After a day’s hiatus for some routine website maintenance, we are back – and so were the Republican presidential hopefuls, who seem to debate as often as we write the roundup.
Also back was the “religion question,” which is shorthand for the controversy over Rick Perry’s pastor-pal calling Mitt Romney‘s Mormonism a “cult.”
“I’ve heard worse,” Romney said, but he still pressed Perry to repudiate the remarks by Dallas megachurch leader Robert Jeffress.
“I didn’t agree with it, Mitt, and I said so,” said a snippy Perry.
“That’s fine,” said an exasperated Romney. Here’s betting that what happened in Vegas won’t stay in Vegas.
Romney may have more worries when it comes to the question of whether he knew illegal immigrants were doing his yard work back in Massachusetts years ago – and his response Tuesday night could be problematic.
“Look, you can’t have any illegals working on our property,” Romney said he told the landscaping company. “I’m running for office, for Pete’s sake.”
The release of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit even made for debate fodder.
Herman Cain has nice poll numbers but apparently was not considered much of a threat by his rivals last night.
No one even bothered to engage his argument, from last Christmas but just making the rounds now, that Jesus was “the perfect conservative” who was killed by “a liberal court.”
That reading of the Gospels is not likely to help Cain, the lone African-American in the crowded field, with members of his own Atlanta congregation, Antioch Baptist Church North. Like most black churches, Antioch is decidedly more liberal than Cain.
“He’s a great speaker and a great singer. He has a great love for the church,” said Joe Beasley, a deacon at Antioch and Southern regional director for Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow PUSH Coalition.
But they stick to religion when they chat, not politics. “I respect him – and I want to keep my respect for him.”
Jewish and Christian backers of Israel are hoping to do better with African-Americans, and are launching campaigns to remind blacks about the longstanding bonds between Jews and African-Americans.
“I firmly believe that Dr. Martin Luther King was a strong African-American Zionist, but I think nine out of 10 African Americans don’t know that,” said Michael Stevens, coordinator of African-American outreach for Christians United for Israel, the largest non-Jewish, pro-Israel organization in the United States.
Is Occupy Wall Street anti-Semitic? Pundits clash.
Frank Schaeffer thinks OSW should be anti-fundamentalist, as in fundamentalist evangelicals and Catholics who have “delegitimized the US Government and thus undercut its ability to tax, spend and regulate.” It gets woolier from there.
Evangelicals should be smarter about matters of science and reason, say the evangelical authors of a New York Times Op-Ed that continues to generate debate.
Rush Limbaugh ought to be smarter about the Lord’s Resistance Army of Uganda:
“Lord’s Resistance Army are Christians. It means God,” Rush said, criticizing President Obama for sending 100 military advisers to help battle the LRA, which others consider a brutal, cult-like terrorist group.
A new network of United Methodists is pledging to marry same-sex couples, countering demands by another group of United Methodists who want church leaders to reaffirm a decades-old ban on gay unions when the leaders meet in North Carolina at the end of the month.
The Mt. Soledad cross case in California could be headed to the Supreme Court in another test of the Establishment Clause. Stanley Fish has toothsome examination of a current case under review by the justices, that of the ministerial exception.
The Oct. 27 interfaith event that Pope Benedict XVI is hosting at Assisi will be a joint pilgrimage rather than a joint prayer. The distinction is meant to avoid confusion, says the Vatican.
And it’s official: Benedict has named a new nuncio, or ambassador, to the United States. John Allen parses the internal church politics, which sounds like good training for any diplomat.
— David Gibson
