Miami Herald: "Pastor Forges Common Ground Instead of Fighting Culture Wars"

From the Miami Herald, by Beth Reinhard

Joel Hunter—Christian evangelical, pastor of a Central Florida megachurch and lifelong Republican—gave the benediction at the Democratic National Convention. He prayed with Barack Obama on Election Day, and rode to the inauguration with Oprah.

At the swearing in, he sat in the 12th row, next to boxing icon Muhammad Ali.

"I'm like, 'What am I doing here?''' said Hunter, who recounted his experience before leading his fifth service in three days. "It's surreal.''

The Midwestern transplant who voted twice for George W. Bush and backed religious conservative Mike Huckabee in last year's GOP primary isn't accustomed to overtures from Democratic politicos and the celebrities who come with them. But in keeping with Obama's unprecedented outreach to the religious right during the campaign, the White House plucked Hunter to serve on a 25-member advisory council that also includes a reform rabbi, a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention and the first female bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

The Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships is an extension of Bush's office directing tax dollars to faith-based social service agencies. The difference: Obama's group will actually weigh in on policy matters.

''President Obama's vision is so much broader. How do you engage churchgoers and people of faith to be part of the solution?'' Hunter asked during a recent interview in his office at Northland Church. "That's something we never talked about in the Bush era. I think we're at a moment in time when people really want to be inspired and re-engaged.''

The mixing of religion and politics has drawn fire from the left and the right. Groups like Americans United for Separation of Church and State accuse Obama of going back on his word by refusing to scrap a Bush policy allowing federally funded religious groups to discriminate against job candidates who don't share their beliefs.

On the other end of the spectrum, some Christian leaders and members of Hunter's church cringe over his relationship with an administration that favors abortion rights and other liberal causes.

''It's important for spiritual leaders to stand firm on matters of principle,'' said Dennis Baxley, executive director of the Christian Coalition of Florida and a former state legislator. "He's basically being used by the administration.''

Hunter, 60, is part of a new breed of evangelicals seeking to forge common ground instead of fighting culture wars. He's focused on what he terms ''compassion issues''—the environment, poverty, immigration reform and peace—instead of on wedge issues like abortion and gay marriage. His broader agenda prompted his resignation as the incoming president of the Christian Coalition of America in 2006, just two months after the socially conservative organization offered him the job.

Still, Hunter says he hasn't ignored abortion altogether. Just last month, he spoke out before Obama was poised to lift a ban on federal aid to international family planning organizations. Knowing that Democratic presidents have used the Jan. 22 anniversary of Roe v. Wade to make sweeping statements on abortion rights, Hunter helped persuade Obama to wait until one day later to soften the blow to the religious right.

''He has always offered honest advice and guidance to the president, and we know we can always count on him for an independent opinion on the issues that confront our nation, today,'' said a statement from Joshua DuBois, Obama's right-hand man on religious affairs.

Hunter and Obama share more than a desire to transcend partisan politics. Just like Obama's campaign used the Internet to cultivate a massive donor and volunteer network, Hunter's nondenominational church embraces technology to reach as many as 12,000 people every week.

Northland claims to be the only church in the country offering interactive services for on-line worshipers in real time. Internet users can tell who else is participating—even in other states and countries—and communicate with them, as well as with an on-line minister. These e-worshipers are even addressed from the pulpit. ''If you're in Starbucks, stand up!'' Hunter implored during a recent service.

Hunter was so intent on emphasizing the church's reach that he changed its name in 1998 from ''a community church'' to "a church distributed.''

''A church ought to be engaging people where they are and getting resources to them, instead of gathering them all in one place,'' he said. "The church is basically a communication device, with a sanctuary attached. Most of our growth will depend on people who never will never step foot in here.''

Here's what they miss in person: a colorful light show, 12-member troupe of singers and musicians belting out Christian rock and ballads, and three giant television screens magnifying the five-foot-six pastor.

What Hunter lacks in height he makes up for in body language. He uses his elbows, knees and back in broad gestures to tell stories from the Bible and impart moral lessons. He squints and purses his lips for comic effect. He resembles George W. Bush—in a black shirt and silvery tie that look like they came from Tony Soprano's closet.

Grabbing the attention of churchgoers prone to fidgeting, Hunter cries, ''Don't freak out!'' when he brings up the subversive, bestselling book, The Shack, which portrays God as a full-figured black woman. Later in the service, after a handful of parishioners accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior for the first time, he declares, "Happy Birthday! You just got born again.''

When Hunter arrived at Northland in 1985, he found about 200 members praying in an old roller skating rink. Two years ago, the church opened a $43 million campus featuring a bookstore, a cafe that serves wraps and paninis, and a 3,100-seat sanctuary that doubles as a concert venue.

Hunter seems to live modestly for the leader of an out-sized church, with a two-door Hyundai and home in middle-class Casselberry. The husband and father of three grown sons often goes by ''Pastor Joel,'' or simply, "Joel.''

Hunter's political and spiritual awakening occurred when he was a student in the late 1960s at Ohio University. He joined student protests and hitchhiked to civil rights battlegrounds like Selma and Birmingham in a neatly trimmed beard and suit. The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968, was what led him to Jesus at the age of 20.

Four decades later, Hunter is widely beloved at his church, even among some parishioners who disagree with his politics and don't care for Obama.

''It's better to have his ear than not,'' said Anders Lindberg, a 47-year-old business development manager who came to pray on a recent evening. "Even if you don't agree with someone, that doesn't mean you ignore them. Jesus didn't just talk to believers.''

Not every churchgoer could abide Hunter's ties to the administration. Weary of Hunter's occasional preaching about global warming and immigration reform, and disgusted by his role at the Democratic National Convention, John Mitchell quit the church after 13 years.

''These things became distractions for me,'' said Mitchell, a 53-year-old lawyer and father of five. "I go to church to worship God.''

Mitchell added that he has a ''tremendous amount of respect'' for his longtime pastor but felt that his appearance at a political party convention amounted to an inappropriate endorsement, even though Hunter never made it official.

''I'm going to continue to pray for him,'' he said. "I hope this experience doesn't change him too much, but I don't think you can help being influenced at those higher levels.''

Find this article at: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/breaking-news/story/917372.html

PBS' Religion and Ethics Profiles Dr. Joel C. Hunter

Find this story at: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/episodes/february-20-2009/joel-hunter/2279/

The Greening of Jesus

Dialogue, by Mark I. Pinsky, Harvard Divinity Bulletin Riding the train down to London last summer, after a two-week fellowship on science and religion at the University of Cambridge, I noticed an article in the Independent newspaper about a new book which reinforced that notion of an increasingly irreligious Europe. It is true that outward signs of faith-apart from biblical passages emblazoned on London's famed red double-decker buses by jesussaid.org-are difficult to come by.

But I found deeply felt Christianity alive and well in an unlikely setting: the academy's scientific community. To many, this may seem counterintuitive. The evangelical theologian Alister McGrath told us he once believed that "science was the ally of atheism." Yet among our other lecturers at the Templeton-Cambridge program were major figures in science, from cosmologists to biologists to particle physicists, who pronounced themselves believers. Of course, given the interests of the late Sir John Templeton, who endowed the fellowships, in the relationship between science and religion, this should not have been surprising.

Still, these towering figures-Simon Conway Morris, John Polkinghorne, Sir Brian Heap, Sir John Houghton-characterized themselves as evangelicals as well. Polkinghorne, author of Science and Theology, preaches at a Cambridge church on weekends. To be sure, these are evangelicals of a particular sort. By and large, they reject creationism and intelligent design, embracing the concept of "theistic evolution," a God-created, billions-years-old universe. None numbered themselves among any of the apocalyptic American evangelical tribes of arrogant dominionists or fanciful premillennial dispensationalists of the "Left Behind" stripe.

Much of the modern dialogue between science and religion deals with the origin of the universe and the development of life on earth-surrogate discussions over the existence of God and the divine role in life. In my relatively brief time at Cambridge, a day did not pass without some mention of Charles Darwin-an alumnus-and Richard Dawkins, the best-selling Oxford atheist. Yet to me, these exchanges have become tiresome, repetitive, and unenlightening.

There have been similar debates among scientists of faith over the morality of stem cell research and end-of-life issues. But a more recent (and intriguing, to me) subset of the science and religion dialogue has emerged among evangelical scientists over climate change. Books arguing the religious case for curbing global warming seem to appear every week with titles like A New Climate for Theology: God, the World, and Global Warming and Jesus Brand Spirituality: He Wants His Religion Back, which asks, "Was Jesus Green?" In A Moral Climate: The Ethics of Global Warming, Michael Northcott asserts that "Christ is present among those suffering already from climate change."

This discussion among Christian researchers raises a host of larger issues, as does another new book, Descartes' Bones: A Skeletal History of the Conflict Between Faith and Reason by Russell Shorto. That is, how does-or should-religious faith motivate, influence, or inform scientific research and its application? Is there a religious foundation for science? Should science glorify God? Can it even be a ministry? Should scientists use their research and that of their colleagues to become activists in causes like global warming? Is it possible for evangelical researchers to reconcile their religious faith and the scientific method?

Increasingly, well-educated, middle-class suburban evangelicals from the Sun Belt are embracing what many Christians call, in a brilliant semantic stroke, "creation care"-a more politically palatable label than "environmentalism." This activist approach to climate change emphasizes biblical stewardship of the earth. There is, to be sure, resistance to this view from evangelical theologians and scientists who argue that global warming does not exist, or that it is part of a natural cycle and in no way the result of human activity and abuse of the earth. Some even argue that the world will soon end with Jesus' return, so don't worry. Thus, Christians are under no obligation to support measures, like the Kyoto Protocols, to drastically limit greenhouse gas emissions. Their scientific advocates are researchers like Calvin Beisner, who has appeared before the Vatican's Pontifical Council on Climate Change and Development. They have organized their own groups, like the Interfaith Council for Environmental Stewardship. Theologically, these opponents agree with the late ultraconservative theologian R. J. Rushdoony, that science must first serve religion: "If Jesus Christ is Lord of the family, he is also Lord of the laboratory."

Yet increasingly, the fundamentalist view of climate change is losing force and is being challenged by other scientists who are equally devout in their evangelical beliefs. At Cambridge the renowned reproductive biologist and ethicist Sir Brian Heap, a self-described "open-minded evangelical," is a leading advocate of addressing climate change. He said he had no difficulty reconciling his personal faith and scientific discovery and advocacy. "When doing my own bench research, it was clear that personal faith influenced decisions about the wisdom of carrying out certain experimentation." He continued, "The religious foundation comes from the Christian motivation to seek the best for others...for the world we too easily damage."

Researchers like Heap have glittering academic credentials, and to bolster their influence, they have joined in groups like Christians in Science in Great Britain. There are prominent American counterparts, like Francis Collins, until recently head of the U.S. Genome Project. The Au Sable Institute of Environmental Studies in the U.S. was founded by a group of evangelicals, including Calvin DeWitt, professor of environmental studies at the University of Wisconsin. Similar groups of evangelical scientists, like the American Scientific Affiliation, began in the late 1960s.

"I'm excited and passionate about understanding the world, its biosphere and ecosystems, and our human place and vocation in creation, to the honor and praise of its Creator," said DeWitt. "It's because of my religious foundation that I've chosen to be a scientist," he continued. "And for all of us in science it is either this, or the inspiration we get from creation, or both that has brought us into this wonderful vocation." DeWitt acknowledges that his lectures sometimes sound like sermons: "Scientific inquiry in some settings can even be a form of worship, I believe-a kind of singing a living psalm to the Lord of creation....My faith inspires my scientific research in helping me to move with passion to discover how the world works, and to do so with integrity."

What happens in the minds of evangelical researchers who may find their religious faith and the scientific method in conflict? Some, like John Polkinghorne, a particle physicist, dismiss the question, saying, where research is concerned, there is no connection between his science and his faith. "I can't tell the difference in research in physics done by a religious believer and that done by an atheist." But he added, "If you see the world as a divine creation, that's a further motive to explore its order."

"Science and theology offer complementary perspectives," said Fraser Watts, professor of theology at Cambridge, a weekend preacher, and editor of Science Meets Faith. "Science tells us how, religion tells us why." Robert White, professor of geophysics at Cambridge, and co-author of Christianity, Climate Change and Sustainable Living, as well as a contributor to Real Scientists, Real Faith, agreed. "Our work, the attitudes we bring to it and the way we do it should be as much part of our worship of God as is the hour or two we spend in church on a Sunday," he said. "Science is a secular activity insofar as its very strength is in not appealing to any external causes-such as divine activity."

Sir John Houghton, in his former capacity as chief executive of England's Meteorological Office, said that in his groundbreaking research he was acting "absolutely as a scientist looking for the truth." He said he didn't approach his scientific research on the issue "from an ethical or moral side," and his religion had no influence on his findings. Once he reached his conclusion, however, he acknowledges pursuing the cause as a "missionary." "I believe the problem we're facing is not just a technical and scientific one," Houghton said, "but a moral and spiritual one."

"The impact of global warming is such that I have no doubt in describing it as a weapon of mass destruction," Houghton told a meeting of British Baptists. The scientist is credited with influencing the climate change debate beyond his own country to the United States, where some evangelical groups, like the Southern Baptist Convention, are deeply divided on global climate change.

Houghton has personally influenced American religious leaders like the Rev. Richard Cizik, head of the 30-million-member National Association of Evangelicals. Cizik's 2002 Oxford "conversion" on the issue-which has been compared to the Apostle Paul's on the road to Damascus-led to charges by fundamentalists that he was advocating "his own political opinions as scientific fact." This led to a concerted effort by conservative leaders like James Dobson, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and Richard Lamb to get him fired.

Nonetheless, support for an activist role in dealing with climate change has become a major tenet among a cohort of younger, mega-church pastors now bidding to assume national leadership of the evangelical movement. (However, the debate over climate change among American believers is not solely sectarian-or scientific. It is also generational, and is even being used as a classic wedge issue.)

In Central Florida, the Rev. Joel Hunter, of Northland, a Church Distributed, has become a major proponent of creation care, and a member of this cohort. Hunter has met with Houghton three times, for several hours at a time, in various conferences around the world. His congregation has gone "green" with a vengeance, recycling just about everything they use and educating themselves on the larger issue of climate change. The church has also hosted national conferences featuring DeWitt in person and Houghton through video.

Support on the global climate change issue from believing researchers like Houghton is very important, said Hunter. "American evangelicals respect good, peer-reviewed science done by respected and recognized scientists," even more so when they are also committed Christians. This is especially true given the influential role evangelicals exercise on America's political dynamic.

Many believe that ideally science and religion should be inseparable. As Houghton put it, "We are integrated people. Theology was once called the 'Queen of the sciences.' "

Mark I. Pinsky, former religion writer for The Orlando Sentinel, is author of A Jew Among the Evangelicals: A Guide for the Perplexed (Westminster John Knox Press, 2006).

Find this article at: http://www.hds.harvard.edu/news/bulletin_mag/articles/37-1/pinsky.html

CBN: How to Pray for President Obama

By Robin Mazyck and David Brody, CBN News, February 13, 2009 CBNNews.com - In the New Testament, the Apostle Paul's First Timothy tells us that we must pray for our leaders. But some Christians are finding it difficult to pray for newly elected President Barack Obama.

Millions of people across the country have been praying for President Barack Obama. From Pastor Rick Warren of Saddleback Church in California who gave the inaugural prayer saying "we now commit our new President and his wife, Michelle, and his daughters, Malia and Sasha into Your loving care."

To Rev. Andy Stanley of North Point Community Church in Alpharetta, Ga. at the 56th Presidential Inaugural Prayer Service who prayed "grant to Barack Obama, President of the United States and to all in authority, Your grace and good will."

Some know exactly what to say in their prayers. But others, especially those who may not have voted for him, are not so sure. They know they should pray for the President, but they're not sure what to pray.

Prominent conservative evangelical Pastor Joel Hunter of Northland Church in California says Christians should pray for two things.

"The one he always requests is pray for his family," Hunter explained. "For a dad and a husband that's always what you cover. Secondly, pray for his relationship with the Lord. He's very serious about his relationship with the Lord."

And many other religious leaders agree.

"I pray for security for his security for he and his family," Bishop George Brooks of Mt. Zion Baptist Church, Greensboro, N. Carolina said. "I pray for wisdom. I pray for our congress. I pray for our senate. I pray that he always remembers why he's there, who he serves and who he has to report to."

And some say with everything going on -- especially the worsening economy - God's hand is going to have to be present.

"Heaven is going to have to help the white house," Pastor Tony Evans of Urban Alternative said. "Heaven is going to have to direct him."

Find this article at: http://www.cbn.com/CBNnews/540544.aspx

Pastor Hunter Visits the Oval Office

Working with Faith from White House on Vimeo.

This video from the White House shows scenes of the President with members of the newly created Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Headed by Joshua DuBois, the council's 25 members includes our pastor, Dr. Joel C. Hunter. He, along with the other members, will advise the President on policy issues—both foreign and domestic—and help to steer government money to religious and neighborhood groups doing social service.

Visit the White House blog to learn more.

Faith-Based Office To Expand Its Reach: Goals Will Include Reducing Abortion

By Michelle Boorstein and Kimberly Kindy, Washington Post Staff Writers Friday, February 6, 2009 - President Obama yesterday announced the creation of his faith-based outreach office, expanding its agenda beyond funding social programs to work on policies aimed at strengthening family life and reducing abortion.

Obama's office leaves in place rules that allow faith-based groups receiving federal funding to hire only people of their own faith, but White House aides said the hiring rules would be reviewed on a case-by-case basis when there are complaints and that the Justice Department will provide legal assistance.

Obama's move more fully formalizes the partnerships between the federal government and faith groups that first began under President Bill Clinton and was expanded by President George W. Bush. But where Bush used the faith office primarily for funding programs -- drawing criticism that he was mainly assisting his political supporters -- Obama said he wants to use the office for policy guidance, as well.

Speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast at the Hilton Washington yesterday, Obama said the goal of the initiative "will not be to favor one religious group over another -- or even religious groups over secular groups. It will simply be to work on behalf of those organizations that want to work on behalf of our communities, and to do so without blurring the line our Founders wisely drew between church and state."

The president created a 25-member advisory council and named 15 of its members yesterday, including several high-profile evangelicals -- the Rev. Joel C. Hunter, senior pastor of a Florida megachurch, and the Rev. Frank S. Page, president emeritus of the Southern Baptist Convention -- as well as representatives from secular nonprofits, which largely had little association with Bush's faith-based initiative. The council members are to advise the faith office on policy but will not play a direct role in allocating federal grants. The office will be headed by Joshua DuBois, a 26-year-old Pentecostal who worked on religious issues for Obama's campaign.

The office will be more involved in policy planning than it was during the Bush years, White House aides said. They said the top priorities for the office will be interfaith relations, strengthening the role of fathers in society and reducing poverty. The office also will help develop policies aimed at reducing the number of abortions, though no specifics were offered.

Obama kept in place, however, much of the legal structure for the office created through executive orders by Bush. The 11 faith-based offices Bush established in different agencies and a faith liaison in the public outreach office will continue. Paul Monteiro will be the religious liaison in the Office of Public Liaison, the White House said yesterday.

DuBois said the faith-based office will employ about 50 people. Despite speaking on the campaign trail against the Bush administration's approach -- including on hiring and proselytizing -- Obama wants "to create a process to look at this in a way that can withstand scrutiny and takes into account views on all sides," DuBois said in an interview yesterday.

Three members of the advisory council -- Page, the Rev. Jim Wallis and World Vision President Richard Stearns -- have heightened concerns among church-state separatists. The Southern Baptist Convention, which Page led, says that it is discriminatory for the government to prevent its members from sharing their faith with others. And Stearns's organization received funding in the Bush years while saying it should not be forced to hire non-Christians.

Faith-based nonprofits received federal grants totaling more than $10.6 billion during the Bush administration, said members of the former White House staff.

Some religious groups argued at the time that they could use taxpayer-funded program to help people out of poverty and addiction by teaching them about God and salvation. And yesterday, some advocates of church-state separation said Obama should not have left the Bush legal structure in place.

"He is expanding the Bush administration's faith-based initiative without putting the most important safeguards in place. The president has created a more powerful office with a greater ability to shovel federal taxpayer dollars to religious groups, but civil rights protections are being deferred for later study and decisions," said Christopher Anders, senior legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union.

Ira C. Lupu, a George Washington University law professor who has written on White House faith-based initiatives, said it was wise for Obama not to move too fast. As a candidate, Obama "hadn't looked at the issue carefully," Lupu said. "I think as a first move, handing it to lawyers is good. But it doesn't avoid that he'll have to deal with this eventually."

Staff writer Jacqueline L. Salmon contributed to this report.

Find this article at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/05/AR2009020500834.html?sub=AR