1. "Two protesters arrested while chalking ‘Black Pre-Born Lives Matter’ on sidewalk"
Cherilyn Holloway, the founder of Pro-Black Pro-Life, gripped a bullhorn and urged listeners before her and on Facebook Live to consider how racism extends beyond pregnancy.
“I would talk to my other Black friends who stand for racial justice, and I would talk about the abortion rate in the Black community . . . and they would look back at me and they would say, ‘Well, what about when they are out of the womb?’ ” she said. “And I knew I could not be the only one who cared about both.”
Holloway said that she cares most about support systems for low-income people and outlawing abortion, but that the nation’s racial reckoning has made her feel more isolated in her beliefs.
You can watch a video of the incident at the Students for Life America website here.
2. "How Joe Biden's Catholic roots have shaped his public life: Campaign hopes Biden's personal story and faith will offer stark moral contrast to Trump"
Michael Wear, who led President Barack Obama's faith outreach during the 2012 campaign, said that message is central to the distinction that the Biden camp is hoping to offer. "Donald Trump is someone who needs religion to work for him in order to be politically successful," said Wear. "He is someone who has used religion and religious people. He values them to the extent that they're valuable to him."
"The contrast Joe Biden has to offer," Wear continued, is that he "isn't looking to see what faith can do for him. His life has been looking to see how he can serve out of, in part, a motivation of faith."
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Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne told NCR that "the way Biden looks at the world is very much influenced by the era of 'the two Johns,'" a phrase that the writer Garry Wills used to describe the time in which Kennedy was in the White House and Pope John XXIII was reigning in Rome.
"It was a time when Catholics were finally finding their place in American politics and obviously had an enormous pride in Kennedy's election, and if you were a Democrat, as most Catholics were at the time, you found real comfort in John XXIII's attitudes toward social justice and peace," said Dionne.
3. "Trump’s faith outreach aims to cast Democrats as the enemy"
White House faith adviser Paula White-Cain appealed to Christians to trust the president over “a very deceptive media.” White-Cain, a fixture in Trump’s circle of religious conservative advisers, asserted that Democratic presidential hopeful and lifelong Roman Catholic Joe Biden was helping liberals to silence people of faith.
Biden is “a Trojan horse for a very radical left agenda that is behind him that wants to take down our churches,” White-Cain, often described as Trump’s personal pastor, said during an event that tied religion to love of country with the title “Praise, Prayer, and Patriotism.” A second of those events is set for Thursday in Las Vegas.
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Richard Lee, founding pastor at First Redeemer Church in Atlanta, told attendees at the Trump event that governors and mayors are “bossing the churches around … to see what you will do in case (Biden) gets in office and they can come after you.”
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Ryan Burge, a political scientist at Eastern Illinois University, said Trump has made a “not so subtle” attempt to sour Christian voters on Democrats.
“Trump wants to tap into that very base feeling of ‘white Christianity is under attack,’” Burge said. “It’s all posturing to set up this God gap, where if you’re a Christian — especially a white Christian — the Republican Party is going to protect you.”
The tactic is “not based in any sort of reality,” Burge noted, “because Democrats have not elected atheists or nominated atheists in any systematic way.”
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Evangelicals for Trump, a campaign coalition-building effort, hosts three prayer calls weekly touting the president’s record, with more than 100 convened since the pandemic began. That’s on top of faith-focused calls held by the campaign’s anti-abortion voter outreach effort and online events hosted under the “Faith in America” banner. Vice President Mike Pence — a born-again Christian with a long track record in allying with fellow conservative evangelicals — recently launched a faith-centered tour in Wisconsin that will stop this week in a second swing state, Florida.
4. "Coming Soon: Religious-Right ‘Documentary’ Meant to Boost Trump’s Reelection Bid"
Marketing materials for “Trump 2024: The World After Trump,” which will be released in September, suggest that the movie will portray Trump as saving the United States from a globalist “new world order” and a socialist one-world government, claiming connections between current political battles and biblical prophecies about the End Times and rise of the Antichrist.
5. "Alabama politician resigns as a Southern Baptist pastor after KKK leader’s birthday celebration"
Seven church deacons met with Dismukes on Wednesday night, and they voted to accept his resignation, according to Mel Johnson of the Alabama Baptist Association. Johnson said that most of the members of the church are elderly and did not know about the controversy until he met with them and explained to them what had happened. Johnson said church leaders were concerned about the timing of the celebration and the backlash that it had caused.
“It was a tough decision in accepting his resignation,” Johnson said. “They understand the confusion and the struggle and what took place and how folks can have mixed feelings on both sides of the table.”
6. Evangelical Trump-supporter and Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. caught with his pants down (literally). (Warning: Can't un-see.)
