On April 30, 2009, Northland’s senior pastor, Dr. Joel C. 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.

Sen. Charles Schumer, who presided over the hearing, personally extended the invitation to participate to Dr. Hunter, who is a member of President Obama’s Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Following is the testimony offered by Dr. Hunter.

Thank you, Chairman Schumer, distinguished members of the subcommittee, esteemed colleagues on this panel, and other guests, for providing me an opportunity to speak on the moral and religious reasons for immigration reform.

I am a one of hundreds of thousands of local religious leaders in this country. I have been a pastor for almost 40 years and that is what I want to be in all my years remaining. Even though I am also in leadership positions of national and international groups that are dealing with immigration, it is at the local level that I am continually reminded that policy truly does hurt or help people. Read the rest of this entry »

This educational mini-documentary reveals how faith, science, art, and conservation voices are joining together to discuss the threat of climate change to wildlife and talk about hope for the future. It features several Christian leaders including Northland’s senior pastor, Dr. Joel C. Hunter.

VIDEO CLIP: Our source of truth.
SLIDESHOW: Various pictures of Dr. Hunter.

The Pastor of a Longwood Church Speaks for a New Style of Evangelicals

By Jay Hamburg
Sentinel Staff Writer
April 12, 2009

He doesn’t thunder from the pulpit in righteous rage. He’d rather relay stories that make a moral point.

He has no catchphrases, fussy handlers or televised religious talk shows.

What the soft-spoken Rev. Joel Hunter of Longwood does have is an evangelical church of 12,000, a talent for building diverse coalitions and a prominent spiritual advisory role in the administration of President Barack Obama, a Democrat.

Not bad for a registered Republican who came to Central Florida in 1985 to take charge of a small flock that grew into one of the region’s largest megachurches.

As Hunter delivers his three Easter sermons today at Northland, a Church Distributed, he holds a place in the national spotlight unmatched by any other faith leader in Central Florida.

But it wasn’t something that seemed destined from the start.

The man who prayed with Obama on Inauguration Day lost his first preaching job when a United Methodist church in Indiana faced a crucial decision nearly 40 years ago: Should they buy new carpet or keep their youth minister, the motorcycle-riding evangelical called Pastor Joel?

New carpet won by a landslide.

“I wasn’t that great a shakes,” Hunter said.

But in the decades that followed, the hard-working pastor proved to be a formidable leader. Read the rest of this entry »

Dr. Hunter and Roland discuss what it means to be a new kind of conservative.

From The New York Times, By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
President Obama has been without a pastor or a home church ever since he cut his ties to the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. in the heat of the presidential campaign. But he has quietly cultivated a handful of evangelical pastors for private prayer sessions on the telephone and for discussions on the role of religion in politics.

All are men, two of them white and three black - including the Rev. Otis Moss Jr., a graying lion of the civil rights movement. Two, the entrepreneurial dynamos Bishop T. D. Jakes and the Rev. Kirbyjon H. Caldwell, also served as occasional spiritual advisers to President George W. Bush. Another, the Rev. Jim Wallis, leans left on some issues, like military intervention and poverty programs, but opposes abortion.

None of these pastors are affiliated with the religious right, though several are quite conservative theologically. One of them, the Rev. Joel C. Hunter, the pastor of a conservative megachurch in Florida, was branded a turncoat by some leaders of the Christian right when he began to speak out on the need to stop global warming. Read the rest of this entry »

From Central Florida Lifestyle Publications, By Michele G. Hudson

Longwood pastor Joel C. Hunter leads a global ministry that serves our local community.

“Let’s go out and change the world for good.” These passionate words, delivered by Longwood pastor Joel C. Hunter in the closing prayer at the 2008 Democratic National Convention, reflect this evangelical leader’s perpetual mission. Read the rest of this entry »

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.” Read the rest of this entry »

Click here to watch the video!

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

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. Read the rest of this entry »