Janet Mefferd, host of the Janet Mefferd Show (one of the best sources of critical information left for Christians), tweeted a stunning message recently:
“Amazing to note the only two Christians brave enough to publicly protest Islam in American and German ‘Christian’ churches have been women!”
Mefferd is referring to Christine Weick and Heidi Mund.
Weick, from Michigan, attended an interfaith service at Washington’s National Cathedral on November 14 — so she could protest the inclusion of the Islamic “jummah” (Friday call to prayer), bizarrely hosted by the leadership of what has been called “America’s grandest Christian stage.”
According to a report from WND, Weick stood to protest the interfaith gathering:
“The Muslims had set up their prayer rugs in such a way that their backs were turned on the cross, which they consider an alien religious symbol. Jesus was a prophet but was not the son of God and never died on a Roman cross, according to Muslim teaching. Yet, they found themselves staring at a woman who demanded the cross become the center of attention. She pointed to it, then blurted out the message she had traveled all the way from Tennessee to deliver.
“’Jesus Christ died on that cross over there. He is the reason we are to worship only Him. Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior,’ she said. ‘We have built …allowed you your mosques in this country. Why don’t you worship in your mosques and leave our churches alone? We are a country founded on Christian principles.’
“She immediately heard voices in the crowd yelling for security.
“’Black coat, white scarf, blonde hair!’ yelled one. ‘We need to get her out of here now!’ someone else cried out.”
Mund, a former atheist, chose a similar path a year ago, when she rose in a German church to protest the prayer of an imam.
Mefferd is to be commended for bringing these incidents to our attention. In only the last few years, top evangelical Christian leaders in America have not only failed to warn their flocks about the encroachment of radical Islam, in many cases they appear to aid the imams and mullahs in opening Christian doors to the religion that regards Jesus Christ as a mere sage.
Rick Warren, pastor of the mega-church known as Saddleback, in southern California, has denied charges of “Chrislam,” yet he’s spoken at major Muslim conferences, and claims a close friendship with his neighbor, an imam. In 2006, Warren also visited Syria’s Bashar Assad (even presenting the butcher from Damascus with an award!).
Bob Roberts, Jr., pastor of NorthWood Church in Keller, Texas, has for several years hosted the “Global Faith Forum,” in which Muslim clerics and those with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood are invited to speak. An interview with Roberts, conducted by Ed Stetzer (president of LifeWay Research, a key Southern Baptist Convention entity), revealed the apparent cluelessness exhibited by these evangelical leaders. According to Stetzer:
“You can’t fear a people and love a people at the same time. And so you have to get to the place where you move beyond that. And I think it’s very important to note that what we see in the news sort of shapes a lot of people’s opinion of global Muslims…and I think that’s unfortunate. Eboo Patel, you know, I think it was at the conference we were both at, he wrote an article that I recently excerpted on my blog and he talked about the availability heuristic which is the idea that if you consistently see what’s available to you, you kind of build a construct about what they are. So if most people in the West see Muslims in the midst of news stories about terrorism and in the midst of news stories about war, it’s much—and what he says it’s very helpful, you know because Eboo writes and he says, you know, it’s not dissimilar to…he talks about growing up in Detroit, where he would see on the TV African-Americans who were consistently arrested, so his available heuristic, the construct from which he would see African-Americans was on the news and so he came—he could come to conclusions that were really not true. Doesn’t represent the African-American community and when we hear that, we get that, we get that what we see on the news is not indicative of any people, yet we often feel that way about Muslims. Yet, you and I have been around the world, and I recently returned from a predominantly Muslim country and found gracious, loving people who disavowed all of these things that we see on the news, and instead just wanted to live in peace and I found even open to the Gospel, had Gospel conversations with them along the way and so I think if we’re going to get to where we need to be and be ‘bold as love,’ then we need to take some risks.”
There are several things to unpack in Stetzer’s statement, glowingly approved by Roberts. First of all, leaving behind Stetzer’s attempt at sounding like a sophisticated thinker (“availability heuristic”), the truth is, the predominant theme coming from vocal, global Muslims is that jihad is their path, and the planting of shariah law in America is a prime goal. That is why many of us see the danger; we take them at their word. Stetzer, ever the pacifist, seems to want to ignore that.
Secondly, his reference to Eboo Patel is curious, curious.
Patel, appointed in 2009 to President Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based Neighborhood Partnerships, is friendly with the family of Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. And according to an article in Frontpage:
“At the main event of a three-day convention held by the Muslim Students Association in 2011, Patel participated in a panel alongside Tariq Ramadan (grandson of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hasan al-Banna) and Siraj Wahhaj (a former Islamic Society of North America vice president who was named as a possible co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing).
“And, for good measure, Patel has depicted Van Jones, the revolutionary communist who served several months as President Obama’s ‘green jobs’ czar, as an ‘American patriot,’ a ‘faith hero,’ and one of ‘the true giants of history.’”
And the drive to appease Muslim radicals (and, by extension, soften support for Israel among evangelicals) is not confined to the very top evangelical echelon.
Wheaton College employs Dr. Gary Burge, professor of New Testament, and a virulent critic of Israel. This spreading influence among Christian students (California’s famous Fuller Seminary takes student groups to what they call Israel/”Palestine”) is falling across all denominational lines.
With the pro Israel evangelical leadership now aging, the vacuum is being filled by rising stars: Relevant magazine’s Cameron Strang, who never misses an opportunity to malign Israel(http://www.relevantmagazine.com/main/slices/politics/19534-israels-reprehensible-organ-program), is a “thought leader” among Christian Millennials.
Young pastors like Jonathan Martin (Renovatus Church in Charlotte, North Carolina) have joined forces with anti-Israel individuals like Stephen Sizer and film producer Porter Speakman, Jr. (“With God on Our Side”), and media specialists like Jonathan Merritt (Religion News Service) work with anti-Israel groups (Telos Group) to coach young leaders how to help spread the so-called Palestinian Narrative.
Q Ideas founder Gabe Lyons, closely aligned with Catalyst (a leadership forum that hosts anti-Israel speakers) routinely interviews Muslim-friendly folks like Roberts and Sami Awad, a Palestinian Christian from Bethlehem who poses as a peace activist while at the same time filling American churches with PLO/PA rhetoric aimed at demonizing Israel.
All this adds up to troubling days ahead for the American pro Israel community, although rank-and-file evangelicals seem largely unaware that pro Israel support in our churches is being hijacked as we speak.
Whether they dupes, or are complicit in the drive to mainstream Islam while also marginalizing Israel and her Christian supporters, America’s top evangelical leaders are laying down for a religious ideology that seeks to convert or destroy anyone who does not bow the knee to Allah and his prophet.
We haven’t seen the worst of it, yet.