Posts Tagged As: Ronnie Floyd

Donald Trump Announces His “Evangelical Executive Advisory Board.” It’s Worse Than You Thought.

Jim Burroway

June 21st, 2016

Remember just last week when Donald Trump was asking, “Who is better for the gay community than Donald Trump?” Well, we have an answer. It turns out that just about anyone would be better for the gay community than Donald Trump, judging by his newly-announced Evangelical Executive Advisory Board.

His press release says that the new board will provide “advisory support… on those issues important to Evangelicals and other people of faith in America. The executive board will also lead a much larger Faith and Cultural Advisory Committee to be announced later this month.”

The statement said that the board will fulfill Trump’s “esire to have access to the wise counsel of such leaders as needed,” and it represents Trump’s endorsement of “those diverse issues important to Evangelicals and other Christians.” The announcement contained one unusual caveat: “The leaders on the executive board were not asked to endorse Mr. Trump as a prerequisite for participating on the board.”

It’s hard to imaging a more extreme group of people to have Trump’s ear. Here’s the list:

Executive board members include:

  • Michele Bachmann – Former Congresswoman
  • A.R. Bernard – Senior Pastor and CEO, Christian Cultural Center
  • Mark Burns – Pastor, Harvest Praise and Worship Center
  • Tim Clinton – President, American Association of Christian Counselors
  • Kenneth and Gloria Copeland – Founders, Kenneth Copeland Ministries
  • James Dobson – Author, Psychologist and Host, My Family Talk
  • Jerry Falwell, Jr. – President, Liberty University
  • Ronnie Floyd – Senior Pastor, Cross Church
  • Jentezen Franklin – Senior Pastor, Free Chapel
  • Jack Graham – Senior Pastor, Prestonwood Baptist Church
  • Harry Jackson – Senior Pastor, Hope Christian Church
  • Robert Jeffress – Senior Pastor, First Baptist Church of Dallas
  • David Jeremiah – Senior Pastor, Shadow Mountain Community Church
  • Richard Land – President, Southern Evangelical Seminary
  • James MacDonald – Founder and Senior Pastor, Harvest Bible Chapel
  • Johnnie Moore – Author, President of The KAIROS Company
  • Robert Morris – Senior Pastor, Gateway Church
    Tom Mullins – Senior Pastor, Christ Fellowship¬
  • Ralph Reed – Founder, Faith and Freedom Coalition
    James Robison – Founder, Life OUTREACH International
  • Tony Suarez – Executive Vice President, National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference
  • Jay Strack – President, Student Leadership University
  • Paula White – Senior Pastor, New Destiny Christian Center
  • Tom Winters – Attorney, Winters and King, Inc.
    Sealy Yates – Attorney, Yates and Yates

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal provided seven names that were expected to be included on Trump’s advisory board. We have a run-down on those seven people here.

The announcement comes after Trump met with about 900 Evangelical leaders in Trump Tower this morning. It was supposed to be a closed-door meeting, but E.W. Jackson tweeted out a series of videos capturing some of Trump’s remarks to the group, which included an admonition that the group should not be “politically correct” and pray for “all of our leaders”:

…Some of the people were saying, “Let’s pray for our leaders.” And I said, well, you can pray for your leaders, and I agree with that, pray for everyone, but what you really have to do is you have to pray to get everybody out to vote for one specific person. And we can’t be, again, politically correct and say we pray for all of our leaders because all of your leaders are selling Christianity down the tubes, selling the evangelicals down the tubes, and it’s a very, very bad thing that’s happening.

He also told the group, “I’m so on your side. I’m a tremendous believer. And we’re going to straighten it out.”

Trump To Meet With 900 Evangelical Leaders Tomorrow, Announce Religious Advisory Board This Week

Jim Burroway

June 21st, 2016

More than 900 conservative Evangelical leaders are making their pilgrimage to Trump Tower for a meeting with The Donald, who has been making a cynical play for the gay vote following the Pulse night club massacre in Orlando. When the meeting was organized last month by Ben Carson, about 400 social conservatives were announced as attending. Back then, the the roster included a veritable Who’s Who of anti-gay politics, and it has, obviously, only grown since then. The Wall Street Journal says that one outcome of tomorrow’s meeting will be a new religious advisory board, with an announcement coming out sometime “this week”:

Among the people likely to be named to Mr. Trump’s religious advisory board: Jerry Falwell Jr., the son of the late televangelist and president of Liberty University; Ralph Reed, founder of the Faith and Freedom Coalition; Paula White, senior pastor of New Destiny Christian Center in Apopka, Fla.; Ronnie Floyd, president of the Southern Baptist Convention; Robert Jeffress, host of a national radio and television ministry and the pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas; Jay Strack, president of Student Leadership University in Orlando, Fla.; and Jack Graham, pastor at Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas.

Here’s a rundown of the names that are being floated:

Jerry Falwell, Jr.: What can I say? Like father, like son, more or less, although the son has taken a much lower profile in anti-gay politics than his father. Instead, he seems to prefer that others to the dirty work for him. He employs the rabidly anti-gay extremist Matt Barber as the associate dean of the university’s law school. Falwell has been an avid supporter of Donald Trump since last January.

Ralph Reed: As head of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, Reed’s anti-gay political activities go all the way bach to the 1989 when he was named the Executive Director of Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition. He started the Faith and Freedom Coalition in 2009. In 2013, he has called the proposed Employment Non-Discrimination Act “a dagger aimed at the heart of religious freedom for millions of Americans.” In 2014, Reed compared Federal District Court decision striking down bans on same-sex marriage to the infamous Dred Scott decision of 1856 which held that African-Americans who were imported as slaves, and their descendants, could not be U.S. citizens. He also compared the fight against same-sex marriage to the flight against slavery.

Paula White: The televangelist and head of New Destiny Christian Center outside of Orlando, Paula White treads the same ground was a lot of her fellow prosperity gospel preachers in the model of Joel Osteen: don’t say anything controversial that could possibly interrupt the flow of checks. She doesn’t seem to have any particular anti-gay agenda. In fact, she doesn’t seem to have any agenda at all, except money. Which makes her such a good match for Trump. Last October, White said that “any tongue that rises against him (Trump) will be condemned according to the word of God.” In March, she said she presented Trump a Bible and a letter, purportedly written by Billy Graham, containing a “prophetic word.”

Ronnie Floyd: He is the current president of the Southern Baptist Convention. He his anti-gay history goes back decades. He once said in a sermon, “Satan has taken his tool of homosexuality, a gross and evil sin, and done a con job on the American culture, making it seem like all is okay when you are gay. …This is not a skirmish or a conflict or a disagreement, but it is a war. The war they have declared against our culture has an agenda and we need to be aware of it.” That was in 2003. There’s no reason to believe his views have changed much since then. Just last year, before the U.S. Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges decision overturning bans on same-sex marriage, Floyd told the SBC’s annual meeting in Columbus, “We are in spiritual warfare. This is not a time for Southern Baptists to stand back…. It (the Supreme Court’s decision) would add fuel, more fuel, to the already sweeping wildfire of sexual revolution and move it beyond all control.”

Robert Jeffries: He is the pastor of Dallas’s influential First Baptist Church, which runs a school, a college and radio stations. Last Thursday, on the very day that Trump was in Dallas asking “Who is better for the gay community than Donald Trump?”, Trump re-tweeted a photo of himself standing beside Robert Jefferies. Just last February, said that because of same-sex marriage, “I believe that we are getting desensitize… which will pave the way for that future world dictator, the Antichrist, to persecute and martyr Christians without any repercussions what-so-ever.”

Jay Strack: He is the head of Orlando’s Student Leadership University, and the lead author, with Dr. Richard Land, of Mercury Rising: 8 Issues That Are Too Hot To Handle. One of those issues — yeah, you sorta guessed it — was teen homosexuality. His book touted ex-gay ministries as a way to deal with teen homosexuality, and directed teens to look up the Exodus International web site. That book came out in 2003. In 2013, Exodus shut down after its president, Alan Chambers acknowledged more than a year earlier that ” 99.9% of them … have not experienced a change in their orientation.” Chambers also issued a formal apology to the LGBT community.

Jack Graham: He is the previous head of the Southern Baptist Convention and pastor of Prestonwood Baptist Church, a 40,000 member megachurch in Dallas’s far-north suburbs near Plano. In anticipation of the Obergefell decision, Graham said that “there’s coming a day, I believe, that many Christians personally and churches corporately will need to practice civil disobedience on this issue. …There are many Christians today who are preparing if necessary to go to jail.”

Donald Trump To Court Anti-Gay Extremists

Jim Burroway

May 24th, 2016

Time magazine has reported that the Trump campaign is actively courting religious and social conservatives as he turns his attention to the fall general election. A meeting has been set for June 21, and invitees represent just about the entire anti-gay brain trust:

The invitation. (Click to enlarge.)

The invitation. (Click to enlarge.)

Former presidential candidate Ben Carson is working with Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, and Bill Dallas, who leads United in Purpose, to plan a closed-door session for about 400 social conservative leaders to meet with Trump in the coming weeks in New York City. A broader steering group of about 20 people includes people like American Values president Gary Bauer, Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, and Family Leader president Bob Vander Plaats.

“We are looking for a way forward,” Perkins says. “The main thing here is this is to have a conversation.” He described the planned meeting as “a starting point for many.” The Trump campaign has not publicly confirmed that the meeting will take place.

Other anti-gay activists include Phil Burress (Citizens for Community Values), Ken Cuccinelli, Ronnie Floyd (Southern Baptist Convetion), E.W. Jackson, Harry Jackson, Cindy Jacobs, Joseph Mattera, Penny Nance (Concerned Women for America), Ralph Reed (Faith and Freedom Coalition), Pat Robertson, Rick Scarborough (Vision America), and Tim Wildmon (American Family Association).

Trump’s outreach doesn’t end there:

Trump campaign surrogates are separately organizing a more official faith advisory committee for the candidate, with Mike Huckabee being discussed as a possible national chairman. Televangelist Paula White, a Trump supporter and a senior pastor of New Destiny Christian Center in Florida, have been organizing the group behind-the-scenes with Tim Clinton, president of the 50,000-member American Association of Christian Counselors, according to several people familiar with the project.

    

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