Filed Under (News-Joel Hunter) by Robert Andrescik on 17-07-2009
Even before Barack Obama was elected president, religious figures loomed large in his political career. The greatest threat to his presidential campaign came not from another candidate but from his longtime pastor, Jeremiah Wright, whose controversial sermons prompted questions about Obama’s judgment in associating with him. After Election Day, the first big controversy of the Obama era was the president-elect’s invitation to evangelical preacher Rick Warren, an opponent of abortion rights and gay marriage, to give the opening prayer at his inauguration. And Obama has offered religious leaders an unusually prominent role in his administration by convening an advisory council for the White House faith-based office that’s dominated by clergy and heads of religious groups.
Members of a generation of evangelical leaders who’ve stepped onto the national political stage in the last decade have gone out of their way to define themselves as outside the Christian right, their socially conservative views notwithstanding. Think Rick Warren or Joel Hunter.
Such figures have two big beefs with the Christian right: its single-minded focus on hot-button issues—more or less ignoring social justice issues like fighting poverty or HIV/AIDS in Africa—and its belligerent approach to politics. (In the 1990s, Ralph Reed, then director of the Christian Coalition, said his enemies wouldn’t be aware of his vast grass-roots army “until you’re in a body bag.”)
The Warrens and Hunters of the evangelical world broadened the evangelical political agenda and avoided slash-and-burn tactics and rhetoric. Read the rest of this entry »
Filed Under (News-Joel Hunter) by Robert Andrescik on 16-07-2009
Leaders of conservative Christian groups are wringing their hands over pending approval of a federal hate crimes bill, but opinions are divided on whether their fears are justified.
More than a decade since Matthew Shepard, a gay, 21-year-old Wyoming college student, was murdered, Democrats may pass a bill in his name that would add sexual orientation and gender identity to the list of federally prosecuted hate crimes. The House passed the legislation 249-175 in late April, and the Senate could vote on a nearly identical bill as early as today. Read the rest of this entry »
Filed Under (News-Joel Hunter) by Robert Andrescik on 14-07-2009
Pastor Hunter is No. 41 in the magazine's annual listing of the"50 Most Powerful" people in Orlando.
When Joel Hunter’s picture appeared on the front page of the Sunday The New York Times a few months back, it only confirmed the Longwood mega-church pastor’s rise to national prominence. Hunter has helped build Northland, a Church Distributed, into a high-tech congregation of 12,000 whose cyber-tentacles stretch from its $32 million sanctuary throughout Central Florida and the world.
In the past year, he has been profiled by New Yorker magazine and on PBS, and in April he was appointed for a one-year term to President Obama’s White House Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Hunter first connected with Obama after a campaign forum at Messiah College in Pennsylvania during that state’s primary. Asked by a campaign aide if he would give the candidate a few private moments, Hunter recalls, “We talked some and then held hands as we prayed. No mention of this was ever made to the press. It was not for the public; it was for him. It’s a memory that will always stick with me.”
Later, Hunter, a registered Republican who is a strong advocate of addressing global warming, was asked to deliver the closing prayer at the Democratic National Convention and in the fall prayed with Obama by phone on Election Day. According to the Times, Hunter is one of five pastors now considered closest to the president
Hunter’s influence may be more pronounced outside Central Florida than in it. Over the past five years the departure or retirement of area mega-church pastors have left a vacuum that Hunter has not yet chosen to fill. Perhaps his greatest impact locally has been to mobilize his congregation for conservation and energy-saving efforts, which the pastor prefers to call “creation care,” rather than environmentalism.
Filed Under (News-Joel Hunter) by Robert Andrescik on 08-07-2009
By Eric Fingerhut — July 7, 2009
WASHINGTON (JTA) — They talked about Israel and about proselytizing — but perhaps the most important thing about the recent meeting between nearly 40 Jewish and evangelical Christian leaders was that they were talking at all.
Organizers believe the two-day meeting last month in Washington was the first time, at least in recent memory, that rabbis, pastors and other on-the-ground leaders of the two faith groups had sat down to have a conversation about their respective faiths and concerns about various issues. Read the rest of this entry »
Two million people look for God each day — not in church, but in a search.
“The number is staggering,” said Mark Weimer, a self-described techie evangelist whose ministry has tapped the Internet to capture those looking for spiritual answers.
Weimer, who previously ran his own Silicon Valley start-up, insists this is not virtual proselytizing.
“We are always up front about the fact that we are presenting the Christian message,” he told ABCNews.com. “We don’t want to deceive anyone. That would be offensive.”
Global Outreach estimates that 1 in 1,000 Internet searchers is looking for information about God. Just last year, their sites had 3 million visitors.
On an average day, sites like Jesus2020 get 150,000 visitors, and about 25,000 of them click a button to say they want to learn more. Of those about 5,000 a day fill in a form so an online missionary can contact them via e-mail.
Their questions are often surprising, according to Weimer: “Now that I have accepted Christ, what do I do next? Do I need to be perfect now? How do I pray?” Read the rest of this entry »
DULUTH, Ga. (Associated Baptist Press) — A member of President Obama’s advisory council on faith-based partnerships says pastors are key to winning the hearts and minds of evangelicals when it comes to caring for the environment.
Joel Hunter, pastor of Northland Church in Lakewood, Fla., said May 13 at a conference promoting “creation care” that it is important to get pastors “equipped and empowered in order to care about this issue.”
Hunter, author of A New Kind of Conservative, said pastors care passionately about people and about serving Christ, but many are insecure about losing their jobs.
“A lot of pastors feel like they are two bad sermons from, ‘Do you want fries with that?’” Hunter told evangelical leaders meeting May 13-15 at Cross Pointe Church in Duluth, Ga. “So we stay away from controversial subjects unless we see them as necessary for spiritual maturity for our people and unless we know facts.” Read the rest of this entry »
Filed Under (News-Joel Hunter) by Robert Andrescik on 07-05-2009
(WASHINGTON) - As climate bill negotiations reach their apex this week, Members of Congress, religious and military leaders are intensifying their efforts to ensure the legislation prioritizes the most vulnerable at home and abroad. Bolstered by the results of a new national poll that shows strong support among key religious groups for action on climate change and its impact on the most vulnerable, U.S. Reps. Heath Shuler and Tom Perriello joined religious and military leaders today to discuss the importance of these principles and announce a new radio and email campaign that will press this message in key districts across America. Read the rest of this entry »
Filed Under (News-Joel Hunter) by Robert Andrescik on 07-05-2009
Greg Warner, Religion News Service
Does conservative Christianity encourage torture?
That debate has been reignited by new numbers from the Pew Research Center that show white evangelicals are more supportive of “torture to gain important information from suspected terrorists” than any other religious or political group in the survey.
Less than half of the general public (49 percent) say government-sponsored torture can “often” or “sometimes” be justified, compared to almost two-thirds of white evangelicals (62 percent).
That view is almost identical to the view of Republicans (64 percent), giving fuel to the charge that evangelicals’ views on torture are rooted more in politics than their faith.
“Conservatives are living within their own moral universe,” said Joel Hunter, an evangelical megachurch pastor from suburban Orlando, Fla. “In the last few decades, we have kind of created our own moral terms — more neoconservative than walking in sacrificial love.” Read the rest of this entry »
Dr. Hunter was a witness at a hearing on “Comprehensive Immigration Reform in 2009, Can We Do It and How?”, scheduled by the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Refugees, which was presided over by Sen. Charles Schumer.
Even before Barack Obama was elected president, religious figures loomed large in his political career. The greatest threat to his presidential campaign came not from another candidate but from his longtime pastor, Jeremiah Wright, whose controversial sermons prompted questions about Obama’s judgment in associating with him. After Election Day, the first big controversy of the Obama era was the president-elect’s invitation to evangelical preacher Rick Warren, an opponent of abortion rights and gay marriage, to give the opening prayer at his inauguration. And Obama has offered religious leaders an unusually prominent role in his administration by convening an advisory council for the White House faith-based office that’s dominated by clergy and heads of religious groups.
