Posts on Coral Ridge Ministries

Back in August, we noted that the Southern Baptist Convention was launching a 40 day prayer vigil timed to coincide with the election and now it looks like those affiliated with Coral Ridge Ministries will be joining them, albeit with a much more targeted vigil of prayer and fasting:

The foundation launched in honor of famed Christian speaker, broadcaster and leader D. James Kennedy, who founded the Coral Ridge Ministries, has announced a day of prayer for Nov. 3.

"We are about to set a course that will affect our country for generations to come," said a statement from Jennifer Kennedy Cassidy of the D. James Kennedy Foundation.

"For this reason we are calling on all Christian leaders and their congregations to join with us for a day of fasting and prayer the day before the election on Monday, November 3rd," she said ... "We're less than a week until the most important election in our lifetime. Must is at stake that is vital to our nation," she said.

Back in 2007, after its founder D. James Kennedy retired and then passed away, Coral Ridge announced that it was going to de-emphasize its focus on politics in favor of "increasing its worldwide audience to 30 million by 2012, mainly by expanding its Internet, TV and print presence." And that is pretty much what they did for a while, shying away from overt political activities in favor of producing various culture war videos that, while still political in nature, focused mainly on warning Christians that their rights were being suppressed and that their churches were going to be shut down.

But apparently those days have passed.  In fact, if you take a look at Coral Ridge's website, you'll see an open letter [PDF] they have written to the next president urging him to protect the unborn and the protection of marriage, fight hate crimes laws and the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, while also prosecuting pornographers and ensuring that America continues to celebrate its "Christian heritage."

Coral Ridge Ministries unveils a new video featuring Matt Barber, Jordan Lorence, Robert Knight, Tony Perkins, and others warning Christians that if Hate Crimes Laws get enacted, Christianity will be criminalized and churches will be destroyed.

In this excerpt, Knight declares that such laws will result in the “criminalization of Christianity” and that, if passed, American will “have criminalized basic Christian moral doctrine” while Perkins says that hate crimes laws will lead to hate speech laws which will “ultimately silence the churches in the country” and that is no accident because “homosexuals know they must silence the church in this country” in order to enact their agenda.

On Saturday, Coral Ridge Ministries—the televangelism empire of the late D. James Kennedy—broadcast a special program to encourage pastors to involve their churches in this year’s elections. While the panelists—Tony Perkins of Family Research Council, Mat Staver of Liberty Counsel, Jordan Lorence of Alliance Defense Fund, and Gary DeMar of American Vision—offered the usual admonishments that there’s no such thing as separation of church and state, the theme of the evening was that Christianity is being “suppressed” in this country by liberals and the “militant homosexual agenda.” Watch "Pastors, Pulpits, and Politics":

This is the persecuted majority syndrome: the idea that it’s a whole lot simpler to convince people to join your political program if you convince them that their faith is “under attack.” This has been one of the Religious Right’s dominant themes over the last few years through campaigns such as FRC’s “Justice Sunday,” a series of televised, church-based rallies to support President Bush’s most radical judicial nominees, who the Right claimed were being opposed because of their religion. Perkins picked up on that theme on Saturday:

The idea that there should be no religious test ... that has been turned on its head to say that if you have a particular faith or denomination in which you actually believe it and apply it to your lives, therefore, if that's the case, you can't serve in government. You have to somehow choose between actually believing in what you believe and serving in government. That's how this is being applied today and it's totally wrong.

And we're losing the Christian foundation of our nation. And if you want to see a totalitarian government, you want to see rights that are lost and freedoms abused, then you lose the Christian heritage of this nation and you go down the path that the liberals are taking us. And that's where it'll be found.

Ben Stein’s anti-evolution attack film, “Expelled,” has finally arrived, grossing $3 million over the weekend, thanks to a church-based roll-out by the marketers that brought you “The Passion of the Christ.” Critics have savaged the documentary—which claims widespread persecution of creationists in academia and warns of a direct link between the theory of evolution and the Holocaust—as a dishonest work of propaganda, but, not surprisingly, the movie has a lot of fans among the Religious Right.

“Expelled” has been promoted heavily in right-wing media this month. Stein appeared on Focus on the Family radio, where the movie received the “enthusiastic” endorsement of James Dobson. Producer Mark Mathis appeared on WallBuilders Live, the radio show of premier church-state integrationist David Barton, to discuss “the persecution of the many by an elite few.” Rush Limbaugh exuberantly promoted it on his show; apparently, the movie taught him that “Darwinism, of course, does not permit for the existence of a supreme being, a higher power, or a God.”

Stein was also interviewed by the American Family Association’s OneNewsNow, while executive producer Logan Craft hit WorldNetDaily. Baptist Press, the official outlet of the Southern Baptist Convention, featured an op-ed by Stein and a series of articles pushing the film. The producers gave a private screening to Brent Bozell of the far-right Media Research Center. (He loved it.)

“Expelled” is also featured by the late D. James Kennedy’s Coral Ridge Ministries, which offers its own product line equating Darwin and Hitler. While some “Expelled” cheerleaders express sympathy for the “Intelligent Design” advocates who have been “persecuted” supposedly (the National Center for Science Education has their realistic back-stories here), most on the Right seem to be especially enchanted by the film’s reliance on a half-baked linking of evolution to Nazism and Stalinism.

“Expelled,” wrote World magazine editor and faith-based initiatives architect Marvin Olasky, “rightly equates Darwinian stifling of free speech with the Communist attempt to enslave millions behind the Berlin Wall.”

The real question is: Did Darwinism bulwark Hitlerian hatred by providing a scientific rationale for killing those considered less fit in the struggle for survival?

The answer to that question is an unambiguous yes.

Richard Weikart of the “Intelligent Design” group, the Discovery Institute, defended the Darwin-Hitler connection as critical: “[W]hat is most objectionable about the Nazis' worldview? Isn't it that they had no respect for human life?” Weikart, who wrote a book entitled “From Darwin to Hitler,” added, “the Nazis' devaluing of human life derived from Darwinian ideology....”

Gary DeMar of American Vision was so inspired he branched out on his own, linking evolution to the fundamentalist polygamist cult that’s been in the news recently.

Given the worldview shift that has taken place in America, none of this is of any consequence. Evolutionary and atheistic assumptions are standard worldview thinking in every public school classroom in America. So then, why is it wrong with having forced sex with young girls? It’s evolution in action. …

The secularists should be proud of what these polygamists are doing. They are confirming the evolutionary thesis of Dawkins and his selfish gene hypothesis.

Following the death of its longtime leader, D. James Kennedy, Coral Ridge Ministries decided to focus it efforts on "increasing its worldwide audience to 30 million by 2012, mainly by expanding its Internet, TV and print presence.”

But in order to do that, CRM needs money and so they have sent out this email seeking donations:

I invite you to follow in the footsteps of the Pilgrims . . . to consider those who huddled inside the Mayflower and faced an icy winter that would claim half their number. I’m asking you to honor the heritage they handed down to us at such tremendous cost.



You see, the freedoms you and I enjoy today were born aboard their dimly lit ship, as 102 stalwart souls signed the Mayflower Compact. They began with these words— “In the name of God, Amen.” They wrote of making their voyage “for the Glory of God, and Advancement of the Christian Faith….”



Thanks to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and modern revisionists, the faith of the Pilgrims is disappearing from our textbooks . . . and being erased from our national consciousness.



Want proof? New York University professor Paul C. Vitz studied 90 of the most used public school history textbooks. He found up to 30 pages devoted to the Pilgrims, yet not a word about their devout faith in God. “It is common in these books to treat Thanksgiving without explaining to whom the Pilgrims gave thanks,” Vitz writes. One textbook even described Thanksgiving as a time “when the Pilgrims gave thanks to the Indians.”



Americans are forgetting who we are—and drifting from our Creator. That is why Coral Ridge Ministries intends to broadcast the truth on The Coral Ridge Hour. We want to reveal that our freedoms have their roots in the Bible and Christianity . . . and expose the false claim that this nation is not and never was a nation under God.



With your support, we’ll use television, radio, the Internet, and our vast library of print and multimedia resources. We will share the truth that God has blessed and guided our country since her earliest days . . . and still longs to bless her today if we will only return to Him. Armed with the facts, Christians can help teach America her godly roots . . . and guide her destiny. By God’s grace, you—like the Pilgrims—can help make history . . . and God may still bless America!

In his book “Persecution: How Liberals Are Waging War Against Christianity,” David Limbaugh likewise cites this study by Vitz and helpfully provides an endnote explaining that the information was taken from Vitz’s book “Censorship: Evidence of Bias in Our Children's Textbooks” … which came out in 1986.  

If CRM is going to try and raise money by scaring it supporters with tales of “modern revisionists” erasing the religious heritage from our national consciousness, it might be useful for them to actually find some “modern revisionists” who are doing that instead of relying on a 20 year old study based on textbooks that are most likely no longer in use.  

Following the death of D. James Kennedy, Brian Fisher has been tapped as president and CEO of Coral Ridge Ministries and is setting some lofty goals: "to reach an audience of 30 million people in 2012 with the transforming truths of God’s Word."

D. James Kennedy, the longtime leader of the Coral Ridge megachurch in Florida has died at the age of 76.

Since suffering a heart attack late last year, Kennedy’s health had steadily declined, leading to the shuttering of his Center for Reclaiming America for Christ in April and his official retirement from Coral Ridge Ministries last week, after which we put together a profile of his lengthy and influential career.

PFAW has long monitored Kennedy and his affiliate organizations, leading him, at one point, to claim that “the diabolical mission” of People For the American Way was “to crush the influence of the Christian religion in American society.”  

Below are some other memorable quotes from his years as a leading right-wing figure: 

It is hard to say, but that seems to be what Vision America’s Rick Scarborough is suggesting in this recent piece on the retirement of D. James Kennedy:

In Isaiah 3, God pronounces nine things that happen to a nation that turns its back on God. Included in the list are such things as rampant homosexuality, (Is. 3:9); apathy among the citizenry, (vs. 6-7); crime (v.5); and immature leaders (v. 4). At the beginning of the list, and perhaps as a precursor to all that follows leading up to judgment, is the removal of the prophets and the judges … During the past 21 months God has taken three of America's prophets off the national scene--two by death and one by infirmity. Elsewhere, at length, we have discussed the sorry state of affairs concerning the judiciary in America. But the retirement of my friend and and [sic] a man whom I considered in many ways to be a mentor, D. James Kennedy, and the death of two great champions, Dr. Falwell and Dr. Adrian Rogers during the two years, should give everyone reading this Report pause. God is taking away our prophets, and tragically, their replacements on the national scene are in large measure preaching another Gospel, one that the world can more easily swallow that doesn’t tackle the big sins of abortion-on-demand and homosexuality, which Scripture refers to as an abomination.

D. James Kennedy, who built up Fort Lauderdale, Florida megachurch and television empire over the last half-century, has officially retired, eight months after he was first hospitalized following a heart attack. Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church has nearly 10,000 members, and his broadcast ministry claims 3.5 million listeners and viewers, but he is best known as one of the founding figures of the Religious Right in the early 1980s, known as the “Ivy League Jerry Falwell.”

Kennedy, who once said that “the diabolical mission” of People For the American Way was “to crush the influence of the Christian religion in American society,” became active in political issues from battling pornography, “secularized” education, abortion, and civil rights for gays to supporting Reagan administration policies like SDI, Iran-Contra, and the nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court. His involvement grew in the 1990s and 2000s, as he organized national conferences for religious-right activism and expanded his influence in Washington.

The 76-year-old Kennedy’s retirement comes just a few months after the death of Jerry Falwell, and again heralds the inevitable passing of the older generation of religious-right leaders -- Falwell, Kennedy, 71-year-old James Dobson, 69-year-old Don Wildmon, and others who built the infrastructure and set the pattern for fundamentalism-charged politics.

Much more on D. James Kennedy’s political career below.

With the retirement of D. James Kennedy, Coral Ridge's "emphasis [on politics] will diminish short term for sure" while it focuses on "increasing its worldwide audience to 30 million by 2012, mainly by expanding its Internet, TV and print presence." Also, FRC and ADF send their regards.

From the Sun-Sentinel: "Months of rumors ended with a Sunday morning revelation at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church: The ailing Rev. D. James Kennedy is not returning to the helm of the congregation he founded 48 years ago. The pastor, religious broadcaster, conservative activist and evangelical leader has been in and out of hospitals since Dec. 28, when he suffered a brief cardiac arrest. On Sunday, his family and church leaders made it official."

Religious-right leaders are flocking to defend a mayor whose anti-gay comments have drawn public criticism.

Last month, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida Mayor Jim Naugle proposed replacing the bathrooms at the city’s beaches with $250,000 self-cleaning robo-toilets to combat the purportedly rampant problem of gay men using public restrooms for sexual encounters. In discussing his plan, he commented:

"I don’t use the word ‘gay,’ I use the word ‘homosexual.’ Most of them aren’t gay. They’re unhappy."

After a public uproar, Naugle then scheduled a press conference to offer an“apology” for his comments. But the "apology" he offered was for not being aware sooner that sex in public bathrooms was such a problem. The major flaw with this apology, in addition to the obvious bait-and-switch which infuriated local gay-rights activists, is that a Fort Lauderdale police spokesman has characterized the supposed problem as “non-existent.”

Nevertheless, adulation from the religious right has been forthcoming, with Rick Scarborough calling Mayor Naugle “bold,” and Concerned Women for America labeling him “gutsy.” Faith2Action’s Janet Folger even presented Naugle with her weekly “Protector of the Family” award for his efforts. A collection of extremely anti-gay religious-right groups including Americans for Truth, Concerned Women for America, Coral Ridge Ministries, and Faith2Action have even formed their own website, www.healthypublicplaces.com.  Although to date it's nothing more than a link to a press release, the site is further evidence that religious-right leaders are willing to circle the wagons around any politician who spouts anti-gay rhetoric.  

(Photo: Janet Folger presents Naugle with the "Protector of the Family" award.)

CRM says it has gathered some 33,000 petitions against Hate Crimes legislation to be delivered to Sen. Mitch McConnell: “This is the single most dangerous piece of legislation we have seen in the recent past, because of its threat to silence the Church on the subject of homosexual behavior,” said Jerry Newcombe, senior producer of The Coral Ridge Hour, CRM’S TV broadcast. “I shudder to think what the impact on free speech will be if this law is enacted.”