big controversy, there have been questions on why the council did not address the hot-button issue of abortion reduction, which President Obama last year said he would like the advisers to work on.

Joshua DuBois, the director of the office, said the council members have been involved in conversations about abortion reduction but did not create a task force for the issue because the president would like to extend the discussion to include the Domestic Policy Council.

Still, pro-life groups such as Focus on the Family say they are disappointed that the council did not present a plan to reduce abortions.

“The president said he wanted to reduce the need for abortions,” said Ashley Horne, federal issues analyst with Focus on the Family Action. “So, that topic would have been a natural fit for this group.”

“It’s one more strike against a president who, so far, has catered only to the pro-abortion agenda.”

Besides the abortion issue, the report has also been criticized for not including religious language. Council member Dr. Frank Page, former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, said he appreciated the work of the advisers but he wished the report expressed the motivation behind why faith leaders care about the issues.

Nevertheless, DuBois said that he is proud of the work the office and its first advisory council has done in the first year. The office under President Obama went directly to faith leaders and community leaders, through the council, and sought their advice on how best to partner, he said.

“The previous initiative largely had a dollar-and-cents vision of their office which caused a lot of controversy,” DuBois said to The Christian Post. “We’re seeking to communicate that when we partner with faith-based groups, it doesn’t have to be about finance. It could be about sharing information with them, about building their capacity, serving as a convener, and we think that will slowly but surely help turn this initiative around.”

The new faith-based advisory council will be installed sometime this spring or summer. Advisers serve one-year terms.

Some of the recommendations made by the council include:

• Utilization of the knowledge, expertise, and on-the-ground experience of local faith- and community-based organizations to redefine the federal poverty guideline so that it more accurately measures and responds to the needs of low-income people

• Support of faith-and community-based partnerships as a means to fill the gaps in providing essential services like transportation, housing, food assistance, job training, education, and healthcare for low-income families and individuals

• Hosting of an annual Father’s Day Celebration at the White House to honor exemplary fathers and to highlight advances in father involvement resulting from the government’s interdepartmental working groups and the strategic partnerships formed at the quarterly roundtables

• Formation of an Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships at the Environmental Protection Agency and assignment of faith- and community-based liaisons to EPA regional offices

• More partnerships with interreligious councils and women of faith networks to advance peace building and development

• Placement of Faith-Based and Civil Society Engagement Officers in USAID missions

• Reduction of barriers to obtaining 501(c)(3) recognition

Michelle A. Vu
Christian Post Reporter

FIND THIS ARTICLE AT: http://www.christianpost.com/article/20100310/faith-based-advisers-we-found-meaningful-common-ground/

BOSTON GLOBE: Pastor Joel C. Hunter Comments on President Obama's Spiritual Life

WASHINGTON - He named a best-selling book after a pastor’s sermon and was outspoken as a candidate about the value of faith in public life. He infused stump speeches with phrases like “I am my brother’s keeper,’’ and made his journey to Christianity a central theme of the life story he shared with voters.

But since President Obama took office a year ago, his faith has largely receded from public view. He has attended church in the capital only four times, and worshiped half a dozen times at a secluded Camp David chapel. He prays privately, reads a “daily devotional’’ that aides send to his BlackBerry, and talks to pastors by phone, but seldom frames policies in spiritual terms.

The greater privacy reflects not a slackening of devotion, but a desire to shield his spirituality from the maw of politics and strike an inclusive tone at a time of competing national priorities and continuing partisan division, according to people close to the White House on faith issues.

“There are several ways that he is continuing to grow in his faith, all of them - or practically of all them - he’s trying to keep as private and personal as possible so they will not be politicized,’’ said Pastor Joel C. Hunter, who is part of an inner circle of pastors the president consults by phone for spiritual guidance.

But the shift has drawn notice from some religious leaders and political analysts, who say it opens Obama to questions of sincerity and threatens his support among the religious voters his campaign helped peel away from the Republican Party.

“You can’t be using the church just to get elected and then push the church to the side,’’ said the Rev. Wilfredo De Jesus, a prominent Chicago pastor who had campaigned for Obama among Hispanic evangelicals, many of whom had voted in earlier elections for George W. Bush. “If the president says he’s Christian, then in his narrative, and in his speeches and in his life, that should be displayed.’’

The first family’s intensive, early search for a church in Washington appears to have lost steam amid concerns about the disruption security arrangements would cause local worshipers. And since breaking with his Chicago church and longtime pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, nearly two years ago, Obama has not openly aligned with any one denomination or spiritual adviser.

A poll last August by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life indicated that the proportion of Americans who saw the Democratic Party as friendly to religion had dropped to Bush-era levels, at 29 percent, after peaking at 38 percent at the height of the Obama campaign a year earlier.

Joshua DuBois, director of the White House’s Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, said he believes Obama “wants to make sure that there is something about his daily religious practice that is separate from the news cycle.’’

“He’ll talk about his Christian faith when it feels right and appropriate, and other times he’s just going to practice his Christian faith through the way he lives his life,’’ said DuBois, a Pentecostal pastor who was Obama’s campaign liaison to faith groups. “It’s not about a political strategy or a communication strategy. It’s about him walking the walk, which is always more valuable than just talking the talk.’’

Said Hunter, the senior pastor of an Evangelical megachurch in Longwood, Fla.: “When you’re on the campaign trail . . . that faith component is very important to people in trying to get a sense of your identity. When you become president, pretty suddenly you’re the president of all the people.’’

Hunter also said that during phone calls with the president, Obama’s spiritual questions are more often personal than political, though Hunter declined to share specifics.

Analysts say that another reason for Obama’s reticence may be the sheer number of crises in his first year in office and that a sharper public focus on faith risks becoming a divisive distraction.

Obama’s choice of evangelical Pastor Rick Warren to give the inaugural invocation, for instance, inflamed gay-rights supporters, while Obama’s commencement address in May at the University of Notre Dame, a Catholic institution, where he called for “open minds’’ on the abortion debate, angered some Catholics and religious conservatives.

“We have a recession, we have the health care agenda - Obama has taken on so much, why add one more thing, especially one that you can’t legislate on?’’ said Professor Alan Wolfe, director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College.

On the campaign trail, Obama saw a discussion of faith as a means to unite Americans of all creeds - nonbelievers included - around a common set of values: a “politics of conscience,’’ as he put it.

But that has been a tougher sell as president. The nitty-gritty of policy has tended to highlight divisions not just between religious and secular voters but also among religious groups. Earlier this month, some two dozen groups ranging from the NAACP to the United Sikhs and the American Jewish Committee signed a letter expressing disappointment that Obama had yet to dismantle fully Bush-era rules permitting faith-based hiring by recipients of some federal funds.

Obama underscored his faith the moment he entered the national stage, declaring in his keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston that “We worship an awesome God in the blue states.’’ His Kenyan father had been raised Muslim but was an atheist by the time Obama was born. His mother, whose ancestors were Methodist and Baptist, was nonpracticing.

While organizing the poor on Chicago’s South Side not long after college, Obama met Wright, began attending Trinity United Church of Christ, and found God, he has said. He named his second book, “The Audacity of Hope,’’ after a sermon by Wright. And he warned Democrats against letting the evangelical right “hijack’’ religion for political ends.

As early as 2007, one poll indicated, Obama was seen as “strongly religious’’ by more voters than every presidential candidate except Republican Mitt Romney, whose Mormonism was the subject of intense news coverage.

Obama’s courtship of religious groups in the 2008 race - the most extensive ever by a Democratic candidate for president - paid off on Election Day with strong support among liberal and moderate religious voters. He won 54 percent of the Catholic vote, a stark reversal from four years earlier, when Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, himself Catholic, lost the same group to Bush.

But a central figure in Obama’s faith journey - the Rev. Wright - nearly derailed his candidacy, when videos surfaced of some of the pastor's controversial sermons. "That was deeply disturbing to us," Obama told a group of Catholic reporters last summer. "It made us very sensitive to the fact that as President the church we attend can end up being interpreted as speaking for us at all times."

Several pastors who support Obama said church membership would send an important signal about the depth of his conviction.

“It’s only by being part of a church community that he’s going to get his own faith grounded,’’ said Bruce Wall, pastor of Global Ministries Christian Church, in Dorchester . “George Bush did not hide his faith. He was a man of prayer, whether you supported him or not.’’

Other pastors said they see religious values behind the president’s policies, even if Obama was less voluble than he was before the election.

“When you’re talking about universal health care policy, you’re talking about helping, ‘the least of these,’ ’’ said the Rev. Jeffrey Brown, a retired pastor who is executive director of the Boston TenPoint Coalition, a community organization serving black and Latino youth. “When you talk about building a coalition around the world to fight terrorism, you’re talking about being your brother’s keeper.’’

In a speech last month in honor of Martin Luther King Day, Obama offered a rare recent glimpse of the role of faith in his life today.

“You know, folks ask me sometimes why I look so calm,’’ he said at a Washington church. “And I have a confession to make here. There are times when I’m not so calm. . . . There are times when progress seems too slow. There are times when the words that are spoken about me hurt. . . . But let me tell you - during those times it’s faith that keeps me calm. It’s faith that gives me peace.’’

Conflict Resolution

Conflict Resolution from Northland Church on Vimeo.

God takes great delight in giving us relationships with people who are very different than we are. This is not for competition, but for completion. This is true in families, in friendships ... and in resolving America's culture war.

NAE: For the Health of the Nation

Dr. Hunter is on the Board of Directors (and Northland is a member) of the National Association of Evangelicals. With a membership of 30 million, it is the most influential evangelical voice in the United States of America. You can visit the Public Affairs page of the NAE website and read “For the Health of the Nation,” our signature statement on participation in the public square.

http://www.nae.net/government-affairs

The Changing Role of Churches and Religion

The Rev. Peg Chemberlin, president of the National Council of Churches, and Dr. Joel C. Hunter join Minnesota Public Radio's "Midmorning" to talk about how the future of religion will be affected by new churches and technology. Dr. Hunter joins the program 28 minutes in.

The Pastor's Dilemma

Sojourners Magazine, 12/1/2009, By Dr. Joel C. Hunter

Recently, my church's board of elders and I were discussing people who had left our fellowship because of their perceptions of my "political activities." As I handed them an outline of what I believe the Bible says about various social issues (creation care, immigration, peacemaking, poverty, etc.), I said, "We know this is not about politics. This is about expressing the Christian witness in the public square as a part of what it means to be a mature Christian." To their credit and my encouragement, they said, in essence, "We agree. And we will take the lead, but it can't be political or partisan."

Most of us went into ministry because we wanted to be both voices and vessels of God's love to others through Jesus Christ. But there is congregational pushback when we tie voices and vessels to votes. And that link is not only a danger, but a necessity to make "witnessing" distinct from "politicking."

For pastors to be involved in addressing the social issues of the day in a prophetic and compassionate way, we must make three decisions:

1. We must decide we will have courage. Many of our congregation members will misunderstand both our motivations and the need to talk of such things. Jesus didn't do us any great favors when he commanded us to "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and unto God what is Gods" (Matthew 22:21). We'd love to only address the second part because the first part implies complicity with unpopular government. To be perfectly honest, such activity could cost some of us our jobs. But if our fear diminishes the fullness of the gospel's love and concern, if others go on suffering so that we can be more secure, what kind of ministry do we have?

2. We must decide that we will make our voice on social issues one that directly links the Bible and the life of Christ to the issue. Individual Christian citizens are free to have personal opinions; pastors are not. Pastors are always seen as spiritual leaders, so not only must we be informed about what will help the most and cause the fewest unintended negative consequences, but we must be clear that what we are doing is an expression of the gospel.

3. We must not be distracted by personal attacks, personal links, or the temptation to defend ourselves. If the cross teaches us anything, it teaches us sacrifice: "He saved others; he cannot save himself" (Matthew 27:42). Love costs. If you are for creation care, you will be linked to people with whom you would vehemently disagree. If in your judgment one side of an issue is more in line with what Jesus would do, then you will be accused of being "in the tank" for whatever politician takes that side and you will be accused of being against the politicians who don't. We have only one Person that we need to consider; One from whom we long to hear, "Well done."

The pastor's dilemma starts with this question: How can we address the public-square issues as a small part of what we do, and keep it about loving people instead of about "taking a stand"?

The questions many pastors are tempted to ask themselves include, "Is it really necessary that I address our country's responsibility for the needy? And if I do speak out for the vulnerable in risky ways, is my next conversation with the public going to begin with the question, '"Do you want fries with that?"

-Dr. Joel C. Hunter is senior pastor of Northland- A Church Distributed in Orlando, Florida.

Washington Post - 'Divine Impulses' Series

Dr. Hunter talks with On Faith's Sally Quinn about the difference between evangelicals and fundamentalists and what is "base" about the religious right, and about his spiritual advice to President Obama.

The Art of Cyber Church

Butternut Squash Soup is calling, but Joel Hunter stands glued to CNN in his living room in rainy Orlando.

Lunch can wait another minute, because details about President Barack Obama's meeting with a foreign leader might be coming. When the news anchor switches topics, Hunter, satisfied, quickly joins his wife, Becky, at their glass dinner table.

One of Hunter's megachurch staffers gleefully picks on his boss, recalling when Hunter sat next to boxing legend Muhammad Ali at Obama's inauguration: "You should've given him a little nudge on the shoulder, just to say you've been in a fight with Ali." "Oh yeah," Hunter replies sarcastically. "I can see the headlines now: PASTOR PUNCHES PARKINSON'S PATIENT."

Politics and media are strong siren calls, and Hunter doesn't ignore either's pleas. His national profile emerged after he resigned from the Christian Coalition in 2006, saying the organization was unwilling to expand its mission beyond fighting abortion and same-sex marriage. During the 2008 presidential election cycle, Hunter prayed at the Democratic National Convention last summer and with the President on Election Day.

Journalists often looked to Hunter during election season as the de facto voice of moderate evangelicals. But the Orlando-based pastor who helped Northland, A Church Distributed grow from 200 to 12,000 people in 20 years has established himself as one of the country's most innovative church planters.

"Politics is one venue in which the Lord can work, but his plan A has always been the local congregation," Hunter says. "My calling is to be part of that frontline ministry."

A Church Distributed

At first glance, 61-year-old Hunter appears closer to retirement than to the Blackberry addict he is. Wearing a black suit, white shirt, and blue tie with his white hair carefully combed to one side, he names Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice as his favorite book and classical music as his choice of tunes. "I've never really been a hip-hop kind of guy," he says with a laugh as he pretends to twist a baseball cap on sideways.

Most church planters value the vitality of youth, but Hunter sees his age as an asset. When members of his congregation become angry that he prays with a Democratic President or experiments with worship on an iPhone, he shrugs it off.

"It's like being a grandfather when your grandkids are throwing a temper tantrum. You say, 'They're having a bad day,'" he says. "Grandfathers have the benefit of having perspective without having the necessity of control."

Even with his grandfatherly perspective, Hunter quickly led Northland to use the Internet to plant a local church far beyond Orlando. Mark Pinsky, former religion reporter for The Orlando Sentinel, has written about Hunter for several years and describes him as a quintessential early adopter of technology—with a slight difference.

"There's a tendency for some in the church world to fall in love with technology as a magic bullet," Pinsky says. "If Joel didn't have a message and a presentation, all the bells and whistles in the world wouldn't make him what he is today."

Hunter began pastoral ministry at a Methodist church in Indiana after receiving his master of divinity from Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis. He and his wife then moved in 1985 to Orlando to lead Northland's 200 congregants.

Like many U.S. churches, Northland saw a surge in attendance after September 11, 2001. Finding the church feeling cramped in a roller-skating rink turned worship area, employees dragged fiber-optic cables across a field to create a second site at a high school down the road. This paved the way for an eventual multi-site approach; Northland now has three other sites in the Orlando area.

In August 2007, when Northland opened its main campus in Longwood, a $43 million, 3,100-seat building, church leaders kept the Internet in mind. Back in the control room in Orlando, five people monitor a room full of computers connected to hundreds of cables that send a live feed that makes the multi-site service possible. Pink, purple, and blue lights beam onto the Orlando stage as a 12-piece band leads the congregation—along with three other congregations and about two thousand individuals in front of their home computers—in "Blessed Be Your Name."

"Planting churches in the Western mentality is tremendously expensive and has a high failure rate," Hunter says. "Since we thought physical church plants would be an ineffective approach to church multiplication, we went with online resources that are much more efficient and less costly."

According to Leadership Network's book Multi-Site Church Roadtrip, in 2008 about 37 percent of megachurches used the multi-site approach, in which one congregation would videotape or stream the sermon to the screens of other congregations. The network's data show that on a typical Sunday in 2009, nearly 10 percent of Protestant worshipers in the United States attend a multi-site church.

Scott McConnell, associate director of Lifeway Research and author of Multi-Site Churches, says that Northland takes the multi-site approach to a new level.

"They really have it down to the second, so that they're showing a mouth at another site singing the same song," McConnell says. (During services, the Longwood site streams live video from the other sites to remind them that they are worshiping together.) "What they've been able to accomplish through technology is a small idea of what the church worshiping around the world looks like. You catch this glimpse that the church is bigger than my local church."

Hunter says this approach has allowed Northland to worship with believers around the world. In recent years, Northland has held concurrent services with churches in Namibia, Ukraine, and Egypt, and is planning to hold another one with an Argentine church later this year. Hunter says that after 9/11, the dual service held in Egypt was particularly powerful.

"The pastor came on, spoke to us as one of our own pastors, and said, 'I know the feelings you have. Don't return evil for evil,' " Hunter says. "That was an example in which the technology made all the difference in the relationships."

Cons and Pros

Not everyone embraces a multi-site approach.

Bob Hyatt, head pastor of the Evergreen Community in Portland, a nondenominational church that meets at local pubs, is one who has resisted. He insists that while he's not a Luddite (he spent eight hours in line for an iPhone—twice), he believes multi-site churches have a tendency to cultivate celebrity-driven church cultures.

"Leaders start saying, 'Bring me in, and I will turn this around [with video feeds],' and I don't see that model as good ecclesiology," Hyatt says.

In addition, since people rely on the main pastor with a multi-site approach, it discourages more people from testing their teaching gifts, Hyatt believes. "Video venues have the unintended consequences of killing teaching and the gift of preaching."

Back on stage, a pastor begins listing the other Orlando-area sites as images of the congregations appear live on the screens. He also introduces individual online viewers: "We welcome Buck in Fairfax, Virginia, Chuck in Kuwait, Brett in Boise, Idaho … would you please welcome these folks who have gathered with us from all over?"There's no question, though, that streaming a service changes things. Behind the scenes at one Sunday morning service, the worship band comes to the back room during Hunter's sermon to chat about a recent YouTube clip and grab some homemade grits and waffles. A church employee with thick-rimmed glasses sits on one of the couches quietly watching the screen of his Mac computer. He's a "Web minister," someone the church has appointed to chat with people who have logged on to its website to watch the live-streaming service.

Douglas Groothuis, Denver Seminary philosophy professor and author of the 1997 book The Soul in Cyberspace, was warning about the downsides of combining faith with the Internet long before YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.

"You can create a crafted, constructed identity online," he says. "It's not the you, who's like me, who's overweight. You can hide those problems when they should be brought to God and other Christians."

But Northland is not interested in replacing face-to-face connections with virtual ones. With Web streaming and a new online evangelism effort, it hopes to create house churches across the globe. For example, if the church sees two people from Chicago worshiping online, they try to connect the two and give them information on how to start a house church together.

Northland staff members also believe a streaming service can reach the people who simply will not step inside a church. Northland reaches about 2,000 participants online.

"Our experience has been that people feel safer being able to talk from their own home than they are when they go on someone else's turf," Hunter says. "We have seen an increase in transparency when you add that safety layer."

Online Evangelism

Hunter's church recently began to combine its online worship with a ministry in which its members become online missionaries for Global Media Outreach, the Orlando-based Internet ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ International.

"Campus Crusade has not been called to be a local church," says director of Global Media Outreach Allan Beeber. "Northland members are not only sharing their faith, they are also going to be helping the person find a church or form a local church wherever they live or work."

Shane Hipps, pastor of a Mennonite church in Phoenix and author of Flickering Pixels: How Technology Shapes Your Faith, wonders whether evangelism should ever take place online.

"The Internet is primarily experienced through cognitive interaction. Online evangelism reinforces that Christianity is information that you need, not a way that a community lives in the world," Hipps says. "The capacity to hold someone's hand, feed the poor, and care for the sick requires a body."

Other observers, though, think there may be no other way to reach some people. "You hear a lot about how people are so addicted to their computers, so you hear church leaders say, 'We have to bring church to their computers; our church has to be MTV on crack in order to reach them,' " says Scott McClellan, editor of Collide, a magazine for church leaders who use media and technology. "The Northland model seems to reflect a sense of connecting people to a community but not leaving them in a virtual scenario."

In any event, Hunter plans to use technology to dramatically expand the number of people worshiping. In May, Hunter told his congregants that Northland could create a million small groups or house churches worldwide by 2020.

To some extent, churches like Northland are updating the apostle Paul's multi-location ministry, says Fuller Theological Seminary theology and culture professor Craig Detweiler.

"Paul's itinerant preaching kept him connected to the congregation in the same way that Web casting allows a pastor like Joel Hunter to send a 'letter' to his congregations," Detweiler says. "The key to their success, though, will be the local pastors who continue to walk with the congregations watching the broadcast."

Hunter recognizes the limits of the Internet. But he wants to use it in a way that gets people past it.

"When the telephone was first invented, everyone talked about how it was the end of real intimacy, but people think about the person they're talking to on the other line," he says. "The main goal here is that the successful use of technology makes the technology disappear so all you're focusing on is the person."

The Church at the Core

Hunter points to two events in his young life that would end up driving his faith and ministry: the assassination of Mark Luther King Jr., and a word from a childhood pastor.

When Hunter was growing up in central Ohio, his grandmother introduced him to a church whose pastor said, "Nothing's ever going to come right in the world until you take care of the sin in your own heart." That line would never quite leave him, even in the political and cultural tumult of the 1960s.

Like many of his college-age peers at Ohio University, Hunter demonstrated during the civil rights movement, believing that if the country had the right political structure, racial injustice would cease.

"When Martin Luther King Jr. was shot, all my dreams just came crashing down on me, and that voice kept coming back into my head," he said. "So I went into a little generic chapel and knelt down and gave my life to the Lord as best I could."

While Hunter keeps his foot in the door of American politics, he believes he is first and foremost a local church pastor.

"Politics shapes social policy in ways that affect people in an exterior way," Hunter says. "The church is there during the most important times of your life: when you get married, when you have kids, when you die. We have this holy ground that we've been invited into during the deepest part of people's lives."

CNN: Pastor Hunter Discusses President Obama's First 100 Days

Orlando Sentinel Profile on Dr. Joel C. Hunter

The Pastor of a Longwood Church Speaks for a New Style of Evangelicals

By Jay Hamburg Sentinel Staff Writer April 12, 2009

He doesn't thunder from the pulpit in righteous rage. He'd rather relay stories that make a moral point.

He has no catchphrases, fussy handlers or televised religious talk shows.

What the soft-spoken Rev. Joel Hunter of Longwood does have is an evangelical church of 12,000, a talent for building diverse coalitions and a prominent spiritual advisory role in the administration of President Barack Obama, a Democrat.

Not bad for a registered Republican who came to Central Florida in 1985 to take charge of a small flock that grew into one of the region's largest megachurches.

As Hunter delivers his three Easter sermons today at Northland, a Church Distributed, he holds a place in the national spotlight unmatched by any other faith leader in Central Florida.

But it wasn't something that seemed destined from the start.

The man who prayed with Obama on Inauguration Day lost his first preaching job when a United Methodist church in Indiana faced a crucial decision nearly 40 years ago: Should they buy new carpet or keep their youth minister, the motorcycle-riding evangelical called Pastor Joel?

New carpet won by a landslide.

"I wasn't that great a shakes," Hunter said.

But in the decades that followed, the hard-working pastor proved to be a formidable leader.

He has become a much-sought-after spokesman for a new brand of evangelicals who hope to tone down the rhetoric of culture wars while engaging in good works. Along the way, the 60-year-old pastor has sought alliances with Catholics, Jews and Muslims and irritated some traditional evangelicals, who worry that too much emphasis on social issues would nudge the Gospels to the sidelines.

While studying government and history at Ohio University, Hunter felt inspired by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., whose sermons and civil-rights marches were changing the nation.

"He was my idol," Hunter said.

When King was killed in 1968, it left the 19-year-old reeling. Desperate for answers, he went into a campus chapel, knelt in prayer and gave his life to Christ. Upon rising, he had found his calling as a minister.

Four decades later, when the nation's first black president asked Hunter to join the White House's Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, Hunter felt a particular pride.

The invitation to the Oval Office was thrilling, yet Hunter said he doesn't have time to be distracted by the honor. He has a big flock to tend and a vow to keep his $42 million state-of-the-art church the kind of place where his mother would have felt comfortable.

An alcoholic, she had great pride in her son, the captain of the high-school football team and president of the senior class. He in turn tried to save her by pouring out her liquor and lecturing her about her drinking. His father, a factory worker, had died of cancer when Hunter was 4.

It made for a complicated life.

His grandparents, coaches and neighbors in the small northern Ohio town of Shelby made sure that Hunter had a stable place to turn when times got rough. But in the 1950s, treatment options for alcoholism were few, and nobody knew how to help his mom. She died in 1971, while Hunter was in seminary training.

"My mother had a beautiful singing voice," Hunter recalled. "Soft and resonant like Nat King Cole's. She could have been a gift to a church. The church didn't reach out to her. But Northland would. My mother would have loved Northland."

Those memories still shape his ministry.

"It's almost like redeeming that [past]," Hunter said. "I'm sensitive to those people who aren't the 'religious type,' but who have incredible God-given gifts and could be a gift to a church."

Tried to broaden agendas

In 2006, the Christian Coalition - the conservative lobby founded by Pat Robertson - invited Hunter to take the reins.

Hunter hoped to expand the group's agenda beyond fighting abortion and gay marriage. His idea was to embrace environmentalism as an act of caring for God's creation and to redefine "pro-life" to include poverty and hunger.

But it turned out to be a bad fit, and Hunter withdrew before actually taking office.

Two years later, the pastor was giving the closing benediction at the Democratic convention in Denver. He concluded his prayer in an innovative way, asking spectators to speak the blessing they would use in their own faith traditions.

D. Michael Lindsay, author of a study of evangelicals called "Faith in the Halls of Power," said the benediction was a case where a sincere effort to include many views led to "intentional ambiguity."

The sociologist at Rice University credits Hunter with "great pastoral gifts" and a style that resonates with many who want to look past endless brawls over religious hot-button issues.

"It seems he has been scratching an itch that others hadn't noticed," Lindsay said.

But some evangelicals did notice his unorthodox, all-inclusive prayer.

Bob Parker, pastor of First Baptist Church Markham Woods in Lake Mary, said Hunter missed a chance to tell the Democratic convention that "Christ is the only savior."

Parker, who headed the Moral Majority in Kentucky before coming to Central Florida, said he worries about attempts to broaden the agenda of evangelicals.

"Jesus said the way is narrow," Parker said.

At boundary of politics

Although Hunter is far from invisible in Central Florida, he has kept his distance from local elections.

"I don't think he aspires to [political prominence]," said Aubrey Jewett, associate professor of political science at University of Central Florida.

Still, Jewett notes the pastor is currently walking along the edges of political territory. "You don't accept the position of a national office unless you have an idea of influencing policy on a broader basis," he said.

Hunter said he has no plans to pursue politics but looks forward to working with Catholic, Jewish and Muslim leaders on a national level to address social ills, as he has done locally.

Imam Muhammad Musri, president of the Islamic Society of Central Florida, speaks glowingly of Hunter and his wife. The imam sees little difference between the relatively unknown pastor who reached out to him about 15 years ago and the man who recently made the front page of The New York Times.

"I've seen him increase in humbleness and generosity," Musri said. "Even after September 11, when it wasn't very popular to talk to Muslims, he stood by us and spoke kindly about us from the pulpit."

Dealing with critics

Hunter rarely seems vexed by critics, but he did vent some frustration at both liberal and conservative commentators "who profit on polarization."

Speaking at an interfaith forum on torture a few months ago in Orlando, Hunter was troubled about the long-term effects of people listening to the "cottage industry of hostility" and "people who are literally paid to make people angry. People who are literally paid to create enemies, so we can feel good about ourselves."

He added: "I don't know how much the rest of the religious leaders up here have to face this, but I tell you, I get nasty, nasty, letters every time I stand up for the poor, the immigrant, the torture victims - all these compassion issues - from my own people."

Generally, though, the criticisms sting his family more.

Becky Hunter gets irked by blogs that question the Christian character of the man she knew she would marry the first time she saw him in church in 1970. One theme that troubles her: Obama uses her husband to score points with conservatives.

Both Hunters warmly praise Obama for his intellect and personality. But to those who fear the liberal and charismatic president will transform the church leader from Longwood, the pastor's wife notes firmly: "What makes you think that if Joel Hunter and Barack Obama were in a room that Joel Hunter would be the one to change his mind?"

Copyright © 2009, Orlando Sentinel

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