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Previous Posts
Closed for the Season
With Election Day finally having come and gone, God-o-Meter is closing up shop till 2012--or at least 2010. Till then, get your faith and politics fix over at Beliefnet editor-in-chief Steve Waldman's blog.
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posted 4:32:33pm Nov. 19, 2008 |
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On The Religious Left, Great Expectations
The first priorities for Barack Obama's administration will be the economy and a variety of foreign policy issues. But the burgeoning religious left, which worked so hard to get Obama elected, expects some movement on its issues, including a robust White House office of faith-based initiatives, pove
posted 1:49:31pm Nov. 07, 2008 |
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Howard Dean's Vindication
God-o-Meter wrote a piece for today's Roll Call on the vindication of Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean's much-derided 50-State Strategy, which is largely about reaching out to the nation's more religious voters in the red states:
Years before Barack Obama showed that a liberal Demo
posted 2:01:06pm Nov. 06, 2008 |
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A Post-Election Chat with Ralph Reed
Amid today's talk that Barack Obama has narrowed the God Gap, God-o-Meter checked in with Ralph Reed, who spearheaded religious outreach for George W. Bush's 2000 and 2004 campaigns and who pioneered such outreach for Republicans as executive director of the Christian Coalition.
What surprised you i
posted 3:09:07pm Nov. 05, 2008 |
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More Innacurate Faith Storylines From the Media
God-o-Meter is struck by the number of faith-based storylines the news media appear to have gotten dead wrong this year.
One was the line that Obama was poised to make big gains among white votes, especially evangelicals, who were undergoing a generational shift in their political thinking and reexa
posted 11:53:20am Nov. 05, 2008 |
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Newsweek’s got the scoop on the Obama campaign’s many prayer-based conference calls, with separate calls for evangelicals, Roman Catholics, Jews, and African Americans happening each week. The calls have included Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell, a spiritual advisor to President George W. Bush (read God-o-Meter’s recent Caldwell interview for a window into how strongly the Obama camp has reached out to him) and T.D. Jakes. One of the reasons why these prayer calls are likely to go over well with religious voters is that they’ve been happening for months, so they won’t come across as a general election ploy to suddenly “get religion.”
posted June 9, 2008 at 1:54 am
It strikes me that these prayer calls are very much in line with what others have seen as Obama’s willingness to reach out to all points of view.
posted June 9, 2008 at 6:30 pm
Dan,
Obama is two weeks from launching a new project aimed recruiting younger evangelicals and Catholics to his campaign. The problem is that the name he chose, Joshua Generation Project is strikingly similar to the name Generation Joshua, which is the organization founded by Homeschool Legal Defense Association (Michael Farris). Farris was quoted in Roll Call as saying that this is an infringement on their trademark and investigating possible legal action. I wanted to email you the link but couldn’t find your email addy, so here’s a link to my blog with all the relevant info.
http://spunkyhomeschool.blogspot.com/2008/06/is-obama-taking-cue-from-hslda.html
posted June 9, 2008 at 7:24 pm
Senator Obama has been reaching out to Evangelicals since forever. I remember watching him during a Fox News interview in 2004, just days after Kerry lost the Presidency to Bush who got 78% of the Evangelical vote. Obama said he was disappointed that Democrats were not sufficiently reaching out to Evangelicals.
That’s a stark contrast from the candidate who in 2000, referred to us as “agents of intollerance”. Apparently, Obama and McCain don’t only differ on ending a costly and unjustified war, changing the policies that have plunged our economy into recession, turning the page on a foreign policy that has made us less safe and more hated abroad, etc.
Brody is reporting that the Obama campaign will be launching The Joshua Generation project aimed at young people of faith. That’s something to look forward to.
http://www.cbn.com/CBNnews/388366.aspx
posted June 9, 2008 at 11:35 pm
For the life of me, I can not see how these could be anything but a plus for Obama. Has McClain reached out to anybody with prayer calls?
I really would like to see SOMETHING that relates to an endeavor to reach out to the many Faith Based people besides a few hate mongers who disguise themselves as Christian Right.
Come on McCain, I want to believe that you have something to offer me besides war, high unemployment and medicals bills, high gas prices or more of Bush failures.
posted June 10, 2008 at 7:40 am
I’m disappointed at Michael Farris. The name is JOSHUA GENERATION PROJECT. Not the same as Generation Joshua. Presumably, you could name your restaurant King Burger and get sued by Burger King.
But spiritually speaking, this is even more dispiriting. This suggests you could rip a phrase from the Bible like “Temple of The Holy Spirit”, get people of the world to trademark it, and then call it your own. It’s a disgrace to the body of Christ.
As the co-founder of Generation Joshua points out:
- When the program launched, there was already a Generation Joshua in North Carolina; a local youth group of sorts.
- They wanted to buy GenJ.com, but it was already being used by a webzine for Jewish youths.
Not only that Generation Joshua comes from God’s infallible word and should not be ‘owned’ by anyone, not only that it has been used and is still being used by Christians, Jews and dozens of organizations worldwide (e.g. JoshuaGeneration.com), but it is different from the Obama campaign’s Joshua Generation Project.
posted June 13, 2008 at 8:49 pm
Do suppose Obama might actually have made prayer calls because he was seeking prayer, not because of political considerations? And if you look at the record of his church, maybe he needed to reach out for prayer?