Florida legislators join anti-Islamic crusade

by Scott Maxwell, Orlando Sentinel

Last week, someone told the Rev. Joel Hunter that they hoped his family dies in a fire.

Why? Because Hunter had the audacity to speak out against intolerance, specifically intolerance against Muslims.

Hunter quickly paid the price, receiving hundreds of angry emails, including the death wish.

This is the state of discourse in Florida.

And it's fostered in part by the people you elect.

You see, once upon a time, the fringy crusade against all things Islamic was led by a handful of legislators who would boycott peaceful prayers by imams and file goofy bills that common-sense legislators ignored.

Unfortunately, Florida is increasingly known as the state where common sense goes to die.

A bill that was dismissed last year as irrelevant — one that tries to prohibit Islamic and foreign laws from affecting Florida court rulings — is now gaining steam.

Even the bill's sponsor, Sen. Alan Hays, struggled to cite examples of the problem he was claiming to solve. Instead, Hays called his bill "preventative."

The fringe-o-sphere, however, claims Islamic Shariah law is creeping into America. So they are backing a bill that would supposedly ban judges from relying upon any and all foreign laws.

Apparently patriotic Americans don't take kindly to foreign precedent (never mind the Magna Carta).

Foreign-based court rulings are scant, if not nonexistent, in most places. Chief judges I polled said they have never cited any and describe the controversy as manufactured.

Still, even if there were questionable rulings in lower levels of the judiciary, it wouldn't be an issue for the Legislature to address.

You see, in America, we have separation of powers — which brings us to the biggest problem with Hays' bill: It's probably unconstitutional.

Don't take it from me. The senate's own analysts concluded his bill could be "an infringement on the essential role of the judicial branch in violation of the constitutional separation of powers."

Analysts spent a solid two pages describing all the "technical deficiencies" in the bill.

Undeterred, a Senate committee passed it anyway — with the support of local Republicans Andy Gardiner and David Simmons, guys who normally know better.

Many sensible people of all faith and partisan stripes remain opposed to this unneeded bill.

One of them is Hunter, the well-known pastor of Northland, a Church Distributed.

In a short statement to the Senate, read by a Muslim, Hunter described the bill as unneeded and rooted in bias. Hunter noted that he is a conservative evangelical, and pointed out that "objecting to unnecessary law is a conservative principle as well as a libertarian one."

Hunter later told me he viewed his statement as simply "a common-sense response."

But remember: This is Florida.

Hunter was immediately targeted by groups such as the Florida Family Association — a group that teeters back and forth in trying to decide who it wants to demonize most: Muslims or gays.

"There were letters that said, 'I hope your family dies in a fire,' " Hunter recalled. "Just horrible, horrible things."

Often those who scream loudest about the Lord are His worst disciples.

And the most unlikely to appreciate the irony of their rants about "religious extremists."

Hunter said he bears no ill will — even for the folks who offered death wishes.

"I just feel so sorry for those people," he said. "Because they're walking in fear."

I respect Hunter's ability to empathize. But my concerns go beyond empathy.

Because these people's hyperbolic fears are threatening to infringe upon my Constitution.

And because our legislators are fanning the flames.

SOURCE URL: http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/opinion/os-scott-maxwell-joel-hunter-muslim-sharia-law-20130402,0,6046322.column

Joel Hunter Responds to Accusations of Islamist Association

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The Florida Family Association is calling Pastor Joel C. Hunter, senior pastor of Northland Church in Longwood, Fla., to the carpet for “partnering with Islamists to oppose an anti-Shariah bill in the Florida legislature.”

The Florida Family Association is claiming that Hunter is helping the Hamas-linked, Jihadi apologist, Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) to stop laws from being enacted that would prohibit courts from accepting Shariah law. The association also published Hunter’s personal email address and invited readers to contact him.

According to the Florida Family Association, if Florida courts accept provisions of Islamic Shariah law or other foreign laws and legal codes which are inconsistent with American laws, it will undermine public policies enacted by our representative form of government and change our value system.

Atif Fareed, a Muslim and former chairman of CAIR Florida, said Hunter, the spiritual advisor to President Obama, asked him to read the following statement:

“To my state senators: As a pastor of one of the largest churches in Florida I believe Senate Bill 58 will do more harm than good if enacted. Its effect will be to increase bias rather than protection. It seems to me to be a cure without a disease. Existing law and judicial precedent have proved sufficient to deal with any concerns addressed by this proposed law.

“Having confidence in both our constitution and the character of our judicial process, I agree with the America Bar Association, the Anti-Defamation League and the American Civil Liberties Union that this law and House Bill 351 will be detrimental rather than the good intended. As a conservative evangelical Christian it is unusual for me to side with the ACLU but I think objecting to unnecessary law is a conservative principle as well as a libertarian one. Indeed, not making laws unless they are absolutely necessary is at the core of our character as a country. Thank you for considering my views.”

David Caton, president of the Florida Family Association, said he could not wait until the committee meeting was over to inquire if Hunter actually authorized or requested Fareed to present this statement to Florida Senators.”

“I sent … email to Joel Hunter to which he affirmed yes in less than five minutes,” Caton said. “He must be really proud to align with the Council on American Islamic Relations.”

Charisma News asked Hunter about the issue. He told us the way it has been interpreted has misrepresented his position.

“I am not aligning myself with CAIR, the Muslim Brotherhood, or any other Muslim organization. I am not for Shariah or any other foreign law to compete with our Constitution. My response to a man who lives in our community (Mr. Fareed) was that I believe our present safeguards are more than capable of keeping those laws out,” Hunter says.

“My opinion is that SB 58 is an unnecessary law that increases bias and heightens animosity between Christians and Muslims—which makes respectful dialogue and sharing Jesus with them all the more challenging. I'm certainly not in favor of any foreign law that would take away our rights under the Constitution.”

Source URL: http://www.charismanews.com/us/38877-joel-hunter-responds-to-accusations-of-islamist-association

Joel Hunter's 'Our Father's World' Documentary: Christians Must Stop Neglecting Environment

Our Father's World from Northland Church on Vimeo.

Dr. Joel C. Hunter, senior pastor of the 15,000-member Northland church in Florida, has released a new documentary titled "Our Father's World," where he reminds Christians that God made people stewards, not owners of the planet, and that environmental issues are Christian issues.

"Scientific evidence now is very much backing up the Scriptural mandate that we need to take care of this Earth. All of the credible scientific organizations of the world are showing the degree to which the environment is being harmed by our pollution, by the disobedience to the first commandment that He (God) gave us," Hunter says.

The 26-minute long documentary is available for viewing and download free online, and includes interviews with leading evangelical scholars, including Bill and Lynne Hybels, Tony Campolo, James Merritt and Mark Liederbach.

One of the main points made in the film is that many Christians seem turned off by the environmental movement because they believe it has been hijacked by political ideals.

"Many Christians still see environmental stewardship as a political issue, rather than seeing it as a biblical issue. Scripture clearly teaches us to be good stewards of our finances, time, talents and relationships, and the church is beginning to realize there is another form of stewardship that we have neglected to embrace," says Raymond Randall, leader of Northland's Creation Care Team.

Caring for the planet is one of the very first commandments God gave to man, Pastor Hunter reminds viewers.

"This was our first calling, recorded early on in Genesis 1 and 2, and we remain God's caretakers over all creation today," Hunter explains.

The documentary reminds viewers that the Earth, its creatures and its resources do not belong to people – they belong to God, and humans are called to be stewards of creation and to protect it, not exploit it and destroy it.

"I don't know why this issue is so complicated from a biblical standpoint. Those of us who are Christians believe that God created the Earth. We don't believe that the Bible is a book of science, it doesn't exactly tell us how He created it but certainly throughout the Bible, we read of God's relationship with creation, that he was that life force that brought it all into being in the beginning, that He said it was good," says Hybels, co-founder of Ten for Congo, an advocate group spreading awareness about the hardships people face in Congo.

"He called us to have dominion, to rule, to subdue it, to till it, to work it, and a lot of people have taken that to mean that we can dominate and rule in a harsh way."

Despite God's clear message to believers, many people today have chosen to ignore or dismiss that calling, the film says, which has led to huge environmental problems, including deforestation, the destruction of habitats and the extinction and endangerment of many species.

Bob Giguere, the Emmy and Telly award-winning director of "Our Father's World," insists that environmental issues are not a concern only for the secular world, a message that the film drives forward hard.

"I know many Christians who commonly mistake environmental responsibility as a task for the secular world," Giguere says. "Upon seeing this film, it should be obvious that the Christian walk can be a very green path."

Apathy toward the environment does not simply impact wildlife and nature; poor communities around the world are hit hard when they lose access to natural resources that they greatly depend on to survive.

"A growing number of evangelical Christians worldwide are uniting in their belief that environmentalism is not merely a moral obligation. It's a matter of justice for the poor and for the generations to come," Giguere stresses.

In "Our Father's World," Hunter calls on Christians and people of all faiths and backgrounds to unite and take meaningful steps to truly become stewards of the planet.

"God has given us problems so big, that not one faith community can solve on its own. Therefore, we need to work together, and we need to find common ground, both with believers of other religions and with those who believe in no religion," the Northland pastor urges.

"Biblical justice is social justice, and it calls for interfaith cooperation."

"Our Father's World" is "ideally suited for presentation at churches and study groups," a press release noted.

Source URL : http://www.christianpost.com/news/joel-hunters-our-fathers-world-documentary-christians-must-stop-neglecting-environment-92403/

White House Names New Faith-Based Office Director

The White House announced today President Obama's appointment of Melissa Rogers to serve as the new director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, and special assistant to the president.

In this capacity, Rogers will provide President Obama with spiritual support and guidance, and assist the Administration in its efforts to collaborate with faith-based and nonprofit organizations throughout the country.

Rogers previously chaired the president's Inaugural Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. In this capacity, Rogers collaborated with members of the Council to adopt consensus recommendations regarding ways in which the federal government could strengthen its partnerships with religious and secular nonprofit organizations that serve people in need.

Joel Hunter, senior pastor of Northland, A Church Distributed in Florida and who was a member of President Obama's inaugural Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, said of Rogers, "She worked diligently [as Council chair] to find common ground. Melissa has a gift for crafting the kind of language that maintains clear boundaries but promotes cooperation."

He continued, "I may differ with Rogers on certain policy and legal issues but I have faith that she will always listen to a variety of views and make sure they are accurately conveyed.

"Melissa is an honest broker, a consensus-builder, and a problem-solver, and someone who believes that government should be actively engaged with civil society, including religious institutions and individuals, to promote the common good. I look forward to her service in the White House."

In 2010, Obama issued an executive order that embraced the council's recommendations, and one of Rogers' tasks will be to implement that order across a range of federally funded programs.

Rogers, who is known for reaching across ideological, political and religious lines to gain consensus on collaborative projects to promote the common good, recently led a common ground project that resulted in the publication of Religious Expression in American Public Life: A Joint Statement of Current Law.

This consensus statement was drafted by a diverse group of religious and civil liberties leaders on the state of current law: signatories included staff from Pat Robertson's American Center for Law and Justice to former staff of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Rogers also collaborated with religious and political leaders in a project called Come Let Us Reason, in which a group of Christian evangelicals and political progressives sought and found important common ground on issues, such as non­discrimination, ending torture, reducing the number of abortions, and reforming our immigration system.

In February, Obama announced Joshua DuBois' departure as head of the White House Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, a position he held since 2009.

During his speech at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C., Obama thanked DuBois for his stewardship and service to him during the past four years. "This morning, I want to publicly thank Joshua for all that he's done, and I know that everybody joins me in wishing him all the best in his future endeavors – including getting married," Obama said.

The president also thanked the 30-year-old aide for sending him a daily devotional every morning via email, "a snippet of Scripture for me to reflect on." Obama added that, "it has meant the world to me."

DuBois, who's credited with helping the Democrats establish a progressive faith movement, was 26 when he started working for the Obama presidential campaign. He now teaches at New York University and plans to author a book of devotionals for leaders, based on the ones he sent the president each day.

The Pentecostal minister sparked controversy last year when he defended the Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate that would require all insurance companies to supply contraceptives and abortifacients, even to employees who work for religious institutions and organizations that are opposed to both.

However, he was also a staunch defender of Pastor Louie Giglio, who was scheduled to deliver the benediction at Obama's inauguration, but whose appearance was canceled by the Inauguration Committee after a decade old sermon delivered by the pastor surfaced, in which he stated the biblical view of homosexuality.

Prior to working for Obama as a senate aide and then the religious affairs director for the Obama campaign, DuBois worked for Democratic Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), was a fellow for former Congressman Charles Holt (D-N.J.), and served as an associate pastor for a small Pentecostal church in Massachusetts.

DuBois said in a statement regarding his successor, "I have known Melissa Rogers for years, as chair of President Obama's faith-based advisory council, as one of the nation's leading experts on religion and public life, and as a close and dear friend. There is no better person to lead the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, and bring the federal government into deeper, effective and constitutional partnership with faith-based and other nonprofit groups around the country."

The White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships (formerly the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives) was established in 2001 by former President George W. Bush, who used his first executive order to create the initiative, which was established with the aim of increasing government-funded social service grants to faith-based organizations that are improving the lives of those who live in their communities.

By Melissa Barnhart, Christian Post. Find this article at: http://www.christianpost.com/news/white-house-names-new-faith-based-office-director-91781/

Joel Hunter’s environmental documentary seeks to inspire Christians, avoid controversy

Evangelical mega-church pastor Joel Hunter has never been afraid of controversy. He’s taken bold positions on a range of topics throughout the years and has been attacked by some for serving as a spiritual advisor to President Obama. But as he and his media team release a new documentary urging Christians to care for creation, they seek to sidestep the scandal and opt instead for inspiration.

The film is titled “Our Father’s World” and features a wide range of evangelical influencers including, Tony Campolo, Bill and Lynne Hybels, Matthew Sleeth, and Mark Liederbach, a Southern Baptist seminary professor. The video was carefully developed over several years, and you’ll notice that a younger version of me and my father, James Merritt, even make a couple of appearances throughout. At the time, I had just released my own book on the matter–Green Like God: Unlocking the Divine Plan for Our Planet.

But the sweeping array of voices featured is not the only attempt to unify. The film takes particular care to avoid more divisive topics, such as climate change. Instead, the film makes the case for Christians to reengage an issue that, according to the Bible, is their God-given responsibility.

“One of the things that evangelicals are very afraid of, and legitimately so, is that in our reticence, we have allowed the New Age movement to hijack the environmentalist movement and make it their own. The result is that the minute we start talking about environmentalism, evangelicals begin to say, ‘Hey you sound like a New Ager,’” Tony Campolo says in the film. “The fact that the New Age people have committed themselves to some thing that really belongs to the church does not mean that the church should not be involved in this.”

By Jonathan Merritt.

Find this article at: http://jonathanmerritt.religionnews.com/2013/03/20/joel-hunters-environmental-documentary-seeks-to-inspire-christians-avoid-controversy/

White House Director of Faith-Based Office Is Leaving His Post

President Obama announced on Thursday morning at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington that Joshua DuBois, the young pastor he appointed four years ago to lead the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, would step down on Friday.

Mr. DuBois played a central role when Mr. Obama was making his first run for the presidency, cultivating relationships on his behalf with religious leaders of many faiths. Mr. DuBois, 30, has also served as an unofficial in-house pastor to Mr. Obama, sending the president an e-mail each morning with Bible passages intended to prompt reflection or prayer.

At the prayer breakfast, the president called Mr. DuBois a “close friend of mine and yours” who “has been at my side — in work and in prayer — for years now.”

He continued, “Every morning he sends me via e-mail a daily meditation — a snippet of Scripture for me to reflect on. And it has meant the world to me. And despite my pleas, tomorrow will be his last day in the White House.”

The faith-based office was started by President George W. Bush at the beginning of his first term, which proved contentious because many critics said the office and its actions often violated the constitutional separation of church and state. But Mr. Obama preserved the office and appointed advisory councils that represented a broad range of religious leaders, including conservative evangelicals and openly gay ministers.

Mr. DuBois, a black Pentecostal minister, steered the office toward engaging religious leaders to address broad social goals like reducing unwanted pregnancies, helping people cope with the economic downturn, encouraging fathers to take responsibility for their children and improving child and maternal health.

Some of the most prickly First Amendment issues facing the faith-based office were never resolved under Mr. DuBois’s tenure, most notably the question of whether religious organizations can receive government funding and still discriminate in hiring. The office last year released a report that did not propose definitive policies.

A White House official said that Mr. DuBois planned to teach at New York University, and would create an organization to help government, nonprofit and private institutions develop partnerships with religious groups to solve social problems. He will work with Michael Wear, his former assistant and the director of faith outreach for Mr. Obama’s second presidential campaign.

With Mr. Obama’s blessing, Mr. DuBois will also write a book of devotionals for leaders, based on those he sent to the president.

The Rev. Joel C. Hunter, the senior pastor of Northland, a network of churches based in Longwood, Fla., said that he observed significant changes in the faith-based office after Mr. Obama inherited it from Mr. Bush.

“Before it was basically about which organizations got funded,” said Mr. Hunter, who served on the first faith-based advisory council appointed by Mr. Obama. He said that Mr. DuBois focused on connecting religious leaders with policy makers, adding, “What has resulted is this accessibility to policy conversations by faith communities that really wasn’t there before.”

But the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, the executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, who served on a task force at the faith-based office, said that Mr. DuBois’s tenure was “a lost opportunity to fix real constitutional problems,” such as government financing of religious organizations that discriminate in hiring or that serve the public in overtly religious settings.

FIND THIS ARTICLE AT: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/08/us/politics/white-house-director-of-faith-based-initiatives-will-step-down.html?_r=1&

Rev. Joel Hunter: Obama’s National Prayer Breakfast Message Marks a Shift

President Obama struck a humble tone at the National Prayer Breakfast, the Rev. Joel Hunter said on Thursday [Feb. 7, 2013]. The senior pastor of Northland, A Church Distributed said the President spoke less of his own faith as he has in the past and more about the role of humility in leadership. “We must keep that same humility that Dr. King and Lincoln and Washington and all our great leaders understood is at the core of true leadership,” Obama said in his speech. The president began his address by announcing that his head of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, Joshua DuBois, will leave his position on Friday. Ben Carson, a pediatric surgeon at Johns Hopkins University and a Seventh Day Adventist, was the keynote speaker at the breakfast.

Video from Odyssey Networks.

WASHINGTON POST: Obama’s use of Scripture has elements of Lincoln, King

President Obama will publicly take the oath of office with Bibles once owned by his political heroes, Abraham Lincoln and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. One Bible was well read, but cited cautiously. The other granted scriptural sanction to the civil rights movement.

When Obama lifts his hands from the Bibles and turns to deliver his second inaugural address on Monday (Jan. 21), his own approach to Scripture will come into view. Characteristically, it sits somewhere between the former president and famous preacher.

His faith forged in the black church, Obama draws deeply on its blending of biblical narratives with contemporary issues such as racism and poverty. But like Lincoln, Obama also acknowledges that Americans sometimes invoke the same Bible to argue past each other, and that Scripture itself counsels against sanctimony.

Obama articulated this view most clearly in a 2006 speech, saying that secularists shouldn’t bar believers from the public square, but neither should people of faith expect America to be one vast amen corner.

“He understands that you can appeal to people on religious grounds,” said Jeffrey Siker, a theology professor at Loyola Marymount University in California who has studied Obama’s speeches. “But you also have to be able to translate your case into arguments that people of different faiths, or no faith, can grasp.”

Florida megachurch pastor Joel Hunter, a close spiritual adviser to the president, said Obama often starts the day by reading Scripture.

One “great source of encouragement in my life,” Obama has said, is Isaiah 40:31: “Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.”

Obama seldom attends church since moving into the White House but occasionally alludes to his private faith in public speeches. More often, he cites Scripture to connect with traditions and arguments familiar to most Americans, if only faintly.

“He is a leader who wants to approach challenges from many different aspects of our lives,” Hunter said. “Not just intellectual, but also moral, and he finds Scripture to be a way of communicating values that many of us share.”

Like many liberal Protestants, Obama often emphasizes Bible passages that urge compassion for the poor and downtrodden.

“He uses those Scriptures more than any other type,” said Hunter. “It has to do with assisting those in need, rather than moral commands about sin,” Hunter said.

As Hunter notes, occupying the bully pulpit gives presidents license to cite Scripture, and Obama is far from the first to use it.

Bill Clinton alluded to the Psalms while asking for forgiveness during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, and George W. Bush cited Scripture to forge a personal connection with evangelical Christians.

Obama uses the Bible a bit more broadly.

He has quoted the Sermon on the Mount to explain his economic views, read Psalms to bereaved families in Newtown, Conn., and Tucson, Ariz., and cited the Bible’s Golden Rule to explain his evolving support for same-sex marriage.

During his 2009 inaugural address, Obama cited the Apostle Paul’s admonition to “set aside childish things,” challenging the country to tackle its complex problems.

“Any time anybody quotes Scripture, they are implicitly saying: If you are a person of faith, this is what God is telling us to do,” said Siker.

But like Lincoln, Obama has also used the Bible for the opposite purpose — to argue that no one fully knows the divine design.

“The full breadth of human knowledge is like a grain of sand in God’s hands,” Obama said at the National Prayer Breakfast in 2011. “And there are some mysteries in this world we cannot fully comprehend. As it’s written in Job,’God’s voice thunders in marvelous ways. He does great things beyond our understandings.’”

Of course, not everyone agrees with Obama’s interpretation of Scripture.

Focus on the Family founder James Dobson has accused Obama of “dragging biblical understanding through the gutter.” Former GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum said Obama has a “phony theology ... not a theology based on the Bible.”

But nothing upset conservatives quite like Obama’s citation of the Bible to back same-sex marriage. Even Hunter criticized the president. “You can’t cite one Scripture to interpret or negate other Scriptures,” he said. “But I know for him that was a moral decision.”

That’s precisely why Obama drew on the Bible, said Mary Frances Berry, co-author of “Power in Words: The Stories Behind Barack Obama’s Speeches, from the State House to the White House.”

“What he wants is to have moral authority. Not just to be president, but to have moral authority,” Berry said. “That’s in the black tradition. We talk about the preacher as having moral authority: the ability to convince your audience of the rightness of what you are saying.”

In that tradition, Obama sometimes bookends big speeches with Scripture, Berry said, wedging a challenging message in between.

Despite Obama’s later estrangement from the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, his former pastor at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, he learned at the feet of a rhetorical master, said Martha Simmons, co-editor of “Preaching with Sacred Fire,” an anthology of African-American sermons.

Among the skills Obama gleaned at Trinity UCC is the ability to draw modern messages from ancient texts, and to condense that message into a memorable phrase. It’s called “shorthanding” Scripture, Simmons said.

For example, Obama frequently used the expression “we are our brother’s keeper” during his 2008 presidential campaign. Some evangelicals were perplexed at the citation, noting that it comes from the mouth of Cain, history’s most famous fratricide.

But the message, which Obama used to argue against excessive individualism, made perfect sense to African-Americans, said Simmons. “He was doing what the black community does: understanding the relevancy of the text for our modern context.”

One more rhetorical tact Obama learned from the black church, especially from King: Orators can challenge their audience, but should always end on an uplifting note.

“When all is said and done,” Simmons said, “you leave people with a hopeful word.”

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FIND THIS ARTICLE AT: http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-faith/obamas-use-of-scripture-has-elements-of-lincoln-king/2013/01/16/869efbac-601b-11e2-9dc9-bca76dd777b8_story.html

The new evangelicals: A return to the original agenda of Christ

I am one of those evangelicals who, in Professor Marcia Pally’s words, have “left the right.” As a former President-elect of the Christian Coalition of America, I resigned that position and all other positions that would box me into ideologies that were becoming insidiously narrow and negative. As a 64-year-old pastor, I may not yet be representative of my generation or profession in my political openness, but I am one of a growing number of white evangelicals who are making biblically-based decisions on an issue-by-issue basis, in a wider circle of conversations than ever. We are put off by the “hardening of the categories” that is stifling not only intellectually, but also spiritually. Part of this transition is cultural. As Professor Pally pointed out, it is not only a generational shift that naturally declares independence from traditional religious reactions (especially paternalistic ones). The transition is for others a distancing from the institutionalism of the church and the inelasticity of a movement that began as personally charitable but has become dogmatically xenophobic.

The greater part of this change, however, is a generic return to the original agenda of Christ. As the world becomes more complex and less predictable, we are seeing a “back to basics” trend. It is an expansion beyond a preoccupation with the more recent monitoring of sexual matters, to a more ‘whole life’ helpfulness. It is the turn from accusation to compassion, and it is much in keeping with the priorities and example of Jesus. His focus on helping the most vulnerable is also our concern. Thus more and more evangelicals are expanding the definition of pro-life. They are including in a pro-life framework concern with poverty, environmental pollution, AIDS treatment, and more. And issues like abortion are being expanded from focusing on only “in utero” concerns—increasing numbers of evangelicals now see prevention of unwanted pregnancy and support for needy expectant mothers as pro-life.

More evangelicals simply want to live our lives according to our spiritual values—unselfishness, other-centeredness, non-presumptuousness—so that when people see “our good works, they will give glory to our Father in heaven.”

Lastly, practically all sustainable change is relationally based. In an increasingly connected world, an increasing number of evangelicals are developing a broader range of relationships, both interfaith and inter-lifestyle. These make us think twice before we declare those who have different values as adversaries. As we “love our neighbor,” we want to cooperate in ways that express our own values while allowing others to express their own.

Professor Pally has established a masterful and nuanced summary of the change in the evangelical political voice. I hope that we will continue the dialogue.

FIND THIS ARTICLE AT: http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/2013/01/16/a-return-to-the-original-agenda-of-christ/

Pastor Joel Hunter Named to Orlando Sentinel's "25 Most Powerful" List of Leaders

" ... 15. Joel Hunter, senior pastor of Northland, A Church Distributed. (Last year: Not ranked.) Hunter, 64, is the first religious leader to ever make this list. He's widely respected locally. And nationally, he's known for having prayed with presidents Obama and Bush. Hunter's thoughtful and serious approach to faith continues to attract thousands every week to his Longwood-based congregation."

READ MORE: http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/politics/os-scott-maxwell-most-powerful-people-20130101,0,4516284.column