Legion of Angels News Archive

As the words to the Christian rock song fade from the giant screens at Mountain Springs church, Pastor Steve Holt steps forward to speak to his congregation. These are perilous times, he says, but he urges them not to despair.

“There are still two weeks before the election,” he says, before announcing a week of fasting and prayer in the run-up to polling day.

For conservative Christians, such as Holt and his congregation, the prospect of a Democratic victory represents sheer calamity. Yet Evangelicals have not been natural supporters of John McCain, doubting the Republican’s commitment to banning abortion and gay marriage.

But conservative Christians believe a Barack Obama presidency would roll back a generation of political gains which culminated with their privileged position in George Bush’s White House.

“I don’t think we are going to have any influence with Barack Obama in the White House,” Holt told the Guardian.

The election represented a paradigm shift for the US as well as for evangelicals. “I think there is a backlash against Bush because of the economy and I think frankly because of a lack of leadership,” Holt said. “There is a sense we are in a position of weakness right now.”

A political forum at the church saw bewilderment and frustration among members of Holt’s flock as they tried to come to terms with Obama’s widening lead over McCain - and the potential loss of their power in Washington.

“Has Obama through mass hypnosis figured out a way to bypass the critical faculties of all Americans?” asked Brian Sherman, a church volunteer.

Mark Andre, a commodities trader, said he had not started out a supporter of McCain - though the senator was well liked by his Democratic friends before the campaign. “It’s almost like Democrats became hateful of McCain. Has it been Sarah Palin and her stance, or is it just Obama and his ideology? What happened to all the Democrats who loved McCain?”

Political soul-searching is under way at conservative churches across the US - but nowhere more so than Colorado Springs, a town known locally as the “evangelical mecca”.

Local government officials lured conservative Christian groups here with tax breaks in the 1980s. Colorado Springs is now headquarters for the most powerful Christian organisations in the US.

The town and surrounding areas remain defiantly conservative in a state that has been leaning Democratic in state elections for the last four years since voting Bush in 2000 and 2004. John Morris, the chairman of the county Democratic party, called the town “a black hole of Republican extremism”.

Colorado is now emerging as a key battleground state, and Republicans are counting on the evangelicals to help McCain hang on. The party has sent emissaries to 400 churches over the past few days to recruit volunteers for “evangelical-to-evangelical” phone banks. It has also used the churches to generate excitement about Palin’s rally schedule yesterday, handing out tickets after morning services on Sunday.

In an ordinary election that grassroots organisation would make a difference. Evangelicals consider it a “Christian duty” to vote. Past elections have seen high turnouts among conservative voters - especially if there were ballots on gay marriage or abortion.

In an attempt to bring out the faithful this year conservatives in Colorado drafted a ballot measure that confers human rights on a fertilised egg from the moment of conception.

Church leaders have also tried to impress on their followers that - even if they are still cool towards McCain - conservatives cannot afford to have Obama in the White House.

But with election officials predicting unprecedented turnout across Colorado - up to 90% in heavily Democratic Denver and Boulder -the tested Republican strategy of winning elections by getting out the evangelical vote is unlikely to work. That vote would be simply swamped by a very high turnout.

There are also signs that evangelical power over the ballot box could be waning - even in Colorado Springs.

Recent years have seen more Democrats in the area. There have also been signs of an internal revolt against local conservative Republican politicians.

Over the years, the influx of evangelicals to Colorado Springs shifted the local party establishment to the right. Party politics increasingly revolved around the emotive issues such as abortion. That alienated more traditional Republicans who wanted their officials to focus on the economy and infrastructure.

Last month, Jan Martin, a lifelong Republican and an elected city council official, announced she was supporting Obama because she believed the party had moved too far to the right.

“I think Bush has been too extreme, and he has catered to this black-and-white extreme view of conservative Christian thinking. The leadership of the local party is still very conservative and still very much us against them.”

A number of evangelical leaders have also begun asking whether their movement has drifted too far to the right. Some church leaders in Colorado Springs have called for the evangelical focus to be broadened beyond abortion and gay marriage and address issues such as climate change and poverty.

Few are willing to publicly write off McCain and the current brand of Republicanism. But in the political forum at Mountain Springs, local Republican elected officials were already discussing how they would operate under an Obama administration.

“God forbid, but if it comes about we are going to have to be speaking out like never before,” said Doug Lamborn, the local Republican member of Congress.

Republicans needed to update their methods of communications by launching more conservative blogs, added Amy Stephens, a local state representative.

Holt was also now moving to reconcile himself to defeat. “This could be the best thing that ever happened to the evangelical cause,” he said. “We’re used to being against the tide.”

Source — Guardian

A Christian registrar who refused to carry out gay ‘weddings’ won a landmark legal battle yesterday.

Lillian Ladele, 47, was threatened with the sack, bullied and ‘thrown before the lions’ after asking to be excused from conducting civil partnerships for same-sex couples because of her religious beliefs.

But yesterday a tribunal agreed that her faith had been ridden roughshod over by equalities-obsessed Islington Council, which had sought to ‘trump one set of rights with another’.

The groundbreaking decision could lead to firms facing ‘conscience claims’ from staff who say their own beliefs prevent them carrying out part of their job.

Yesterday’s ruling found that Liberal Democrat-run Islington Council in North London cared too much about the ‘rights of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual’ community.

It also found that the council – which gave Miss Ladele an ultimatum to choose between her beliefs and her £31,000-a-year job – showed no respect for her rights as a Christian.

Speaking afterwards, Miss Ladele said: ‘It is a victory for religious liberty, not just for myself but for others in a similar position to mine.

‘Gay rights should not be used as an excuse to bully or harass people over their religious beliefs.’

Miss Ladele, who is single, said she was treated like a pariah by colleagues and left in an ‘intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment’.

She had wept as she told the tribunal how her employers gave her an ultimatum to perform the ceremonies or face dismissal for gross misconduct.

‘I was being picked on a daily basis,’ she said. She said she felt like she was being ‘thrown before the lions’, explaining: ‘I hold the orthodox Christian view that marriage is the union of one man and one woman for life and this is the God-ordained place for sexual relations.

‘It creates a problem for any Christian if they are expected to do or condone something that they see as sinful.’

Her nightmare began in 2004, when she realised that legislation permitting civil partnerships at town halls between gays or lesbians would require her to preside over the ceremonies.

Miss Ladele raised her concerns, but was ridiculed. Her boss, Helen Mendez-Child, said her stance was akin to a registrar refusing to marry a black person.

In 2006 Miss Ladele and another, unnamed, Christian colleague were accused of ‘discriminating against the homosexual community’.

In May 2007, the council launched an internal disciplinary inquiry into Miss Ladele.

Four months later, she was told if she did not co-operate she would be sacked. She took the council to an employment tribunal, claiming discrimination, harassment and victimisation on the grounds of religion or beliefs.

Yesterday the Central London tribunal agreed she had been unfairly treated.

In its ruling, which could have implications for the administration of the 18,000 same-sex ceremonies conducted every year, the tribunal said: ‘This is a situation where there is a conflict between two rights or freedoms. It is an important case, which may have a wider impact than the dispute between the parties.

‘The tribunal accepts that it would be wrong for one set of rights to trump another.

‘The evidence before the tribunal was that Islington Council rightly considered the importance of the right of the gay community not to be discriminated against but did not consider the right of Miss Ladele as a member of a religious group.

‘Islington Council decided that the service it provided was secular and that the rights of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual community must be protected.

‘In so acting, it took no notice of the rights of Miss Ladele by virtue of her orthodox Christian beliefs.’

Compensation will be decided in September. There is no limit to the amount that can be awarded for religious discrimination.

Last night employment lawyer Lisa Mayhew, of Jones Day, said: ‘It is a bit of a wake-up call for employers.

‘They need to think about whether their instructions and the tasks expected of staff might cause people with religious beliefs more problems than others.

‘It does not have to be religion – this could apply across the spectrum in terms of race, gender or sexual orientation.’

But Ben Summerskill, of gay rights campaign group Stonewall, said: ‘Public servants are paid by taxpayers to deliver public services.

‘They shouldn’t be able to pick and choose who they deliver those services to.’

Source — The Daily Mail

Heath Ledger’s costars from The Dark Knight, including two-time Batman Christian Bale, took turns at a press event this weekend praising and remembering the late actor’s intense style. A few of them are even lobbying for a gold statue on his behalf.

“Definitely,” said Aaron Eckhart, who plays doomed district attorney Harvey Dent to Ledger’s droll and very creepy Joker. “Why not?”

Fellow castmember Gary Oldman was more pointed about it.

“Heath had this frequency none of us could hear,” said Oldman. “The Academy tends to overlook movies like this, but this acting is so good it’s going to be very hard for them to avoid it.”

His other Gotham cohorts marveled at Ledger’s obsession with detail:

He patched together influences ranging from A Clockwork Orange to ventriloquist dummies to Charlie Chaplin. The result: a Joker so demented and creepy he makes Nicholson’s 1989 version look like Elton John in a bad mood.

“He called me during preproduction from time to time to tell me what he was working on,” director Christopher Nolan recalled. “He told me he was researching the way ventriloquist dummies talk. It was a bit peculiar.”

But when Nolan finally saw Heath’s Joker onscreen, he got it. Ledger was trying for a vocal style that would match the Joker’s chaotic character; even his pitch would be unpredictable, the same way that ventriloquists’ voices would suddenly switch from low to high.

“He’s raised the bar,” said Bale.

If the Academy does honor Ledger for his Joker character, it would be only the second posthumous acting win ever. The first went to Peter Finch for the 1976 movie Network.

Source — E! News

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(B&H Publishing Group, February 2008) by best-selling author Robert Lewis is
not your garden-variety read.

See the “Biblical Barbie” video and learn the five bold moves at

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Source — Religion News Service