FAITH IN THE PUBLIC SQUARE: IMMIGRATION
Part 5 in a series of teachings from Dr. Joel C. Hunter about how to approach today’s issues biblically, respectfully and effectively.
Filtering by Category: Public Square,Religious Freedom
FAITH IN THE PUBLIC SQUARE: PEACE
Part 4 in a series of teachings from Dr. Joel C. Hunter about how to approach today’s issues biblically, respectfully and effectively.
Faith Leaders Urge Soul Searching
In the wake of the tragedy in Tucson, Arizona, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim faith leaders are weighing in. They are urging a time of reflection and "soul searching" when it comes to political dialogue. It's important to note that the letter doesn't suggest that politics or rhetoric prompted the shooter, Jared Lee Loughner, 22, to launch his attack. However, the letter takes advantage of an opportunity to address the issue of civility in public debate.
Bishop T.D. Jakes, pastor of The Potter's House; the Rev. Joel Hunter, pastor of Northland Church; and the Rev. Sam Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference are among the 50-plus signatories.
Read the letter below:
Dear Members of Congress,
As Americans and members of the human family, we are grieved by the recent tragedy in Tucson, Arizona. As Christian, Muslim and Jewish leaders, we pray together for all those wounded, including Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords as she fights for her life. Our hearts break for those lives lost and for the loved ones left behind. We also stand with you, our elected officials, as you continue to serve our nation while coping with the trauma of this senseless attack.
This tragedy has spurred a sorely needed time of soul searching and national public dialogue about violent and vitriolic political rhetoric. We strongly support this reflection, as we are deeply troubled that rancor, threats and incivility have become commonplace in our public debates.
We appreciate the sacrifices you make and risks you incur by accepting a call to public service, and we urge you to continue to serve as stewards of our democracy by engaging ideological adversaries not as enemies, but as fellow Americans.
In our communities and congregations, we pledge to foster an environment conducive to the important and difficult debates so crucial to American democracy. In our churches, mosques and synagogues, we come together not as members of a certain political ideology or party, but as children of God and citizens called to build a more perfect union. We pray that you do the same.
Naeem M. Baig Executive Director Islamic Circle of North America Council for Social Justice
Dr. Carroll A. Baltimore, Sr. President Progressive National Baptist Convention, Inc.
The Rev. Geoffrey Black General Minister and President United Church of Christ
Bishop John R. Bryant Senior Bishop African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church
Dr. Zahid H. Bukhari President Islamic Circle of North America
Rev. Jennifer Butler Executive Director Faith in Public Life
Simone Campbell, SSS Executive Director NETWORK, A National Catholic Social Justice Lobby
Bishop Minerva Carcaño Desert Southwest Conference United Methodist Church
The Rev. Canon Peg Chemberlin President National Council of Churches
Rev. Richard Cizik President New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good
Nathan J. Diament Director of Public Policy Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America
Faithful America
Rev. Jan Olav Flaaten Executive Director Arizona Ecumenical Council
Rev. Wesley Granberg-Michaelson General Secretary Reformed Church in America
Simon Greer President and CEO Jewish Funds for Justice
Dr. David P. Gushee Board Chair New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good
Rabbi Steve Gutow President and CEO Jewish Council for Public Affairs
Rev. Dr. Derrick Harkins Senior Pastor Nineteenth Street Baptist Church, Washington, DC
The Rev. Dr. Katharine Rhodes Henderson President Auburn Seminary
The Rev. Anne S. Howard Executive Director The Beatitudes Society
James E. Hug, SJ President Center of Concern
Dr. Joel C. Hunter Senior Pastor Northland - A Church Distributed
Bishop T. D. Jakes The Potter's House
Rev. Dr. Michael Kinnamon General Secretary National Council of Churches
Chris Korzen Executive Director Catholics United
Leadership Team of the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas Eileen Campbell, RSM Anne Curtis, RSM Pat McDermott, RSM Mary Waskowiak, RSM Linda Werthman, RSM
Rabbi John A. Linder Temple Solel, Paradise Valley, AZ
Marie Lucey, OSF Associate Director for Social Mission Leadership Conference of Women Religious
Rev. Steven D. Martin Executive Director New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good
Brian McClaren Author/Activist
T. Michael McNulty, SJ Justice and Peace Director Conference of Major Superiors of Men
Rev. Peter Morales President Unitarian Universalist Association
Bishop Paul Morton International Presiding Bishop Full Gospel Baptist Church Fellowship
Muslim Public Affairs Council
Stanley J. Noffsinger General Secretary Church of the Brethren
Dr. Walter L. Parrish III General Secretary Progressive National Baptist Convention
Rev. Gradye Parsons Stated Clerk Presbyterian Church (USA)
Nancy Ratzan President National Council of Jewish Women
Rev. Meg Riley Board Chair Faith in Public Life
Dave Robinson Executive Director Pax Christi USA
Rev. Samuel Rodriguez President National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference
Rev. Gabriel Salguero President National Latino Evangelical Coalition
Rabbi David Saperstein Director Religious Action Center
Dr. William J. Shaw Immediate Past President National Baptist Convention USA, Inc.
Dr. T. DeWitt Smith, Jr. Immediate Past President Progressive National Baptist Convention
Rt. Rev. Kirk S. Smith Bishop, Episcopal Diocese of Arizona
Dr. Sayyid M. Syeed National Director, Office for Interfaith & Community Alliances Islamic Society of North America
Rev. Dr. Stephen J. Thurston President National Baptist Convention of America, Inc., Intl.
Rev. Jim Wallis President and CEO Sojourners
Rev. Dr. Sharon E. Watkins General Minister and President Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)
Rev. Heyward Wiggins, III PICO National Network Camden Bible Tabernacle Church
Jim Winkler General Secretary United Methodist General Board of Church & Society
Faith in the Public Square: It's Your Calling
Part 3 in a series of teachings from Dr. Joel C. Hunter about how to approach today's issues biblically, respectfully and effectively.
Faith in the Public Square: It's All About Jesus
Part 2 in a series of teachings from Dr. Joel C. Hunter about how to approach today’s issues biblically, respectfully and effectively.
Faith in the Public Square: It's Personal
Part 1 in a series of teachings from Dr. Joel C. Hunter about how to approach today’s issues biblically, respectfully and effectively.
MSNBC: "Moderate Evangelical Leaders Emerging," an Interview With Pastor Joel Hunter
Newsweek: Faces of the Christian Right
Newsweek writes: "For all the attention given to Jeremiah Wright, the minister who’s closest to President Obama these days is probably Joel Hunter, who leads the 12,000-member Northland Community Church in Orlando. He led the closing benediction of the 2008 Democratic National Convention, delivered a blessing before Obama’s inauguration, and serves on the president’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. None of this is to say that Hunter is a Wallis-style liberal. After all, his 2008 book was called A New Kind of Conservative, and he remains staunchly anti-abortion and anti-gay-marriage. But he’s willing to talk, slow to condemn, and is a potential bridge to white evangelicals—which, when combined with an apparent personal bond between Hunter and Obama, endears him to the president ... He’s a prime pastor to watch in 2012 and beyond."
Advent Advice: Prepare for a Divine Interruption (Editorial for The Huffington Post)
The Christmas story sounds strangely familiar, not just because it is well known history but because it is in part our story, too. Who of us has not experienced shocking interruptions of what we had hoped would be a predictable course of events?
More than 2,000 years ago, no one was prepared for God to actually do what had been long predicted by the prophets. It was easier to believe that a Messiah, a Savior, would come some day than to think that it could happen in their lifetime.
A baby? Did the angel say "child?" Was that an angel? Who was ready for a baby?
Reactions to surprise varies between believing it is from God and immediately submitting, like Mary, or deciding to quickly dispense with the discomfort, assuming someone has done something wrong, like Joseph's first reaction to Mary's condition.
Part of the surprise was the original cast of characters God chose. Mary was an unwed teenager who had "never known a man." She likely thought of herself as a poor prospect for motherhood. Joseph was a descendant of religious leaders, surely expecting the propriety of a traditional marriage before fatherhood. Herod was a paranoid political figure. The Magi were foreigners, educated scientists of the day, who were not a part of the Jewish faith. The shepherds were just regular working folk, unlikely to be esteemed in religious circles because they could not keep all the ceremonial laws. Who out of that cast would expect to be chosen?
And circumstances were just as inconvenient. A pregnant woman traveled 80 miles walking or on a donkey to give birth in a stable for animals because the government had passed a decree demanding a census. An angel, then a host of angels, announced the arrival of the baby who would be God's presence on earth. In this story, God does not come in the form of a conquering hero. In fact, His answer to our hopes and fears is a baby that needs human care and patient attention before He saves us from our own destructive ways. How odd it is to demand that humans expend energy to help God.
No one in the Christmas story can receive Him without some adjustment to their regular lives. In fact, as they receive Him, their lives are not just regular anymore. Now they will live in adjoining worlds -- the baby who will become a great teacher, and give his life as a sacrifice, is the door to heaven. Those who receive him experience an access to heaven while living on earth because heaven came to earth in him.
Of course learning to bridge two worlds is a risky and uncomfortable business. Joseph and Mary become refugees to escape the political figure's attack. The Magi return to their home by a way that will avoid contact with those who demand destruction of the competition. The shepherds return to the field, praising God but wondering how what they have seen relates to their everyday lives.
God came in a way that would reconcile the differences and distances between groups. If shepherds and Magi, if a poor couple and the Roman Caesar, if stars and animals and crowds unaware can be combined in the story of God's special arrival, then cooperation among different groups for the good of all would seem to be God's way.
Once upon a time, God interrupted the lives of people to make them part of a special story. Those of us who commemorate the story are also part of it. During Advent we prepare for Christmas not merely as a ritual but as a hoped-for divine interruption. We look to recognize in the interruption of our routines a chance to see God's arrival again. We are hoping that He will use us with groups that would ordinarily not be in the same story. We are hoping that as our families get together, as we personally ponder in our hearts (as Mary did) all the facets of the Christmas story, God will use us to do something extraordinary in the world again.
The "Glory to God in the highest [is] on earth peace among men [as in male and female humankind] with whom He is pleased" (Luke 2:14).
During this solemn season of Advent, the preparation to re-live the birth of Jesus, we have a choice: We can focus on decorations and gifts and food, some of it fun and bonding. Or we can focus on the door, once a baby, adjoining heaven and earth. We can get ready to worship God in such a way that we will be ongoing agents of reconciliation. We can long for and work for a world where different and distant groups are all a part of the same story -- His.
FIND THIS ARTICLE AT: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joel-c-hunter/advent-preparation-after-_b_788157.html
Hearing over Tennessee mosque puts Islam on trial
MURFREESBORO, Tenn. -- Islam is suddenly on trial in a booming Nashville suburb, where opponents of a new mosque have spent six days in court trying to link it to what they claim is a conspiracy to take over America by imposing restrictive religious rule.
The hearing is supposed to be about whether Rutherford County officials violated Tennessee's open meetings law when they approved the mosque's site plan. Instead, plaintiff's attorney Joe Brandon Jr. has used it as a forum to question whether the world's second-biggest faith even qualifies as a religion, and to push a theory that American Muslims want to replace the Constitution with extremist Islamic law.
"Do you want to know about a direct connection between the Islamic Center and Shariah law, a.k.a. terrorism?" Brandon asked one witness in a typical line of questioning.
Brandon has repeatedly conflated a moderate version of Shariah with its most extreme manifestations, suggesting that all Muslims must adhere to those interpretations.
At one point, he asked whether Rutherford County Commissioner Gary Farley supported hanging a whip in his house as a warning to his wife and then beating her with it, something Brandon claimed was part of "Shariah religion."
The commissioner protested that he would never beat his wife.
County attorney Jim Cope objected to the question, saying, "This is a circus." The rhetoric has conjured up comparisons to another culture clash that played out in a Tennessee courtroom a hundred miles and nearly a century away from Murfreesboro, a college city of 100,000 that is among the fastest-growing communities in the country. In 1925, the world watched as evolution came under attack at the Scopes monkey trial in Dayton, Tenn.
Chancellor Robert Corlew has consistently given the plaintiffs leeway to present testimony by nonexperts and documents that they cannot prove are legitimate, saying he reserves the right to strike things from the record later.
Corlew, who holds an elected office, has given little explanation for why he has allowed the testimony to stray so far afield.
Since it is not a jury trial, the judge can ultimately disregard anything he deems irrelevant. Several attorneys suggested he may want the plaintiffs, three residents who object to how the mosque came about, to feel they were able to have their say.
That could explain why Corlew has allowed Brandon to repeatedly question witnesses about whether Islam is a legitimate religion - even after the Department of Justicestepped in with a brief stating that it was.
When Farley, the commissioner, told Brandon the federal government defined Islam as a religion, Brandon responded, "Are you one of those people who believes everything the government says? Are you aware the government once said it was OK to own slaves?"
Other faiths have risen to the defense of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro. The newly formed Interfaith Coalition on Mosques, which is composed of prominent Catholics, Jews, Muslims, and Southern Baptists and other Protestants, has filed a brief in the case.
It's good for the mosque's opponents to get their day in court - testimony is to resume Friday - said the Rev. Joel Hunter, an evanglical megachurch pastor and coalition member.
But it's "really out there" to question whether Islam is a religion, said Hunter, who leads a Longwood, Fla., congregation called Northland, A Church Distributed.
Seeking to prove that the mosque has terrorist leanings, witnesses have pointed out that board member Mosaad Rowash previously had pro-Hamas postings on his MySpace page, something the mosque's leaders have not denied. The U.S. government considers Hamas, a Palestinian Islamic political party with an armed wing that has attacked Israel, a terrorist organization.
The political views of Rowash - who hasn't been called to testify and hasn't commented publicly - and other board members are "totally irrelevant," said Deborah Lauter, the director of civil rights for the Jewish Anti-Defamation League, which sponsors the interfaith coalition.
If all of the members of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro were public cheerleaders for Hamas, it would still be illegal to discriminate against them because the First Amendment protects freedom of worship, she said.
Even the group that provided the information on Rowash, the Washington-based Investigative Project on Terrorism, doesn't claim that the MySpace postings prove anything about the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro or its members.
Managing director Ray Locker said the Washington group provided the information about Rowash to a Tennessee resident who sent an inquiry about the mosque. He said how such information is used is beyond his group's control.
"We don't consider all Muslims to be terrorists," he said. "The vast majority of American Muslims just want to worship freely, just like members of other religions."
That wasn't the message of witness Frank Gaffney, the president and founder of the Washington-based Center for Security Policy and a former deputy assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration.
While acknowledging he was not an expert on Shariah law, Gaffney testified that Shariah, and by extension the new mosque, poses a threat to America.
Shariah isn't really law, at least not law as a universally recognized, codified body of rules and rights, the way Americans have come to know it. Shariah is a set of core principles that most Muslims recognize as well as a series of rulings from religious scholars.
It's some of those rulings, such as stoning a woman to death for committing adultery, that many non-Muslim Americans find reprehensible. But many Muslims, in America and around the world, are equally horrified by them, said Mohammad Fadel, an assistant professor of law at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law and an expert on Islamic law.
The mosque project has had problems outside court as well. A sign at the construction site was spray-painted with the words "Not Welcome" and torn in half, and federal investigators have offered a $20,000 reward for information leading to an arrest in what they say was the arson of a dump truck on the grounds.
Hunter, the Florida pastor, said he studied American history in college and knows that what is happening to Muslims today has happened to other groups in the past.
"Every minority - and Islam is very much a minority in this country right now - has had to struggle for equal rights," he said. "Islam is facing that now and we will not rest until they have equal rights with other religions."
FIND THIS ARTICLE AT: http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2010/11/11/general-us-rel-islam-on-trial_8098629.html?boxes=Homepagebusinessnews
