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

Evangelicals: Abortion, Moral Relativism Top Moral Issues List

Evangelical leaders have identified the greatest moral issues facing America today and topping the list is abortion. Moral relativism and mistreatment of others followed closely behind.

Evangelical leaders have identified the greatest moral issues facing America today and topping the list is abortion.

"The moral scandal of abortion tops my list…not because murder is worse than other moral evils, but because of the massive numbers of this killing field and intentionality of so many to put self-gratification, greed and political advantage above life itself," said Jeff Farmer of the Open Bible Churches in Des Moines, Iowa.

Abortion, moral relativism and mistreatment of others almost came in a three-way tie as the top concerns among America's evangelical leaders, according to the survey released Monday by the National Association of Evangelicals.

While abortion has traditionally remained a major moral concern, the recent push by Congress for health care reform and the possible coverage of abortions with federal dollars have prompted new opposing efforts and louder voices among prominent evangelical leaders.

Pastors such as Joel C. Hunter from Florida and groups like the Evangelical Church Alliance have released statements urging members of Congress not to violate the sanctity of human life in allowing abortion to be funded by tax dollars.

Following abortion, moral relativism was listed as the second greatest moral issue facing America. NAE board member Ron Carpenter said the problem is "a non-belief in Absolute Truth which permeates every other arena of our society.”

Many of the surveyed evangelical leaders cited the Old Testament passage Judges 17:6 (“every man did that which was right in his own eyes”) as they identified moral relativism as a major concern.

Mistreatment of others was third on the list.

"The greatest moral issue in America today is our blindness and silence to injustices here and around the world," said Sammy Mah, president of World Relief, according to the report on the survey. "Social ills like poverty, malnutrition, homelessness, human trafficking, and so many more are rooted in injustices that must be fought."

Other moral issues named by evangelical leaders included secularization, homosexuality and pornography.

The Evangelical Leaders Survey is a monthly poll of the Board of Directors of the National Association of Evangelicals. They include the CEOs of denominations and representatives of a broad array of evangelical organizations including missions, universities, publishers and churches.

Audrey Barrick Christian Post Reporter FIND THIS ARTICLE AT: http://bit.ly/5UNrJP

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."

Becoming Completely Pro Life

My goal is to lead Christians in becoming completely pro-life (John 10:10), protecting the vulnerable inside and outside the womb and sharing eternal life with them. We must protect the vulnerable from harm, starting with the baby in the womb (Matthew 18:10). To do this, we must offer a full range of approaches: from personal to legal, from prevention of unintended pregnancies to medical, financial, personal and spiritual support, including options for adoptions in our support for pregnant women. Our ultimate goal encompasses both the eventual elimination of abortion and the demonstration of Christ’s love through our care for mothers and babies (Psalm 127:3). We must also work to protect the vulnerable outside the womb, protecting the most vulnerable (the poor and least insulated) by reducing the disease, displacement and death that comes from pollution (Psalm 72:13). Christians are, also, given the charge of caring for the sick and promoting the full range of healing in this world (John 14:12). From epidemics such as AIDS, to individual sicknesses, to physical, mental, emotional and spiritual disabilities, we are to be agents of His healing and love.

Furthermore, our treatment of all people must take into consideration that they are made in the image of God. Therefore they are to be treated with respect and dignity. Jesus summarized this in what we now refer to as the “Golden Rule” (Matthew 7:12). We should not use or oppress anyone (Luke 4:18). All people are created equal and can choose their religion (Joshua 24:15), and the way they will live their lives. We must work for human rights and religious freedom for all people.

Because God loves justice, and because we are commanded to live a simple lifestyle of doing justice (Micah 6:8), we must stand against different forms of exploitation, systems of advantage for only particular groups, and discrimination based upon circumstances beyond one’s control. We are blessed in order to help the disadvantaged to advance to the place where they help others (Luke 12:48b).

We are to give to those who cannot help themselves as a matter of immediate compassion and eternal reward (Luke 16:19-25).

As we expand the agenda into other areas of moral importance—caring for vulnerable people outside the womb as well as inside it—we will motivate and mobilize many, like never before. More importantly, we will be obeying God's Word and putting it into practice.

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