Conservative Center Closes Up Shop

Source: Ap

Conservative Center Closes Up Shop

Published: Apr 29, 2007


FORT LAUDERDALE - The Center for Reclaiming America for Christ, founded more than a decade ago to propagate a largely antiabortion, antigay message, has closed its doors.

The offshoot of Coral Ridge Ministries laid off an undisclosed number of workers Thursday at its headquarters here and at an office in Washington in what was called a "streamlining."



Read more: http://www.tbo.com/news/metro/MGB8LFEV21F.html

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Closing shop in Ft Lauderdale :rofl: Must be having hard times....

My eyes are crying orange juice.

D. James Kennedy is a frightening man. :scared:

scares me.

That, and they're pretty strong Calvinists, and I suspect they have no problem with John Calvin's burning of Michael Servetus in Geneva. I knew some Calvinists online who thought that burning Servetus at the stake was a good idea. This, folks, is what happens when you let theocracies emerge...human beings catch fire at odd times. Er...they're set on fire. This, of course, prompts a thinking person to ask why a supposedly all-powerful God needs humans to do his killing for him...if he really wants infidels of whatever stripe to die, couldn't he just think them out of existence? An all-intelligent entity could surely come up with a more efficient means of carrying such a sentence out...man's fiery solution is barbaric and messy.

Questions like this scare the bejeezus out of fundamentalists of any stripe.

Dominionism + Calvinism = all hell breaks loose.

Todd in Cheesecurdistan

preaching hatred and divisivenesss.

I don't see this as something to celebrate

Case in point, after her comments at the Conservative Political Action Conference, she was an invited speaker at the Center for Reclaiming America, an organization affiliated with Christian extremist D. James Kennedy and his Coral Ridge Ministries. Coulter was there for the Center's "Reclaiming America for Christ" conference. During this presentation, she repeated what she had previously said about John Edwards. Not only that, but she appeared to condone the murder of personnel at clinics where abortions are provided.

"Those few abortionists were shot, or, depending on your point of view, had a procedure with a rifle performed on them. I'm not justifying it, but I do understand how it happened....The number of deaths attributed to Roe v. Wade — about 40 million aborted babies and seven abortion clinic workers; 40 million to seven is also a pretty good measure of how the political debate is going."

Clearly, the woman knows her audience.
http://atheistrevolution.blogspot.com/2007/03/ann-coulter-spouts-more-hate-how-to.html


Ann Coulter, single-handedly crucifying the religious right. You go, girl!

..."In Case Of Rapture, Can I Have Your Car?"

No rapture, because Presbyterians generally don't believe in a rapture. I was raised in Kennedy's church as a small child and I left as an adult, so I have a unique insight into what motivates these people. They belive in a doctrine called "Replacement Theology." According to Replacement Theology, the Jews forfeited their right to the land by not accepting Jesus as the Messiah, so God took all the promises that were given to the Jews and gave them to the Christian Church. One of the promises was a theocratic nation, earthly riches and power.

Christians, therefore, are charged by God to reclaim dominion over human society, especially the government. As a Christian elite takes dominion and "Christianizes" society, they will set up the Kingdom (a theocracy) as a condition of Christ's return (the "Second Coming"). There's no Rapture, and Israel isn't important. Israel is just another country that the Christian elite takes authority over. Of course, the present state of Israel annoys these people, because its existence throws off their entire theology. I know how they talk in private, I was raised around them, and many of them wouldn't mind seeing Israel/Jews vanish into thin air. When you believe you are X, and someone else is X, that someone else threatens your reality, and a deep hatred often ensues.

that strident Jabba-The-Hutt lookalike John Hagee spits all over his podium railing against "replacement theology", calling its adherents heretics and worse, and yet he joins right up with Kennedy and others at these huge events. It's all politics and power, throw some bones to the rubes while fleecing them for every cent they're worth, and weasel into positions of political power.

They all make me sick.

Todd in Cheesecurdistan

Crac.. what they must have been smoking to work there.

I have it on good authority that Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church is a dying congregation. The demographics of Broward County Christians are radically changing, particularly due to immmigration and migration from Dade County. Many of these people find Kennedy's message too extreme and the church environment too staid and old-money WASPish. These are still theologically conservative Christians, but they are increasingly disillusioned with mixing Christianity and conservative politics. The Ted Haggard scandal did it in for many, I think.

The only thing keeping the church afloat is that they run a top-rated K-12 prep school that keeps expanding with the number of students enrolled. But hardly any of the school families attend Coral Ridge. Plus the school is not the only game in town; other churches in the community are running their own schools at less cost. The largest church in the county (15,000 in typical attendance), Calvary Chapel Fort Lauderdale, runs a school.

My parents used to have dozens of friends from Coral Ridge when they were regular attenders. Now, everyone they knew has left for other churches. The people who've remained are mostly early baby-boomer generation and older. This has been a long time coming, it didn't just start when Dr. Kennedy had his heart attack. Yet, you turn on the Coral Ridge hour, and it's all re-broadcasts of Dr. Kennedy. The successor could take over for 10 years and no one would know it, it is that personality-driven. My opinion is that the church will either radically revamp its image - get a much younger pastor, dump the right-wing politics - or completely go under.

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