10/19/06
Comments by Senator Barack Obama:
“We need to take faith seriously not simply to block the religious right but to engage all persons of faith in the larger project of American renewal”
“Some of this is already beginning to happen. Megachurch pastors like Rick Warren and T. D. Jakes are wielding their enormous influence to confront AIDS, Third World debt relief, and the genocide in Darfur. Self-described “progressive evangelicals” like Jim Wallis and Tony Campolo are lifting up the biblical injunction to help the poor as a means of mobilizing Christians against budget cuts to social programs and growing inequality. And across the country, individual churches like my own are sponsoring day-care programs, building senior centers, and helping ex-offenders reclaim their lives.”
Time Magazine October 23, 2006
Book Excerpt: “My Spiritual Journey”
“In an exclusive excerpt from his new memoir, the rising star discovers how faith can open doors to understanding”
Comments by Walter Russell Mead of the Council on Foreign Relations in Foreign Affairs magazine in the September/October 2006 issue. Mr. Mead speaks of why he is actually hopeful about merging the Evangelicals with a global agenda:
“As evangelicals have recently returned to a position of power in U.S. politics, they have supported similar causes and given new energy and support to U.S. humanitarian efforts. Under President Bush, with the strong support of Michael Gerson (an evangelical who was Bush’s senior policy adviser and speechwriter), U.S. aid to Africa has risen by 67 percent, including $15 billion in new spending for programs to combat HIV and AIDS. African politicians, such as Nigeria’s Olusegun Obasanjo and Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni, have stressed their own evangelical credentials to build support in Washington, much as China’s Sun Yat-sen and Madame Chiang Kai-shek once did. Thanks to evangelical pressure, efforts to suppress human trafficking and the sexual enslavement of women and children have become a much higher priority in U.S. policy, and the country has led the fight to end Sudan’s wars. Rick Warren, pastor of an evangelical megachurch in Southern California and the author of The Purpose Driven Life (the single best-selling volume in the history of U.S. publishing), has mobilized his 22,000 congregants to help combat AIDS worldwide (by hosting a conference on the subject and training volunteers) and to form relationships with churches in Rwanda.”
Earlier in this same article Mr. Mead observes about the traditional view of Evangelicals:
“This [apocalyptic vision of Evangelicals] is not particularly hospitable to the idea of gradual progress toward a secular utopia driven by technological advances and the cooperation of intelligent people of all religious traditions.”