trump

While fewer than half of Americans — less than 40 percent — endorse the idea of banning Muslims and Syrian refugees from entering the U.S. and erecting a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, Republicans and Democrats have strikingly different opinions. 

Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, who last week gave his support to Trump, said Tuesday that Trump’s recent attack on Judge Gonzalo Curiel of a United States District Court was “the textbook definition of a racist comment.” Textbook racism, said Ryan — but he has yet to withdraw his support.

True religion is radical. It moves us beyond our “private I” and into full reality. Jesus seems to be saying in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) that our inner attitudes and states are the real sources of our problems. We need to root out the problems at that level. Jesus says not only that you must not kill, but that you must not even harbor hateful anger. He clearly begins with the necessity of a “pure heart” (Matthew 5:8) and knows that the outer behavior will follow. Too often we force the outer and the inner remains like a cancer.

DeMoss told The Washington Post two months ago that the Republican front-runner’s insult-laden campaign has been a flagrant rejection of the values Falwell Sr. espoused and Liberty promotes on its campus.

In late April, the executive committee of Liberty’s board of trustees had voted to ask DeMoss to resign from the board’s executive committee, which he chaired, according to a statement he made to Patheos blogger Warren Throckmorton. Days later, on April 25, DeMoss decided to step down from the board as well, citing “a concern about a lack of trust.”

Racism is being incited and condoned, and now violence is being incited and condoned. So we will need to bring what Archbishop Desmond Tutu once called “a spirituality of transformation.” I remember when he preached that message from the pulpit of the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. I had the blessing of preaching from that same pulpit this past Sunday, and I wanted to share the sermon I preached with you. 

Russell Moore may be president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. But don’t call him an evangelical — at least not until the current election cycle ends.

Moore started introducing himself as a “gospel Christian” a few weeks ago. That’s because, he said, “The word ‘evangelical’ has become almost meaningless this year, and in many ways the word itself is at the moment subverting the gospel of Jesus Christ.”

1. What Americans Believe About Sex
A new Barna study shows the generational disparities in people's attitides about sex. “The big story here is how little everyone agrees on when it comes to the purpose of sex,” said editor-in-chief Roxanne Stone …“It’s important for Christian leaders to notice this shift in the framing of sex and to adjust their own conversations accordingly.”

2. White Christians Need to Act More Christian Than White
Jim Wallis writes in Washington Post on the need for white evangelicals to repent for how they’ve enabled racism.

Without mentioning Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump by name, Detroit Archbishop Allen Vigneron has blasted proposals like Trump’s that would specifically bar Muslims from the U.S., saying the idea “fractures the very foundation of morality on which we stand.”

Vigneron’s denunciation, in a letter he sent on Dec. 10 to his priests, is significant because Catholic leaders have been strong defenders of religious freedom in recent years but have been largely quiet in the wake of Trump’s controversial pitch earlier this week to bar all Muslims from the U.S.

“While the Catholic Church refrains from weighing in for or against individual candidates for a particular political office, the Church does and should speak to the morality of this important and far-reaching issue of religious liberty,” Vigneron wrote in the letter, which he also sent to imams in his state.

Muhammad Ali aimed a powerful and impassioned message at Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Dec. 9, saying that the recent global terrorism crisis has “perverted people’s views on what Islam really is.”

Ali became a Muslim and changed his name from Cassius Clay during the height of his career as one of the greatest boxers in history. His message came in a statement following a week in which Trump cast doubt on President Barack Obama’s assertion that several American “sporting heroes” practiced Islam.

“I am a Muslim, and there is nothing Islamic about killing innocent people in Paris, San Bernardino, or anywhere else in the world,” Ali said.