Evangelicals are an important voting block in most elections. However, in the 2016 Presidential race, their vote may be more critical than ever. So, they are being courted – especially by presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
One thought up for debate after Trump’s meeting with evangelical leaders this week is whether or not Christians are out of focus when it comes to expecting spiritual leadership from whoever occupies the White House. Continue reading…
U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump tosses off his overcoat as he speaks at a campaign event in an airplane hangar in Rome, New York April 12, 2016.Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s closed-door meeting Tuesday with 900 top evangelical and social conservative leaders will be a time of questions and answers on issues such as the Supreme Court, sanctity of life and religious freedom, according to an organizer, who said a similar meeting is being discussed also with Trump’s rival Hillary Clinton.
“Of the more than 50,000 questions that came in, many of them focused on those three issues. Others focused on issues related to leadership, national security, and faith,” Johnnie Moore, the spokesperson for My Faith Votes, a non-partisan organization focused on engaging the 25 million Christians who did not vote in 2012 and one of the two groups behind the meeting, told The Christian Post. Continue reading…
During a podcast with Charisma Media founder Steve Strang last week, televangelist Frank Amedia said God spoke to him about Donald Trump.
Strang said Amedia told him about the experience months ago, and urged his long-time friend to come on his podcast to discuss it. Amedia said it occurred last summer, as he was “feeling challenged” about the 2016 presidential race—with former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) in the race—and turned to prayer. Continue reading…
On June 3, 2016 Pope Francis addressed the judges and magistrates of the Vatican, insisting that the Church has a duty to intervene in political issues that cause “open wounds and dramatic suffering.” Citing the current model of the criminal justice system, he decried the prevalence of corruption and strictly penal punishments.
Pope Francis insisted that for true justice, punishment is not enough. Rather, both victims and offenders must be re-educated to give them hope for a successful re-integration into society. “No penalty that doesn’t give hope is valid. If it doesn’t give hope, it’s torture.”
“Forcefully reiterating” the Church’s stance against the death penalty, Pope Francis implores all to “let it be God who chooses when the time has come.” Source
Allies of Ben Carson will launch a super-PAC later this month with the aim of turning out evangelical voters for Donald Trump and down-ballot Republicans.
The group, led by Bill Millis, a North Carolina businessman and former top fundraiser for Carson, is also forming an ambitious network of nonprofit advocacy groups aimed at affecting conservative social change. Continue reading…
RIO DE JANEIRO — As he struggles to build support for his presidency, Brazil’s new leader, Michel Temer, has been dogged by the kind of character issue that pollsters refer to as “a strong negative.”
Temer, rumor has it, is a devil worshiper.
The origins of this falsehood are unclear. Temer, 75, a longtime politician, is a Christian of Maronite Lebanese descent. But the rumors have inflicted enough damage that Temer turned to prominent evangelical pastors for help. They encouraged him to make a video appealing for evangelicals’ support. Continue reading…
MANILA, Philippines — An application for membership in the Seventh-day Adventist Church has been submitted by newly-elected Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. The church has acknowledged receipt of the application and a character review of the baptismal candidate is under way.
President Duterte signalled his interest in the church in a recent interview with the Cebu Sun Star in which he said that if he was excommunicated from his own church he “might join the Seventh-day Adventists.”
Joining the Adventist Church would be a bit of an adjustment for the president, said University of the Philippines Anthropology specialist, Miguel Magnolia. “The Seventh-day Adventists don’t just baptize you on the spot. They want you to know what you are committing to. Plus, vegetarian chicken can be a shock to the system.” Continue reading…
The Philippines president-elect accused the Catholic church on Sunday of hypocrisy, saying the bishops who had condemned him during his campaign had been asking favours from the government.
Rodrigo “the punisher” Duterte, who won the 9 May presidential elections by a landslide, caused outrage in the church hierarchy in December after making a rambling and obscenity-filled speech cursing the pope. About 80% of Filipinos belong to the Catholic church. Continue reading…
A step that could lead to an eventual embrace of the presumptive Republican nominee
Pope Francis says that London’s election of the first Muslim mayor of a Western capital is an example of how migrants can be integrated in Europe.
Voters in the English capital elected Sadiq Khan, the son of a Pakistani bus driver, on May 6 after a campaign in which the Conservative candidate, Zac Goldsmith, was criticized for focusing on Labour candidate Khan’s religion.
In an interview with French Catholic newspaper La Croix published on Tuesday, the leader of the Catholic Church said that Khan’s election provided an encouraging sign as other parts of Europe put up borders to migrants coming from the Middle East and Africa. Francis, 79, cited the orchestrators of the Brussels attacks—in which suicide bombings at an airport and metro station killed 36 people in March—as an example of the consequences of not integrating migrants. Many of the perpetrators of both the Brussels attacks and Paris attacks that killed 130 people in November 2015 grew up in the Molenbeek district of the Belgian capital, seen as a haven for extremists. Continue reading…