Samuel Rodriguez

Engle and Company Protest Genocide in Houston

Submitted by Kyle on January 22, 2010 - 10:49am

Earlier this week, we posted a video from Lou Engle's "The Call - Houston" four-hour prayer rally against abortion. But that was just part one of the festivities, as the following day Engle and the participants gathered with a crowd esitmated at 10,000 outside a new Planned Parenthood facility to protest and accuse the organization of engaging in genocide against minority groups:

Samuel Rodriguez said the "spirit of Herod" is alive and well, referencing the desperate king's attempts to kill the baby Christ. Rodriguez said the building's location specifically targets minorities and begs the question, "Why is the devil so afraid of black babies and brown babies? It's time to turn the tide. Abortion is anti-Latino, anti-black and anti-life," he declared to the cheers of estimated 8,000-9,000 people gathered for a worship and prayer rally at the Catholic Charismatic Center, a few blocks from the 78,000-square-foot Planned Parenthood facility.

...

Pastor Stephen Broden of Fair Park Bible Fellowship in Dallas said the acceptance of Darwinism escalated racist ideals as blacks were seen as below par on the evolutionary scale. As blacks were dehumanized -- as Jews were in Germany -- there was little to no moral outcry within the circles of the intellectual elite who supported and promoted the practice of eugenics, the theory of improving humanity through selective breeding and discouraging breeding among those considered less fit.

Broden said Sanger supported the practice by promoting the use of birth control among the black populations in America.

"To the community of death," Broden declared, "no more eugenics. We will push back."

Harry Jackson, who led opposition to the push for same-sex "marriage" in Washington, D.C. said, "We are in danger of the civil rights movement selling us out. This is about the rights of the unborn."

Jackson said he understood intimately the struggles of blacks in America. He told of how his father's life was threatened when he tried to vote and of seeing lynchings and the burned body of a black man dragged through town.

Referencing that brutal history, Jackson said, "I'm here to tell you, right now is the same kind of lynching, the same kind of burning. But you are seeing us come together. I believe Dr. King would say, 'Save the unborn.' The ultimate civil right is the right of life."

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Engle Leads The Right Into Houston

Submitted by Kyle on January 6, 2010 - 10:33am

It seems as if Lou Engle has now become a full-fledged Religious Right leader whose gatherings are now regularly attended by everyone from Tony Perkins and Richard Land to Star Parker and Harry Jackson:

A coalition of pro-life advocates and religious leaders plan to gather in Houston on Jan. 18 to oppose what is expected to be the largest abortion clinic in the country.

Planned Parenthood is renovating a former bank, turning it into a 78,000 square foot facility that will include a surgical wing equipped to provide late-term abortions.

“It’s an abortion super center,” Lou Engle, founder of the pro-life group The Call to Conscience, which is organizing the rally, told CNSNews.com.

Joining Engle at the “prayer march” will be Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, and Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference. Religious leaders expected to attend include Bishop Harry Jackson, senior pastor of Hope Christian Church; Richard Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention; Star Parker, president of the Coalition for Urban Renewal and Education; and Abby Johnson, the former director of a Planned Parenthood clinic.

Engle compared the fight for the rights of the unborn to another critical movement in America. “As Martin Luther King, Jr. said, ‘It is time to subpoena the conscience of America,’” he said.

Here is Engle's latest video and the announcement on his website:

Houston We Have A Problem

The Second largest abortion clinic in the world is being built at this present moment in Houston, Texas. This six-story Planned Parenthood abortion “super center” is right in the middle of four (4) “super neighborhoods.” Three average to 85% Latino in population and the other is 85% African American. Planned Parenthood is targeting these minority pro-family communities, both for their finances and the restriction of their populations. But, there is a voice rising out of Houston and out of Texas, declaring, “We don’t want this death camp specializing in late-term abortions in our neighborhoods!”

On Martin Luther King Jr.’s holiday, January 18th, 2010, thousands are gathering to march against this Goliath to pray, fast, and peacefully siege this massive injustice in the spirit of that great liberator Martin Luther King Jr. Key African American, Latino, and political leaders are coming to speak and hold a nationwide press conference challenging this “super center.” This is a great hour for the Hispanic pro-LIFE people, Catholic and Evangelical, to raise their voices against abortion and for adoption. Public opinion over abortion is shifting radically in America to pro-LIFE at the same time this facility is exalting itself above the humble and oppressed.

We are entering into the 37th anniversary of the “Roe V. Wade” abortion decree of 1973 on January 22, 2010. We are in a ’73/’37 window to reverse that decree. It started in Texas, now let it begin to reverse there. We are calling for the pro-LIFE people of Houston, Texas, and America to gather Sunday night, January 17th, 2010 for four (4) hours of prayer for spiritual awakening and justice, from 6:00pm to 10:00pm at Grace Community Church. On this evening, 1/17, we will be unifying with one voice before God to pray for the Luke 1:17 answer to the killing of our babies and the wounding of our women – “And he will also go before Him in the spirit and power of Elijah to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the rebellious to the wisdom of the just, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”

On January 18th, at 9:00am on Martin Luther King Jr.’s holiday, we will gather by the thousands to launch a silent prayer march through the streets to the abortion “super center” for the nationwide press conference and prayer stand. As Martin Luther King Jr. would proclaim it – It is time to “subpoena the conscience” of the nation from the flashpoint of Houston, Texas. Maybe Houston could become the Birmingham of our day to let the unborn go free and spare the pregnant mother the agony of guilt. Maybe out of Houston a great demonstration of compassion could be launched through pregnant mother care with a mass movement of adoption. Martin Luther King Jr. cried, “I have a dream”. Alveda King, the niece of Martin Luther King Jr., has eloquently stated, “How can the dream live as long as we kill our children?” God has a dream. He has a dream for America and He has a dream for every mother and every child and a six-story massive abortion facility has never been a part of that dream. Lets end the nightmare and let the dream live.

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Will Immigration Reform Fracture The Freedom Federation?

Submitted by Kyle on October 21, 2009 - 12:34pm

Dan Gilgoff reports that efforts are underway to get religious conservatives on board efforts to reform the nation's immigration laws:

Many of the same faith-based groups attacking Obama and the Democrats over healthcare reform's abortion provisions, including the National Association of Evangelicals, the Southern Baptist Convention, and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, are poised to become major players in the president's coming push for comprehensive immigration reform, which would include a path to citizenship for many illegal immigrants. "There is a strong biblical teaching about showing hospitality to the stranger and the alien," says [Galen Carey, chief lobbyist for the National Association of Evangelicals.]

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The shift follows an intensive effort by Latino evangelical leaders to lobby their white evangelical counterparts. "My stump speech is that this is not amnesty and that this is a biblical issue," says the Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference. "If you are a devout follower of Christ, you have to support immigration reform." In the years since the last national debate on immigration reform, Rodriguez has met with white evangelical opinion makers like NAE President Leith Anderson and former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee. "This is the same constituency Glenn Beck is appealing to," says Rodriguez.

White evangelical leaders have also been influenced by their increasingly Latino congregations. Though nearly 70 percent of Hispanics in the United States are Roman Catholic, Hispanic evangelicals and Pentecostals are among the nation's fastest-growing religious groups. And politically speaking, conservative evangelical activists see Hispanics, who are generally conservative on issues like abortion and gay marriage, as potential allies. "The only thing that can turn them against us is if they are made to feel unwelcome in social conservative circles," says Richard Land, the Southern Baptist Convention's public policy chief.

In an attempt to get Christian-right groups to back comprehensive immigration reform, Rodriguez is working with the dean of the Liberty University's Law School, founded by the Rev. Jerry Falwell, on an immigration summit for conservatives. "The conservative wing of the Republican Party has to understand that it's impossible to win a national election without Hispanics," says Rodriguez. "And it's impossible to win Hispanics without immigration reform."

Frankly, I don't see that any of these developments will do much to influence the overall right-wing opposition to immigration reform, or move the Religious Right at all.

Richard Land has long been something of an outlier on this issue and the recent National Association of Evangelicals' unanimous resolution backing comprehensive immigration reform is already being attacked by Religious Right groups like the Institute on Religion and Democracy, which blasted the NAE for "adopting political stances in God's name and without consideration for their own churches' members."

The one interesting thing is Rodriguez's plans to host an immigration summit with Mat Staver, dean of the Liberty Law School, as both are members of the Freedom Federation, the new right-wing supergroup.

As we pointed out last month, Rodriguez recently began pushing to ensure that healthcare reform contained coverage for those in the country illegally, which is a position that would not go over well with several other members of the Freedom Federation.

If Staver and Rodriguez do start pushing for immigration reform, one would expect that such an effort would ultimately create a lot of tension within the Freedom Federation coalition itself, which could end up undermining the coalition's very reason for existing, considering that it was created specifically in order to unify the Religious Right.