An email controversy is nothing new for Hillary Clinton, but evangelical leaders are voicing their concerns and demanding an apology regarding one of the latest issue related to emails.
Banding together with Catholic leaders, the group posted an open letter Oct. 12 denouncing what they call anti-Christian bigotry in the Clinton presidential campaign.
The letter, published on Republican candidate Donald Trump’s campaign website, expressed collective outrage at “demeaning and troubling rhetoric” used by high-level Clinton campaign staffers to describe evangelical and Catholic communities.
Ronnie Floyd, pastor of Cross Church in northwest Arkansas and the immediate past president of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), and Jack Graham, pastor of Prestonwood Baptist Church, Plano, Texas, who served as SBC president in 2003 and 2004, signed the letter, along with Richard Land, retired head of the SBC’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.
Other Southern Baptist signers included Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Church, Dallas, and Mathew Staver, director of the Liberty Council who served on the 2016 SBC Resolutions Committee. Gary Bauer, formerly with the Family Research Council and Focus on the Family and now president of American Values, also signed the letter.
The letter said the recently released emails “clearly ridicule, demean and smear Roman Catholics and evangelicals” and “reveal a contempt for all traditional Christians.”
‘Mocking’ faith
The letter came in response to documents published in early October by WikiLeaks that appear to show Clinton campaign communications director Jennifer Palmieri, a Catholic, joking about evangelicals and Catholics in emails sent to John Podesta, chairman of Clinton’s campaign and subject of the hack reportedly being investigated as a possible Russian cyberattack.
Palmieri and American Progress fellow John Halpin allegedly mocked conservative Catholicism as an “amazing bastardization of the faith” while also attacking Christians, according to news reports.
According to an article on www.breitbart.com, Podesta and Sandy Newman, president of Voices for Progress, emailed back and forth in 2012 about how to “plant seeds of revolution” within the Catholic Church. The timing was noted as being connected to when Catholic bishops were expressing opposition to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) contraceptive mandate in the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare).
Catholic leader Frank Cannon, president of American Principles Project, said on thepulse2016.com that the content of the leaked emails should not surprise anyone.
“Hillary Clinton’s anti-religious freedom policies aim to segregate people of faith away from the public square,” Cannon wrote. “Given these radical, anti-religious positions, it’s not a shock to find out that Clinton’s top staffers hold bigoted, anti-Christian views.
“It is also concerning that … Podesta … is attempting to divide the Catholic Church through a series of front groups, which aim to pit Catholic against Catholic by encouraging practicing Catholics to deny Catholic doctrine,” Cannon added.
“These emails reveal a bigoted, anti-Christian attitude held by those who will be managing the day-to-day activities of our country if Clinton is elected. Catholics and evangelicals should keep this in mind as they head to the voting booth in November.”
Ashley McGuire, senior fellow with The Catholic Association, told Breitbart News that Clinton also is on record as saying “deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs have to be changed” to make abortion more acceptable.
The religious leaders signing the open letter called on the former secretary of state “to immediately apologize for the Christophobic behavior of her associates.”
The term “Christophobia” was tied to Clinton and President Barack Obama in September by Christian author and humanitarian Johnnie Moore in an interview with Newsmax Prime on Newsmax TV.
The phrase also is similar to one used by sociologists David Williamson and George Yancey in their book “So Many Christians, So Few Lions: Is There Christianophobia in the United States?”
Moore accused Obama and Clinton of sitting “on their hands while hundreds of thousands, if not millions and millions, of Christians have been displaced and killed” during the recent refugee crisis in the Middle East.
Moore told J.D. Hayworth, host of Newsmax Prime, “If you support Christians who have been the recipients of genocide in the Middle East, you’re called Islamophobic and it’s just incomprehensible.
‘Global war’
“The Obama/Clinton administration has been party to the most systematic dismantling of religious freedom in this country,” he said. “If I’m going to be accused of Islamophobia just by speaking up for Christians … what about people that are anti-Christian?” he asked.
“If you’re anti-Christian, henceforth you are guilty of Christophobia. You are a Christophobe.
“There is a global war on Christians and we’ve got to do more about it. And if you don’t do something about it, you’re guilty of Christophobia,” he said.
Floyd told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on Oct. 17, “This election is not about these two personalities as much as it is about the future of America,” he said. “The key is not whom we endorse, but which of these two candidates endorse what we as evangelicals believe and practice.” (TAB, BNG)
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