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Special Report
Q’ing Evangelicals
Young evangelicals gathered in divided Washington this week for a sometimes odd mix of civil exchanges and hipster Christianity.
About 700 mostly young evangelicals convened this week amid the soaring Doric columns of the august Andrew Mellon Auditorium in the Federal Triangle of Washington, D.C. It was the fifth convocation of “Q,” which aims to provoke cultural and political conversation among Christians. President Obama sent greetings by video. New York Times columnist David Brooks discussed humility, while his fellow Times columnist Ross Douthat talked politics. Conservative philanthropist Roberta Ahmanson discussed art. Southern Baptist leader Richard Land conversed with Evangelical Left activist Jim Wallis. NPR’s Barbara Bradley Hagerty peered into the future of religion and the media. American Enterprise Institute President Arthur Brooks defended capitalism, almost provoking an approving smile from the dour portrait of former Treasury Secretary and financier Andrew Mellon that graced the auditorium’s entrance.
Immersed in slickly produced sound and light, amid the performance of stirring old hymns, “Q” founder and leader Gabe Lyons presided from the stage in a fashionably tight jacket, his bare ankles showing no socks, and a shock of blonde hair cascading over one eye. Other speakers replicated his mode look, and hipster Christianity was definitely de rigueur. An after party appropriately convened in the esoteric D.C. office space of Google. A temporary coffee house, always bustling, serviced “Q” across 3 days.
Ostensibly young evangelicals, discomfited by the culture wars of their conservative grandparents and leaders like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, are shifting somewhat left. A poll of “Q” participants showed not quite 60 percent opposing Obama’s reelection, and just over 40 percent supporting. This result almost mirrors how young evangelicals voted in 2008, even while white evangelicals as a whole favored Republicans by over 70 percent. But even among young conservative evangelicals, or at least the activist elites, there is often a preference for non-controversial humanitarian causes over hot buttons like abortion and homosexuality. About 60 percent of “Q” reportedly professed no allegiance to a political party.
Sojourners chief Jim Wallis tries to speak for this new demographic, focusing on social justice, disavowing partisanship, and mostly avoiding the hot buttons. “Christians should not worship at the altar of politics,” he opined without irony, even though he is of course intensely political. “We should be the ultimate independents.” He pointed to “common ground” issues like foreign aid, religious liberty, Comprehensive Immigration Reform, “abortion reduction,” strengthening families, and a “foreign policy that reduces conflicts.” By “abortion reduction,” Wallis mostly means larger federal social welfare programs, not legal restrictions. He is also typically reluctant to define “family” or suggest aids to it beyond more government largesse.
Richard Land, as head of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, was more direct, especially about abortion: “Vote for unborn citizens; they can’t vote!” He warned that spiraling federal deficits were “generational theft.” And he retorted to Wallis’s usual claim that federal budgets are “moral documents” that tax policy is also a “moral issue.” Wallis wants to address deficits with more taxation, Land warns of taxation’s impact on the economy and on families.
Ross Douthat admitted his New York Times readers are likely more secular and liberal than America as a whole. He suggested America has become more religious but also less theologically orthodox, thanks to the decline of institutional religion, especially Mainline Protestantism. Therapeutic religion, Oprah-style spirituality, and prosperity Gospels have often filled the vacuum. Across America, Methodists and Lutherans and Presbyterians have been replaced by generic evangelicals, noncommittal church hopping Christians, and persons who are spiritual but not religious. Douthat’s new book is Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics. The lack of a “theological center” in America is leading to cultural and political polarization, he warns. He worries that that while evangelicals have become ascendant, they likely cannot fill the breech left by imploding Protestant churches and slowly declining Roman Catholicism. A poll of “Q” shows participants mostly belong to nondenominational churches.
Maybe representative of the new evangelical is Florida megachurch pastor Joel Hunter, often cited as spiritual counselor to President Obama, and prominent on the National Association of Evangelicals. “Government Is Not the Enemy,” was the title of his talk, as he bemoaned increasing hostility to “big government.” Instead, Hunter insisted, government is an “instrument of God” with which churches should partner. “Let’s not fool ourselves” that churches could feed the poor if government retreated, he opined. “Government can’t changes lives, but they have resources,” he said. “We can change lives with those resources,” he suggested, hailing government grants to faith-based charities. Hunter called President Obama a “very humble man” who reads the Bible and prays every day.
Making the “Moral Case for Capitalism,” Arthur Brooks thanked globalization and free markets, not the United Nations, for reducing extreme global poverty by 80 percent over several decades. Liberal lobbyist David Beckmann of Bread for the World repeated this good news, saying global poverty had been halved in 30 years, while mostly crediting foreign aid. “Our loving God is bringing hundreds of millions out of poverty,” he celebrated. “Many more Christians are involved in advocacy with government for poor people around the world.” But turning negative, Beckmann complained: “I don’t think our country is serious about reducing hunger and poverty.” Not since Lyndon Johnson have Americans been willing to vote for someone who really pushes against poverty, he bewailed. More optimistically, a USAID official noted that foreign aid is “building the markets of tomorrow,” citing prosperous South Korea as a former aid recipient.
Two evangelical environmental activists fretted over climate change and mercury poisoning. A winsome Palestinian Christian complained of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, implicitly criticizing typically pro-Israel U.S. evangelicals. An Israeli lawyer largely agreed, fingering “dispensationalist” pro-Israel evangelicals who don’t think he’s “patriotic enough.” Conservative thinker Jay Richards of the Discovery Institute hailed increased cooperation between evangelicals and Catholics, whether in overseas missions, or the “mission field outside a Planned Parenthood clinic.”
A final sermon to “Q” seemed to warn against too much creative hipster evangelical Christianity, emphasizing tradition, historic Christian worship, and the ancient church creeds: “We can’t reinvent the world if we keep reinventing the church.” Wise words, though traditional Christians don’t typically think they can totally reinvent the world, which is ultimately a divine prerogative. “Q” offered an intriguing window into America’s always vibrant religiosity, at once both troubling and reassuring.
About the Author
Mark Tooley is president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy in Washington, D.C. and author of Methodism and Politics in the Twentieth Century. You can follow him on Twitter @markdtooley.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (55) | Leave a comment
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Jack in Wi.| 4.12.12 @ 7:32AM
Well it seems like the young evangelicals are as divided like everyone else in the country. It was good that there was finally an honest discussion about Palistine. One thing is sure. The people running the Republican and Democrat parties have little to do with Christian principles. Both Obama and Romney are not traditional Christians in theology or practice.
Ryan| 4.12.12 @ 12:38PM
I don't know that there can be an honest discussion about Palestine or Israel until at least two things happen.
1. Palestinians cease all hostilities, particularly random attacks against Israel civilians, and using civilian structures and women and children as cover. This also includes revocation of Hexbollahd and Hamas, and admission that the Protocols of Zion is a fraudulent document.
2. Israelies cease overstating what is anti-semitism.
Appleby| 4.12.12 @ 7:44AM
All in all, this sounds like the echo of "Meaningful Nonsense" we trudged through at Bible College in the mid 1960s, and judging by the fact that the over 200 Catholic churches in Toronto were crammed to the doors during Holy Week, including young people with their growing families, I would guess that it's receiving the same attention from the same audience as it was then. If not wearing sox is the best a leader can do toward thumbing his nose at Mom and Dad, I think we're on the right road.
What the Slacker Occupiers are of course looking for is an easy, wide road along which their parents and the government will carry them ... and the whine that churches cannot care for the masses of Poor People that these kids wouldn't know if they bit them on the backside is a personal cop-out that we in Socialist Kanukistan hear all the time. Charity is the Government's job; buy the t-shirt and feel good about yourself and leave the heavy lifting to bureaucrats. Real Christians are the people who flocked to New Orleans, and better yet to Nashville (where the Government was not interested in parading, since it was white people who were harmed by that disaster) with truckloads of goods and tools and loving kindness; and in fact it was many of their cohort, the non-slacker branches, who are still spending their holidays in these hard-hit areas, doing what Jesus taught was our PERSONAL responsibilities, without blowing trumpets or waving pre-printed signs urging the government to force their neighbours to feed His Sheep.
I have much more faith in the Wednesday night gatherings at the hundreds of thousands of churches in Flyover Country than I do in the annual gatherings of Hipster Christians strutting and fretting for a swarm vacation before they head home to watch The Real Housewives of Peyton Place and endlessly tweet about Justin Bieber.
Stormzeye| 4.12.12 @ 9:27AM
Be careful about marginalizing the impact of these "useful idiots" that the wolf in sheep's clothing (Jim Wallis) is all to eager to use to his purposes: the get the federal government to confiscate money from the taxpayers and give it to his "faith based" organizations to re-engineer society.
Were it not for our crippled educational system from public school to graduate school, we would be graduating "critical thinkers" instead of these sheep ready to be sheared.
BodieInSD| 4.12.12 @ 5:37PM
Well, when you get a "video greeting" from President Obama, and the first two speakers mentioned are from the New York Times, I have apretty good idea of what kind of "Christian" group this is.
Rev. Fox| 4.13.12 @ 11:28PM
Well said, Appleby. I am a minister of the gospel from New York City, and I am surrounded by the "emerging church" of Neo-Evangelicalism, both locally and throughout my denomination.
There is little new here. Neo-Evangelicalism's positions are essentially those of liberal Protestantism one hundred years ago. They only seem new because today's liberal Protestantism has moved so far beyond their forebears from the last century that Neo-Evangelicalism's embrace of them seems novel. Perhaps in another hundred years, Neo-Evangelicalism will have caught up with the liberal Protestantism of today — one can only imagine where liberal Protestantism itself will be by that point. It is likely that we will not have to speculate, since I suspect most Neo-Evangelicals will be absorbed into current liberal Protestantism, and revitalize that dying breed with a new surge of enthusiasm. Whatever actually happens, what is clear is that in chasing the liberal Christianity of yesteryear, Neo-Evangelicalism is heading in a direction counter to that of biblical, orthodox Christianity.
Ambassador for Christ| 4.14.12 @ 6:39PM
If you aren't evangelical, you aren't Christian.
"I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus who is to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and his Kingdom: preach the Word, be urgent in season and out of season, convince, rebuke, and exhort, be unfailing in patience and in teaching.
For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths." 2 Tim. 4:1-5.
Unless of course you want to try and tell us that God didn't mean that "for you".
Layne S| 4.12.12 @ 9:03AM
"'Let's not [fool] ourselves' that churches could feed the poor if government retreated, he opined. 'Government can't changes lives, but they have resources,' he said. 'We can change lives with those resources,' he suggested, hailing government grants to faith-based charities."
Wow, where to start. I'm not sure how you can claim to believe in a Sovereign God that lives in you and and at the same time claim that the church couldn't meet the needs of people - oh, but government can. Maybe he doesn't believe in a Sovereign God. He certainly appears to believe in the god of government. Secondly, I wonder where Mr. Hunter thinks government gets its resources.... um, the people?! Do you suppose, sir, that churches could tap into those resources within their own local body of believers and make decisions about how to help the needy without giving, say 50+% to the bureaucracy first? In fact, there are some churches doing just that.
It's sad to read about other believers looking to the god of government instead of the one, true Sovereign God of the universe for guidance about how to help the needy. Their logic is quite vacuous.
Quartermaster| 4.12.12 @ 9:42AM
Gov gets its resources by stealing from "We The People" in the form of veiled armed robbery. The country took care of its impoverished at one time because everyone worked and tried to support themselves. The rest could then chip in, voluntarily (an idea utterly foreign to both the falsely labeled evangelical left and mainline leftists) and take care of the needy, and did it rather well until FDR and LBJ came along.
Hipster Christianity isn't Christianity, just an attempt to syncretize with the culture at large. Christianity has always been counter cultural, and that will not change. As the country falls further, Christianity the culture will become more obviously anti-Christian.
No Christian could honestly stand for the re-election of the Kenyan. Obama is quite anti-Christian, as is those who support him, such as Wallis.
Trinacria| 4.12.12 @ 4:21PM
Remarkable, isn't it, L? Funny how the discussion about who can best "help the poor" conspicously excludes any discussion of how to empower the poor to help themselves.
And by the way, since when did compulsory confiscation of assets become "charity"? Bunch of intellectually vacant schmucks...
Doctor Right| 4.12.12 @ 9:38AM
The misappropriation and misuse of the word "evangelical" needs to be addressed.
Put simple, "evangelizing" means spreading the Good News of Christ as written in the Gospels.
That's it. And it's something that ALL who call themselves Christians should be doing. In essence, all faithful and believing Christians are "evangelicals."
Nonetheless, the media throws this term around generically and without regard for it's meaning. It's often hard to tell who they're describing.
Lately, the term seems to apply to these phony "hipster" Christians who are using the Word of God to spread the Social Gospel, not the Good News.
Indeed, the idea that the people described are increasingly more interested in "non-confrontational humanitarian issues" instead of "controversial" issues (meaning obedience to God's Word) says all you need to know about these stylish devotees.
And FYI, the mainstream Protestant Churches that are disintegrating are liberal churches. More orthodox churches ate growing.
Patrick| 4.12.12 @ 11:44PM
As I am a papist, perhaps I am wrong on the moniker.
Isn't "Evangelical" (the ecclesiastic label) essentially just a word for "Low Church" Protestantism?
Patrick J| 4.12.12 @ 11:47PM
Sorry, the above is me, not another Patrick. Odd, as I'm used to being the only "Patrick" in a given situation...
Rev. Fox| 4.13.12 @ 11:40PM
No, Patrick, as Dr. Right says above, "evangelical" in its truest sense refers to those Christians who focus on the spread of the evangel, i.e., the gospel. After the introduction of liberal Christianity at the end of the 19th-century, evangelicals who resisted the intrusion of modernism into church doctrine and practice could be found in all denominations, high and low.
After WWII, evangelicals increasingly left their denominations for low-church non-denominational churches, or in many cases, formed alternate, conservative denominations, that tend to be higher-church, mirroring the liberal denominations they left behind. Today, the term seems to be used by the media and the culture at large to refer almost exclusively to the low-church variety.
Bill H| 4.12.12 @ 9:46AM
..."though traditional Christians don't typically think they can totally reinvent the world, which is ultimately a divine prerogative."
Spot on! Since the birth of Civil Rights movement Americans have been fooled into thinking that each of us has the power to remake the world. Never mind that the world in around them isn't getting better. While it has always been a central theme of Christianity that the Church can change the world the mechanism that change was faith not activism. God was the central player not man. All that has changed.
Appleby| 4.12.12 @ 7:48PM
Yes, the culmination of that false impression of human power being the false god of Global Warming/Climate change.
Anyone who has ever watched a total eclipse of the Sun, in person, has a much clearer idea of Man's relative power to influence Nature than most of these slacklustre kiddies ever will.
THKrupp| 4.13.12 @ 12:10PM
I disagree. Each person has the power to make their individual life better. Multiple individuals making their own life better makes all life better in general. You can have all the faith you want but if you just sit there doing nothing...nothing will happen. Faith is about the afterlife, action is for changing the now. We all have the power to remake our own little piece of the world. The founders of our country reinvented the world. They werent supermen or particularly different from any other men, but they changed the course of history. They did this through action.
Unger| 4.12.12 @ 10:24AM
In the article we read, that Joel "Hunter called President Obama a 'very humble man' who reads the Bible and prays every day."
I know a lot of men who are about Obama's age. Most try to attend church regularly and try, struggle to live as Christians.
To a man, they would never lie about reading the Bible every day. As they don't. They might wish to and wish to have this great habit in their lives all the time, but they openly, humbly admit that the non stop g0-go-go of life gets in their way.
Thus, let me tell Mr. Joel Hunter something -- sincerely, "Stop peddling the malarkey. Obama does not read a Bible every day."
The truth is, Hunter, he disdains that Bible and whomever he prays to is not the God of the Bible.
I have a feeling that when I start to learn who Joel Hunter is, I will learn of a charlatan leading his flock....where?
Patrick| 4.12.12 @ 2:44PM
I do not see humility in Obama. How a born again believer could ever vote for Obama is beyond my understanding.
IrishEdddieOHara| 4.12.12 @ 5:59PM
Joel Hunter is probably the same kind of immoral shill for Obama that Rush Limbaugh is for Capitalism
Citizen Jerry| 4.12.12 @ 6:15PM
Eddie, stop acting like an idiot!
Anommynous| 4.12.12 @ 10:46AM
"But even among young conservative evangelicals, or at least the activist elites, there is often a preference for non-controversial humanitarian causes over hot buttons like abortion and homosexuality."
Burger King Christianity
"Have it your way."
Mazzuchelli| 4.12.12 @ 3:50PM
LOL!
Ryan| 4.12.12 @ 4:33PM
I could live with the desire to be apolitical only as long as the focus is truly spreading the Gospel, and using that to change the overall culture.
Doctor Right| 4.12.12 @ 5:24PM
Not me.
I don't see how any Christian can be apolitical.
Politics is power that determines how we will live.
If Christians wish to remain truly Free, and all that implies, then we CANNOT sit idly by and be apart from it all. Too much is at stake.
And remember...the only reason that the Left hates the influence of Christians in politics is precisely because we're effective, and our beliefs are not based on secular humanism. In other words, we don't worship at the altar of the state.
I hear people in my own Church say all the time "Oh, that's just politics," and I urge them to not be so naive.
Yes, it's politics. All the more reason that we should participate.
Ryan| 4.13.12 @ 2:08PM
I'm not saying don't participate. What I AM saying is that we need to remember what it is that truly changes peoples' hearts - the Gospel. I can't change a heart away from abortion or homosexuality with the law, even though we may even be able to minimize the activity.
Christ brings the core, soul-change which is truly necessary. I think that a lot of Christians tend to forget that.
When we have to resort to attempting to change the law rather than peoples' hearts, have we won or lost?
Layne S| 4.14.12 @ 8:22AM
Dr. Right is not saying either / or. He's saying both. In other words, we both work to influence the adapting of laws AND work at influencing people's hearts. And I fully agree with him.
IrishEdddieOHara| 4.12.12 @ 5:58PM
False Gospels do not change cultures. Evangelicalism is a false Gospel.
Ryan| 4.13.12 @ 2:06PM
Sooo...telling people that they are sinners and that Jesus died for them is a false Gospel?
Ambassador for Christ| 4.14.12 @ 6:45PM
A false gospel is anything preached that is not written in the Bible.
The teachings of Christ and the will of God are all contained in therein, and God made certain of it.
Either one believes the Words of God, and preach them, or they are preaching a false gospel.
Citizen Jerry| 4.12.12 @ 11:42AM
America has become more religious but also less theologically orthodox? There's the truth, and there's the lie. Choose this day who you would serve.
David T| 4.12.12 @ 11:46AM
The Catholic Church is not "slowly declining." Church growth, fueled in large part by immigration, has equaled or exceeded U.S. population growth in recent years. There are more than 68 million Catholics in the U.S. today. The World Council of Churches publishes membership data for all churches.
JP| 4.12.12 @ 2:03PM
The RCC adds about 100,000 new adult converts every year.
IrishEdddieOHara| 4.12.12 @ 5:56PM
Yes. And many of them are former Evangelicals like myself who found out that we were:
A. Lied to about the Church.
B. Decieved about doctrine.
C. Given a false Church history.
D. Deliberately kept in the dark.
I have as much use for Evangelicalism as I have for an infected tooth
Appleby| 4.12.12 @ 7:50PM
Amen! Me too!
Ambassador for Christ| 4.14.12 @ 6:46PM
Catholicism IS a false gospel, period.
Ryan| 4.16.12 @ 9:53AM
So....there were hardly any Christians from about 100 AD to the 1600s?
Big Bob| 4.12.12 @ 1:26PM
I'd like to know who assigned the term "evangelicals" to this group, and how is it that it is accepted without questions or caveat. Did they take the term themselves? Is one an evangelical because they call themselves an evangelical? Is that all there is? I think a more interesting column would have been a look into the etymology of this group and term. I can call myself an actor or poet all day long. It doesn't make me either one. The same thing is true here. Please don't accept the premise unilaterally. Thanks.
JohnM| 4.12.12 @ 1:35PM
Conversation, just conversation? Did they do anything? Did they resolve to do anything? They may as well have stayed home watching tv and showing up at church on Sunday.
Doctor Right| 4.12.12 @ 5:25PM
Liberals think that all of life's problems are solved by workshops...
BackToBasics| 4.12.12 @ 1:51PM
As soon as I read in the first paragraph that Obam spoke to them by video, I figured something wansn't right. So, I didn't have to read much further to see this, "Ostensibly young evangelicals, discomfited by the culture wars of their conservative grandparents and leaders ..."
Ostensible or misguided; one of these two descriptions or both in some cases sounds about right.
I think everyone likes to be at least a little "hip." But the overdone "hipness" is the same old record repackaged. Ecclesiastes says, there's nothin new under the sun. Thirty years ago, Amy Grant tried the hip-Christianity when she received the grammy in bare feet. Other Christian artists have done similar things.
Young people are no different than anyone else who seeks for a personal God such as one can find with a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. They want God's love and forgiveness, assurances and a sense of His presence. If "hipness" is used as a substitute, it will fail. I see it in so many churches now too. Many churches play loud rock and roll style music in an attempt to win young people. But it's not the style of music but rather the sense of the Holy Spirit and sometimes that "still small voice" that makes good worship. Mild rock, a' capella, piano, organ, etc. all have merit if accompanied by the Holy Spirit's worship-enabling presence. I leave out "hip" hard rock as I've never seen it work yet as a worship form that builds up one's faith.
I've seen young people quickly rise to their feet in encores for traditional, non-hard rock group concerts, where the Holy Spirit was evident in the worship. The gimmicks in the churches have gotten out of hand in my opinion. The susbtitutes have a "liberal" and false sense to them and leave one wanting.
Any movement in the Christian church that mixes Biblical traditions with leftist ideology thus giving it the blessings or partial blessings of the left will fail to bring about a strong church and will fail as a beacon for those seeking a true relationship with God.
M&M| 4.12.12 @ 3:42PM
I like your post, Back2Basics. Thank you.
Might you have thoughts on Hillsong? I've seen some of their YouTube videos. (And I have to wonder about all the logistics and the work that went into video cuts, camera angles, etc.) I'll be frank: I get very very concerned as I see the "make me feel good" and "I want a good vibe" Hillsong stuff. It looks narcisisitc. It does not look genuine. To go back to the word you and the article writer used, it looks way too hip.
Ryan| 4.12.12 @ 4:35PM
It depends. Art for the glory of God is genuine. It can come in many forms, even video editing. If that is the purpose, then I am all for it.
I think that there are a lot of Christians who miss that point - that part of being "made in God's image" is the idea that we are creative beings, and our ability to imagine and create is a reflection upon Who God Is.
BackToBasics| 4.13.12 @ 12:26AM
Thank you, M&M. I'd never heard of Hillsong until your post. I looked it up. What I heard sounds okay. In my post I was not referring to production techniques. I was more referring to whether a mode of worship allows for reflection and a sense of God's presence and a sense of corporate worship before the Lord. As I said in my post, I have found almost every musical form helpful in bringing this about except for loud and / or hard rock. So many of the churches just have a pounding, one-size-fits-all noise-fest on Sunday mornings. Don't the church leaders and worship leaders ever read how Elijah did not hear God's voice in the earthquake and fire but rather in the still small voice of God? 1 Kings 19:12.
Good teaching in a family and their church is necessary of course, but good worship is also needful individually, in a family and at church to help a church remain vibrant and strong. I find it interesting that there is not one mention in the Bible of Jesus laughing, but there is a mention after the Lord's Supper of Jesus and the disciples singing.
As for "vibes" I do not worry about them. I do KNOW the Lord's Holy Spirit as all Chistians do. It is not necessary to "feel" the Lord's presence everytime in worship and expecting it can lead to emotionalism rather than sensing God's presence and I do know the difference. I know His presence as John 10:14 says, "I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine."
BackToBasics| 4.13.12 @ 1:11AM
M&M, in referring more to the music rather than the production I missed one of your points. As for producing such videos, I think it's okay if the producers are trying to spread the Gospel. But caution is needed too, most especially by person or group being recorded as they can become the center of attention rather than the Lord. So, I understand your point. Yet those singing or playing, recording or watching such videos and hearing the music may still be blessed by the Lord.
Mazzuchelli| 4.12.12 @ 4:11PM
The very excellent Catholic high school I attended in the '70s in central California was strict academically and lame from a religious perspective. Rock bands, new age nonsense before new age was invented. At the same time, the Mother Superior wore black, floor-length robes with large, brown brogan's marking her 6-foot stride. The priests were a notorious lot either smoking or drinking too much or displaying excessively masculine good looks to the young women flocking around them. The local church still held early morning Latin mass! Raised by agnostics and agnostic myself, there's no moral ground from which to complain. But I've always looked to the Catholics to hold down the fort. I should probably join up and give them a hand.
Magic Underwear| 4.12.12 @ 4:36PM
BELIEVE IN IT!
IrishEdddieOHara| 4.12.12 @ 5:54PM
Wow!!! Excuse me for appearing rude in my observation, but this was nothing more than a good ol' Texas whorehouse using the name of Jesus. Let's just cite a few examples:
1. First of all, the fact that Herr Obama would send greetings to this group makes me entirely suspicious of it. One must know that a REAL group of REAL Christians (i.e. those who support the life of babies and not grinding them into hamburger for medical experimentation) would more likely get the NYC Single Finger Salute from him than a greeting. Makes me suspicious from the start.
2. Jim Wallis & Arthur Brooks on the same platform. Wallis must have been ready to lose his lunch while Brooks was trying to figure out how to turn all these eager young people into nice little Capitalist drones, subservient to Wall Street. The rest of the speakers were also a pretty shady crewe!
3. Wallis' ideas about the goverment giving out more and more welfare are clownish. Doesn't this man know that the government wastes .74 cents of every dollar they collect for welfare programs? Does he not know of the complete fraud and waste that infests these programs? Does he not know that money distributed through the Church is better spent, more wisely used, and gets in larger percentages to the people it is supposed to help? We don't need more welfare, we need LESS!!!! Welfare encourages sloth, irresponsibility, drug abuse, and fornication. And this is what Wallis wants to support? Sheeeeesh!!!
4. Joel Hunter somehow thinks that Judas Obama is some form of real Christian??? On what planet? Real followers of Christ do not kill the innocent and promote immorality. And Hunter wants MORE GOVERNMENT. The very government that wants to defile our right to obey our conscience in religious matters? What is this guy, out of his mind????
5. As noted elsewhere, the Catholic Church is not diminishing. It is growing, and my hope is that it is growing with orthodox bishops, priests, and laity who will rouse the Church from Her slumber and become the Church militant again, especially in the area of social justice. It is time that politicians once again wondered with fear about what the Church would do before they pass a law. It is time that politicians fear for the wrath of 70+ million voting Catholics who will throw them out of office for killing the unborn and destroying the family.
This meeting was a showcase for what is WRONG with the spiritual life in America. Jesus established one Church. There is still only one Church. The denominations represented here are not that Church. They are various shades of apostates and heretics, and the last I looked, nations in heresy cannot expect God's blessing. Until this circus sideshow ends, don't expect blessing. This is an accurate description, not a slam or rude. Go to an Evangelical assembly and see the drums, the tambourines, the rock singers crooning about "Jaaaaaayzuz". That is not worship. That is entertainment. It' s not about Jesus. It's about feeling good. When I listen to a Jimmy Swaggart convention, I wonder if I am listening to a nightclub. There is no sacrifice, no altar, no Eucharist --- nothing!!!!
Thanks for an article that shows the real problem in America today. We have no blessing because we have forgotten God and put Baal worship in His place.
Ryan| 4.13.12 @ 2:12PM
Wow, thanks for overgeneralizing and demonizing envangelicals. Your hyperbole goes into the realm of false witness.
MANY evangelicals (maybe depends on how you define the term) are good, honest, God-fearing people who happen to worship God differently than you do, and still have repented of their sins and received Christ's grace to save them.
BackToBasics| 4.13.12 @ 9:25PM
That's right, Irish, go ahead and criticize us for being suspicious of Obam's sweet talk to this group. Then come back and defend him for forcing Catholic and other faith institutions to provide birth control or abortions through the insurance policies they have. What, people don't have a right to be suspicious of him? If that's the case then you don't have any right to be suspicious of us.
BackToBasics| 4.13.12 @ 9:28PM
Sorry, Irish, I jumped the gun on that one. I thought you were talking about the comments rather than the group itself.
Becky| 4.12.12 @ 11:13PM
Sounds like the Tower of Babel to me.
albert constantine jr.| 4.12.12 @ 11:36PM
“…they likely cannot fill the breech left by imploding Protestant churches…”
Please allow me to don my pain in the a$$ proofreader cap here, Mr. Tooley. “Breech” is the base of a firearm, howitzer or cannon, along with a few other definitions. “Breach” describes a gap in the line or other such opening. As it can also mean the same as “Break”, keep that spelling in mind as an aid.
Wally| 4.13.12 @ 12:04AM
Irrelevant pow-wow of the fake anti-Jewish anti-Israel xians - a Jewish Messiah will know what special place to put these reptilians into...
Pastor emeritus Nathan Bickel | 4.16.12 @ 12:50PM
Hunter's ("Christian") characterization of Obama is very disturbing. It illustrates that he has his head stuck in the sands of arrogance and denial. Obama is no more Christian than the man in the moon:
"Sample of Hate Crimes by Obama Against America:"
http://moralmatters.org/2012/0.....t-america/