Joel Osteen, the pastor of America’s largest church, who told Oprah in his Texas mansion that “Jesus died that we might live an abundant life.”
.. Blessed is a loaded term because it blurs the distinction between two very different categories: gift and reward.
.. It is a perfect word for an American society that says it believes the American dream is based on hard work, not luck.
If Oprah could eliminate a single word, it would be “luck.” “Nothing about my life is lucky,” she argued on her cable show. “Nothing. A lot of grace. A lot of blessings. A lot of divine order. But I don’t believe in luck. For me luck is preparation meeting the moment of opportunity.”
.. It is a perfect word for an American society that says it believes the American dream is based on hard work, not luck.
If Oprah could eliminate a single word, it would be “luck.” “Nothing about my life is lucky,” she argued on her cable show. “Nothing. A lot of grace. A lot of blessings. A lot of divine order. But I don’t believe in luck. For me luck is preparation meeting the moment of opportunity.”
.. The prosperity gospel holds to this illusion of control until the very end. If a believer gets sick and dies, shame compounds the grief. Those who are loved and lost are just that — those who have lost the test of faith.
.. There is no graceful death, no ars moriendi, in the prosperity gospel. There are only jarring disappointments after fevered attempts to deny its inevitability.
Iowa, Ted Cruz, and the Evangelical Identity Crisis
Because “Hey! Good News! We just carpet bombed the hell out of you,” sounds a lot more like the gods of ancient Rome than the God of Jesus Christ.
Book: Bush Aides Called Evangelicals `Nuts’
A new book by a former White House official says that President Bush’s top political advisors privately ridiculed evangelical supporters as “nuts” and “goofy” while embracing them in public and using their votes to help win elections.
The former official also writes that the White House office of faith-based initiatives, which Bush promoted as a nonpolitical effort to support religious social-service organizations, was told to host pre-election events designed to mobilize religious voters who would most likely favor Republican candidates.
The assertions by David Kuo, a top official in the faith-based initiatives program, have rattled Republican strategists already struggling to persuade evangelical voters to turn out this fall for the GOP.
.. National Christian leaders received hugs and smiles in person and then were dismissed behind their backs and described as ‘ridiculous’ and ‘out of control.’ ”
.. Kuo is not the first insider to accuse the White House of politicizing the faith-based program. John J. DiIulio Jr., the first director of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, resigned after seven months and was quoted as saying that the White House was run by “Mayberry Machiavellians” who sometimes put politics ahead of other causes.
How Cruz beat Trump
By targeting evangelicals and libertarians from the very start, he dominated from the two most reliable Iowa voting blocs.
Meanwhile, Cruz’s father, Pastor Rafael Cruz, boosted his son’s name identification as he kept up an intense schedule of church visits across the state. Other campaigns were miffed that at Christian conferences over the past several years, there were often two entries under the Cruz name. But Rafael Cruz was a key entry point for pastors, whom he urged at church gatherings over the summer to take a hard look at his son.
“It’s one thing to meet a senator, it’s another thing for a pastor to meet and talk with a pastor, a guy who speaks your language, knows your heart, knows your struggles,” said Pastor Mike Demastus, who is backing Cruz. “There’s a connection point with Pastor Rafael Cruz. He’s one of us, he knows who we are. He has been, pardon the pun, a wonderful secret weapon for Sen. Cruz.”
.. Cruz put on an elaborate event in Des Moines in which he played part preacher, part therapist as he sat onstage with people who ran into legal problems over, for example, refusing to do floral arrangements for a gay wedding. Meanwhile, his campaign continued recruiting pastors.
.. After the Paris terrorist attacks of Nov. 13, national security issues damaged the political outsider image that initially pushed the pediatric neurosurgeon to the forefront, creating an opening for someone with more experience. Cruz pounced, playing up at every turn his knowledge of foreign affairs and pushing legislation to bar most Syrian refugees from coming to the United States, as conservatives grew increasingly fearful that those migrants could pose a threat.
.. “If I’m going to let Rubio redefine Cruz … we’re going to end up with open borders and cultural suicide, a mirror of what we’re seeing today. That was the galvanizing piece that brought it together.”
.. “Strap on the full armor of God,” Cruz told supporters in a New Year’s Eve conference call.
.. The voters open to Trump and Rubio received negative, contrasting information, but the Cruz campaign offered only positive messages to those also looking at Carson in the days leading up to the caucuses.