WASHINGTON (RNS)—Squeezed among two-dozen other evangelical supporters of the president, Southern Baptist Richard Land added his hand to the others reaching to pray for President Trump.

Evangelical supporters place hands on and pray with President Trump in the Oval Office of the White House. (RNS Photo/Courtesy of Johnnie Moore)The July 10 Oval Office prayer session, which has been panned and praised, is just one example of the access Trump and his key aides have given to conservative Christian leaders—from a lengthy May dinner in the White House Blue Room to an all-day meeting in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next door.

“This is unlike anything we’ve experienced in our career or ministry—unprecedented access, unprecedented solicitation of opinions and viewpoints,” said Land, president of Southern Evangelical Seminary in Matthews, N.C., and former president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.

Mainline Protestants, minority religions lack access

But while some religious conservatives are granted such intimate contact with the chief executive that they can literally “lay hands” on him, other faith leaders are kept at arm’s length.

Steven Martin, the communications director for the National Council of Churches, a group that includes mainline Protestant, Orthodox and historically black denominations, declared: “I’d absolutely say we’re frozen out.”

Manjit Singh, a co-founder of the Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund, called interaction with the White House at a “very limited level to practically nonexistent.”

Minhaj Hassan, a spokesman for Islamic Relief USA, said: “In the first six months of the Trump presidency, there hasn’t been any direct communication with the White House.”

‘Different center of gravity’

Randall Balmer, chair of Dartmouth College’s religion department, calls the political shift in the White House “a whole different center of gravity religiously” from the recent past.

In the 1960s, “representatives of the National Council of Churches could pretty much knock on the door almost any time and be granted access, and now you just don’t have that any longer,” he said.

Melissa Rogers, who was director of the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships under President Obama, said it was “very common” for various offices to hold briefings for a diverse range of U.S. religious communities.

“That certainly included evangelicals, Catholics, mainline Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs and others,” said Rogers, whose former position still hasn’t been filled by the Trump administration. Rogers is former general counsel with the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty.

In the 1980s, President Reagan welcomed conservative Christian leaders Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell to the White House. But political scientist Paul Kengor called Reagan “a Protestant with a healthy respect for non-Protestant faiths, especially Catholic and Jewish faiths.” Reagan had relationships with Pope John Paul II, Mother Teresa and Cardinal Terence Cooke and “carried in his jacket a list of Soviet Jews held in prison or denied the right to emigrate.”

Religions other than conservative evangelicals have limited communication

Today, some groups outside the fold of conservative Christianity report a limited amount of communication with the 6-month-old Trump administration. They describe connections with Cabinet-level offices, such as Hindus with the Justice Department and Baha’is with the State Department.

Officials of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops “frequently send letters to relevant departments and agencies on vital issues of the day,” said Judy Keane, spokeswoman for the bishops’ conference. Some of those letters differed with the administration on capping the number of refugees and withdrawing from the Paris climate change agreement.

Rabbi Jonah Dov Pesner, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, said leaders of the Reform movement have met with administration officials and voiced their concerns about issues such as the two-state solution and religious pluralism in Israel.

“Despite profound disagreements on issues including immigrant justice, access to health care, voting rights and more, members of the administration have heard our concerns with respect,” he said. “Every administration is different, but we have always found a way to make the voices of Reform Judaism heard.”

There have been a few examples of interfaith approaches by the Trump White House, such as when Vice President Mike Pence praised the contributions of Sikhs in a June speech in his home state of Indiana. Days later, he traveled to Colorado to celebrate the 40th anniversary of conservative Christian organization Focus on the Family.

And turbans, habits and an array of other religious attire were seen at the National Day of Prayer ceremony and the National Prayer Service at Washington National Cathedral on the day after the inauguration.

But two very different recent administrations—those of Presidents George W. Bush and Obama—have made more particular efforts to be inclusive, especially in relation to government partnerships with faith groups on social services, said Bob Tuttle, professor of religion and government at George Washington University.

Is Trump seeking ‘seal of approval’ from evangelicals?

So what benefit is there for Trump to emphasize his ties to evangelical leaders? Balmer said they provide Trump a seal of approval.

“Whenever Billy Graham showed up at the side of any politician, it provided some sense that the politician was on the right track or doing the right thing,” Balmer said.

Although he doesn’t consider Trump’s evangelical supporters to have equivalent authority as Graham, “nevertheless they do represent that constituency, a constituency that voted for Trump at 81 percent.”

While it may not be surprising that any president would welcome those with whom he agrees more than others, Carlos Malavé, executive director of Christian Churches Together, says Trump risks losing a channel of communication to an important constituency.

“If the president is interested in listening to the wisdom of American Christians in general, he should be open to give access to a broader representation of these leaders,” said Malavé, who hasn’t been able to get a meeting for himself and other anti-poverty advocates.

Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Sanders, who defended the recent prayers for the president at the White House, called those who attended the July 10 gathering “his Faith Advisory Board” who “meet from time to time to speak about issues that are important to that community.” Johnnie Moore, an evangelical author and advocate for persecuted Christians who was at the Oval Office gathering, noted the only people who attended were evangelicals.

WASHINGTON (RNS)—Vice President Mike Pence told evangelical supporters of Israel that God had a hand in creating the state of Israel, and Pence said his support for the country is rooted in his faith.

He also promised the Trump administration will move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

“Indeed, though Israel was built by human hands, it is impossible not to sense that just beneath its history lies the hand of heaven,” Pence told the annual summit of Christians United for Israel July 17.

The group, founded by San Antonio pastor John Hagee, bills itself as the largest pro-Israel organization in the United States. It is composed largely of evangelicals and met in Washington in part to celebrate a new administration its members consider far friendlier toward Israel than its predecessor.

Linked to dispensational theology

Many evangelicals look upon the founding of the modern state of Israel in 1948 and the “ingathering” of the Jews as a necessary step toward the end times, when they believe Jews either will accept Christianity or face eternal damnation.

Pence thrilled his audience, quoting from the Prophet Ezekiel’s vision of the dry bones: “Ezekiel prophesied, and I quote, ‘Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you and you shall live.’

“The state of Israel and her people bear witness to God’s faithfulness as well as their own. How unlikely was Israel’s birth? How more unlikely has been her survival and how confounding against the odds has been her thriving?” he said.

Since Israel’s founding, Pence continued, “the Jewish people have awed the world with their strength of will and their strength of character.”

American Jewish voters, however, preferred Democrat Hillary Clinton to Republican Donald Trump by a nearly 3-1 ratio. Few cited Israel as a top reason for their choice.

Move the embassy to Jerusalem

Pence also promised Trump would make good on his own promise to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. “It is not a question of ‘if.’ It is only ‘when,’” the vice president said to cheers.

Although the move is a priority of Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu and many conservative Jews and Christians, Palestinian leaders have said it would stymie peace negotiations.

Congress passed a law in 1995 requiring the move, but every president since has found it practical to delay it for fear of damaging chances for peace. Trump did the same last month, signing the waiver—which expires every six months—that keeps the embassy in Tel Aviv.

Jerusalem is holy to Christians, Muslims and Jews and is claimed as a capital by Israel but also the Palestinians, for the future state they aim to build on disputed land now controlled by Israel.

At the summit, Hagee dismissed any Palestinian rights to Jerusalem, a stance even many Israelis consider too rigid and an obstacle to peace.

Trump has reneged on his promise to move the embassy, said Barbara Goldberg Goldman, a member of the executive committee of the National Jewish Democratic Council.

Goldman, who listened to Pence’s speech, said Pence also was wrong to claim the new administration is any more committed to Israel than the last.

“In terms of deliverables with respect to Israel, nothing has happened,” Goldman said. And many, including former Israeli President Shimon Peres, considered President Obama a steadfast friend of Israel.

“To present this as a new day? No. It is a continuation of the strong unwavering bond that Israel has had with America and America has had with Israel,” she said.

WASHINGTON—The U.S. House Appropriations Committee approved a spending bill that includes a provision weakening the Johnson Amendment—the law that bars churches and other nonprofit organizations from endorsing political candidates without jeopardizing their tax-exempt status.

Advocates for separation of church and state, including the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, insisted the committee’s July 13 action exposes churches to political pressure from candidates.

“In the name of protecting the church from the IRS and without any evidence of an overreaching bureaucracy, the appropriations committee acted today to expose the garden of the church to the woolly wilderness of partisan campaigning,” said Amanda Tyler, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee soon after the July 13 committee action.

Committee rejects amendment

Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, D-Fla., and Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., proposed an amendment that would have deleted the section of the funding bill that included the provision regarding enforcement of the Johnson Amendment. The committee rejected the amendment by a 24-28 vote.

“Gutting potential enforcement of the law gives candidates and campaign donors a green light to press churches for their endorsements and possibly their tax-deductible offerings, too,” Tyler said. “Vast majorities of clergy and churchgoers oppose endorsing candidates from their houses of worship, knowing it would divide their congregations and distract from their mission.”

President Donald Trump promised at the National Prayer Breakfast in January he would “get rid of, totally destroy, the Johnson Amendment and allow our representatives of faith to speak freely and without fear.” 

Polls show most don’t want political endorsements at church

A March 2017 poll commissioned by Independent Sector showed 72 percent of U.S. voters want to keep in place the law that prohibits nonprofit organizations from engaging in political activity without endangering their tax-exempt status. 

That lines up with earlier research. In a poll of 112 evangelical Christian leaders in February by the National Association of Evangelicals, 89 percent said pastors should not endorse politicians from the pulpit, although some said the government should not penalize pastors who make political endorsements. 

A LifeWay Research survey conducted in September 2015 showed 79 percent of U.S. adults believe it is inappropriate for pastors to endorse political candidates during church services, and three-fourths said churches should not make endorsements. However, the LifeWay survey revealed fewer than half—42 percent—wanted churches to lose their tax-exempt status if they endorsed candidates.

‘Render to Caesar in God’s house’

The day before the House Appropriations Committee voted on the bill with language that weakened the Johnson Amendment, Tyler of the Baptist Joint Committee sent a letter to the committee outlining its opposition to that provision. The agency also joined more than 100 faith and nonprofit organizations to ask the committee to oppose the provision. 

“Current law strikes the right balance in protecting the integrity and independence of our religious sector,” the BJC letter said.

Tyler’s letter noted pastors and other religious leaders remain free to endorse or oppose candidates in their personal capacities, but most ministers recognize how divisive it would be in their congregations if political campaigning occurred in houses of worship.

“Jesus taught us to render unto Caesar what is Caesar and to God what is God’s. Curtailing the enforcement of the law could put pressure on churches to render to Caesar in God’s house,” Tyler wrote. “This approach does not bode well for religion or religious liberty.”

WASHINGTON (RNS)—President Trump touted his support from evangelical Christians and his friendly relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin in an interview with Pat Robertson on the Christian Broadcasting Network’s The 700 Club.

The president also continued to strike at his Democratic opponent in last year’s presidential campaign, insisting Putin would have preferred a Hillary Clinton presidency.

“There are many things that I do that are the exact opposite of what he (Putin) would want,” Trump told Robertson, the 87-year-old host of The 700 Club.

“I keep hearing about that he would have rather had Trump. I think probably not, because when I want a strong military, you know, she (Clinton) wouldn’t have spent the money on military. When I want a strong military, when I want tremendous energy, we’re opening up coal, we’re opening up natural gas, we’re opening up fracking, all the things that he would hate, but nobody ever mentions that.”

Still, the president said, he and Putin “get along very well, and I think that’s a good thing. That’s not a bad thing.”

“People said, ‘Oh, they shouldn’t get along.’ Well, who are the people that are saying that? I think we get along very, very well. We are a tremendously powerful nuclear power, and so are they. It doesn’t make sense not to have some kind of a relationship.”

Trump sat for the interview with Robertson, himself a former Republican presidential candidate, July 12 at the White House. That was two days after the president gathered evangelical Christian leaders around him to pray in the Oval Office. The leaders were in Washington, D.C., to attend a daylong meeting organized by the White House Office of Public Liaison.

No questions about Russia investigation

The interview also comes as new evidence of possible collusion with Russia to influence the 2016 election was released, including a series of emails by the president’s oldest son, Donald Trump Jr.

Robertson did not ask the president about the Russia investigation, although he seemed to reference it afterward, saying, “I dealt with so many issues in that interview, and we didn’t once talk about all that garbage because the American people don’t care about it.”

The conversation between Trump and Robertson aired in its entirety on the July 13 episode of The 700 Club on CBN, a channel Trump has turned a spotlight on as president that, like Fox News, is viewed as friendly to him.

“As long as my people understand. That’s why I do interviews with you. You have a tremendous audience. You have people that I love—evangelicals—and sometimes you say ‘the evangelical Christians,’” Trump told Robertson.

The president previously had given CBN News his third one-on-one interview in office, and Robertson, who founded the network in 1961, has been a vocal supporter of Trump.

Support from evangelicals noted

The host pointed to Trump’s support from evangelical Christians, noting many had voted for him and “thousands and thousands” were praying for him.

In return, the president said, “We’ve really helped, because I’ve gotten rid of the Johnson Amendment.”

“Now they’re going to be able to speak, and that’s a great thing for Christianity, believe me—a great, great thing—and it’s a great thing for religion,” he said.

Under the Johnson Amendment, churches and other 501(c)(3) organizations can lose their nonprofit status for endorsing political candidates or participating in political campaigns. It has been enforced only a handful of times, and Trump noted during the interview he first learned who Robert Jeffress was because the pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas was “always speaking so well of me” on TV.

A presidential executive order issued May 4 advises the IRS not to enforce the Johnson Amendment. To make it permanent, Trump added during the interview, Congress would have to repeal the amendment.

Robertson also asked the president about two things he said were important to Americans—cutting taxes, as well as repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act, referring to the latter as “iniquitous.”

Asked what would happen if efforts to get rid of the ACA, popularly known as “Obamacare,” fail, Trump answered he “will be very angry about it.”

WASHINGTON (RNS)—Christians made up the majority of refugees admitted to the United States in the first five full months of the Trump administration, reversing a trend that saw Muslims entering the country at higher numbers under President Obama, a new Pew Research report shows.

Out of all the refugees who arrived between President Trump’s inauguration and June 30, about half were Christians and 38 percent were Muslims, Pew reported.

But when monthly figures are viewed, the data—originally from the U.S. State Department—reveals a steady decline for Muslims, from about 50 percent of refugees in February to 31 percent in June.

This comes at a time when the origin of most of the world’s refugees continues to be Muslim-majority countries. According to the U.N. Refugee Agency, Syria continues to account for a significant proportion of newly displaced refugees, with more than half of all new refugees worldwide fleeing the conflict in that country. Afghanistan and Somalia also top the list.

Not so in America.

“As whole, we look at fiscal 2017 since October, and Muslims and Christians are about the same number,” said Phillip Connor, a co-writer of the report. “But seeing the shift month to month was somewhat surprising. … It is a growing increase. It’s not just that there was an immediate shift.”

Causes of change difficult to identify

In the wake of Trump’s executive orders restricting travel to the United States from seven—and under the revised travel ban, six—Muslim-majority countries, the report said, “the religious affiliation of refugees has come under scrutiny.”

Yet the specific cause of this year’s changes can’t be fully explained.

Some refugees now arriving on U.S. shores likely applied for resettlement when Obama was still in office.

Muslim refugees to the United States outnumbered Christians only three times between 2002 and 2016—in 2005, 2006 and 2016, which saw a record number of Muslims (38,901).

Refugees’ countries of origin have changed

Of the top six countries of origin for U.S. refugees, three—Iraq, Somalia and Syria—are Muslim-majority. But beginning in April, that changed. Now, only Iraq remains among the top six nations, in addition to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burma, Ukraine, Bhutan and Eritrea.

Refugee admissions to the United States in fiscal 2017, which ends Sept. 30, are on pace to fall below the 85,000-person ceiling established by the Obama administration for fiscal 2016, the report said.

WASHINGTON—The U.S. Supreme Court ruled states sometimes must make public funds available to religious organizations, a decision some Baptists hailed as a victory for religious freedom and others saw as chipping away at the wall of separation between church and state that protects religious liberty.

In a 7-2 decision in Trinity Lutheran Church v. Comer, the court ruled Missouri acted improperly when it denied public funds to a Lutheran church that sought assistance from a state program providing grants for playground improvements. 

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said excluding Trinity Lutheran from a public benefit—for which it otherwise qualified—solely because of its religious character “is odious to our constitution.”

However, Roberts sought to limit the sweep of the opinion by adding a footnote: “This case involves express discrimination based on religious identity with respect to playground resurfacing. We do not address religious uses of funding or other forms of discrimination.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented, insisting the ruling “profoundly changes” the relationship between church and state by insisting the government is obligated to provide public funds to a congregation.

The Missouri constitution states, “No money shall ever be taken from the public treasury, directly or indirectly, in aid of any church, sect or denomination of religion.” 

ERLC applauds decision

Last year, the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission filed a brief in opposition to the lower court rulings that upheld Missouri’s decision to deny the state grant to the church-based daycare. 

“The case matters because the court here recognizes the difference between a government establishing a religion and a government choosing not to penalize a religion,” ERLC President Russell Moore wrote in an online article after the court issued its ruling.

Moore called the ruling “a win for religious freedom and for limits on the power of the state.”

Court ‘upends precedent,’ Baptist Joint Committee says

The Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, on the other hand, filed a friend-of-the-court brief supporting the constitutional prohibition on state aid to churches.

In ruling against the Missouri prohibition on state aid to churches, the high court rejected “an important aspect of America’s history of protecting religious liberty,” said Holly Hollman, general counsel for the Baptist Joint Committee.

“By treating a state ban on aid to churches as a mark of discrimination, the court’s decision upends precedent and adds confusion to the law,” Hollman said.

“While claiming to stand up for churches, the court ignores their distinct nature as centers of religious exercise. ‘No aid’ provisions reflect the hard-fought battles of Baptists and other religious dissenters that abolished government controls over religion and secured church autonomy.  

“The decision does not create a free exercise right to government funding of religion, but it unnecessarily blurs the line that ensures religion flourishes on its own.”

Varied views on ‘common sense’

The Alliance Defending Freedom represented Trinity Lutheran, arguing the church should be eligible for the state grant because the playground materials are secular, and the congregation operates a preschool open to children in its area, regardless of their religious affiliation.

“The government should treat children’s safety at religious schools the same as it does at nonreligious schools,” said David Cortman, senior counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom. “The Supreme Court’s decision today affirms that common-sense principle and the larger truth that government isn’t being neutral when it treats religious organizations worse than everyone else.

“Equal treatment of a religious organization in a program that provides only secular benefits, like a partial reimbursement grant for playground surfacing, isn’t a government endorsement of religion. As the Supreme Court rightly found, unequal treatment that singles out a preschool for exclusion from such a program simply because a church runs the school is clearly unconstitutional.”

Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, in contrast, insisted the ruling “undermines the bedrock principle that no American should be forced to support a religion against his or her will.”

“The religious freedom protections enshrined in state constitutions are worth more than resurfacing a playground,” Lynn said. “Taxpayer-funded religion is bad for churches, communities and citizens. … This ruling threatens to open the door to more taxpayer support for religion, which is at odds with our history, traditions and common sense.”

WASHINGTON (RNS)—No U.S. religious group possesses a majority who think it’s acceptable for businesspeople to invoke their religious beliefs to refuse service to gays.

This finding from a 2016 Public Religion Research Institute survey is a first, said Robert P. Jones, CEO of the nonprofit research group.

In a 2015 PRRI survey that asked the same question, more than half of white evangelical Protestants and Mormons approved of businesspeople who cited religious belief to deny service to LGBT customers.

But in the new 2016 survey, only 50 percent of white evangelical Protestants expressed such approval, as opposed to 56 percent the year before.

Mormons showed the second-highest rates of approval. About 42 percent of Mormons backed businesspeople who deny services in the latest survey, as opposed to the 58 percent who favored them the previous year.

Shifting views

But these two conservatively minded religious groups weren’t the only ones to shift their views about bakers, for example, who won’t make a cake for a gay couple’s wedding.

The percentage of white mainline Protestants who approved of businesspeople who withhold services to gay people dropped to 30 percent in the recent poll, down from 37 percent in 2015.

Overall in 2016, twice as many Americans disapproved than approved of those who refuse service to a gay person based on religious beliefs—61 percent to 30 percent.

PRRI’s findings corroborate a more dramatic overall shift in attitudes about same-sex marriage and LBGT Americans in the past decade.

Most religious groups today support same-sex marriage, Jones noted, adding, “The religious groups in which majorities oppose same-sex marriage make up less than 20 percent of the public.”

Still an issue

And although conservative religious groups have effectively ended their political campaigns against gay marriage since the 2015 Supreme Court decision legalizing it, the question of whether people can legally use their religious convictions to refuse service to LGBT Americans remains an issue.

In statehouses across the country, lawmakers, voicing concerns about the erosion of religious liberty, continue to introduce bills to allow businesspeople and professionals—from florists to pharmacists—to deny service to gay people based on religious beliefs.

One such bill signed into law by Vice President Mike Pence when he was governor of Indiana was later amended after an outcry from citizens and businesses who called it anti-gay and threatened to boycott the state.

While white evangelical Protestants show the highest levels of approval for those who deny services to gay people for religious regions, Unitarian-Universalists show the lowest rate—8 percent.

The PRRI poll, which asked about 40,000 people this particular question, has a margin of error of plus or minus less than 1 percentage point for Americans overall, and higher margins of error for particular religious groups.

Washington, D.C.—The country’s religious congregations will have to add $714,000 to their annual budgets each year for the next decade to make up for the cuts found in President Trump’s 2018 federal budget proposal, according to Bread for the World.  

“There is no way our country’s 350,000 religious congregations can make up for the cuts in the services that help hungry, poor and other vulnerable people,” said David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World. “Congress should not justify budget cuts by saying that churches and charities can pick up the slack. They cannot.”

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimated more than half—or $2.5 trillion over 10 years—of the Trump administration’s proposed fiscal year 2018 cuts will come from programs that help low- and moderate-income Americans.   

“President Trump has proposed a budget that includes the largest cuts ever to programs assisting struggling American families,” Beckmann said. “The healthcare cuts and the fiscal year 2018 budget cuts—both of which are being negotiated in Congress—are a double whammy for America’s struggling families.”

Bread for the World estimates the healthcare cuts alone under the American Health Care Act will take away $2,000 a year in healthcare services from every man, woman and child in or near poverty for the next 10 years.

WASHINGTON (RNS)—Evangelical Christian leaders are spearheading a campaign for criminal justice reform, calling for equitable punishment, alternatives to incarceration and a different take on the “tough on crime” language of the Trump administration.

“Our country’s overreliance on incarceration fails to make us safer or to restore people and communities who have been harmed,” said James Ackerman, CEO of Prison Fellowship Ministries, at a news conference at the National Press Club.

Joined by black, white and Hispanic officials of evangelical organizations, he introduced the “Justice Declaration” that has been signed by almost 100 religious leaders from a wide range of Christian denominations.

“The church has both the unique ability and unparalleled capacity to confront the staggering crisis of crime and incarceration in America,” the declaration reads, “and to respond with restorative solutions for communities, victims and individuals responsible for crime.”

The leaders later presented their declaration to Republican leaders, such as House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, in hopes of gaining bipartisan support for changes in federal law.

“A big mistake”

In a May memorandum to federal prosecutors, Attorney General Jeff Sessions established a stricter policy on charges and sentencing, saying they “should charge and pursue the most serious readily provable offense” and consider using mandatory minimum sentences.

Ackerman said Prison Fellowship supports sentencing guidelines but thinks mandatory sentences are “a big mistake.”

He was joined at the news conference by leaders with testimonies of how churches helped formerly incarcerated people rehabilitate themselves and become productive citizens.

Dimas Salaberrios, president of the Concerts of Prayer Greater New York, told of how church members once vouched to a judge about his transformation after he escaped from authorities when he was a drug dealer. The judge pardoned him.

“I’m living proof that when you grab somebody out of the pits of hell and you turn their life around, that they can be great contributors to society,” he said.

Address racial inequities

National Association of Evangelicals President Leith Anderson challenged churches to do more than sign the declaration but also to take action steps to address racial inequities and work for alternatives, such as drug courts and mental health courts, to keep people out of prison.

Thirteen percent of Americans are African-American, but close to 40 percent of U.S. prisoners are black.

“What if all of our churches were to adopt one incarcerated person?” he asked. “What if all of our churches would service one family where a family member is incarcerated? What if all of our churches would care for one victim?”

The declaration, and a related 11-page paper on how the church can respond to crime and incarceration, were spearheaded by evangelical organizations—Prison Fellowship, the NAE, the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission and the Colson Center for Christian Worldview.

But signatories on the declaration include a wider range of Christian leaders, such as Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Michael Curry, Bread for the World President David Beckmann and Bishop Frank Dewane, who chairs the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development.

“Make an example …”

Despite the unified voices, a new Barna Group poll commissioned by Prison Fellowship found that 53 percent of practicing Christians—Christians who have attended a church service at least once in the past month and describe their faith as very important—agree with the statement: “It’s important to make an example out of someone for certain crimes, even if it means giving them a more severe punishment than their crime deserves.”

Restorative justice proponents said the finding indicates they have more work to do.

“We as a church are not recognizing that disproportional punishment—that is, giving someone more than they deserve—is not consistent with our values and certainly will not help us advance the hope of a restorative justice system we all seek,” Ackerman said.

CHARLESTON, S.C.—The two-year anniversary of a white supremacist’s killing of nine black people at a Bible study was a day when “pain and hope and treachery and triumph, awful and awesome, come together,” Joel Gregory told hundreds gathered for an ecumenical service of remembrance.

Gregory, holder of the George W. Truett Chair of Preaching and Evangelism at Baylor University’s Truett Seminary, spoke at an anniversary memorial service for victims who were murdered at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., June 17, 2015.

Truett Seminary’s Joel Gregory (right) visits with a South Carolina pastor while in Charleston to observe the second anniversary of the murder of the “Emanuel Nine.” (Photo by Todd Still / Truett Seminary)Gregory urged victims’ families, survivors, community members and dignitaries to follow the biblical exhortation: “Abhor that which is evil and cling to that which is good.”

“I know that there are nine families where every Christmas witnesses an empty chair, every Easter listens for a voice that will never be heard, and hands will reach out to grasp a hand that will never be held again,” Gregory said.

“Yet for the rest of us who do not have such intimate, daily recurring reminders, we must join in solidarity to stop and remember. If we do not, we rob the departed of their dignity and minimize the magnitude of the malicious and malignant act that took them.”

The person who only hates evil degenerates into “a cynical, negative, sour, embittered shell who finally sees evil only,” Gregory said. “On the other hand, those persons whose naïve eyes only see the bright pastels of good deny the very reason for the gospel. We need redemption.”

Gregory reminded those at the service to remember the Passover meal embedded in Judaism, which looks back to the pain of slavery, but “it looks forward in its ringing climax, ‘Next year in Jerusalem.’ It is thus pain and hope together.”

“Even so also, the Lord’s Supper, the meal celebrated by millions weekly all over the planet,” Gregory said. “It looks back at pain, the very death on the Cross. But it looks forward in hope to the time we will eat it together with Jesus anew in the kingdom. In the heart of faith is a memory-keeping meal that joins together pain and hope, the awful of the past and the awesome of the promise.

“So also, this memorial is both pain and hope, and it must be that way.”

On June 17, 2015, “good people were gathered in God’s holy house to study God’s holy word,” Gregory said. “In all of Charleston, there was not more goodness than the goodness in that room. Into that room walked with forethought, intention and premeditation a perpetrator who joined in that righteous circle of biblical discussion. A different race, he was welcomed, seated, encouraged, and embraced.

“As painful as it is, we cannot honor and dignify the Emanuel Nine without recognizing that disturbing fact.”

But the perpetrator—Dylann Roof, now in prison after he was convicted of hate crimes—does not have the center stage he wanted, Gregory said.

“His very existence is a shadow that is cast by the light of the luminous goodness of the nine shining, lustrous, luminescent souls so quickly taken,” he said.

Forgiveness for that is not easy, he acknowledged

“This day, I cannot conceive of directing someone to forgive who has experienced a pain I have never experienced. For that matter, what I think I should do is far from what I would do,” he said.

But he implored listeners to hold onto what is good even as they despise the evil.

“The tragedy of 2015 did not close Mother Emanuel. The massacre in its hall did not silence the praise of God. The vileness of demonic hate did not shatter the beautiful windows of its storied sanctuary. The falling of the Emanuel Nine did not empty its pews,” he said. One day, “a child will look at the picture of the Emanuel Nine and will be reminded that the evil done there did not end the good that will be done there.”

For video of Mother Emanuel Unity walk, visit Unity; for coverage of the ecumenical service, visit Remembering. For coverage from WCSC-TV in Charleston, visit Second Anniversary .

RICHARDSON (RNS)—If Muslims have their way, the man with the megaphone said, there will be no justice for America’s goats.

Protesters and counter-protesters assemble outside the Islamic Association of North Texas, a large Muslim education and worship center in Richardson June 10. (RNS photo by Bruce Tomaso)“Why do Muslims rape their goats so much?” Jim Gilles asked his fellow protesters gathered June 10 outside one of the largest Islamic worship centers in the Dallas area. “It’s because they’re perverted, demonic, sex-crazed … sick perverts.”

Such outlandish statements appeared completely plausible to many of the 200 or so participants of the rally held outside the Islamic Association of North Texas in Richardson.

The demonstration was one of about two dozen “Marches against Shariah” organized in cities across the country by ACT for America, a self-styled grass-roots national security organization.

ACT for America labeled a ‘hate group’ by Southern Poverty Law Center

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks extremist groups, including neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klansmen and black separatists, considers it to be a hate group. The center says since ACT for America’s founding 10 years ago, it “has grown to become the largest grassroots anti-Muslim group” in the country, with 1,000 local chapters and a claimed membership of 280,000.

It also sponsored anti-Shariah rallies in major cities such as Boston, Chicago, Denver and Seattle. In some places, the protests were met by counter-demonstrations, and in some cases, there were scuffles between two sides. In Manhattan, the counter-rally was significantly larger, the New York Daily News reported.

A small number of counter-protesters, many of whom have friends who worship at the Islamic center, marched in Richardson. Some in the anti-Shariah crowd wore desert fatigues and carried military-style handguns or rifles.

The rhetoric often was rancorous, and tempers seemed to rise with the North Texas heat, but a contingent of Richardson police officers kept the peace by keeping the two groups separated.

Group says it wants to safeguard Western values, protect U.S. from terrorism

ACT for America—the first three letters stand for American Congress for Truth—says its mission is “to protect America from terrorism” and safeguard “the Western values upon which our nation was built.”

Among its initiatives has been to push for passage of state statutes and constitutional amendments—known collectively as “American Laws for American Courts” measures—that would prohibit courts from deciding cases by applying Shariah, a body of Islamic laws and practices derived from the Quran and the traditions of the Prophet Muhammad.

Headquartered in Virginia Beach, Va., ACT for America was founded in 2007 by Brigitte Gabriel, a Maronite Christian who was born in Lebanon.

The group steadfastly denies being anti-Muslim. The enemy isn’t Islam, its website says. The enemy is “radical Islam,” which seeks “to destroy our Western way of life.”

But Gabriel, in her writings, in interviews with right-wing publications and in other public pronouncements, has often blurred any line between “good” and “bad” Islam—as did many of her followers in Richardson. Gilles, for example, carried a large placard that said, “Every real Muslim is a Jihadist!”

“Islamic terrorists … are really just very devout followers of Muhammad,” Gabriel wrote in 2006. “They are following his example and doing exactly what the Koran teaches.”

In a 2007 lecture at the Defense Department’s Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Va., she said a devout Muslim “cannot be a loyal citizen to the United States of America.” In the same lecture, she was reported to have said Muslims shouldn’t be allowed to hold public office.

Anti-Shariah rallies denounced by variety of groups

The June 10 demonstrations, scheduled during Islam’s holy month of Ramadan, were denounced by more than 100 religious, community and civil-liberties organizations across the country, including Amnesty International USA, the Anti-Defamation League, the Presbyterian Church (USA), the United Methodist Church, the Sikh Coalition, the American Friends Service Committee, the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the National Council of La Raza.

In a letter to the mayors of host cities, the groups said the demonstrations were “intended to manufacture fear of Muslims” by “disingenuously” raising concerns about Shariah taking root in American courts.

“We are deeply concerned about the type of message that these protests send to the American public and to the good people in your city—that it is acceptable to vilify people simply because of their faith,” the letter said.

Khalid Hamideh, the lawyer and spokesman for the Richardson Islamic center, said “it is absolute nonsense” to suggest Muslims are plotting to set up religious courts in America, substituting the judgment of Shariah for, say, the Bill of Rights or the Kansas Motor Vehicle Code.

Shpendim Nadzaku, the center’s imam and resident scholar, said of the protests: “They are anti-Muslim. Let’s just call a spade a spade.”

However improbable the establishment of Shariah in America may be, ACT for America and allied groups have attracted broad populist support by vowing to stamp out the threat.

In 2015, tea party Republicans cheered Beth Van Duyne, then-mayor of Irving, for fighting to stop a court in her city from imposing Shariah. As it turned out, there was no such court—Van Duyne heard about it through a chain-letter rumor, which proved to be false.

But that didn’t stop her from pushing for passage of an American Laws for American Courts bill in the Texas Legislature. Muslims, she warned, were intent on “bypassing Texas courts, bypassing American courts.”

This spring, after Van Duyne opted not to seek a third term as Irving’s mayor, President Trump selected her as a regional administrator of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, overseeing federal housing programs in Texas and four surrounding states.

WASHINGTON (BP)—Baptist leaders decried Sen. Bernie Sanders’ stated opposition to a White House nominee based on the candidate’s comments about Islam.

Sanders—an independent from Vermont and 2016 candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination—said Russell Vought should not be confirmed as deputy director of the White House Office of Management and Budget.

Sanders cited a 2016 blog post by Vought in which he said Muslims “stand condemned” because they have rejected Jesus as Savior. Sanders called Vought’s post “hateful” and “Islamaphobic” and added, “It is an insult to over a billion Muslims throughout the world.”

He also said Vought “is really not someone who is what this country is supposed to be about.”

‘No religious test for public office’

Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, described Sanders’ comments as “breathtakingly audacious and shockingly ignorant—both of the Constitution and of basic Christian doctrine.”

“Even if one were to excuse Sen. Sanders for not realizing that all Christians of every age have insisted that faith in Jesus Christ is the only pathway to salvation, it is inconceivable that Sen. Sanders would cite religious beliefs as disqualifying an individual for public office in defiance of the United States Constitution,” Moore said.

“No religious test shall ever be required of those seeking public office. While no one expects Sen. Sanders to be a theologian, we should expect far more from an elected official who has taken an oath to support and defend the Constitution.”

Amanda Tyler, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, called Sanders’ questioning of Vought’s religious views “a troubling turn.”

“Sanders’ line of questioning imposed a religious test, which is forbidden by Article VI of the Constitution,” Tyler wrote in an article posted June 9 on her agency’s website.

Vought posts blog on Wheaton controversy 

Sanders took exception to comments made in a January 2016 blog post, in which Vought defended his alma mater, Wheaton College, after the Christian school began termination proceedings against a professor who said Christians and Muslims worship the same God.

In the post at The Resurgent website, Vought wrote: “Muslims do not simply have a deficient theology. They do not know God because they have rejected Jesus Christ his Son, and they stand condemned.” 

Sanders called Vought’s post “indefensible.”

In the hearing, Vought said, “I’m a Christian, and I believe in a Christian set of principles,” according to Associated Press. Vought said his post was intended to defend the actions of Wheaton College and were not anti-Islamic.

“I specifically wrote it with the intention of conveying my viewpoint in a respectful manner that avoided inflammatory rhetoric,” Vought said in a written response to the committee, AP reported.

Distinction between religious exclusivism and political exclusivism

Tyler took issue both with Sanders and with Sen. Chris Van Hollen, who asserted Vought’s comments “suggest a violation of the public trust.”

“Giving them both the benefit of the doubt, maybe they confused religious exclusivism with political exclusivism,” Tyler wrote. “That is an extremely unfortunate but understandable mistake, given the current state of our world where political exclusivism is evident both in authoritarian regimes around the globe and in nativist rhetoric and violence, rampant in democratic societies, including our own.”

Sanders “missed an opportunity” to clarify the distinction between religious exclusivism—which is a constitutionally protected belief—and political exclusivism, Tyler said.

“We have seen other recent examples of attempts to declare certain religious beliefs as irreconcilable with American values and therefore legitimate grounds for exclusion,” she wrote. “Part of living in a religiously diverse society is encountering people who have theological views that are opposed, even abhorrent, to us. Our founders created a system through the Constitution and Bill of Rights that provides equal citizenship despite those differences.”

With additional reporting by Managing Editor Ken Camp