The mental illness of, Peter Wagner, even recognized and disavowed by fellow evangelist, Leanne Payne ..
Spiritual Mapping: A Misguided Focus on the Demonic
For the last three decades we in PCM have had to deal with the extraordinarily grievous effects that misguided practices of spiritual warfare have had upon Christian leaders, communities, and families, and most particularly upon children growing up in homes where an all-consuming focus on the demonic has crippled the formation of their minds and imaginations. The dark myths out of which these ideologies and practices are spawned form the milieu in which fear, paranoia, and a tragic absence of the good of what it means to be truly human is missing in their lives.
These effects include even dissociative identity disorders as well as other emotional and spiritual illnesses. To see evangelical leaders such as C. Peter Wagner and others dress up these unscriptural ideas and methods in pseudo-technical language and then give to them a universal platform has been and continues to be for us among the gravest of concerns. .. continued ..
Sod bless America .. you have incredible whackos in your midst .. heh, every country has their share, but the American zoo is quite something to behold ..
In the most interesting section of the remarks, Perry lists various problems facing America and, instead of offering policy prescriptions, he says he would simply hand things over to the Lord:
I tell people, that "personal property" and the ownership of that personal property is crucial to our way of life.
Our founding fathers understood that it was a very important part of the pursuit of happiness. Being able to own things that are your own is one of the things that makes America unique. But I happen to think that it's in jeopardy.
It's in jeopardy because of taxes; it's in jeopardy because of regulation; it's in jeopardy because of a legal system that’s run amok. And I think it's time for us to just hand it over to God and say, "God, You’re going to have to fix this." ...
I think it's time for us to use our wisdom and our influence and really put it in God's hands. That's what I'm going to do, and I hope you'll join me.
This rhetoric echoes Perry's letter [ http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/06/06/rick_perry_prayer/index.html ] to those attending the stadium prayer meeting, in which he wrote: "Right now, America is in crisis: we have been besieged by financial debt, terrorism, and a multitude of natural disasters. As a nation, we must come together and call upon Jesus to guide us through unprecedented struggles." Though handing over the country's political problems to God seems to go one step further than merely asking for Jesus' guidance.
Texas Gov. Perry's public day of prayer draws fire from clergy and atheists
Gov. Rick Perry (R) of Texas, seen here at a Boy Scouts ceremony aboard the USS Midway in San Diego, June 29, has called for a day of public prayer and fasting, to be held Aug. 6 in Houston's Reliant Center. Gregory Bull / AP / File
Gov. Rick Perry of Texas has called for a public day of prayer and fasting, prompting criticism from First Amendment watchdog groups, atheists, and the Houston Clergy Council.
By Stacy Teicher Khadaroo, Staff writer / July 14, 2011
The American debate over the mixing of politics and religion is swirling in Texas.
Gov. Rick Perry’s call for Americans to gather in Houston’s Reliant Stadium for a day of public prayer and fasting on Aug. 6 has drawn the ire of atheist groups and concerns from interfaith church leaders as well.
Titled “The Response,” the event is intended to bring together people to address the nation’s “state of crisis” through Christian prayer. The website (theresponseusa.com) features a one-minute video invitation from Governor Perry, in which he says in part, “I’m all too aware of government’s limitations when it comes to fixing things that are spiritual in nature. That’s where prayer comes in, and we need it more than ever.”
But opponents say what’s needed is a clearer line between government and religion.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) [ http://ffrf.org/ ], a Madison, Wisc., group concerned with the separation of church and state, filed a lawsuit July 13 in the Southern District Court of Texas, located in Houston. It seeks to restrain Perry from being involved in the prayer event and to declare his endorsement of it unconstitutional.
The governor’s actions violate the establishment clause of the First Amendment, the group says, because it “gives the appearance that the government prefers evangelical Christian religious beliefs over other religious beliefs and non-beliefs,” says a press release from FFRF [ http://ffrf.org/news/releases/federal-lawsuit-calls-gov.-perrys-prayer-association-illegal/ ].
American politicians historically called for prayer days for the nation without much controversy, but in more recent decades, “rather than uniting, many critics see them as highly politicized and highly partisan,” says Marie Griffith, director of the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis. Conflicting court decisions are on the books, she notes. “We’re still hashing these things out ... and this kind of case brings all this to the fore and forces us to define more carefully what ‘establishment’ means and what ‘religion’ means.”
The lawsuit also raises concerns that the governor has been working with the American Family Association (AFA) [ http://www.afa.net/ ], which “promotes a rabid evangelical Christian agenda,” the FFRF statement says.
Another group calls the event a diversion from problems the governor should be focused on solving.
“Gov. Perry obviously has no idea how to fix the state’s budget crisis, and instead of fixing it, he is literally using religion as a smokescreen,” says David Silverman, president of American Atheists, Inc. [ http://www.atheists.org/ ], in Cranford, N.J. “If he wasn’t pulling this stunt, there would be huge uproar about the state of Texas’s financial situation, but ... a lot of Christians are giving him a bye - they’re giving him a break.”
American Atheists is planning a protest near the event and calling for Perry to step down. “Prayer fails 100 percent of the time. There’s no God up there to listen to Gov. Perry’s financial woes.... What’s going to fix the state of Texas is humans, working,” Mr. Silverman says.
But atheists are not the only ones objecting.
The ecumenical Houston Clergy Council issued a letter [ http://houstonclergycouncil.org/ ] in June saying it supports a “healthy boundary between church and state.” Signed by 24 Houston-area pastors and ministers, the letter says the event materials imply an exclusion of people who are not Christians of a certain type. And it says it is inappropriate for the governor to organize an event funded by the American Family Association, a group they note the Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled a hate group for its anti-gay and anti-Muslim statements.
“Gov. Perry continues to look forward to the prayer event on Aug. 6,” says spokeswoman Catherine Frazier. “He believes it will serve as an important opportunity for Americans to come together and pray seeking the Lord’s wisdom and guidance as our nation navigates the challenges before it. And the pending litigation does not affect plans for the event.”
The lawsuit is “legal harassment,” says Eric Bearse, a spokesman for the AFA and The Response. So far, he says, 6,000 people are planning to attend, including Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback.
FFRP also objects to the National Day of Prayer, established by Congress in 1952. The majority of Americans - 57 percent - support the National Day of Prayer, while only 5 percent oppose it, according to a 2010 Gallup poll.
Americans are split more evenly as to the influence of organized religion: 29 percent say they’d like it to have more influence in the nation, another 29 percent would like it to have less, and 39 percent say it’s about right, according to a Gallup poll this year.
The Response website [ http://theresponseusa.com/ ] lists many national and international church-affiliated endorsers. It encourages people to bring a Bible and a notebook, and it notes that vendors will be offering a limited range of food and water, as the daylong event is intended to be for fasting as well as prayer.
Because the nation “has not honored God in our successes or humbly called on Him in our struggles,” the event’s website reads, the answer “is to gather in humility and repentance and ask God to intervene.”
Rick Perry Wants God To Take Over Governing Of Texas, America
Rev. Chuck Currie United Church of Christ minister Posted: 7/14/11 06:41 PM ET
Anyone paying attention to the 2012 presidential race knows that Texas Governor Rick Perry [ http://www.governor.state.tx.us/ ] is a likely candidate and that he'll run to the right of, well, everyone else in the race. With this GOP field that will be a hard feat but Perry will try. Many observers believe the un-official kick-off of his campaign will be a massive Christian-only "prayer rally" [ http://theresponseusa.com/ ] scheduled for August 6th in Houston. Perry has teamed up to host the event with an array of far-right Christian leaders [ http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/fact-sheet-gov-rick-perry%E2%80%99s-extremist-allies (two posts back at http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=65087619 {third item})] who combined have targeted women, democrats, gays, lesbians, Roman Catholics and Muslims with hate filled rhetoric and a warped theology most will never hear preached in your neighborhood church. Now it seems clear Perry wants to hand his state and our nation over to God to govern. The Houston Chronicle reports [ http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/7652531.html ]:
Employing deeply religious language that national experts say affords both power and peril for his political career, Gov. Rick Perry in late May told a group of East Texas business leaders that he was "called to the ministry" at age 27, suggested that the governor's office was his pulpit and that God put him "in this place at this time to do his will."
According to a transcript of the private meeting, organized to raise funds for Perry's Aug. 6 "day of prayer and fasting" at Reliant Stadium, the governor stated that property rights, government regulation and a "legal system that's run amok" were threatening the American way of life and "it's time to just hand it over to God and say 'God, you're gonna have to fix this...'?"
According to a transcript of the Longview meeting, Perry said his faith grew after his service in the Air Force, when he returned to live in his parents' home in Paint Creek. "God was dealing with me," he said. "At 27 years old, I knew that I had been called to the ministry. I've just always been really stunned by how big a pulpit I was gonna have. I still am. I truly believe with all my heart that God has put me in this place at this time to do his will."
To advocates of religious tolerance, that borders on "a theocratic declaration," said C. Welton Gaddy, president of the Washington, D.C.-based Interfaith Alliance."The problem is not faith. The problem is the public assumption that he understands God and the will of God so perfectly that he can implement for everybody God's policies for this nation," Gaddy said. "I think there are a lot of people uncomfortable with that -- and I am one of them."
Perry seems intent on misusing faith as a political weapon to win the GOP nomination. The road to that nomination runs through early states like Iowa and South Carolina where Christian fundamentalists -- far outside the mainstream of Christian tradition -- wield enormous influence over the nominating process. Most candidates running for the presidency see building coalitions as a virtue -- reaching out beyond their natural base a necessity, particularly when thinking about the general election. Extremists don't generally go far in national politics even if they win their party's nomination (remember President Goldwater or Vice-President Palin?). The list of Perry's extremist allies is long and it leaves one to wonder if Perry honestly believes that the American people will embrace his views or if Perry, who once famously said Texas could succeed from the Union if the state didn't like President Obama's policies, has another agenda that transcends traditional political considerations.
As clergy leaders in the nation's fourth-largest city, we take pride in Houston's vibrant and diverse religious landscape. Our religious communities include Bahais, Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, Unitarian Universalists and many other faith traditions. Our city is also home to committed agnostics and atheists, with whom we share common cause as fellow Houstonians. Houston has long been known as a live-and-let-live city where all are respected and welcomed. It troubles us that the governor's prayer event is not open to everyone. In the publicized materials, the governor has made it clear that only Christians of a particular kind are welcome to pray in a certain way. We feel that such an exclusive event does not reflect the rich tapestry of our city. Our deepest concern, however, lies in the fact that funding for this event appears to come from the American Family Association, an organization labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The American Family Association and its leadership have a long track record of anti-gay speech and have actively worked to discriminate against the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community. The American Family Association and its leadership have also been stridently anti-Muslim, going so far as to question the rights of Muslim-Americans to freely organize and practice their faith. We believe it is inappropriate for our governor to organize a religious event funded by a group known for its discriminatory stances.
They go on to urge that "Gov. Perry leave the ministry to us and refocus his energy on the work of governing our state."
...a governing problem that he's trying to disguise through calls for prayer and the over-the-top rhetoric of some extremist megachurch pastors.
This is the politics of distraction played out as religious revivalism. Thus, I tend to agree with Wayne Slater of the Dallas News that Governor Perry won't be repudiating the extremist megapastors who are supporting this Houston prayer rally like John Hagee of San Antonio, Texas or Colorado Springs evangelist Peter Wagner. Governor Perry needs these religious extremists and their Muslim-bashing, Christian supremicist rhetoric to divert voters away from the fact that Texas is in a fiscal crisis.
And what a crisis.
Texas leads the nation in the number of uninsured children -- denying them needed health care -- is the number #1 state in carbon pollution, and schools in Texas will begin the school year without new textbooks, according to Think Progress [ http://thinkprogress.org/education/2011/07/05/260322/texas-to-begin-school-year-without-new-textbooks/ ]. The state is a paradise if you're an oil rich business man. For everyone else, God may be the only hope you have. "The reason Governor Perry is apparently pushing prayer and fasting as a solution for what's wrong with Texas is because he hasn't been able to fix Texas the ordinary way, through governing effectively. His state is falling apart. When you abandon actual governing, you'd better hope Jesus is coming soon to solve your problems. Otherwise, voters will start to figure it out," writes Thislethwaite.
Let's hope U.S. voters figure out Rick Perry before he leaves Texas for Washington, D.C.. We need our next president, whether that means we re-elect Barack Obama who clearly believes in pluralism or elect any of the GOP candidates, to be committed to democracy, not theocracy.
News 
Market Data 
Discover 
AI
