Posted on 04/25/2008 1:33:09 PM PDT by ConservativeMajority
WASHINGTON, April 25 /Christian Newswire/ -- The Reverend Rob Schenck (pronounced SHANK), president of the conservative National Clergy Council and chairman of the Committee on Church and Society for the Evangelical Church Alliance, will attend a National Press Club Breakfast featuring Sen. Barack Obama's long-time pastor, Dr. Jeremiah Wright, on Monday, April 28, at 8:30 AM, at the National Press Club, 529 14th Street NW, Washington, DC 20045.
Rev. Schenck said, "Jeremiah Wright's liberation theology puts him in a camp of violent extremists who use guns and grenades in the name of religion. Dr. Wright needs to unequivocally denounce these dangerous movements and explain how he is fundamentally different from them."
Rev. Schenck will report Dr. Wright's comments to church leaders around the country and will seek to respectfully engage the United Church of Christ minister on several questions about his controversial sermons and statements. Rev. Schenck will also deliver a personal letter asking Dr. Wright to participate in a conversation on theology, race and culture.
There’s no such thing as the Religious Left, and John McCain shook hands with Jerry Falwell once, so there.
I have been a great admirer of Billy Graham for nearly 30 years. For 25 of those years, Dr. Graham was my role model in many ways as my ministry in preaching and evangelism developed. He set the gold standard for integrity, led the way in using technology to communicate the Gospel and stayed "on message," resisting trendy distractions by preaching only the simple Gospel for more than 60 years.
...
I looked up from my reading material anticipating Dr. Graham's arrival on the stage. But wait, who was this? Out of the shadows came a very familiar figure, but it wasn't Billy Graham – it was Bill Clinton!
Yes, former President Bill Clinton, accompanied by his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, came out, both waving to a cheering crowd. They used the old "simulated eye-contact" that goes on routinely at political rallies, before taking their seats immediately adjacent to the pulpit. I was stunned. What were Bill and Hillary Clinton doing on the platform of a Billy Graham Crusade?
First of all, Mr. Clinton was his usual self-congratulatory unctuous self, making his praise for Billy Graham somehow magically redound to his own glory. In reflecting on learning in his childhood that Dr. Graham had refused to come to Arkansas unless he would preach to an integrated audience, it almost sounded like it was then that the great evangelist got the true "seal of approval" by engendering the young Clinton's approval. I was nauseated.
But, it got worse.
When President Clinton finally surrendered the microphone back to Dr. Graham, in what I can only excuse as a moment of weakness, Dr. Graham said, "I told President Clinton that when he left office, he should be an evangelist because he has all the right gifts for it, and he should leave his wife to run the country."
Except for the small number of boos, all you could hear was the roar of the crowd, many thousands of which stood to the their feet in whoops, applause and whistles.
Now, I'm a New Yorker down deep to my DNA. My dad is from Manhattan and mother is from Brooklyn. I served as a staff pastor in Queens. I know New Yorkers and I know New York audiences. I am sure that a huge number of those 90,000 people present read that as one thing: Billy Graham's endorsement of Hillary Clinton for president.
That's when I got up, turned away from the stage, and walked out.
Now don't get me wrong, I didn't leave in a huff. I was more in a daze. I couldn't believe that I had just witnessed the Clintons manipulate their way to a quasi endorsement by the leading evangelical of the last half-century. It was shameless exploitation of a sacred platform by the most powerful, cunning and recklessly ambitious political duo in American history.
I've been in Washington for 12 years – eight of them with the Clintons in the White House and four of them with Hillary in the Senate. I have met both of them personally and I have seen them in action – live and in person – on many occasions. What the Clintons want, they get. If any two individuals could bully themselves into a Billy Graham meeting and onto his platform to get photo ops and a quasi endorsement, it's them. And that's precisely what they did.
Of course, I'm not leaving Dr. Graham off the hook. He is after all, one of the top religious leaders in the world and a worldly-wise statesman. I'm simply giving him a little slack for being 86-years old, suffering from Parkinson's disease, prostate cancer, fluid build-up on his brain and serious fragility after a devastating pelvic fracture. I wouldn't say he was at his strongest to resist the strong-arm tactics of Clinton & Clinton, Inc.
What I will say is that Dr. Graham and his organization allowed the Clintons to take this holy moment, this sacred hour, and once again soil it, as President Clinton had done to his sacred office at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
The specter of Dr. Graham's departure from the world stage already had me in a sort of funk. But this was an even sadder spectacle – too sad for me, and I left. I never did hear Dr. Graham preach. I'd rather have his better days in my memories.
In case you're wondering about Hillary's intentions on that platform, she went on to the whoops and whistles of another adoring crowd the very next day as she marched in the annual Gay Pride Parade. It was a very different kind of crowd, though.
Rev. Rob Schenck is the president of the National Clergy Council.
And then there's this:
***July 28, 2005
Spokesman: 'UCC Leaders Pushing Counterfeit Christianity'
July 28, 2005
Ed Thomas
Agape Press
A spokesman for an evangelical renewal organization in the United Church of Christ says the latest vote by church representatives at a recent Atlanta meeting is an important and shameful benchmark for the denomination.
During that gathering, UCC General Synod delegates voted to support a same-sex "marriage" resolution and reject a resolution that favored traditional marriage between one man and one woman.
However, executive director David Runnion-Bareford of Biblical Witness Fellowship notes that the General Synod voted to affirm resolutions regarding the lordship of Christ, the centrality of the cross, and other mainstream evangelical doctrines. That leads him to conclude that the UCC is trying to fool people into thinking there is a legitimate Christian blessing on their liberal, pro-homosexual stances.
Runnion-Bareford contends that, compared to all the other Protestant denominations, the UCC stands alone in authorizing all the homosexual alternative lifestyles in a general resolution from its rule-making body and calling them compatible with Christianity. "This is not just simply a very liberal kind of denomination that just doesn't get it about God," he says. "They really are attempting to create a counterfeit that is saleable."
A further indication of this, the Biblical Witness Fellowship spokesman notes, is the fact that there was media coverage and commentary from around the world, including reports from the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and National Public Radio on the UCC General Synod's decision to endorse same-sex marriage.
He even sees something suspect in the timing of an appearance by leading Senate Judiciary Committee Democrat Charles Schumer on ABC's "This Week," where the senator suggested he would make homosexual marriage an issue in the next Supreme Court justice confirmation battle.
Runnion-Bareford believes the UCC intended for its pro-homosexual agenda to get the media attention and discussion it is receiving and took carefully orchestrated steps to see that this would happen. "It's interesting to see the BBC run this as a front item as soon as that vote was taken," he says, "and for Senator Schumer to come out for gay marriage, almost as soon as that vote was taken, in a very strong way."
What is "afoot here" with the United Church of Christ, the church renewal advocate contends, is "an attempt to gain Christian sanction for the ideology that has moved forward in an attempt to let gays gain legal sanctions in the state of Massachusetts."
Runnion-Bareford says now that it is clear the UCC leadership wants to help that agenda along, many local churches in the denomination will be forced to take a stance on their doctrine as it relates to the issues of homosexuality and marriage.
Biblical Witness Fellowship (www.biblicalwitness.org)
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