Values Voter Summit

If you need more proof that the Family Research Council’s Values Voter Summit was a public relations disaster, look no further than the FRC’s own prayer team, which is calling on members to pray for improved coverage after journalists focused on the unabashed bigotry of summit speakers Robert Jeffress and Bryan Fischer. Republican infighting was present on and off the stage over the remarks of speakers like Jeffress and Fischer, and now the FRC wants members to pray away all of that negative attention:

The premiere Washington gathering of "social conservatives," sponsored by FRCAction, FRC and several allied conservative groups, was a spectacular success, but not without controversy. Reporters and pundits from over 400 media outlets were present, many watching critically for controversy to capture ratings. The Texas pastor who introduced Gov. Perry was asked later by reporters if Mormonism is a cult. When he said yes -- even though it was in a sidebar conversation with the media -- his answer became a dominant story from VVS.

FRC President Tony Perkins offered this perspective: We clearly recognize the fact that Mormon theology includes doctrines that are distinct from Evangelical theology and Catholic theology. At the same time, the goal of the values voter movement is not to build a "National Church." Our goal is to build a national coalition based on the shared values of respecting human life, strengthening natural marriage, defending religious liberty, promoting personal and fiscal responsibility, and maintaining our national security. When we successfully work together with those who share our values, we are preserving and strengthening our religious liberty, so that we can freely share the truth of the gospel with everyone.

Pray God's people will be guided by Scripture, common sense and good conscience in exercising their vote. May all Christian leaders take special care to discern their audiences and be "wise as serpents and harmless as doves." (Mt 10:16; 1 Th 3:1-2; 1 Tim 3:16 ff).

The FRC not only called for prayers against the terrible media coverage over unapologetic anti-Mormon figures like Jeffress and Fischer, but also called for prayers against the Occupy Wall Street protesters and their enablers in “the sycophant liberal media”:

Days of Rage/Occupy Wall Street -- The sixties-style tent city protest, which seemed to fizzle after its September 17 launch, now has momentum and is expanding to cities across the nation, including Washington, D.C. Organizers of the movement (e.g. ACORN, labor unions, and other far-left leaders and groups) have been given new life by the sycophant liberal media, Hollywood celebrities and leading Democrats in Washington, including President Obama. Six arrests were made when one hundred demonstrators conducted an illegal demonstration inside a Senate office building.

May God prevent these radical organizers from stirring revolution and distracting voters from the elections and keeping watch on our elected leaders (Num 16:1-14; Is 1:4-6; Pr 12:11-12; Mt 26:41; Eph 4:28; 1 Tim 6:3-10; Heb 13:5-6).

The theory of evolution was a central topic in Bryan Fischer's speech to the Values Voter Summit, where he argued that the presidential candidates should reject evolution. "I submit to you that not a single one of our unalienable rights will be safe," Fischer said, "in the hands of a president who believes that we evolved from slime and that we are the descendents of apes and baboons." Fischer called the separation of church and state "mythical" and argued that a result of secular government and the theory of evolution result in mass murder like in Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia and Maoist China.

Watch:

Earlier today at the Values Voter Summit Bill Bennett called on speakers not to "give voice to bigotry," Bryan Fischer however did not get the memo. As part of a much longer speech against the supposed "threat" of "the homosexual agenda," Fischer said that "we must choose as a nation between homosexuality and liberty, because we cannot have both."

Watch:

Fischer: I believe we need a president who understands that just as Islam represents the greatest long term threat to our liberty so the homosexual agenda represents the greatest immediate threat to every freedom and right that is enshrined in the First Amendment, it's a particularly threat to religious liberty.... We need a president who understands that every advance of the homosexual agenda comes at the expense of religious liberty. We need a president who understands that we must choose as a nation between homosexuality and liberty, because we cannot have both. A president who understands that we must choose between homosexuality and liberty, and who will choose liberty every time.

Star Parker ended tonight's Values Voter Summit by mourning Roe v. Wade and marriage equality, declaring, "We are sick as a country, and we are going to have to recognize how deep this sickness is." She went on to compare legal abortion and gay marriage to slavery and the holocaust, warning that God in the same way "is going to answer the question of abortion and He is going to answer the question of marriage; He already defined marriage and God is true and man is the liar."

Watch:

Parker: He is going to answer these questions, and we've been yearning, and we've been begging, and we're 35 years, 36 years now with Roe v. Wade. And we're talking about all of the millions of people whose lives were touched, how deeply abortion has scarred this country. And now we're yearning, waiting, to protect the interest of marriage, such a most humble position God would put us in, the marital sacrament, to recognize how personal and private that is. It's absolutely under attack to the degree that in California they now have to stop a law, they have to form an initiative to stop a law, from teaching their children gay history. We are sick as a country, and we are going to have to recognize how deep this sickness is.

So that when we get to November 3rd, regardless of the outcome, the same way big moral questions were on the table before, God would answer what we are praying for. And as with slavery when He turned the history clock on and we saw pictures, and we said, 'what happened? We were founded on such principles? These founding fathers prayed. How did we go eighty years, 600,000 dead later to answer a simple question, that was just unlawful in God's eyes. The protection of innocent life, to give that life that liberty, and that opportunity to pursue their personal property and happiness.' We saw it again in the Holocaust, they turned the history clock on after He answered that big question and we said, 'How did this happen? What were we doing? How did the churches that were there just turn their music up and sing a little longer?' Well, He is going to turn the history clock on on today too, He is going to turn the history clock on because one day He is going to answer these questions. He is going to answer the question of abortion and He is going to answer the question of marriage; He already defined marriage and God is true and man is the liar.