Preparing for the future?
See: Nationwide FEMA programs to train Pastors
Waiting for the Olbermann or Maddow opine or comment, aren't you?
(Of course, I would not know if they offered any because I don't watch their programs anymore -- not since they turned into Democratic attack dogs rather than reporters)
"Circle of pastors helps to advise president" by Laurie Goodstein, New York Times | March 15, 2009
NEW YORK - 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 Obama 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.
The pastors include the Rev. Otis Moss Jr., a lion of the civil rights movement, and the entrepreneurial dynamos Bishop T.D. Jakes and the Rev. Kirbyjon H. Caldwell. Jakes and Caldwell also served as occasional spiritual advisers to former president George W. Bush.
More CHANGE for you, AmeriKa: Slow Saturday Special: Obama's Shield
Another pastor, the Rev. Jim Wallis, is president and chief executive of Sojourners, a liberal magazine and movement based in Washington. None of these pastors are affiliated with the religious right, though several are quite conservative theologically.
Well, I'm glad Obama is reaching out; however, when does the hand get extended to the antiwar crowd? The Ron Paul libertarians? The Dennis Kucinich wing of the Democrat Party?
All I've seen in the Cabinet are globalist Clintonites, 'bamer. Hello?
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.
Gees, the cultists even got them inhaling the fart mist!
But as a group they can hardly be characterized as part of the religious left either. Most, like Wallis, do not take traditionally liberal positions on abortion or homosexuality. What most say they share with Obama is the conviction that faith is the foundation in the fight against economic inequality and social injustice.
Unless you are Muslim.
"These are all centrist, social justice guys," said the Rev. Eugene F. Rivers, a politically active pastor of Azusa Community Church in Boston, who knows all of them but is not part of the Obama's prayer caucus. "Obama genuinely comes out of the social justice wing of the church. That's real. The community organizing stuff is real."
The pastors say Obama appears to rely on his faith for intellectual and spiritual succor.
"While he may not put 'Honk if You Love Jesus' bumper stickers on the back of his car, he is the kind of guy who practices what he preaches," said Caldwell, the senior pastor of Windsor Village United Methodist Church in Houston. "He has a desire to keep in touch with folk outside the Beltway, and to stay in touch with God. He seems to see those as necessary conditions for maintaining his internal compass."
After all the campaign lies, that's just an insult. Need more proof?
White House signals openness to taxing workers' health benefits
After Obama pilloried McCain for suggesting it and said he wouldn't do it!!!
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The Obama administration has reached out to hundreds of religious leaders across the country to mobilize support and to seek advice on policy. These five pastors, however, have been brought into a more intimate inner circle.
This scaring you a bit?
Their names were gleaned from interviews with people who know the president and religious leaders who work in Washington. Their role could change if Obama joins a church in Washington, but that could take some time because of the logistical challenges in finding a church that can accommodate the kind of crowd the Obamas could attract....
?????
The pastor in the circle who has known Obama the longest is Wallis. In contrast to the other four, his contact with the president has been focused more on policy than prayer. Wallis - who leans left on some issues, such as military intervention and poverty programs, but opposes abortion - has recently joined conservatives in pressing the president's office of faith-based initiatives to continue to allow government financing for religious social service groups that hire only employees of their own faith.
Why not let the PEOPLE GIVE DIRECTLY to the CHURCH, rather than TAKING TAXES and doing it, huh?
Wallis said he got to know Obama in the late 1990s when they participated in a traveling seminar that took bus trips to community programs across the country. Wallis said they "hit it off" because they were both Christians serious about their faith, fathers of young children the same age, and believers in "transcending left and right" to find solutions to social problems.
"He and I were what we called back then 'progressive Christians,' as opposed to the dominant religious-right era we were in then," Wallis said. "We didn't think Jesus' top priorities would be capital gains tax cuts and supporting the next war."
Presidents through the ages have leaned on pastors for spiritual support, policy advice, and political cover. The Rev. Billy Graham was a counselor to at least five presidents: Dwight D. Eisenhower, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George H.W. Bush.
Pinning down Obama's theological leanings is not easy, the ministers said in interviews. They said he is well read in the Bible, but has not articulated views consistent with the racially inflected interpretation of his former pastor, Wright. Moss, who once worked alongside the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and who only recently retired from his pulpit at Olivet Institutional Baptist Church in Cleveland, said of the president, "I would simply say that he is a person of great faith, and I think that faith has sustained him."
Jakes said he sought out Obama in Chicago because of their common interest in Kenya and because he was impressed with the speech Obama delivered at the Democratic National Convention in 2004. Jakes is himself a nationally known preaching powerhouse who fills sports stadiums and draws 30,000 worshipers to his church in Dallas, the Potter's House. He also produces movies, writes books, and runs antipoverty programs in Dallas and Kenya, where Obama has ties through his Kenyan father.
Three of the ministers said their introduction to the president was through Joshua DuBois, who led religious outreach for the Obama presidential campaign and now heads the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. DuBois, who declined to comment, is himself a Pentecostal pastor.
Hunter, who leads a church in Longwood, Fla., said he was approached by DuBois in 2007 - a few months after he left his new post as head of the Christian Coalition, the conservative advocacy group, because the board did not want to enlarge its agenda to include environmental issues like global warming.
Jakes, Wallis, and Hunter said they were political independents. Moss and Caldwell publicly endorsed Obama, and Caldwell donated money to his campaign.
On the morning of the inauguration, Jakes delivered the sermon at a private service at St. John's Episcopal Church. He likened Obama to the boys in the book of Daniel who are thrown into a fiery furnace that is seven times hotter than it should be - and survive. "God is with you in the furnace," Jakes preached to Obama.Why did the image of a NUCLEAR BOMB BLAST just flash through my head?
That's SCARY!!!!
These religious guys SCARE ME more than ANY MUSLIM EVER COULD!!!!
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