Evangelical leaders: global warming 'uncertain'

Oy vey. It's statements like these that convince atheists good evangelicals have no brains:

WASHINGTON – While it may seem like everyone believes in global warming and the impending catastrophe it will bring, a group of conservative Christians countered that message Thursday by launching a national campaign to gather one million signatures for a statement that says Christians must not believe in all the hype about global warming.

The “We Get It!” declaration, which currently has nearly 100 signers, is backed by prominent Christians including Tony Perkins of Family Research Council, Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family, award-winning radio host Janet Parshall, and U.S. Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma.

What supporters of the statement seek is to inform Christians about the biblical perspective on the environment and the poor, and to encourage them to look at the hard evidence, which they say does not support the devastating degree of climate change claimed by mainstream society.

“How can you create policies on uncertain science?” asked Dr. Barrett Duke, vice president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

“How can you say what it is that needs to be done when you don’t really know and you don’t really have real consensus on the state of the problem or what is causing the problem?”

I've never understood who the Tony Perkinses and James Dobsonses of the world speak for. It's certainly not me or a lot of other evangelicals like the NAE's Richard Cizik. Maybe the pope.

GodTube likes big bucks

I've never used GodTube, the evangelical equivalent of YouTube, but apparently enough people have that a London hedge fund thought the company deserved a $30 million investment. The NY Times explains:

When it was formally introduced last August, GodTube was the fastest-growing Web site, as rated by comScore, attracting 1.7 million unique visitors for the month. The traffic remains about the same today. “People thirst for more than just a once-a-week relationship with the Lord and Savior,” said Jason Illian, Big Jump Media’s chief strategy officer. “They desire something that they can live out 24/7.”

Unlike its secular cousin, YouTube, GodTube is proudly filtered: all content must gain approval from the site’s headquarters in Plano, Tex. Vulgar and overtly sexual material isn’t allowed. Neither are videos promoting other religions — for that, there are JewTube.com and IslamicTube.net. (Appropriately enough, the domain name SatanTube.com is for sale.)

Mocking Christianity is definitely not allowed. James O’Malley, a 20-year-old from Leicestershire, in Britain, posted a series of videos last year that jeered at evangelical theology. During a videotaped walking tour of the Natural History Museum in London, he referred to a plesiosaur fossil as a “liar-saur” and noted that volcanoes tended to erupt in non-Christian countries.

“The first couple of videos, where I spoke about Biblical infallibility and homosexuality, remained on GodTube and were treated like any other video,” Mr. O’Malley said. “It was only when I posted a third video suggesting that the earth was flat and that astronauts were part of the ‘round earth’ conspiracy that they finally cottoned on to the fact it was a hoax, and I was banned.”

More in line with GodTube’s spirit is “Baby Got Book,” a satire of the rapper Sir Mix-A-Lot’s ode to the full-size derrière, “Baby Got Back.” In it, Dan Smith, a 34-year-old minister at a church near Cleveland, simultaneously praises godly women and pokes fun at aspects of Christian culture. He dances around with a gold neck medallion reading KJV (for King James Version) and tweaks Sir Mix-A-Lot’s lyrics so that “butt” becomes “Bible” and “she looks like a total prostitute” turns into “looks like Mother Teresa.”

The video has logged more views on GodTube than it has on YouTube. Mr. Smith says he appreciates the exposure, though he prefers promoting his music in places where he can reach nonbelievers, like call-in radio shows. “I just know there aren’t a lot of unchurched or de-churched people going to GodTube,” he said.

I just watched "Baby Got Book" while typing this, and it was worth a few good laughs. Not $30 million, but at least $5. I'm interested to see how GodTube makes money off its popularity.

Leading evangelicals to condemn group's politicization

Big statement coming from evangelicals today:

Conservative Christian leaders who believe the word "evangelical" has lost its religious meaning plan to release a starkly self-critical document saying the movement has become too political and has diminished the Gospel through its approach to the culture wars.

The statement, called "An Evangelical Manifesto," condemns Christians on the right and left for "using faith" to express political views without regard to the truth of the Bible, according to a draft of the document obtained Friday by The Associated Press.

"That way faith loses its independence, Christians become `useful idiots' for one political party or another, and the Christian faith becomes an ideology," according to the draft.

The declaration, scheduled to be released Wednesday in Washington, encourages Christians to be politically engaged and uphold teachings such as traditional marriage. But the drafters say evangelicals have often expressed "truth without love," helping create a backlash against religion during a "generation of culture warring."

"All too often we have attacked the evils and injustices of others," they wrote, "while we have condoned our own sins." They argue, "we must reform our own behavior."

The Evangelical Manifesto, to be presented at the National Press Club, carries a lot of the mainstream voices that teeter between liberal and conservative politics -- a refreshing bit of news for a brand of Christianity that has become far too aligned with political power and the Republican Party.

David Neff, the top editor at Christianity Today, to which I regularly contribute, told The Seeker that it was high time evangelicals reflected on what it has meant to be seen as a political bloc.

By clinging too tightly to the Bible as a political platform, Neff said, evangelical messengers often fail to reach the general public. Not only does biblical reasoning fail to persuade everyone in the public square, it also creates a backlash that damages how people perceive evangelical Christianity, he said.

"Faith is a very humble thing and ideology is a severe master," he said. "Faith is a humble trusting in God and a willingness to proceed not always knowing where we’re headed," he said, adding that ideology replaces a "confidence in God" with "confidence in a particular set of precepts."

Remember, Christianity is a religion of cultural change, not political dealings.

Wheaton professor fired over divorce

Wheaton College is an evangelical school outside of Chicago. Like many colleges cut from conservative Protestant cloth, its students and faculty must uphold a stricter standard of conduct than they would at, say, Florida State. One of those rules for married faculty is remaining so. Divorce is grounds for dismissal unless your circumstances fit the biblical exemption, which generally is limited to an unfaithful spouse.

The problem for Kent Gramm is he doesn't want to talk with Wheaton administrators about why he and his wife are separating. So they're letting him go.

For him, he says, it didn’t seem appropriate “to subject your personal life to the judgment of the college administrators.” However, he told his students of his reasons for leaving – first reported in Wheaton’s student newspaper, The Wheaton Record – to offer them an alternative model of Christian living. Gramm, who teaches literature, fiction and nonfiction writing, has his master of divinity degree in addition to his M.A. and Ph.D.

“I think the students can be given a false picture of what the proper Christian life should be,” Gramm says. “Whereas many of these students come from households that have been broken by divorce, and if they conform to the overall population, half of them themselves will be going through divorce. And if they are shown that God doesn’t abandon you if you are divorced and they’re shown that this is a part of life and that sometimes it can possibly be the right thing or the best thing, not necessarily the desirable thing, to do, then I think that might help them in their future lives.”

Gonzo journalist goes on Christian retreat; says 'Jesus made me puke'

Rolling Stone's gonzo political reporter, Matt Taibbi, who has been called a latter-day Hunter S. Thompson (over and over again), has a new book about his "tales from the evangelical front lines." Taibbi is a great reporter and a fantastic writer, but he doesn't strike me as the kind of guy who would be inducted into GetReligion's hall of fame. Not with writing like this.

"The Great Derangement," his cynically named book, does, however, offer a number of interesting windows into life in the Rev. John Hagee's "apocalyptic mega-ministry." It is with Hagee's Cornerstone Church that Taibbi attends a weekend retreat through which he tells his tale.

So here I was, standing in the church parking lot, having responded to church advertisements hawking an "Encounter Weekend" — three solid days of sleep-away Christian fellowship that would teach me the "joy" of "knowing the truth" and "being set free." That had sounded harmless enough, but now that I was here and surrounded by all of these blanket-bearing people, I was nervous. When most Americans think of the Christian right, they think of scenes from television — great halls full of perfectly groomed people in pale suits and light-colored dresses, smiling and happy and full of the Holy Spirit, robotically singing hymns at the behest of some squeaky-clean pastor with a baritone voice and impossible hair. We don't get to see the utterly batshit world they live in, when the cameras are turned off and their pastors are not afraid of saying the really dumb stuff, for fear of it turning up on CNN. In American evangelical Christianity, in other words, there's a ready-for-prime-time stage act — toned down and lip-synced to match a set of PG lyrics that won't scare the advertisers — and then there's the real party backstage, where the spiritual hair really gets let down. I was about to go backstage, to personally take part in the indoctrination process for a major Southern evangelical church. Waiting to board the bus for the Encounter Weekend, I had visions of some charismatic ranch-land Jesus, stoned on beer and the Caligula director's cut and too drunk late at night to chase after the minor children, hauling me into a barn for an in-the-hay shortcut to truth and freedom. Ridiculous, of course, but I really was afraid, mostly of my own ignorance and prejudices. I had never been to something like this before, and I didn't know how to act. I badly wanted to be invisible.

Taibbi, of course, fails to remain inconspicuous. How could he after fabricating his "wound" -- a concept, which Taibbi calls "schlock biblical Freudianism," from John Eldredge's "Wild at Heart" -- as being the abused son of an alcoholic circus clown?

Unfortunately, my one fleeting error of judgment about my circus-clown dad had left me shackled to a rank character absurdity for the rest of my stay in Texas. I soon found myself reading aloud a passage from my "autobiography" describing a period of my father's life when he quit clowning to hand out fliers in a Fudgie the Whale costume outside a Carvel ice cream store:

I laugh about it now, but once he chased me, drunk, in his Fudgie the Whale costume. He chased me into the bathroom, laid me across the toilet seat and hit me with his fins, which underneath were still a man's hands.

Taibbi later seems dismayed his fellow retreaters actually believe his outlandish story of hardship. He chalks this up to their pathetic lives. And that is sad.

I'm the first to agree that "Wild at Heart" was a sappy manifesto about how all the pain in our life is caused by some single trauma. And I was understanding when one of my friends said he literally tossed the book across the room when Eldredge's son asked, "Am I a wild man dad?" (That is supposed to be a good thing.) And I wish Christians writers were more critically introspective of their own community.

But there is something positive to be said about a group of "desperate congregants," as Taibbi terms them, who are willing to come alongside you and help you along, even if your major malfunction is the consequence of being beaten with clown shoes. This is not, as Taibbi later calls it, your "basic cultist bait-and-switch formula," even if it is coming from a rather fundamentalist congregation. Fear and loathing, anyone?

If you want to read more, a lengthy excerpt can be found in Rolling Stone's current issue.

Evangelicals kicked out of Jordan

There is an important post over at the CT Liveblog discussing recent reports that evangelical Christians have been kicked out of Jordan or had their visa renewals denied.

The government alleges covert missionary activity. Compass Direct reports on this aspect, noting in a late February dispatch:

Jordan last week [week of Feb. 17] admitted to expelling foreigners for “illegal” missionary activities. Acting Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh told the Jordanian parliament on Wednesday (February 20) that authorities had expelled missionaries operating “under the cover of doing charitable work,” suggesting that evangelistic activity is illegal in Jordan. If such evangelistic work were illegal, Jordan could be opening itself to accusations of violating of Article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which the country published in its official Gazette in July 2006, giving it the force of law.

On January 29 Compass reported that Jordan had deported and denied residence permits to at least 27 foreign Christian individuals and families in 2007. On February 20 the acting foreign minister, Judeh, read a statement by the Council of the Church Leaders of Jordan condemning the Compass report. The Jordanian parliament on Thursday (February 21) then passed a resolution condemning the Compass article. While it was unclear what the government considered false in the report, the fact of deportations of Christians was further verified as authorities on February 10 expelled an Egyptian pastor with the Assemblies of God church in Madaba and, the previous week, an Egyptian pastor from a Baptist church in Zarqa.

The big question for President Bush and Jordan's King Abdullah is this: How can they expect evangelicals, American or otherwise, to support a Middle East peace strategy that puts a very low priority on securing religious freedom for all peoples of the Middle East?

If religious freedom is in jeopardy in a Western-friendly nation like Jordan, then Islamic leaders in Gaza, Syria, Iran, or Afghanistan have little or no motivation provide religious freedom to their populations.

Hagee says the darndest things

In the wake of the "controversy" surrounding the Rev. John Hagee's endorsement of John McCain for president -- comparisons have been made to Farrakhan's desire for a black president, a veiled endorsement that Barack Obama repudiated -- The Forward offers a run down of some of Hagee's most explosive comments.

On Hurricane Katrina: “All hurricanes are acts of God, because God controls the heavens. I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God, and they were recipients of the judgment of God for that… I believe that Hurricane Katrina was, in fact, the judgment of God against the city of New Orleans.”

On the Catholic Church: “Most readers will be shocked by the clear record of history linking Adolf Hitler and the Roman Catholic Church in a conspiracy to exterminate the Jews.”

On Muslims: Asked whether he believes that Muslims have a mandate to kill Christians and Jews, Hagee replied, “Well, the Koran teaches that. Yes, it teaches that very clearly.” On women: “Do you know the difference between a woman with PMS and a snarling Doberman pinscher? The answer is lipstick. Do you know the difference between a terrorist and a woman with PMS? You can negotiate with a terrorist.”

On the Antichrist: “He’s going to make a seven-year treaty with Israel and set up his image to be worshiped in Israel. And that is where I’m convinced that a Jewish person who understands who he is shoots him, because the Bible says he’s wounded in the head and recovers wondrously, emulating the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. At this point in time when he comes back to life he has the personality of a Hitler. He now pursues the Jewish people. The Jewish people then go to Petra, which is a place in Jordan that is a natural fortress. And that God is going to provide for them there protection from him. And as he gets ready to pursue him, the Bible says that he, the Antichrist, hears tidings from the east that disturb him. The tidings from the east is that… the Chinese army is marching up the Euphrates River, 200 million of them, and they’re moving toward the battle of Armageddon, because they want the oil that will make them a superpower.”

On the Israeli-Palestinian peace process: “When the Annapolis Conference was being planned and the topic of dividing Jerusalem came up, one man asked me, ‘Where do you stand on this based on the Bible?’ I responded that ‘the plan of the Antichrist is to divide Jerusalem.’ If America puts pressure on Israel to divide Jerusalem we are following the blueprint of the Prince of Darkness. Amos 3:2 states that any nation that divides the Land of Israel will come under the severe judgment of God.”

Hagee, the head of Christians United for Israel, will speak next week at Stephen S. Wise Temple in Los Angeles.

Previously in Outlandish Opinions, The God Blog mentioned Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Israel whoppers. And here's a kid saying the darndest thing.

'Hating Hillary'

A Christianity Today editorial now online takes up a phenomenon that could dog Hillary Clinton if she survives as the Democratic nominee -- an increasingly unlikely event unless things turn around tonight. The issue is one I've mentioned here before: Despite the findings of a recent Zogby poll, evangelicals love to hate Hillary.

Her public persona, a brand of East Coast liberalism with roots in '60s radical politics, strikes many Americans as uppity and unapproachable. Open talk about her personal faith in recent years strikes some as politically convenient. And Clinton's consistently pro-choice stance on abortion clashes with most evangelicals' deeply held belief that life begins in the womb and should be protected at great cost.

But then come more baseless blows to the former first lady. No small amount of jokes and hate-marketing attests to how far the "Hate Hillary" demographic stretches: T-shirts, bumper stickers, voodoo dolls, and "No Way in Hellary" BBQ aprons are now among the items you can purchase to advertise your anti-Hillary stance. On the nonprofit side, scads of websites dish on Hillary's supposed crookery, while bloggers invent new derogatory nicknames, such as Hitlery and Hilldabeast. We seem to simply enjoy hating Hillary. ...

Perhaps Hillary-bashing says more about the political climate Americans have created than it does about Clinton herself. The current President? "Village Idiot." The one before him? "Slick Willy." And on it goes. Instead of researching a candidate's voting record or listening to position statements on pressing issues, it's easier to mark someone ENEMY and begin the verbal whacking. There's admittedly something comforting about this: It helps make sense of the world and creates a feeling of mutuality among those with whom we share dislike. The factions created around enemies may even bear a far-off resemblance to true community.
Better than bashing

Evangelicals, knowing that turning candidates into verbal punching bags will never create real community, are called to talk about political figures in ways starkly different from the pundits and hate-marketers.

While the loudest political voices this election season will keep only a loose rein on their tongues, evangelicals do well to ponder the Bible's insights into the mysterious yet profound connection between a person's heart and mouth: "The things that come out of the mouth," says Jesus, "come from the heart." Which is why Paul says, "Now you must rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips" (Col. 3:8). Biblical psychology assumes not only that the words of our mouths reveal the state of our hearts, but that words have power to shape the heart—for better or worse.

Americans change faiths frequently

A new survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life found that "constant movement characterizes the American religious marketplace": more than a quarter of Americans leave the faith they grew up with, that about 16 percent aren't affiliated with any religion and that Protestants are approaching minority status. Some explaining from The New York Times:

While the unaffiliated have been growing, Protestantism has been declining, the survey found. In the 1970s, Protestants accounted for about two-thirds of the population. The Pew survey found they now make up about 51 percent. Evangelical Christians account for a slim majority of Protestants, and those who leave one evangelical denomination usually move to another, rather than to mainline churches.

To Prof. Stephen Prothero, large numbers of Americans leaving organized religion and large numbers still embracing the fervor of evangelical Christianity point to the same desires.

“The trend is toward more personal religion, and evangelicals offer that,” said Mr. Prothero, chairman of the religion department at Boston University, who explained that evangelical churches tailor many of their activities for youth. “Those losing out are offering impersonal religion and those winning are offering a smaller scale: mega-churches succeed not because they are mega but because they have smaller ministries inside.”

Rick Warren On Faith

I wish I had a viral marketer to send my best blog posts out in press releases. The folks at The Washington Post and On Faith do, and their publicist just sent me a plug for a taped interview with Rick Warren, who you might know as "founding and senior pastor of the largest Christian church in California, best-selling author and influential evangelical leader Rick Warren."

I'm having problems embedding the video, but here is a link to the highlights, in which Warren talks about why Jesus couldn't have been "a good man," why music is a proof for God's existence and why atheists don't believe.

A lot of times our morality tends to dictate our theology. And that is, well, like I said to Sam Harris. I said, Sam, if there was a God, would you have to change your lifestyle? And he said, 'yeah' and I said, 'Well, I think really, Sam, you just don’t want a boss. The bottom line is you don't want a solving God who tells you this is right or this is wrong. And, you want to live a kind of life where you make your decisions rather than God saying this is what I want you to do with your life.

McCain loses conservative Christian vote, according to GodTube's unscientific, but possibly accurate, 'stunning new poll'

Via the DMN religion blog:

GodTube is a Dallas-based online service aimed at Christians. It's hosted a presidential poll that is no more scientific that me sticking my finger in the air. Self-selecting, non-random, it's own population. But that doesn't mean it's not interesting. GodTubers (which sounds like a sacred potato, no?) clearly do not (heart) McCain. Specific results after the jump.

From my e-box:

DALLAS, Texas (Feb. 14, 2008) - GodTube.com has announced that despite the recent sweeping victory for John McCain, a stunning new GodTube.com poll reveals that if McCain wins his party's nomination, Christian Conservative participants would rather vote for one of the two Democratic candidates.

With a slim 9.1% support for McCain, Obama has become a viable choice for many Christian Conservatives with 26.3% of the Christian vote, up 8% from last week.

Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton showed no increase in the GodTube.com poll this week maintaining her 19.6% of the Christian vote while Republican candidate Mike Huckabee increased his lead 30% last week, leading the GodTube.com poll by 45% of the overall Christian vote.

TV goons miss the point on religion coverage

That is generally the theme of the GetReligion blog, that "the press ... just doesn't get religion." Here's what David Pulliam was most recently referring to: the growing liberalization of young evangelicals, which you probably noticed sometime in the past few years and not when you saw it on the evening news a few nights ago.

Sometimes television news pieces are just bad. ...

This ABC News piece on asking the question “Are Young Evangelicals Skewing More Liberal?” is case in point. First of all, please don’t ask questions like this in a news article headline. Rhetorical questions are best saved for cocktail party conversations.

The story gets support from what I believe is a September 2007 Pew Research Center survey — a very good source by the way — that found that “40 percent of evangelicals younger than 30 call themselves Republicans,” and that two years ago 55 percent of evangelicals claimed the GOP. In the substance department, that’s about as far as the article takes the reader:

This weekend at a concert and a rally in New York City, a huge gathering of Christian youth came together to decry the coarsening of culture.

“What should be done to stop glamorizing the things that are destroying my friends, your friends — like drugs, alcohol and sex?” cried a young evangelical.

The top three issues these young evangelical Christians said they most want the presidential candidates to address are Internet pornography, media glamorization of sex and drugs, and children orphaned by AIDS. Abortion and gay marriage were not at the top of their list.

Many of those who did rank abortion as their number one issue also said their favorite candidate was Barack Obama.

Zogby must be wrong: evangelicals like Hillary?

This can't be. It just doesn't jibe with everything we've been told: Hillary Clinton is the Democratic favorite among white evangelicals? They split the Christian vote on Super Tuesday, but this Zogby poll from the primaries shows Clinton is way ahead with evangelicals and points to other religious voting patterns of note.

What we do know is that Hillary is doing better among evangelicals than she is among Protestants in general. And that’s a surprise, especially since most pundits have assumed that Obama, not Clinton, is the evangelical favorite on the Democratic side.

The reality, it seems to me, is that who is supporting Hillary really doesn't matter. Barack Obama has the momentum, steamrollering last night. And Clinton seemed to be cooked.

Though, yesterday I saw this headline accompanying Clinton's portrait on the homepage of Slate: "Is She Doomed?" The article offered a surprisingly upbeat analysis for Clinton's camp:

The best news for Hillary Clinton's campaign may be that it's headed over a cliff. In a campaign season where conventional wisdom has been so wrong so often, she can take heart that the current view among the political class is that Obama is marching unstoppably toward the nomination.

Obama has won the last five contests by wide margins and looks on course to win all three primaries on Tuesday. The Clinton campaign predicted this would be a good period for Obama and that they could take this in stride, but their nonchalance crumbled when Clinton replaced her campaign manager this week. (We're winning; time to fire the quarterback!) Obama is also ahead of Clinton for the first time in a national poll and outperforms Clinton in head-to-head matchups with likely opponent John McCain. Obama has more money, can raise it easily, and still draws those blockbuster crowds. (He should travel with his own overflow room since they are so often required at the venues he uses.)

But all is not lost for those who support Hillary Clinton.

Here's why, John Dickerson argues: Clinton has secured the key voting blocs, being the front-runner in such a rollercoaster campaign is a recipe for losing, and, if the race comes down to the 796 superdelegates, well, maybe they'll favor Clinton's insider credentials. Then again:

In a race where so much that seemed certain has not been, any struggling candidate can find a reason to persevere, especially perhaps a candidate who was once seen as inevitable. Of course the race's switchbacks have now become such a predictable part of conventional wisdom that it may be time now for the undulations to stop and for momentum to start playing a role again. In that case, Clinton is doomed.

Why Huckabee will bomb in big cities

He might be a favorite of evangelicals, but former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee has said some things that scare other Americans, particularly those oh-so-coveted swing voters.

Zero percent -- that's a bagel -- of New York Jews favored Huckabee over the other Republican front-runners in a mid-January poll by Siena College. And a completely unscientific search here in Los Angeles didn't yield better results. (Huckabee's press office did not respond to a request for info on any Jewish volunteers in California; Greenfield also was unaware of any supporters.)

Here's how Jacques Berlinerblau, the author of "Thumpin' It," explained that phenomenon to me:

"Jews have been conditioned to play it close to the vest and keep their religious sentiments to themselves," said Berlinerblau, an associate professor of Jewish civilization at Georgetown University. "It is so viscerally in our cultural DNA, I don't think we are very comfortable with public faith-and-values talk. Especially when it is coming from a Christian spokesperson."

I know what you are thinking: Jews aren't typically considered swing voters. True, but if the Republican nominee is John McCain, we will most certainly see more Jews vote Republican than if the nominee is Huckabee or Mitt Romney or, heaven help us, Ron Paul. The same can be said for those who consider themselves an amalgam of liberal and conservative political opinions.

The question then becomes: What happens to the evangelical vote if the nominee is not Huckabee?

Obama on reaching evangelicals

You know it is a religion-laced campaign season when only days before Barack Obama got on the phone with reporters for Jewish publications to reiterate that he's not an anti-Semite, he spoke with Christianity Today about his faith and why he thinks evangelicals can trust him.

I am a Christian, and I am a devout Christian. I believe in the redemptive death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I believe that that faith gives me a path to be cleansed of sin and have eternal life. But most importantly, I believe in the example that Jesus set by feeding the hungry and healing the sick and always prioritizing the least of these over the powerful. I didn't 'fall out in church' as they say, but there was a very strong awakening in me of the importance of these issues in my life. I didn't want to walk alone on this journey. Accepting Jesus Christ in my life has been a powerful guide for my conduct and my values and my ideals.

There is one thing that I want to mention that I think is important. Part of what we've been seeing during the course this campaign is some scurrilous e-mails that have been sent out, denying my faith, talking about me being a Muslim, suggesting that I got sworn in the U.S. Senate with a Quran in my hand or that I don't pledge allegiance to the flag. I think it's really important for your readers to know that I have been a member of the same church for almost 20 years, and I have never practiced Islam. I am respectful of the religion, but it's not my own. One of the things that's very important in this day and age is that we don't use religion as a political tool and certainly that we don't lie about religion as a way to score political points. I just thought it was important to get that in there to dispel rumors that have been over the Internet. We've done so repeatedly, but obviously it's a political tactic of somebody to try to provide this misinformation.

Pat Robertson not popular with evangelicals

Pat Robertson gets mentioned here every now and then. And a recent poll by Beliefnet confirmed a sentiment I expressed in November when Rudy Giuliani garnered the endorsement of Pat Robertson: "Who cares?"

Only about 19.6 percent of evangelicals. That's the percentage that have a favorable impression of Robertson. That's the lowest popularity of the eight Christian leaders survey subjects were asked about. (Billy Graham led the list with 87.3 percent favorable reviews.)

Hillary and evangelicals: 'The Antichrist is here'

As you know, Hillary Clinton has been talking a lot about her lifelong commitment to the Methodist church, a part of the Godtalk game that I spoke with Georgetown associate professor Jacques Berlinerblau about today. (He's got a knew book out called "Thumpin' It.")

"In Hillary's case, it's not so much that she wants to project herself as a religious virtuoso, it is that she wants to avoids the stigma of a label that was unfairly applied to her in the early '90s of being a radical, godless feminist," Berlinerblau told me. "And she gives off the impression of being a solid religious citizen, of being steeped in her church since childhood. It's defensive. She is not letting people accuse her of being some godless, feminist, blue state politician.

"What's the prize? The prize is evangelical voters."

Still, the perspective in this cartoon is one many evangelicals have of Clinton. It's hard to know if she'll be able to overcome it.

(Hat tip: CT Liveblog)

Huckabee: 'Change the Constitution' for God

I have no idea why Mike Huckabee thinks the Constitution is un-Christian, a statement he made last night that only makes me more wary of his candidacy.

I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution. But I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God, and that's what we need to do is to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards so it lines up with some contemporary view of how we treat each other and how we treat the family.

This is really ridiculous. And it is exactly the kind of politicking the Constitution sought to prevent. Huckabee keeps selling his conservative Christian creds like a used-car salesman, but this time it might backfire.

I can see how support for a human life amendment and a federal marriage amendment can win votes among some politically conservative evangelicals. But honestly, I'm thinking that this quote probably cost Huckabee more evangelical votes than it won him. The strongest supporters of those amendments have made the case on pragmatic grounds, not theological ones. James Dobson, for example, doesn't say the federal marriage amendment is necessary to bring the Constitution in line with God's standards. He says it's necessary to keep marriage from being redefined legally and culturally.

Round 2 for McCain and S. Carolina evangelicals

God-o-Meter looks at John McCain's second chance in South Carolina, the site of his presidential-would-be collapse eight years ago.

This all seems so eight years ago. A folksy Southern evangelical wins Iowa only to be stopped in his tracks by maverick John McCain. But will what happens next in the Republican presidential race be a replay of 2000? Will the Christian Right stop McCain cold in South Carolina? God-o-Meter doubts it. Let's examine the evidence:

1. As opposed to denouncing the Christian Right as "agents of intolerance," as he did in 2000, McCain is enthusiastically reaching out the movement. ...

2. McCain has launched a "truth squad" in South Carolina to smack down potentially ruinous attacks as they surface. Rumors spread by George W. Bush supporters about McCain in South Carolina--including that he had fathered an illegitimate child--hit him especially hard among "values voters."

3. McCain got just as many evangelical votes in New Hampshire as Mike Huckabee. ...

Does this mean John McCain will have an easy time in the Palmetto State? No. But for McCain, what happens next won't be a replay of 2000.

New Yorker on megachurches

The current issue of The New Yorker, which is always late to arrive at my place, has a story about one of the few New England megachurches. This is a photo of Faith Church from The New Yorker's online slideshow. The full article is not available yet.

Previously, Malcolm Gladwell wrote about the success of the cellular church, the Orange County behemoth led by Rick Warren.