Tag Archives: Conservatism

Politics

Billy Graham Warned Against the Political Right Manipulating Religion to Promote Bigotry

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Did you know about this? In 1981, the world famous evangelist Billy Graham said:

“I don’t want to see religious bigotry in any form… It would disturb me if there was a wedding between the religious fundamentalists and the political right. The hard right has no interest in religion except to manipulate it.” – Billy Graham

Many have questioned whether this really is true so

and unlike most of the things the MAGA movement is claiming nowadays, it’s completely accurate. In the 1 February 1981 cover story of Parade magazine; Billy Graham’s commented his conversations with fellow pastor Jerry Falwell, who helmed the conservative political group the Moral Majority (which was neither moral nor a majority). The full quote from Graham is:

I told him to preach the Gospel. That’s our calling. I want to preserve the purity of the Gospel and the freedom of religion in America. I don’t want to see religious bigotry in any form. Liberals organized in the ’60s, and conservatives certainly have a right to organize in the ’80s, but it would disturb me if there was a wedding between the religious fundamentalists and the political right. The hard right has no interest in religion except to manipulate it.

This recent ad from Evangelicals for Harris is a stark reminder that the Gospel that Graham was preaching was nothing like the hateful, bigoted lies that Trump is building his authoritarian campaign on that tries to destroy democracy:

While Billy Graham’s son Franklin has joined the MAGA movement and desperately tries to claim that Billy would have been a Trump supporter as well if he had lived today, you can’t erase what has clearly been written down in history as the foundations of evangelical belief.

Micael Grenholm is a Swedish church historian, author and an editor for PCPJ.

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Pentecostals & Charismatics for Peace & Justice is a multicultural, gender inclusive, and ecumenical organization that promotes peace, justice, and reconciliation work among Pentecostal and Charismatic Christians around the world. If you like what we do, please become a member!

Politics

How Right-Wing Politicians Captured the Hearts of Pentecostals in Latin America

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The last two years have been very important to Latin America concerning the relationship between religion and politics. In fact, there have been three significative cases in which evangelical-pentecostals have shown their will to participate in public debates.

First, there is the case of the 2016 impeachment against progressive president Dilma Rousseff in Brazil, led by the Pentecostal Assemblies of God congressman Eduardo Cunha, who besides belong to the so-called evangelical caucus, strongly conservative.

Second, there is the 2016 case of Peace Agreement in Colombia that intended to be a way to finish the war with FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia), in which the Christian and particularly evangelical-pentecostal vote was an important factor for the victory of “no” option. The agreement considered the possibility for FARC to integrate into the political system, but this was not the most problematic issue for evangelicals. The agreement also considered issues like gender inclusion and LGBT demands. Continue reading How Right-Wing Politicians Captured the Hearts of Pentecostals in Latin America →

Spirituality

Why Both Conservative and Liberal Churches are Decreasing

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Rachel Held Evans

Author and speaker Rachel Held Evans has become an important voice for the many post-evangelical millennials in the US who long for a church with more Jesus and less Republican prejudice. In an interview a few years ago, Evans names progressive values along with sacramental church life as being the reason she joined the Episcopalian church. She was asked to comment the fact that Episcopalianism is rapidly losing church attendees, to which she responds:

Just about every denomination in the American church — including many evangelical denominations — is seeing a decline in numbers, so if it’s a competition, then we’re all losing, just at different rates… Lately I’ve been wondering if a little death and resurrection is exactly what the American church needs… A church might produce thousands of attendees without producing any disciples.

This is quite remarkable, since the point of one of Evans’ most famous articles on CNN’s Belief Blog is that evangelical churches must become more liberal to stop millenials from leaving them. This is a similar argument to John Shelby Spong‘s famous thesis that Christianity must change or die. A former bishop in Evans’ new church, Spong argued that this change includes stop believing in theism, stop beliving in the supernatural, stop believing that prayer is useful and stop believing in physical resurrection. Pretty ridiculous. Evans is far from this extreme, but her reasoning in the CNN article was similar: liberal Christianity is necessary for church growth. Continue reading Why Both Conservative and Liberal Churches are Decreasing →

Economic Justice, Spirituality

The Social Dimension of the Power of God

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Ebony Adedayo about what the Pentecostalism she grew up in was lacking.

“What will people think

When they hear that I’m a Jesus freak

What will people do when they find that it’s true

I don’t really care if they label me a Jesus freak

There ain’t no disguising the truth.” – Jesus Freak, DC Talk

If there is anything Christian song that characterized my experience as a young person, it would have to be DC Talk’s Jesus Freak. Released in 1995, it defined what it meant to live a life completely sold out to God. Living a life on fire, as we so affectionately called it, was a big deal for youth like me who grew up in a Pentecostal context such as the Assemblies of God. In the era of the Brownsville Revival and the Toronto Blessing, being consumed with anything else simply wasn’t an option if you were truly a Christian. Continue reading The Social Dimension of the Power of God →