Prayer Over Politics?: Florida Megachurch’s New Leader Is Weary Of Fighting The ‘Culture Wars’

[Political Tiger]

Could it be true – a new generation of conservative Christian leaders may actually be opposed to politics from the pulpit?

At least one Florida church leader seems to be.

William Graham Tullian Tchividjian, the grandson of famous evangelist Billy Graham and the new pastor of Ft. Lauderdale’s Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, surprisingly says he has no interest talking politics. It’s quite a change from his grandfather, and even more so from his predecessor, TV preacher D. James Kennedy.

“He is not going to be interested in addressing cultural issues ideologically,” Pastor John Wood of Cedar Springs told The Miami Herald. “His interest isn’t getting up there and waving the American flag.”

Tchividjian told the newspaper, “Dr. Kennedy came from a completely different generation, and my leadership by that fact alone will be different.” He refused to answer any of the newspaper’s questions on current political issues, including same sex marriage.

“The impression out there of Coral Ridge is that they are a church that is stuck in the past and unwilling to change” he said. “This move on their part corrects that assumption.”

It sounds like it. The church’s former pastor, Kennedy, was a leader in the Religious Right movement known for speaking on his right-wing politics from the pulpit, as well as through his radio and TV shows.

Kennedy passed away in 2007, and though he never received the same prominence as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, his ministry did dish out quite a bit of Religious Right propaganda. Through the years, Kennedy’s ministry issued a steady stream of books, pamphlets, tapes and DVDs attacking evolution, opposing gay rights and arguing that America is a “Christian nation.”

In 1999, Church & State compiled a list of Kennedy quotes. He called church-state separation a “false doctrine” and wrote, “This phrase does not appear in the United States Constitution at all, but in Article 52 of the Constitution of the Soviet Union – now the Soviet disunion. Defunct, because they tried to get rid of God.”

Kennedy loudly voiced his beliefs that “every new advance and every step taken by science confirms not evolution but the Genesis account of creation,” and that “anyone who reads about the values upon which this nation was founded understands perfectly well that this was, from the start, a Christian nation.”

It certainly would be a welcome change if Tchividjian really does plan to take Coral Ridge in a new direction, one that may actually be what most American church-goers want.

In a survey by the Pew Forum from August 2008, 52 percent of Americans expressed discomfort with mixing religion and politics, agreeing that houses of worship should keep out of politics.

MORE:
http://blog.au.org/2009/01/22/prayer-over-politics-florida-megachurchs-new-leader-is-weary-of-fighting-the-culture-wars/

[JeanGrey]

1. I've been a christian all my life and attended church for

40 years. NEVER has a pastor tried to influence me from the pulpit. I'll take that back. Only once. It was at a black church in Atlanta. The minister was telling the congregation that if they didn't get some "cooperation" at city hall some members could find themselves looking for new positions. I was shocked.