Tag: politics

Pompeo’s Kansas church asks God to ‘give him strength’ in Senate confirmation process

April 17, 2018

“Mike has enemies because of his faith who may try to paint him in a poor light and make it difficult for him to reach the Secretary of State position,” the pastor of nominee Mike Pompeo wrote to his congregation.

By Bobby Ross Jr. | For Religion News Service

WICHITA, Kan. — Under fire from Muslim, Jewish and human rights groups for a record of anti-Muslim remarks, Secretary of State nominee Mike Pompeo is receiving spiritual support from his home church in Kansas.

Eastminster Presbyterian Church, where Pompeo is a member and former deacon and Sunday school teacher, prayed Sunday (April 15) that God would “give him strength” in his uncertain confirmation process.

“This morning, we want to pray for our dear brother Mike Pompeo as he goes through the confirmation process,” the Rev. Warren Snyder, Eastminster Presbyterian’s assistant pastor, said as members bowed their heads.

“We ask that you would be glorified in his life, that you would be lifted up, that you would strengthen him and his wife (Susan) and his son (Nick) as he goes through this process,” Snyder prayed to God. “Give him strength. Help him to stand.”

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee began hearings Thursday on whether to confirm Pompeo — the outgoing CIA director nominated by President Trump to replace Rex Tillerson in the top diplomatic post.

In advance of Pompeo’s testimony before the Senate panel, the Rev. Stan Van Den Berg, the Wichita church’s senior pastor, issued a call to prayer Wednesday. He cited a request from Susan Pompeo for “specific prayer during this very important and stressful time.”

Read the full story.

Religion News Service is a national wire service with more than 100 secular and religious media subscribers, including USA Today, the Washington Post and NPR.

‘Dear Jesus, send some angels’: Faith and prayer inside Southwest Flight 1380

April 1, 2018

By Bobby Ross Jr. | GetReligion

Several years ago, I was flying home from a reporting trip when the pilot came on the loudspeaker and reported trouble with the controls that direct the plane.

He said we needed to make an emergency landing, and rescue vehicles would be waiting as a precaution. But he stressed that the flashing lights on the ground shouldn’t alarm anyone because he didn’t expect any problem landing the plane.

That statement would have provided more comfort if I hadn’t kept asking myself: If the plane were going to crash, would he be so candid as to say so?

“Attention, passengers, I fully expect that we are all about to die. Please buckle your seat belts and get your affairs in order.”

For an anxious flyer such as myself, that experience was scary enough.

But I can’t even imagine what the passengers of Southwest Flight 1380 endured this week. As you no doubt heard, one passenger was killed and seven others wounded Tuesday after an engine exploded.

However, as I noted Wednesday, devout Christian pilot Tammie Jo Shults is being praised for her “nerves of steel” in calmly maneuvering the plane to the ground and avoiding a much worse catastrophe.

Since I wrote that post, I’ve come across more faith-filled news coverage that needs to be highlighted.

Read the full column.

• • •

All of my GetReligion columns (March 2018):

Read More

When adoption agencies can turn away gay prospective parents, what happens to the kids?

March 23, 2018

Those who study the issue say it’s hard to tell exactly how such rules governing adoption affect the numbers of children placed in “forever” homes. 

By Bobby Ross Jr. | For Religion News Service

OKLAHOMA CITY — Oklahoma lawmakers may soon sanction private adoption agencies turning away same-sex couples and other prospective parents who don’t meet their religious criteria, a possibility cheered by the Roman Catholic Church and many evangelical Christians and lambasted as discriminatory by gay rights groups.

It’s a conflict playing out across the nation, and both sides say that if the other wins, the number of children placed in loving homes will fall.

Seven states have passed laws — including Alabama, South Dakota and Texas last year — like the one proposed in Oklahoma. A bill with comparable language also has been introduced in Congress, according to The Associated Press. At least two other states — Georgia and Kansas — are debating similar legislation. At the same time, some local governments are withholding support from agencies that won’t serve gay prospective parents.

The LGBT community says the Oklahoma measure would result in fewer adoptions as prospective gay parents are turned away by agencies. Conservative Christians say failing to protect the right of adoption agencies to follow their faith would result in fewer adoptions, because those agencies would close before they act against their beliefs.

Those who study the issue say it’s hard to tell exactly how such rules governing adoption affect the numbers of children placed in “forever” homes. Still, the assertions from both sides on the matter have been definitive.

Passage of Oklahoma’s Senate Bill 1140 would “result in a disastrous reduction in adoption and foster placements and put 9,000 young people — currently in the system — in jeopardy,” said Troy Stevenson, executive director of Freedom Oklahoma, as the LGBT advocacy organization launched a statewide media campaign this month against the bill.

The numbers may not be there to back him up.

“I don’t know of any empirical evidence on the topic,” said Elizabeth Bartholet, faculty director of the Child Advocacy Program at Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Mass.

“In general, any barriers to adoption are likely to decrease numbers of homes for kids in need,” Bartholet added in an email. “But, of course, it’s possible that religious agencies would shut down rather than put their religious principles aside.”

Read the full story.

Religion News Service is a national wire service with more than 100 secular and religious media subscribers, including USA Today, the Washington Post and NPR.

Related: Under new Texas law, faith-based adoption agencies win protections (reporting from Abilene, Texas)

Texas city council members censure colleague over anti-Islam Facebook post

February 18, 2018

By Bobby Ross Jr. | For Religion News Service

PLANO, Texas — The city council of heavily Republican Plano has voted to censure one of its members for an anti-Islam Facebook post — a post for which he has apologized but over which he refuses to resign.

The 7-1 vote Sunday was a decisive repudiation of the kind of exclusionary rhetoric that President Trump himself has employed. Only embattled council member Tom Harrison dissented in the vote that came during a special council meeting called to address his Tuesday re-post from a Facebook group called Joined Hands Across America For Trump.

It featured a student in a hijab and these words: “Share if you think Trump should ban Islam in American schools.”

As word of the councilman’s action quickly spread in this affluent city of 286,000 about 20 miles north of Dallas, the city’s first black mayor called for his immediate resignation.

Harrison took the post down on Wednesday, but residents had already begun taking sides over whether he deserved to continue in office.

“My message to everyone within the Islamic community is: This is their home. They’re welcome just like everyone else is,” Mayor Harry LaRosiliere, a Republican elected in 2013 who has been critical of Trump, said at a news conference.

All of that happened within the last week, and on Sunday roughly 500 people showed up at city hall for a special council meeting called to discuss the future of Harrison, 73.

After an hour behind closed doors, the council took their censure vote in public session.

“Six years ago or 10 years ago, I would have given him the benefit of the doubt,” said Plano resident Gans Subramanian, a Hindu immigrant from India who attended the meeting. “But in the current political context, we are all very, very careful about things. … If you have a councilman make an incorrect statement like that, it breaks the trust in the community.”

The mayor said the censure serves as a public admonishment of Harrison. The council does not have the power to remove him. That would require a recall petition and referendum decided by voters, city officials said.

“I am not xenophobic. I am not a bigot. I am not a racist,” Harrison said in public session after listening to a half-dozen of his colleagues either demand that he resign or encourage him to come to that decision on his own. 

Read the full story.

Religion News Service is a national wire service with more than 100 secular and religious media subscribers, including USA Today, the Washington Post and NPR.

 

Trump + Gillibrand + faith: ‘Why is religion only talked about when reporters profile Republicans?’

December 1, 2017

By Bobby Ross Jr. | GetReligion

Did you happen to hear where Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand was last week when President Trump posted a tweet about her that the president’s critics labeled “sexually suggestive and demeaning?”

Yep, that’s right: The New York Democrat was at a bipartisan Bible study.

So what are the odds that the New York Times political writers who profiled Gillibrand in Sunday’s newspaper — in a lengthy A-section piece tied to the president’s kerfuffle with the senator — delved into her faith?

Hint: The Times makes passing reference to the aforementioned Bible study.

But any actual consideration of Gillibrand’s faith? Not so much. (Interestingly enough, the profile does point to the senator’s propensity to curse “freely in public venues.”)

In case you somehow missed Trump’s tweet and Gillibrand’s response, here they are:

I first became aware of Gillibrand’s participation in the regular Bible study when I did a Religion News Service profile of Sen. James Lankford earlier this year. I asked the Oklahoma Republican’s team for the names of Democrats involved in the study. They put me in touch with Gillibrand’s office.

I visited with Gillibrand about Lankford and her own faith, and a portion of that interview ended up in my story:

Read the full column.

• • •

All of my GetReligion columns (December 2017):

Read More

Amid partisan din, Sen. James Lankford walks a fine line: Pastor and politician

July 14, 2017

By Bobby Ross Jr. | For Religion News Service

OKLAHOMA CITY — As music plays softly and the Quail Springs Baptist Church prepares to sing “Jesus Is Tenderly Calling,” the guest speaker urges the crowd to bow and pray.

“Here’s my very simple invitation,” the fill-in preacher tells the congregation. “There’s a God who loves you and will walk with you through some very difficult things. Are you interested in coming to know him?”

It’s a traditional altar call — the kind offered in countless evangelical churches each Sunday.

What makes this one unusual is the person behind the pulpit: U.S. Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., a rising political star who mixes a boyish, Opie Taylor-like face with a booming, bass voice.

In the nation’s capital, Lankford’s weekdays consist of Senate Intelligence Committee hearings into Russian meddling in the U.S. presidential election and frequent cable news appearances to discuss policy questions ranging from national security to health care.

“He’s one of the most respected members of the Senate, even though he’s only been there two years,” said Sen. Angus King, a Maine independent who caucuses with the Democrats. “He’s deeply respected on both sides of the aisle.”

But each weekend, the former youth pastor flies home to Oklahoma and worships with the Quail Springs church, a large Southern Baptist congregation in this Bible Belt state capital. Here, the senator insists, he’s not “The Honorable James Lankford.” He’s simply “James,” husband of Cindy and father of Hannah and Jordan.

Read the full story.

Religion News Service is a national wire service with more than 100 secular and religious media subscribers, including USA Today, the Washington Post and NPR.

 

The pope praised him for providing for his parents; now Texas may want to deport them

July 13, 2017

By Bobby Ross Jr. | For Religion News Service

FORT WORTH, Texas — For the past two years, Mexican immigrant Ricardo Ortiz felt he had an advocate.

Pope Francis, speaking via satellite, had praised Ortiz for “the way you gave everything you could as a boy, when you supported your family.”

Now, the 21-year-old Ortiz — like numerous other Hispanics in Texas  — worries about how the Lone Star State’s immigration enforcement crackdown may make his family a target.

While Ortiz has a temporary work permit, his father and mother lack proper documentation. A new state law — set to take effect Sept. 1 if it survives legal challenges by major Texas cities — would allow a police officer to inquire about his or his parents’ immigration status in a routine traffic stop.

“It’s basically people-hunting. It’s like the new sport here in Texas, and the sponsor is Texas,” the Houston resident said of Senate Bill 4, a controversial measure banning “sanctuary cities” — local governments that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration laws.

“To me, it’s very racist, and I don’t know how people are able to look past that. I don’t understand how people are able to vote for that.”

Bishops for Texas’ 15 Roman Catholic dioceses — comprising an estimated 8.4 million parishioners statewide — are among the law’s harshest critics, maintaining it “neglects Christ’s call to welcome the stranger and undermines our nation’s heritage to offer the light of freedom to the oppressed.”

The bishops recently developed a resource guide explaining their opposition and providing a “know your rights” checklist on how immigrants can exercise their Fourth and Fifth Amendment protections.

Read the full story.

Religion News Service is a national wire service with more than 100 secular and religious media subscribers, including USA Today, the Washington Post and NPR.