Ben Carson
Ed Gramlich, a housing policy adviser at the National Low Income Housing Coalition, said jurisdictions had to analyze impediments to fair housing choice in their communities, but these reports were often not well-written or “just sat on a shelf because the community didn’t even know they existed.”
Image via REUTERS/Jonathan Drake/RNS
When presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump meets behind closed doors next week with conservative Christians from across the country, no one expects a coronation.
But neither will there be an inquisition, according to organizers.
Empty podiums at the Republican debate on Dec. 15 in Las Vegas. Joseph Sohm / Shutterstock.com
I can’t watch the political debates for long without feeling sick: So much animosity and ego and bullying and attacking and negativity; so little thoughtful discussion and kindness. The toxic words seep inside my skin and into my emotions. I have to get away from it.
The worst part is when candidates use their “religion” as a justification for all of the ugliness being spewed — when they start trying to one-up the other and convince voters that they, themselves, are true believers who rank right up there on Jesus’ most-favored list.
In this oddest of presidential election seasons, one odd fact is rarely mentioned: the curious age spread of the candidates.
At their first inauguration, our 43 U.S. presidents* have ranged in age from almost 43 to almost 70. More than half were in their 50s. Their median age was 55, and so was their average age.
But in 2016, now that we're down to seven candidates (Carson, Cruz, Kasich, Rubio, and Trump vs. Clinton and Sanders), not a single candidate is in his or her 50s.
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.
Ben Carson speaks at CPAC Aug. 8, 2014 at National Harbor, Md. Christopher Halloran / Shutterstock.com
Carson, a renowned neurosurgeon, has compared same-sex marriage to bestiality and pedophilia. He even suggested segregating bathrooms for the transgender population since it was unfair to make non-trans individuals uncomfortable. And this week, Carson referred to trans individuals as “abnormal” and said they should not be given “extra rights.” His comments on the LGBT community may seem outrageous to many — even to those in evangelical and mainline faith traditions who have left the “being gay is a choice” rhetoric in the past. Yet Carson, perhaps the most visibly religious presidential candidate, holds onto many of his anti-LGBT views.
If Carson’s faith affects his politics, it’s important to contextualize his conservative LGBT views with his church affiliation. Indeed, the Seventh-day Adventist Church espouses many similar views, which stem from a long, complicated history with the LGBT community.
Image via Adelle M. Banks/RNS
Ben Carson, the retired neurosurgeon once best known for separating conjoined baby twins, announced May 4 that he will pursue the Republican nomination for U.S. president. Carson is now known as a culture warrior whose criticisms of President Obama have made him a favorite of conservatives. Here are five faith facts about him:
1. He’s a twice-baptized Seventh-day Adventist.
In his book Gifted Hands, Carson, 63, describes being baptized as a boy by the pastor of Detroit’s Burns Seventh-day Adventist Church. At age 12, he told the pastor of another Adventist church in the Detroit suburb of Inkster, that he hadn’t completely grasped his first baptism and wanted to be baptized again.
Carson has served as an Adventist local elder and Sabbath school teacher. But he attends other churches. “I spend just as much time in non-Seventh-day Adventist churches because I’m not convinced that the denomination is the most important thing,” he told RNS in 1999.
“I think it’s the relationship with God that’s most important.”
Left to right, former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), U.S. Rep. Connie Mack (R-Fla.), former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) in 2012. Photo via REUTERS / Brian Snyder / RNS
As Southern Baptists prepare to interview Republican presidential candidates Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio in Nashville, Tenn., on Aug. 4, a group of mostly younger pastors is challenging the methods used by the old religious right and urging a broader agenda and more qualified support for the Republican Party.
“There’s a whole generation of guys coming up saying we’re tired of being the lapdogs of the GOP and, worse than that, being tossed away like a Kleenex after the election is over,” said Ryan Abernathy, 40, teaching pastor at West Metro Community Church in Yukon, Okla.
“I know a ton of people saying we should no longer be blindly giving our allegiance to one political party.”
Photo via REUTERS / Hans Deryk / RNS
When it comes to political partisanship in the 2016 presidential race, it might be said that Southern Baptists have taken one step forward and two steps back.
The Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, the public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, announced in a press release that its president Russell Moore would be interviewing Republican candidates Jeb Bush (live) and Marco Rubio (via video) before 13,000 attendees at the denomination’s missions conference on August 4. Leading candidates from each major party were invited, the release states, but only Rubio and Bush accepted.
Ben Carson. Photo via Gage Skidmore / Wikimedia Commons / RNS
Ben Carson, the retired neurosurgeon once best known for separating conjoined baby twins, is expected to announce May 4 that he will pursue a GOP candidacy for U.S. president. Carson is now known as a culture warrior whose criticisms of President Obama have made him a favorite of conservatives.
Here are five faith facts about him.
Columnist Ann Coulter at the 2004 Republican National Convention. Photo courtesy of Kyle Cassidy via Wikimedia Commons.
Prominent conservative voices are criticizing the decision to bring two medical missionaries who contracted Ebola back to the United States for treatment.
Real estate mogul Donald Trump and retired neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson were both critical of bringing the infected missionaries back to the U.S. Columnist Ann Coulter went further, questioning why the missionaries were working in the “disease-ridden cesspools” of Africa.
Dr. Kent Brantly, with Samaritan’s Purse, and Nancy Writebol, with Service in Mission, are medical missionaries who were infected with Ebola while working with patients in Liberia. They are being treated at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta.
“If Dr. Brantly had practiced at Cedars-Sinai hospital in Los Angeles and turned one single Hollywood power-broker to Christ, he would have done more good for the entire world than anything he could accomplish in a century spent in Liberia,” Coulter wrote in a column.
But the professional provocateur is facing a backlash from the mainstream Christian establishment, especially evangelicals, for whom overseas missionary work is an article of faith.