American family association – Page 6

American Family Association Takes Aim at Critic of The Response

The whole article is up at Religion Dispatches.

The American Family Association has taken aim at fellow religious conservative Brannon Howse over his criticism of the AFA’s recent sponsorship of GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry’s The Response prayer meeting. Earlier this week, Jim Stanley, program director of AFA’s radio network, American Family Radio, sent notices to two talk show hosts who are associated with Howse, informing them that continued presence on the AFA’s radio network was conditioned on severing ties with Howse.
The talk show hosts, John Loeffler and Todd Friel, have shows aired by American Family Radio and also speak at Howse sponsored events. According to Tim Wildmon, president of the AFA, “we identified two people with programs on our networks and told them, ’you have to make a choice.’” In defense of the move, Wildmon said “AFR is under no obligation to run programs of individuals who are going to help Brannon when he is attacking our friends. We make programming decisions all the time.”

Todd Friel and John Loeffler are two guys who were doing their own thing and then out of the blue they get an email from American Family Radio telling them to make a choice. Neither one of them had taken sides with Howse against the AFA’s involvement in The Response. Still they must pick a side now. Loeffler chose to leave the radio station. No word from Friel as yet. He has until Wednesday to cancel with Howse or else the AFA will remove his show.
On a broadcast last week, Thursday I think, Howse said an unnamed evangelical figure wrote to him to say that he had large “megaphones” to use in order to “decimate” Howse’s ministry. The only other evangelical I know who has mentioned Howse in a critical way is David Barton, using the megaphone of Wallbuilders Live.
This is a kind of internecine war where the ideological issues are complicated. Howse is a social conservative speaker who has worked with Barton and the AFA. However, Howse believes it is wrong for Christians to partner with the New Apostolic Reformation. From Howse point of view, the NAR is not apostolic nor a reformation. Most of the teachings are heretical and the AFA and other social conservative groups are selling out to NAR for a mess of right wing political pottage.

AFA takes a stand on religious freedom

While this is not a perfect statement (see this post for a critique), the AFA decided to oppose Bryan Fischer’s narrow view of the First Amendment. Earlier this week, the AFA issued the following statement.

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM FOR ALL
An American Family Association Policy Statement
The American Family Association celebrates Religious Freedom for all people and for all beliefs as one of the foundational values that make the United States of America a great nation.
Historical Background
America’s Founders disagreed how broadly the First Amendment extended Freedom of Religion. Since James Madison, known as the Father of the Bill of Rights, insured that the Congressional debates over the Bill of Rights were conducted in secret, Americans must look to later sources to understand the positions taken by their Founders. Thomas Jefferson and Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story, whom Madison appointed to the Supreme Court and who later founded Harvard Law School, openly debated over the place of Christianity in American law. Jefferson advocated a broad view that that all religions, not merely variations of Christianity, were to be protected. In his autobiography Jefferson wrote:
[When] the [Virginia] bill for establishing religious freedom… was finally passed,… a singular proposition proved that its protection of opinion was meant to be universal. Where the preamble declares that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word ‘Jesus Christ,’ so that it should read ‘a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion.’ The insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend within the mantle of its protection the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo and infidel of every denomination.
Joseph Story stated a contradictory view in his Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States:
The real object of the [First] amendment was, not to countenance, much less to advance Mahometanism, or Judaism, or infidelity, by prostrating Christianity; but to exclude all rivalry among Christian sects, and to prevent any national ecclesiastical establishment, which should give to an hierarchy the exclusive patronage of the national government.”
Jefferson’s position has ultimately prevailed; under American law all religions enjoy freedom from government interference. However Joseph Story’s view continues to have proponents, including Bryan Fischer, one of American Family Radio’s talk show hosts. However, the American Family Association (“AFA”) officially sides with Jefferson on this question. AFA is confident that the truth of Christianity will prevail whenever it is allowed to freely compete in the marketplace of ideas.

In other words, on one of the fundamental issues the AFA speaks about, they have a spokesperson who takes the anachronistic view with which they disagree.
Now I would like to see the AFA come out and issue a statement regarding Bryan Fischer’s position on the nobility of displacing and eradicating indigenous people from the land. It appears that they now understand a little better that silence communicates consent. So now there are several statements they need work on.

The Response – Good and bad

Rick Perry’s not-as-big-as-hoped prayer meeting, The Response is underway in Texas. You can check out the live stream at the website. As I take a break and write, a gospel choir is belting out some sweet praise music. As an evangelical, these songs touch me deeply and as is customary for me lifts my emotions.
But then I think about who is paying the bills (host entity) for the event.
The folks who think there is honor in the displacement and elimination of Native Americans from the land, who blame the Holocaust (6 million dead Jews) on gays, and who think the First Amendment is only for Christians, among many other offensive things are paying the bills.
To onlookers, I just want to say sorry.

More on The Response: Did Hitler mimic the Indian reservations?

Here is a tale of two supporters of The Response.
John Benefiel is founder of the Heartland Apostolic Prayer Network and endorser of the upcoming prayer meeting, The Response, initiated by Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) and funded by the American Family Association. Benefiel has focused on repairing relationships with Native Americans. His reasons are spiritual. For instance, he teaches that Oklahoma’s high divorce rate is due to the fact that Oklahoma was once home to the Indian Territory, a place where the government broke covenants with Native Americans. Over the years, people have been inspired by dark forces to break their marriage vows because the government broke vows with the native nations of the land. Thus, the support for making amends with native people is not simply to do the right thing, rather the big picture is to clear the land of demonic influence so that Benefiel’s version of Christianity can take hold.
Bryan Fischer is an Issues Analyst for the AFA, the group funding the event endorsed by Mr. Benefiel. Mr. Fischer has said that Native Americas were morally disqualified from ownership of their lands because of their savagry and immorality. The AFA website provides Mr. Fischer a forum to say the Indians got what they deserved because they refused to convert to Christianity. Fischer and Mr. Benefiel surely seem to disagree about this matter.
Mr. Fischer also preaches that the Nazi party was full of gays, Hitler was gay and needed gays to enforce his evil intentions. According to Fischer, gays in the Nazi military gave the world 6 million dead Jews.
Mr. Benefiel has something to say about Hitler and the Nazi era as well. Roll the tape:

The only reference to this possibility that I can find is John Toland’s biography of Adolf Hitler, where he wrote:

If we believe Bryan Fischer (which I don’t), then Hitler was some kind of gay and his brutality was because of it. Now we hear, from Apostle Benefiel and author John Toland, that the Nazis were inspired by the cruelty of the Christian nation America toward our indigenous people. Wow.
Benefiel and President Obama have something in common according to Fischer. According to Fischer when we consider America’s treatment of Native Americans, there are two conceptual options:

The template that the left has generated is that the displacement of indigenous tribes by European colonists and settlers was irredeemably evil. All the land which now comprises the United States was stolen from its rightful owners. Our very presence on this soil is a guilty, tainted presence.
So the question is whether that template is right, or whether the displacement of indigenous nations was consistent with the laws of nature, nature’s God, and the law of nations and history.
A lot is at stake here. If Americans believe that the entire history of our nation rests on a horribly evil foundation, then there is nothing to be proud of in American history, and our president is correct to identify America as the source of all evil in the world and to make a career out of apologizing for her very existence.
If, however, there is a moral and ethical basis for our displacement of native American tribes, and if our westward expansion and settlement are in fact consistent with the laws of nature, nature’s God, and the law of nations, then Americans have much to be proud of.

On the matter of native people and the evil perpetrated, Benefiel and President Obama are on the same page.
Obviously making amends with Native Americans is a big deal to Benefiel. And to his credit, he has investigated and documented the evil treatment of indigenous people by the American government. However, given his belief in curses and apologies, it is hard for me to understand how he can endorse an event like The Response, funded by the AFA, which condones Bryan Fischer’s derogatory views of Native Americans as a race of people.
One observation that I can make here is that Christian conservatives are not as monolithic a group as those outside the group think we are. Since I would be somewhere in there, the boundaries expand to even greater reaches.
It does raise for me a question about the intent of events like The Response. To which god are these folks praying? Are they praying to the one who demands an apology for evil done to Native Americans, or the one who empowered the Europeans to displace the indigenous people?
Well, at least The Response is bringing people of competing ideologies together.
(Thanks to Kyle Mantyla at Right Wing Watch for the tip.)
Video is derived from this sermon.

The strange bedfellows involved in Rick Perry's prayer meeting

On the video below, at least four people who are associated with Governor Rick Perry’s The Response prayer meeting speak in favor of an apology to Native American people for the atrocities committed against them by European settlers. Jay Swallow, Lou Engle, Sam Brownback and John Benefiel appear and support the Native American Apology Resolution. In fact, John Benefiel’s ministry made the video.
Lou Engle, who is not listed as a The Response endorser but is a part of the International House of Prayer which is providing support, speaks about the apology as a way to remove the curse on the land due to how the American government treated native people. He leaves the impression that abortion today might be related in some way to the government’s practice of making and breaking treaties.
On the other hand, the event is being funded by the American Family Association, a group which condones and provides a platform for the views of Bryan Fischer. Fischer believes the native people were wiped out because they were so savage and immoral that God favored the occupying European settlers. If confessing national sins is on the agenda, I wonder if the prayers of all of these people will cancel each other out. Some will pray thanks for removing the land from the native people, and others will ask forgiveness for taking it.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HT0ekWNUjL8[/youtube]
While I do not link any of our present day issues to curses, I do believe that Christians should be in the front of the line to support the Native American Apology Resolution. I repeatedly asked the AFA to do so back in the Spring with dead silence from them. In taking the view that America was acting as a proxy for God, he and the AFA stand in direct opposition to those they are partnering with to put on The Response.
Additional notes:
After I posted the above, I explored the work of John Benefiel a bit more. Right Wing Watch has a couple of posts bringing to light Benefiel’s views about the Statue of Liberty (demonic) and homosexuality (big Baal conspiracy). You can read more about Benefiel here. Benefiel and Cindy Jacobs have a fixation on Baal which strangely enough is a tie to the Native American Apology Resolution. It is all explained here in this prayer alert from Jacobs’ Generals International.
I don’t really understand it all, but it appears that the Resolution was used as a kind of talisman to appease spirits in places around Route 50 all through the nation. The Resolution is important because it represents a necessary step to keeping a covenant given by God to the Pilgrims to evangelize the native people. So when the settlers breached treaties, they were also breaking covenant with God. According to this line of thinking, God won’t hear our prayers until we get things right with indigenous people.
The passage of the Resolution was viewed as a means of entering into a second phase of repentence from idolatry — which is divorcing Baal via a rejection of freemasonry and the occult. Enter the statue of liberty. According to Benefiel, this pagan symbol is idol worship. Benefiel and the Generals folks want to pray all of that away.
What a gathering The Promise should be. I think if God could be confused, this meeting might be the one to accomplish it. David Barton will be thanking God for George Washington’s faith, and John Benefiel will be divorcing himself from Washington’s freemasonry. Bryan Fischer and the AFA might pray in thanks for delivering the land into the hands of the Europeans, and John Benefiel and the apostles will be in remorse over it.
Since God is not the author of confusion, then I am not sure what is going on with The Response.