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NPR Press Items
04/17/2013
Long tied to the conservative, anti-immigrant wing of the Republican Party, a number of evangelical leaders are now coming out in favor of the immigration overhaul released by a bipartisan group of senators.
04/15/2013
The evangelical movement, historically, has not been supportive of overhauling immigration. But that stance is changing. The Evangelical Immigration Table has united a diverse section of religious groups — from the social justice organization Sojourners to the Southern Baptist Convention.
04/14/2013
"Many people have never heard of him, but he shaped the vocations of so many of us that he shaped the church more than any pastor of his generation," says Jim Wallis, a prominent Christian writer and evangelical leader, and one of the many pastors whom Cosby mentored over his life.
01/14/2013
The coalition includes the National Association of Evangelicals, which represents about 40 denominations; the public policy arm of the 16 million-member Southern Baptist Convention; Esperanza, the Latino evangelical economic development group; pastor Bill Hybels of the influential Willow Creek Community Church in Illinois; and writer Max Lucado. Sojourners, the liberal-leaning evangelical advocacy group, is also participating.
11/28/2012
After an election in which Hispanics voted overwhelmingly for President Obama, the White House and Republicans on Capitol Hill are making overtures about immigration reform.
09/12/2012
On Wednesday, a coalition of religious groups called the Circle of Protection released videos by President Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney on their plans to help the poor.
07/06/2012
More than 150 prominent leaders, including some from some of the country's most conservative Christian denominations, are calling for comprehensive immigration reform. They say they want reform that includes what they call respect for the God given dignity of every person, protection for the family and secure national borders.
05/09/2012
"The heroes of that story were our Christian friends, our Christian evangelical friends. At that time, [the] Rev. Jim Wallis called me up ... and explained how [the evangelical community] did not want me to engage with this person. They said, 'This is not your problem. This is a problem within the Christian community. Let us deal with him.' And they were the ones, in fact, when he came up trying to meet me, [they] met him at the airport and forced him to back down."
03/26/2012
"The inherent dignity of all people is the foundational principle of Catholic social teaching because we're all created in the image of God," Father Thomas Kelly, a constituent of Representative Ryan's, told me after a conference call with Half in Ten. "A budget that cuts nutrition programs for poor children and tells working families they must sacrifice even more so the wealthy can have bigger tax cuts offends bedrock Catholic values. It's hard to square Representative Ryan's moral rhetoric with the cruel reality of this budget."
02/07/2012
Journalist Cathleen Falsani says she saw that when she visited a Sunday school class recently. The teenagers were rowdy, talking over each other and the teacher. Then the teacher played Bethke's video.
"And you could have heard a pin drop in the room," she says. "They were absolutely rapt, they were focused. And then when it was done they had really good questions to ask, they had excellent feedback. It engaged them in a way that I did not think they could be that early in the morning."
Falsani, who heads new media for Sojourners, a progressive Christian organization, says video Christianity isn't a bad thing. It's a spiritual thing.
