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Liberation Theology and Neo-Pentecostalism: A Leading Challenge to the Evangelical Churches in Brazil By Julio Severo Traditionally, major theological trends — good or wicked — came from Europe and America. The single major theological trend originating outside Europe and America is Liberation Theology, which is prevalent in Latin America, especially Brazil. In this original and exclusive e-booklet, I trace this movement in Brazil and how its leaders recognized openly that the only force capable of challenging Liberation Theology was neo-Pentecostal churches. In fact, the Brazilian Left admits today that neo-Pentecostal churches are the only hindrance to the advance of its...

Every once in awhile WILLIAM RIVERS PITT publicly puts on a very showy display of supposed faith for either political and/or showboating purposes. We already saw Pitt showboating himself as a KENNEDY CATHOLIC upon the death of Teddy Kennedy in which he recited Latin prayers in DUmmieland which he never utters in real life except, perhaps, when on a huge Bukowski's bender. And now that a new Pope has been chosen, the expected Catholic bashing went full force in DUmmieland which led the Pittster into full blown showboating in which he pretends to be indignant about attacks on his...

We have a new pope! Pope Francis I, formerly Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires, is the first Latin American pope, and indeed the first pope not from Europe or Northern Africa. While considered a long shot in the betting markets — correcting for bookie profit, Paddy Power gave him a 2 percent chance, and Betfair a 0.7 percent chance, last I checked — he was widely considered the runner-up in the 2005 race for pope, a fact confirmed by leaked diaries after the fact. He also has one of the more interesting political records of any of the...

Mexican Narcoterrorist Region May Abandon Catholicism for Islam It would seem as if Bishop Ruiz’s brand of Liberation Theology has had the same effect on Chiapas as on Europe. Chiapas is poor, but it’s now also appearing to trend Islamic as any region under the influence of the left eventually does. When you kill the local religion and replace it with social justice, foreign religions eventually take its place. In the mid-1990s, a leftist resistance group which calls itself The Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) made Chiapas its home. Its attempts to fight the Mexican Army repeatedly failed, but...

Disobedience and preaching against the teaching of the Catholic Church about women's ordination led to his excommunication, dismissal and laicization. Then Fr. Bourgeois engaged in an obstinate crusade which involved public and direct defiance of the Holy See and a repudiation of the unbroken teaching of the Magisterium of the Catholic Church concerning sacred ordination. MARYKNOLL, N.Y. (Catholic Online) - The short Press Release from the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers confirmed some sad news on Monday, November 19, 2012. The priestly ministry of Roy Bourgeois has come to an end: ***** FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEThe Congregation For The Doctrine Of The...

He blasted big business, Wall Street, big oil, General Motors, “excess profits,” “millionaires” and the “wealthy.”He called out the “corporation executive” for not paying his “fair” share.He attacked “GOP” tax cuts that “spare the rich” and “benefit millionaires.”He advocated wealth redistribution from greedy “corporations” to “health insurance” and “public works projects.”He described himself as “progressive,” while his detractors accused him of being a communist.He adopted slogans like “Forward” and “Change.” He wanted to transform America through what he called “fundamental change.”He was skeptical of preachers and their effect on God-and-gun clinging Americans, and saw the Catholic Church as an obstacle...

(Church & State Magazine) — The movement known as the Religious Right is the number-one threat to church-state separation in America. This collection of organizations is well funded and well organized; it uses its massive annual revenue and grassroots troops to undermine the wall of separation in communities nationwide.Americans United staff members have carefully researched this movement, and here are the 10 Religious Right groups that pose the greatest challenges to church-state separation. Most of these organizations are tax-exempt under Section 501(c)(3) of the tax code, but the financial data includes some affiliated 501(c)(4) lobbying organizations operating alongside the...

I just listened to Bill O'Reilly discuss Michelle Obama's comment that "there is no place better than church to talk politics." My first thought was to agree with the First Lady and to ask why she doesn't do something about her Democrat party which believes the First Amendment's so-called "separation" of church and state means, among other things, that churches cannot take a political stance. The IRS disallows politics in the pulpits and pews across America. Why? Because some Americans oppose tax-exempt faith-based-religions and find it distasteful when they are forced to fund a politically religious ideology. It is necessary...

Acts of faith are performed each day in this country, and we are all the better for it. But sadly, Barack Obama does not seem to have faith in the American system, nor does he believe in American exceptionalism, nor does he believe that Americans can make it on their own without government handouts. In short, Obama doesn’t have faith in us. Faith has become an inflammatory topic in the 2012 election. In policy, speeches and campaign ads, the president has used faith as a means to demagogue his Republican opponent. Faith has been used by the left-wing extremists as...

In 2008, Barack Obama took aim at the “pew gap,” the overwhelming Republican edge among voters who regularly attend church. The Democratic presidential nominee came nowhere near closing it, but he didn’t have to. He just needed an extra percentage point or two among traditional GOP constituents, and he got it. The Democratic National Committee is promising a repeat performance in 2012. But some religious leaders and scholars who backed Obama in 2008 are skeptical. They say the Democrats have, through neglect and lack of focus, squandered the substantial gains they made with religious moderates and worry it will hurt...

Civil rights activist Rev. Jesse Jackson defended Monday controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright, saying that it was a “source of pain” to see him criticized in the media. “I know it’s a source of pain for me to see him used as an object of degradation and manipulated the way he’s been used the media as if he’s some sort of enemy of the state. It’s not fair and it’s not true,” said Jackson on MSNBC’s “Daily Rundown.” “It pains me to see him used as an object of degradation.” Jackson said that Wright had developed an influential ministry, one that...

In a shocking interview yesterday on the Sean Hannity Radio Show, author Ed Klein said Barack Obama’s former pastor helped Obama accept Christianity without having to renounce Islam. The Daily Caller reported: Klein also said Wright told him he “made it comfortable” for Obama to accept Christianity without having renounce his “Islamic background,” which Klein said he has on tape. -snip- Klein spoke more on this in a separate interview with NewsMax: Klein says Obama originally sought out Wright to discuss community activism. “Quickly the conversations turned from picking up garbage on the street and getting streetlights put up on...

Staggering under an avalanche of bad news regarding the economy, Obama’s presidential campaign took another hit over the weekend as the New York Post detailed divisions amongst Democrats and radicals, including charges that Obama tried to buy the silence of his controversial Chicago pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Author Edward Klein in his new book The Amateur writes that Obama offered his long-time radical preacher and pastor $150,000 in hush money for staying out of the spotlight during Obama’s 2008 run for president. I might add that I have a feeling that radical association with Obama was a booming cottage industry...

<p>When sermons of Obama’s Chicago pastor, Jeremiah Wright, surfaced during the Iowa primaries, it threatened to derail Obama’s campaign. ABC aired one where Wright screamed, “Goddamn America!” Edward Klein interviewed Wright, who told him Obama’s team tried to buy his silence.</p>

Jim Jones’ sinister grip on San Francisco How the Peoples Temple cult leader ensnared Harvey Milk and other progressive icons “Season of the Witch,” the new book by Salon founder David Talbot, tells the story of the wild and bloody birth of “San Francisco values.” The following excerpt – Part 1 in a three-part series -- recounts one of the darker dramas before the ultimate triumph of those values. Jim Jones, the strange and charismatic leader of Peoples Temple, proved a master at politically wiring San Francisco in the mid-1970s. The driven preacher had begun his climb up the political...

UNITED NATIONS — A former Nicaraguan foreign minister who once called President Ronald Reagan “the butcher of my people” has been appointed to represent Libya at the United Nations after its delegate was denied a visa, the Nicaraguan government said on Wednesday. Nicaragua said the former minister, Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann, 78, an outspoken critic of the United States and a Catholic priest, would replace the Libyan diplomat Ali Abdussalam Treki, who had been unable to obtain a visa to enter the United States. Libya’s ambassador to the United Nations, Abdurrahman Mohamed Shalgam, defected in late February after denouncing Col. Muammar...

We need to start taking student loan debt seriously, both as a troubling moral issue and as a ticking economic time bomb. By some reports, student loan debt will exceed 1 trillion dollars this year, more than the credit card debt of all Americans. A whole generation of young Americans is at risk in this excessive borrowing. They fall further and further behind in “servicing their debt” because they have no way to keep up with the payments as many of them are unemployed or underemployed. They will delay starting marriage and families; they dare not take the risk of...

When I was 12 years old, I used to play tennis at a certain public park in the Bronx. One day it got back to me that a black fellow at the courts, whose name I forget, said, "Selwyn doesn't like black people." This raised my eyebrows. You see, I had never really thought about the man one way or the other. And what occupied my mind were forehands, backhands, topspin, and volleys, not race. So the only thing I could figure was that I was probably in a funk one day and didn't hear and acknowledge a greeting he...

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez wept and asked God to spare his life during a pre-Easter Mass after returning from his latest session of cancer treatment in Cuba. Very little is known about the 57-year-old socialist leader's condition, including even what type of cancer he has. Chavez has undergone three operations in less than a year, and received two sessions of radiation treatment. He says the latest surgery was successful, that he is recovering well and will be fit to win a new six-year term at an election in October. Yet big questions remain about his future, and on Thursday the...

WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama says the Easter story of Christ's agony and resurrection has helped him get through the tough moments of an embattled presidency. The president got "Amens" from religious leaders at a White House prayer breakfast in the East Room as he recounted Jesus saying, "In this world, you will have trouble."

Pastor Ronald Slaughter wore his Sunday best, plus a white hoodie sweatshirt as he preached his Palm Sunday sermon today. Slaughter and members of his congregation at St. James AME Church in Newark donned hoodies in honor of Trayvon Martin, the Florida teen gunned down by a neighborhood watch captain last month. Several congregants wore their hoodies up while others sitting in the pews came in regular dress. Slaughter, who wore a white zipped up hoodie sweatshirt over a shirt and tie, and other church leaders behind the pulpit wore hoodies but did not cover their heads.

Former US President Jimmy Carter has disclosed that he had angry exchanges with Pope John Paul II about liberation theology and about the ordination of women. The former president said that he complained to the Pontiff about the Church’s “perpetuation of the subservience of women” while Blessed John Paul II was visiting the US in 1978, and “there was more harshness when we turned to the subject of ‘liberation theology.” Carter said that he classified the Pope as a “fundamentalist,” placing him in that category along with Iran’s late Ayatollah Khomeini. In the same interview Carter said that “it...

Because of slavery (Democrats did it), KKK violence (Democrats did it), segregation (Democrats did it), Jim Crow laws (Democrats did it) and other historic abuses heaped on black Americans in our country by the Democratic Party and its supporters, America has been a bit oversensitive about race for the last few decades. Of course, the political party responsible for all of that racism is now the one shouting, "You're a racist," and trying to pit different racial groups against each other. That might seem ironic at first glance, but if you think about it, it's actually par for the...

The recent release of a tape by Andrew Breitbart's outfit sparked renewed interest in President Obama's murky past. In anticipation, conservatives were elated that the president might finally be exposed. The tape showed Obama, then at Harvard Law, orchestrating a protest on behalf of Derrick Bell. Without providing any background on just how radical is Professor Bell, the compliant liberal media derisively dismissed it all as conservative paranoia, even proclaiming presidential vindication. It still appears preposterous to purport that America elected a communist ideologue. The world's greatest beneficiary of capitalist bounty would never willingly empower a radical socialist to "fundamentally...

Andrew Kaczynski of Buzzfeed discovered this little gem of a video, in which then-law student Barack Obama spoke at a protest in favor of Harvard Law Professor Derrick Bell. Kaczynski explains what the protest was all about. Bell was the first black tenured professor at the school, and a pioneer of "critical race theory," which insisted, controversially, on reading issues of race and power into legal scholarship. His protest that spring was occasioned by Harvard's denial of tenure to a black woman professor, Regina Austin, at a time when only three of the law school's professors were black and only...

Theology of Integral Mission Can the Gospel be used as a mere platform for an ideology? “Theology of Integral Mission is a [Brazilian] Protestant variation of the Liberation Theology”. — Ariovaldo Ramos, in the Marxist magazine Diplomatique. Ramos is a former president of World Vision in Brazil. By Julio Severo Note: This is a message by me to Brazilian evangelicals, because Theology of Integral Mission is by far the most serious problem in the Brazilian churches, making them prey to political opportunists, and because the dominant political ideology in Brazil, in churches and society, is socialist. I hope that this...

Catholic bishops, evangelical pastors and Republican presidential candidates have been decrying the Obama administration's war on religious liberty. Amid all the uproar, it's easy to overlook something equally important: the administration's many battles for religious liberty....In other realms, believers have found a Barack Obama and his Justice Department to be staunch allies.The most conspicuous surprise involves government rules for faith-based organizations that get federal funding for social services.President George W. Bushissued an executive order allowing such groups to hire only people who share their faith — exempting them from the usual ban on religious discrimination. Liberal critics accused him of...

A fascinating theory has been advanced by Dick Morris, which, in turn, is being considered by Rush Limbaugh and other leading conservatives. Morris speculates that the Obama HHS mandate on contraception, sterilization, and abortifacients is a fight with the Catholic Church that Team Obama wants — and with the focus based narrowly on contraception, not abortifacients. Dick Morris may be right. It seems no accident that Obama publicly noted that the vast majority of Catholic women use contraception. Yes, the vast majority does, but the vast majority does not support abortifacients — that is, “contraceptive” drugs that cause or induce...

Phil Lawler of CatholicCulture.org offers an in-depth analysis of President Obama's accommodation of the religious Left in the flap over his administration's coercion of religious institutions, most obviously Catholic ones. Catholic Leftist's like Sr. Carol Keehan, D.C., President of the Catholic Health Association--known as Obama's nun; the presumptive Bishop of the American Church recognized by secularists and self-hating Catholics--approve of the State intruding upon the Church's internal governance. They won't object about that until Catholic governance reflects their beliefs, at which time enough will be enough, the lamb will lay down with the lion, and Church-State relations will achieve heights...

Former Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry said on Thursday that the dispute between President Barack Obama and the Catholic church over contraception shows he was right to accuse Obama of a "War on Religion." Perry, who quit the presidential campaign last month after a faltering performance, said that he was blasted last September for criticizing Obama as hostile to religion. Perry ran ads before the Iowa caucuses stressing his Christian religion and saying that he would restore respect for religion if he were elected. "But last night if you turned on a television or heard talk radio or read a...

<p>Announcing his support for Commissar Sebelius’s edicts on contraception, sterilization, and pharmacological abortion, that noted theologian the Most Reverend Al Sharpton explained: “If we are going to have a separation of church and state, we’re going to have a separation of church and state.”</p>

At the National Prayer Breakfast last week, seeking theological underpinning for his drive to raise taxes on the rich, President Obama invoked the highest possible authority. His policy, he testified “as a Christian,” “coincides with Jesus’ teaching that for unto whom much is given, much shall be required.’” Now, I’m no theologian, but I’m fairly certain that neither Jesus nor his rabbinic forebears, when speaking of giving, meant some obligation to the state. You tithe the priest, not the taxman. The Judeo-Christian tradition commands personal generosity as represented, for example, by the biblical injunction against retrieving any sheaf left behind...

President Obama has hit a new low. By promoting his reasoning for hiking taxes on the rich at the National Prayer Breakfast, he diminished the seriousness of his proposals and manipulated Jesus' teachings for his own political purposes. Listening to Obama talk about taxation almost as a form of worship was beyond the bounds as he said, "For me as a Christian, it also coincides with Jesus's teaching that for unto whom much is given, much shall be required." He was quoting and distorting the Gospel of Luke and the Parable of the Faithful Servant. And, as Christians, we are...

Church And State: President Obama has taken a very powerful name in vain in defense of his class warfare economic policies. In fact, Obama encourages a sin Jesus Christ repeatedly admonished: envy. Attending the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday, President Obama declared that raising tax rates on higher incomes "coincides with Jesus' teaching that 'for unto whom much is given, much shall be required.'" It is disgraceful enough for a president to use a religious event to push an economic agenda that has already insured his place in history as the food stamp president. But Obama began his remarks by...

...President Obama spoke to the National Prayer Breakfast. As a Christian, I want to give him the respect due his office. I try to give him the benefit of the doubt because he professes to believe in the same Savior whom I also profess... I will not refrain from pointing out the blatant and dangerous contradictions between his words and his actions as the President of the United States. I am sure these words will soon be on the White House web site. I am also sure they will be utilized repeatedly as his campaign for reelection moves into high...

Obama just said in a live speech (9:18 AM EST) at a Prayer Breakfast that he wants to raise taxes on the rich because his Christian values tell him to personally give more to those less fortunate by raising his own taxes, just as Jesus would do. Not kidding.... now he just called federal welfare 'charity'... and just accused those of opposing tax increases as 'not having Jesus love of others in their hearts' Did Jesus really ask the Romans to raise taxes on the Jews and Samaritans to pay for the fish, bread and wine for the early Christians...

Dear Father, I get my dander up when the "social justice" crowd roars. There is a place for it to be sure (we can't pick and choose which parts of our faith to follow), but some of this support comes at the expense of the bigger picture. I follow the Holy Father's words on this: "While the Church exhorts civil authorities to seek peace, not war, and to exercise discretion and mercy in imposing punishment on criminals, it may still be permissible to take up arms to repel an aggressor or to have recourse to capital punishment. There may be...

Is the pulpit brain-washing blacks against supporting Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual and Transgendered (LGBT) people? It depends on who you ask. LGBT advocates have different perspectives on why blacks do not align themselves with gay rights causes. To varying degrees, many LGBT rights advocates say that the church is the singlemost influential factor in black opinion on homosexuality. Antonio David Garcia, executive director of Affirmations, a Detroit-area LGBT civil rights group, says what’s worse is that those opinions are often homophobic and go unchallenged. “Everyday we face religious bigotry [from the church],” Garcia says. “They’ve got to start questioning some of...

Is The Black Church The Answer To Liberal Prayers? By Lisa Miller, Published: November 24 As the American left continues to seek a coherent way to articulate its moral priorities in these days of political stalemates and widening income gaps, it might look to the most unlikely of places — the academy — for guidance and inspiration. At elite universities and seminaries thrives a constituency of African American intellectuals who fiercely contend that the American conversation needs to stay focused on justice — specifically, for those whom the Bible calls “the least of these.” Cornel West, who was arrested at...

This is a very clever parody of our President, which points out he is in fact a Commie.

President Obama is politically insane. This is the real meaning of his speech Thursday night in front of a joint session of Congress. Albert Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result. By that definition, Mr. Obama is a lunatic leftist. Much of his speech called for more of the same — government activism; massive spending on infrastructure, bridges and roads; extending the payroll tax cut; and more public aid to states and municipalities. In short, he seeks to perpetuate the dismal policies of Obamanomics. He is a reckless ideologue masquerading as a...

I am scheduled to be a reader at my church this Sunday on the Tenth anniversary of 9/11. Yesterday, the minister sent me the special 9/11 reading that was prepared by the National Council of Churches for parishioners to hear. While most of it was fine, there are some prayers that are appalling to any right-thinking Christian and deserve to be publicized for their stunning example of moral relativism and anti-Biblical message. "We stand together in penitence, recognizing that we have not done enough to address the sources of anger, hate, dehumanization, rage and indignation that lead to acts of...

It's important that people converge on the truth about Obama, in order to oppose him and his minions effectively. The truth is that Obama is influenced more by Malcolm X than anyone else. James H. Cone said that Black Liberation theology is based on Malcolm X (Black Nationalism) and Martin Luther King (Christianity). If you read his books, it has Malcolm's Nation of Islam beliefs at the core and only a thin facade of Christianity. There are degrees of racism. Black Liberation Theology is not merely racist, but actually genocidal in it's racial core concept, just like the doctrine of...

...we pretty much know what kind of re-election campaign Barack Obama is going to wage: A relentlessly negative one, which...will focus almost exclusively on making the challenger seem unacceptable rather than defending the sitting president’s accomplishments. Thanks to Ben Smith at Politico, we also know roughly how the White House plans to “destroy Mitt Romney,”...By “attacking him as inauthentic, unprincipled and, in a word used repeatedly by Obama’s advisers in about a dozen interviews, ‘weird.’” Weird how, you ask? Here’s Smith: The character attacks on Romney will focus on what critics view as a makeover, both personal (skinny jeans) and...

One of my closest friends, "Gail," lives in a pristine suburb in northern New Jersey. It's one of those leafy bedroom communities where residents drive their Lexus SUVs to the railroad station each morning to catch the train to Manhattan. After 9/11, Gail told me that eerily, several vehicles were left abandoned in the parking lot for weeks. Their drivers never returned home that day to retrieve them. But, in general, not much goes on in her sleepy, idyllic town. The residents rave about shopping sprees to Loehmanns and sprints to Whole Foods for organic strawberries. There is no crime...

Palin: If We Were Really Terrorists, Obama Might Want to Pal Around With Us [YouTube]

Tea Party’s War on America By JOE NOCERA You know what they say: Never negotiate with terrorists. It only encourages them. These last few months, much of the country has watched in horror as the Tea Party Republicans have waged jihad on the American people. Their intransigent demands for deep spending cuts, coupled with their almost gleeful willingness to destroy one of America’s most invaluable assets, its full faith and credit, were incredibly irresponsible. But they didn’t care. Their goal, they believed, was worth blowing up the country for, if that’s what it took. Like ideologues everywhere, they scorned compromise....

The Circle of Protection radio advertisements being broadcast in three states right now make their arguments, such as they are, from a quotation of the Bible and a federal poverty program that might be cut in a debt ceiling compromise. But the scriptural quotation is a serious misuse of the Book of Proverbs, and the claims about heating assistance programs are at best overblown: the ads are really not better than their goofy contemporary piano track.The Circle of Protection, of which the group Sojourners that produced the ads is a founding member, enjoyed the high honor of a meeting at...

The Bible requires work, frugal living and honest dealings. It mandates impartial justice, sound money and property rights; plus endorses liberty and limited government – all essential elements of capitalism. Christ even used free market principles repeatedly in his teaching. Jesus clearly appreciated price signals and the role of incentives. The parables of the talents and minas offer sage investment advice. It is prudent to entrust resources to those multiplying them and extract resources from those squandering them. This counters the Marxist principle of progressive taxation taking from the most productive to subsidize those wasting scarce resources. But Jesus used...

My writing began in response to America’s escalating culture war. As my book The Courage to do Nothing explains, progressive elitists are building another tower of Babel. Where Nimrod furnished bricks to raise himself to the heavens, his modern descendants fashion theories on progressive cloud dancing. Their ambition resembles that of antiquity: separating creation from its Creator. Socialism proves a critical tenet in this tower.