Entries for June 2009

By Dan Gilgoff, God & Country

I attended my first Christians United for Israel event last night.

For those of you who don't know, Christians United for Israel was launched by well-known evangelist John Hagee in 2006 and has quickly become the face of Christian Zionism in the United States.

The organization recently sponsored its 100th Night to Honor Israel event. These affairs are high-spirited, pro-Israel rallies that draw mostly evangelical Christians. I attended a more sober happening, a kind of informational session called a Stand for Israel Event at the historic First Baptist Church in Hightstown, N.J.

Andrew Summey, the organization's regional coordinator, addressed a crowd of about 30 for a little more than an hour. My back-of-envelope observations:

By Dan Gilgoff, God & Country

TIME's Amy Sullivan is standing by her story about the first family giving up plans to join a Washington-area church in favor of worshiping at Camp David's Evergreen Chapel, despite a White House denial. But both Sullivan and the White House are hedging their bets.

In a statement yesterday, the White House implied that the TIME report was erroneous:

The President and First Family continue to look for a church home. They have enjoyed worshipping at Camp David and several other congregations over the months, and will choose a church at the time that is best for their family.

By Dan Gilgoff, God & Country

As it works to draft a common-ground plan around abortion and related reproductive issues, the White House is careful to emphasize that is not trying to reduce the number of abortions.

Rather, it says, is aiming to reduce the need for abortion.

Interviewing the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Deirdre McQuade, assistant director of policy and communications at the "pro-life secretariat," I was reminded this week that some religious groups object to the very idea of a need for abortion. Says McQuade: 

The phrase "reducing the need for abortion" is not a common-ground phrase. We would say that there is no need for abortion, that abortions are signs that we have not met the needs of women. There is no authentic need for abortion.

By Dan Gilgoff, God & Country

A week after a left-leaning faith group enlisted a Franciscan sister to sell the climate bill on the Indiana radio waves, another progressive faith outfit is using the Bible's Book of Isaiah to sell healthcare reform in other red states.

What's novel about the new ad—which will air in Arkansas, Colorado, Louisiana, Nebraska, and North Carolina over Congress's Fourth of July break—is not that it uses Christian radio and messaging to push a mostly Democratic cause. In the past few years, that's become standard practice for the Dems.

What's novel is that the ad enlists local pastors in each market where it's airing to make a case for healthcare reform. It's the second such ad to do so for a liberal cause.

By Dan Gilgoff, God & Country

As the White House readies its plan for finding "common ground" on reproductive health issues and reducing the need for abortion, a major debate has emerged over how to package the plan's two major components: preventing unwanted pregnancies and reducing the need for abortion.

Many abortion rights advocates and some Democrats who want to dial down the culture wars want the White House to package the two parts of the plan together, as a single piece of legislation. The plan would seek to reduce unwanted pregnancies by funding comprehensive sex education and contraception and to reduce the need for abortion by bolstering federal support for pregnant women. Supporters of the approach say it would force senators and members of Congress on both sides of the abortion battle to compromise their traditional positions, creating true common ground that mirrors what President Obama has called for.

But more conservative religious groups working with the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships say they would be forced to oppose such a plan—even though they support the abortion reduction part—because they oppose federal dollars for contraception and comprehensive sex education. This camp, which includes such formidable organizations as the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Southern Baptist Convention, is pressuring the White House to decouple the two parts of the plan into separate bills. One bill would focus entirely on preventing unwanted pregnancy, while the other would focus on supporting pregnant women.

By Dan Gilgoff, God & Country

The White House is disputing a TIME report that the Obama family will avoid making the tricky decision about which Washington church to join by settling on the chapel at Camp David as their primary place of worship. Here's the statement the White House is circulating this morning:

By Dan Gilgoff, God & Country

Embattled South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford is not known as a Bible thumper. Conservative evangelical leaders love him, but he's an Episcopalian. As a congressman, he condemned Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, yet he's not known to be a public moralizer.

But, boy, can he quote the Bible.

Here's how Sanford opened his apology this afternoon to his state cabinet (video above): 

Based on the way that I've disappointed my wife, my boys, close friends, family, South Carolinians at large, I think always the question you've got to ask yourself in the larger context of leadership is what's it all mean and where do we go from here. And so I've been doing a lot of soul searching on that front and what I find interesting is the story of David. And the way in which he fell mightily, he fell in very, very significant ways, but then picked up the pieces and built from there. And it all really began with the larger quest that I think is well expressed in the Book of Psalms and the notion of humility. Humility toward others, humility in one's own spirit.