Jerry Newcombe

It apparently doesn’t matter that a Texas student athlete who had claimed he and his team were disqualified from a race over a religious gesture recanted his allegations and admitted that he made it all up, as it appears that Religious Right groups intend to pursue the story anyway.

The debunked accusation, promoted by Fox News and even Gov. Rick Perry, was featured as the top story on Liberty Counsel’s radio show Faith & Freedom even after the student and his father both acknowledged that the disqualification had nothing to do with religious expression.

Today, Truth In Action Ministries today is promoting the fabricated case as well, with Newcombe citing the fictitious account to warn of the imminent threats to the freedoms of religion and speech.

Virtually every week there is some outrageous story of an alleged violation of the separation of church and state. They’re becoming so frequent that they are often met with a collective yawn.

The crazy thing about all this is how removed this is from the clear intent of the founders themselves---as seen in their documents, in their actions, in their words, etc.

One recent incident that blows me away is that involving a high school junior sprinter in a competition in Texas. His team, the Columbus High School Mighty Cardinals, had a chance to compete at the state level, until he did something egregious.

What did he do? What was his crime? After a successful run, as one of four runners (100 meters each in a relay), he pointed his finger to the sky---in a gesture of thanksgiving to God.

This one gesture now disqualifies his team because it was supposedly an “excessive celebration”---which is not allowed.

His father was dumbfounded, according to Alexander Marlow of Breitbart News (May 3, 2103): "It was a reaction," said the father, "You're brought up your whole life that God gives you good things, you're blessed."

It dawned on me that if that young man had given an obscene gesture to his team’s opponents, and he were likewise punished, the ACLU would have been at that young man’s defense faster than he had run the 100-meters.

Let me ask a question in this case: Where’s the church? Where’s the state?

Why is it that any sort of Christian expression in the public arena is not allowed, but virtually every other expression is allowed?

Jerry Newcombe of Truth In Action Ministries is upset that ex-gay leader John Paulk has renounced the movement and announced that his marriage to his wife is ending. While Newcombe didn’t explicitly name Paulk, the former poster boy of the ex-gay movement made news recently for recanting his past activism.

Newcombe said that Paulk is like an “ex-ex-smoker” who “for whatever reason, they lit up again, and they no longer try to fight these urges,” adding that the rejection of the ex-gay movement is nothing short of “blasphemy.”

Well, it’s happened again. Another prominent person in ministry has apparently fallen away from the faith, and he renounces what he once was a part of.

This isn’t a story like the supposed apostasy of Joel Osteen. That was a false story foisted on the world through computer hacking. What a strange time we live in, where such hackers could invade the Associated Press’ website and plant a false story about the president getting injured---causing the stock market to temporarily drop, until the truth came out.

The moral of the story is: Don’t believe everything you read or hear in the news, until firmly established by two or three witnesses, to use the biblical standard.

But this story about a prominent man in ministry falling away is verified from multiple sources. His particular sin happened to be homosexuality, to which he has now returned.

As Christians, how are we to understand it when people seem to get converted but fall away, presumably for good? Like they say, the Bible will keep us from sin or vice versa.

Perhaps this man will eventually get back right with the Lord. Perhaps not. When people say, “Once saved, always saved,” I prefer to add two qualifiers: “Once truly saved, always truly saved.” Obviously, temporary setbacks are on a different level than permanent ones.

…

What’s interesting about this fallen away man who is currently in the news is that he claims he never was changed. Fair enough, because only he and God know his own heart. But what he now says is that you can’t change---that is, no one with such a struggle can change. Excuse me?

As the wife of an ex-gay once told me in an interview, “To say that people can't be transformed is to say that God cannot transform people, and that's blasphemy. Nothing less.”

Granted, some sinful backgrounds may be harder to work through than others. But God can and will transform those willing to submit to His will. He wants us to be free more than we do.

…

I actually know some ex-ex-smokers. They gave up smoking---for a while. In some cases they became fanatical against smoking. But eventually, for whatever reason, they lit up again, and they no longer try to fight these urges. Does that mean that no one can quit for good? Of course not. Yet that’s sort of implied in some of the media stories about our fallen away friend. …

Every Christian is described by Paul as a “living sacrifice.” The problem is that sometimes we living sacrifices can crawl off the altar. We should pray for such people to crawl back. When they do, they’ll see that God waits for them with open arms, like the father of the Prodigal Son.

Fred Jackson, the American Family Association’s news director, while discussing the Colorado movie theater shooting today said that liberal Christian churches and liberal media helped contribute to violent incidents by supposedly deemphasizing the fear of God and the Bible. During AFA Today, Jackson had on as his guest Jerry Newcombe of Truth in Action Ministries to discuss his column on the AFA’s OneNewsNow blaming the shooting on a waning fear of God and Hell, and blamed the American Civil Liberties Union for destroying the public school system by supposedly forbidding students from reading the Bible. “You wonder why all these terrible things are happening to us when there is no fear of God,” Newcombe said.

Jackson maintained that unlike in the communities of forty years ago, liberals in the media and churches, along with movies and the internet, have “have come together to give us these kinds of incidents.”

Jackson: In the community there were community standards that reflected biblical principles, whether people knew it or not, the standard in the community was based on Scripture. In that short period of time, roughly forty years, we have seen such a transformation in values in our communities, whether it’s rural or whether it’s big city. I have to think that all of this, whether it’s the Hollywood movies, whether it’s what we see on the internets [sic], whether it’s liberal bias in the media, whether it’s our politicians changing public policy, I think all of those somehow have fit together—and I have to say also churches who are leaving the authority of Scripture and losing their fear of God—all of those things have seem to have come together to give us these kinds of incidents.

Newcombe: I think that’s so true. It’s as if we said to God, publicly or in the public arena, ‘get out, You’re not welcome here anymore’ and it’s as if God removed His protection from our land.

Update: Later in the program, Jackson and co-host Teddy James of AFA Journal said the shooting is a sign of God’s judgment for the failings of the public education system and liberal, mainline Protestant churches that affirm gays and lesbians.

Jackson: I think the sources of this is [sic] multifaceted but you can put it all I think under the heading of rebellion to God, a rejection of the God of the Bible. I think along with an education system that has produced our lawyers, our politicians, more teachers, more professors, all of that sort of thing, is our churches, mainline churches. We’ve been dealing Teddy and I know the AFA Journal has been dealing with denominations that no longer believe in the God of the Bible, they no longer believe that Jesus is the only way of salvation, they teach that God is OK with homosexuality, this is just increasing more and more. It is mankind shaking its fist at the authority of God.

James: And God will not be silent when he’s mocked, and we need to remember that.

Jackson: We are seeing his judgment. You know, some people talk about ‘God’s judgment must be just around the corner,’ we are seeing it.

Truth in Action Ministries has released yet another short film chronicling America’s supposed moral decline and spiritual collapse. In Losing Liberty, hosts Jerry Newcombe and Jennifer Kennedy Cassidy, daughter of late televangelist D. James Kennedy, insisted that America is a “Christian nation” but that secularists are “working day and night to unmoor of us from our Christian foundations.” According to the film, America is turning into a dystopian society much like The Hunger Games, the trilogy about a dictatorial regime which forces children to fight to the death each year. “One can’t help but wonder, will our future will be similar if our nation continues in the direction we are headed,” Carmen Pate asks.

After activist Dee Wampler insisted that America was much better off in the 1950s and 1960s, South African evangelist Peter Hammond said there is a “secular humanist assault on our Christian heritage” that is leading to tyranny. “It’s the Christian foundation of our foundation that brought us freedom,” said John Rabe, who hosts the organization’s radio show Truth that Transforms alongside Pate, “to turn away from that would take what’s already disastrous and make it infinitely worse.”

As Hammond discussed “everything that is evil in this world,” the film displayed images of the September 11 attacks, bombings, drug abuse, Adolf Hitler…and a married lesbian couple and the kiss between characters Kurt and Blaine on Glee!

Much like American Religious Right activists who reminisce about the 1950s, when much of the country had legal segregation, Hammond asserted that the 1994 election in South Africa, the first free election following the fall of Apartheid, demonstrated the “disastrous” impact of “evangelical apathy.”

Evangelicals “refused to vote because they didn’t like what was happening in our country at that time,” Hammond said, “all that happened is less Christian candidates got elected and more anti-Christian candidates got elected, and the country got more anti-Christian and soon they legalized abortion and pornography, homosexuality and before we knew it we had desecration of Sundays to a massive increase of crime.” He then went on to blame the Obama administration for having “encouraged” anti-Christian persecution and violence abroad.

Watch highlights here:

Religious Right activists continuously claim that a wide majority of Americans share their ultraconservative views but are too politically apathetic or confused to act on their beliefs, frequently blaming the IRS for supposedly “silencing” pastors by maintaining a rule that would take away a church’s tax-exempt status if it endorses candidates. This week, Truth in Action Ministries unveiled a film on Truth that Transforms featuring host Jerry Newcombe, Liberty Counsel’s Mat Staver, Liberty Institute’s Kelly Shackelford and author Bill Federer, along with a petition “to repeal the ban on church free speech.”

“How does Satan always work?” Shackelford asked. “False information, intimidation and fear, and that’s what’s happening here.” Later, Federer said that “horrible things can and unfortunately will happen” as a result of the IRS rule, while the film showed images of Adolf Hitler delivering a speech and the corpses of Holocaust victims.

Watch:

After comparing the “radical homosexual agenda” to the iceberg that sank the Titanic, Truth in Action Ministries yesterday discussed how homosexuality results from a “deep pathology” and deficient “biblical” parenting and today went into how gays and lesbians are stealthily using anti-bullying programs to turn kids gay. The claim is common in Religious Right circles, and Jerry Newcombe told host Carmen Pate on Truth that Transforms today that gay rights supporters want to “indoctrinate children” into “a deadly lifestyle” through anti-bullying programs.

Pate: As we talk about the radical homosexual agenda and their attempts to take their agenda into the public school, we see evidence day in and day out in the news, in activities that are coming up in public schools, activities that are put together by an organization called Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network. They seem to be set on taking their agenda and teaching our children that their lifestyle is actually an inherent identity. How do you see this infiltrating our children’s school systems?

Newcombe: It’s something where they are basically taking a legitimate concern, which is that of bullying, and they are using that serious problem that does happen as an opportunity by which they will then promote and essentially indoctrinate children and expose children to the acceptability of the homosexual lifestyle. Now bullying is wrong but so also is indoctrination into a deadly lifestyle and frankly homosexuality is a deadly lifestyle and that fact is withheld from the children.

Later in the program, Newcombe suggested that it may not be a coincidence and is “ironic” that the anti-bullying Day of Silence takes place on April 20th, Adolf Hitler’s birthday. While the Day of Silence last year took place on April 15th, as the date has changed over the years, Newcombe sees something more sinister:

Newcombe: It’s sad to see groups like GLSEN be accepted by the teacher's establishment and then allow the platform to go into the public schools and try and indoctrinate children. For example, they have something called the Day of Silence. Now they chose April 20 of all days to be the Day of Silence, I looked that up, I was like, ‘isn’t that Adolf Hitler’s birthday,’ I looked it up and sure enough it is Adolf Hitler’s birthday. I don’t think there’s a link there but how ironic. But they are using this day as a means by which to promote their lifestyle as if it is a positive thing.

We are surprised to find that it actually took some Religious Right activist almost a whole day before publicly blaming Monday's tragic shooting at Chardon High School in Ohio on the lack of school prayer, as what Jerry Newcombe of Truth in Action did in an op-ed for Crosswalk yesterday: 

There were never school shootings when prayer was in school. Nothing even remotely like it. But now, for the most part, God has been thrown out of our public schools, and they have had to install the metal detector instead. Even that is not fail-proof ... I find it ironic that yesterday’s shooting would occur in the shadow of the 50th anniversary of the infamous school prayer decision. In June 1962, in Engel v. Vitale, the Supreme Court ruled that schools could not officially participate in prayer.

Specifically, the High Court banned this seemingly innocuous prayer: "Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessing upon us, our parents, our teachers and our country."

...

As long as our schools don’t have a prayer, I suppose some of them need to have a sign installed out in front: Enter at your own risk.

When TLC introduced a reality show about Muslim families living in Dearborn, Michigan, called All-American Muslim, it didn’t take long for anti-Muslim activists to throw a fit that the families in the program didn’t fit their stereotype of Muslims as bloodthirsty and devious terrorists. Robert Spencer urged TLC to make a show about an American Muslim who “ended up participating in jihad activity,” and the Florida Family Association claimed to have convinced eighteen companies to pull their ads from the show.

Earlier this year, the same group demanded companies stop advertising on TeenNick because the show Degrassi featured a transgender character. The FFA said in an alert to members:

The Learning Channel's new show All-American Muslim is propaganda clearly designed to counter legitimate and present-day concerns about many Muslims who are advancing Islamic fundamentalism and Sharia law. The show profiles only Muslims that appear to be ordinary folks while excluding many Islamic believers whose agenda poses a clear and present danger to liberties and traditional values that the majority of Americans cherish.

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Clearly this program is attempting to manipulate Americans into ignoring the threat of jihad and to influence them to believe that being concerned about the jihad threat would somehow victimize these nice people in this show.

Forida [sic] Family Association sent out an email alert on November 15, 2011 to inform supporters about The Learning Channel’s new show called All-American Muslim and encouraged supporters to send emails to advertisers.

Truth in Action Ministries, formerly Coral Ridge Ministries, also attacked the reality show and said it is part of the “stealth jihad”:

Jerry Newcombe, Truth in Action Ministries' senior producer and analyst, says the major problem with the program is that it's not going to show the reality of "pure Islam."

"It's a free country. Muslims are free to practice their religion here (thanks to Christianity, ultimately). What is sad, though, is that the truth about the goals of radical Islam are hidden from many Americans through programs like the one on TLC. Islam wants to take over the world. If they have to use force, they'll do that. But otherwise, they'll do it by what Robert Spencer calls 'stealth jihad,'" Newcombe said.

We have been writing about the growing overlap between the traditional Religious Right and the new brand of self-proclaimed prophets and apostles like Cindy Jacobs, Rick Joyner, Chuck Pierce, and Lou Engle, who have emerged out of the New Apostolic Reformation movement.

In recent years, old-school Religious Right leaders like Tony Perkins and Janet Porter have eagerly embraced leaders like Joyner, Engle and Jacobs and welcomed them into movement, often placing them front and center in their events. 

So imagine our surprise when we took at look at the American Family Association's blog today and saw a post by Marsha West laying out her concerns about the movement and calling out various Religious Right leaders by name for aligning with false prophets like Jacobs:

Last year self-professed NAR prophet Cindy Jacobs’ and General’s International held the May Day 2010: A Cry To God For A Nation In Distress at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial where “local representatives shared about their state’s Christian heritage and lifted up prayers for their state and the United States. National leaders offered up prayers of repentance for seven main issues: family, the church, education, arts and entertainment, business, government and the media.” Janet Porter of Faith2Action had an active role in organizing the gathering. In attendance were such notables as James Dobson, Tony Perkins, Wendy Wright, Jerry Newcombe, Peter LaBarbera, David Barton, Mathew Staver, Robert Knight, Alan Keyes, to name a few. Also in attendance were several NAR leaders including C. Peter Wagner, Chuck Pierce, Dutch Sheets, Lance Wallnau and Rick Joyner.

In April 2010 conservative Liberty University in Lynchburg, VA hosted The Awakening 2010 conference sponsored by the Freedom Federation. They define themselves as “a group of the nation's largest multiracial, multiethnic and multigenerational faith-based and policy organizations representing more than 30 million Americans united by core values. The group’s mission is to bring together community leaders committed to mobilizing the Judeo-Christian worldview to preserve freedom and promote justice.”

One of the speakers at the event was Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli. Other influential leaders include Newt Gingrich, Gary Bauer, Tony Perkins, Wendy Wright, Richard Land, Andrea Lafferty, Kelly Shackelford, Ken Blackwell, Mat Staver, Rick Scarborough, and NAR Apostles Cindy Jacobs, Lou Engle, Harry Jackson and Samuel Rodriguez.

What is wrong with this picture? People from the NAR who are in the grip of evil were invited to participate in both of these events. One example is Cindy Jacobs. Jacobs is the NAR’s “lead U.S. National Apostle.” Cindy is supposedly a modern day prophet. But I beg to differ. This woman has uttered more false prophecies than Walgreen’s has pills, proving beyond a reasonable doubt that she is no more a prophet of God than Lady Gaga! The truth is, Cindy Jacobs is a false prophet.

Considering that Perkins regularly co-hosts a radio broadcast with AFA head Tim Wildmon and Dobson, Barton, Staver and the like are key ideological allies of the organization, I wonder how they feel about being called out for associating with people "who are in the grip of evil."