Flip Benham with Ante Pavkovic at a rally. Photo by talkradionews via Flickr (http://bit.ly/1s7daXc)
Two handsome brothers sign on to host a show on HGTV. If it isn’t exactly an original pilot (Property Brothers, anyone?), it’s at least an idea with proven success. Their show, Flip it Forward, would have helped families transform fixer-uppers into their dream homes–until, that is, HGTV canceled it, issuing only a brief statement via Twitter that they have “decided not to move on” with the series.
Brothers David and Jason Benham are real estate professionals in Charlotte, North Carolina. Both are graduates of Liberty University, a conservative Christian college in Lynchburg, VA, and proclaim their faith explicitly on their business website:
BENHAM Companies exists to build, strengthen, and reproduce the heart of Jesus Christ in believers around the world by teaching them to be Kingdom Builders in the marketplace and to give abundantly to His work on the earth.
The website RightWingWatch.org, a liberal watchdog, reported on a 2012 prayer rally called Charlotte 714 organized by David Benham and scheduled to coincide with the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte. In a radio interview with Janet Mefferd, Benham said:
We will always finger point but we don’t realize that OK if 87% of Americans are Christians and yet we have abortion on demand; we have no-fault divorce; we have pornography and perversion; we have a homosexuality and its agenda that is attacking the nation; we have adultery; we have all of the things; we even have allowed demonic ideologies to take our universities and our public school systems while the church sits silent and just builds big churches. We are so complacent, we are so apathetic and we are very hypocritical in the church, that’s why the Bible says judgment begins in the house of God. So when we prayed at 714 we asked God and our city to forgive us for allowing these things in the house of God.
