Thread: EVANGELICALS: Your Leaders Endorsed Mass Amnesty Today

EVANGELICALS: Your Leaders Endorsed Mass Amnesty Today

By Roy Beck,
Updated Thursday, October 8, 2009, 6:41 PM EDT

Leaders of most of the nation's evangelical Christians made a shocking endorsement of illegal-alien amnesty today in Senate testimony.

Their spokesman -- the head of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) -- said high immigration is increasing membership in evangelical churches and is good for the economy.

Polls have shown that evangelical Christians in the pews are the MOST likely to OPPOSE amnesty. If you are one of them, you may want to contact your church leaders immediately.

The NAE phone number is: 202-789-1011 --- Fax number is 202-842-0392

The NAE email address is: executivedirector@nae.net and govaffairs@nae.net

Please be respectful and thoughtful in your comments to the NAE. I would suggest that only evangelical Christians make the contacts.

NATIONAL EVANGELICALS PRESIDENT SAYS PRO-AMNESTY SUPPORT WAS UNANIMOUS

Rev. Leith Anderson, president of the NAE, was invited by Sen. Shumer (D-N.Y.) to testify in favor of the Senate immigration chairman's push to create amnesty legislation this fall.

Sen. Shumer asked Rev. Anderson if many of his colleagues agree with his support for legalizing 12-20 million illegal aliens and increasing the legal immigration far higher than the 1 million a year current level (the two key components of "comprehensive immigration reform").

Rev. Anderson answered that there was no dissent in adopting the pro-amnesty resolution on the 75-member NAE board of directors.

ZERO dissent!

SOME OF THE DENOMINATIONS & ORGANIZATIONS BEHIND THE AMNESTY PUSH

Rev. Anderson described the NAE as:

. . . a network of 40 denominations comprising more than 45,000 local churches located in every congressional district and every state. The NAE membership also includes evangelical universities, seminaries, ministries, local congregations, and individuals.

Here is the list of the denominational members: http://www.nae.net/membership/current-members

Notable among the members are:

Anglican Mission in America -- Phone: 843.237.0318 -- Fax: 843.237.4008 -- info@theamia.org -- Chairman Charles H. Murphy III's Chief of Staff: sgrayson@theamia.org
Assemblies of God -- Phone: 417-862-2781 -- Toll Free: 1-877-840-4800 -- Contributions@ag.org -- General Superintendent: GeneralSuperintendent@ag.org -- http://ag.org/top/contact.cfm
Brethren in Christ Church -- Phone: 717.697.2634 -- bic@bic-church.org
Christian Reformed Church in North America -- Phone: 616-241-1691 or 1-877-279-9994 ---- Fax: 616-224-0803 --- E-mail: crcna@crcna.org
Church of God -- Phone: 765-648-2125 --
Church of the Nazarene -- Phone: 913.577.0500 -- E-mail from this page http://nazarene.org/contactus.aspx
Churches of Christ In Christian Union
Conservative Lutheran Association
Evangelical Assembly of Presbyterian Churches
Evangelical Presbyterian Church -- Phone: 734-742-2020 - Fax: 734-742-2033 -- Email: webmaster@epc.org
Evangelical Free Church of America
Fellowship of Evangelical Churches
Free Methodist Church of North America
General Association of Regular Baptists -- Telephone: (88 588-1600 --- Fax: (847) 843-3757 --- E-mail here: http://www.garbc.org/news/?page_id=335
International Church of the Foursquare Gospel
International Fellowship of Christian Assemblies
International Pentecostal Church of Christ
International Pentecostal Holiness Church
Presbyterian Church in America --- Telephone: 678-825-1000 ---- Fax: 678-825-1001 --- Email: ac@pcanet.org
Primitive Methodist Church USA
Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America
The Brethren Church
The Christian & Missionary Alliance
The Evangelical Church
The Salvation Army --- E-mail at: NHQ_Webmaster@usn.salvationarmy.org --- 703-299-8314 --- toll free 800-725-2769 --- fax 703-684-3478
The Vineyard, USA --- Phone: 281.313.8463 ---- Fax: 281.313.8464 ---- e-mail: info@vineyardusa.org
Transformation Ministries
United Brethren in Christ
US Conference of the Mennonite Brethren Churches
The Wesleyan Church Corporation
If you have a connection with any of these denominations, you may want to contact them and ask if they really want to side with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Council of La Raza in flooding the country with millions more legal foreign workers while 15 million Americans are looking for a job but can't find one.

There is a good chance that even the leaders in your national church agencies are not really aware that their representative voted for a massive amnesty and increase in foreign worker importation.

Rev. Anderson is Senior Pastor of Wooddale Church in Eden Prairie, Minn. It describes itself as non-denominational with some Baptist connections. http://www.wooddale.org/default/index.cfm

EVANGELICAL OFFICIALS REFUSED TO EVEN HEAR MORAL ARGUMENTS FOR REDUCED IMMIGRATION

I would note that NumbersUSA and others have made requests to NAE for several years to present our moral arguments for less overall immigration to protect the stewardship of the nation's natural resources and to protect the nation's most vulnerable citizens. The NAE has resolutely refused to hear any voice but pro-amnesty voices, as far as we have been able to tell.

When you read Rev. Anderson's prepared testimony, you find much that is thoughtful, including:

Evangelicals do not condone law breaking. . . . Evangelicals believe that government is a gift of God for the common good. Borders are necessary for public order. We support intelligent enforcement of our nation's immigration laws as long as the enforcement measures are consistent with respect for human dignity, family values and sanctity of human life.

-- Evangelicals President

But then Rev. Anderson told Sen. Shumer that the Gospel requires that Christians be willing to forgive illegal aliens for breaking immigration laws which means that:

We believe that undocumented immigrants who have otherwise been law abiding members of our communities should be offered the opportunity to pay any taxes or penalties owed, and over time earn the right to become U.S. citizens and permanent residents. The process of redemption and restitution is core to Christian beliefs, as we were all once lost and redeemed through love of Jesus Christ.

-- Evangelicals President

Furthermore, the 75 national evangelical leaders agreed that immigration laws that have allowed legal immigration to soar from a traditional average of 250,000 a year to more than 1,000,000 a year are too strict and must be changed to allow many more foreign workers to enter.

FAULTY THINKING, FAULTY PROCESS, FAULTY ANALYSIS, FAULTY THEOLOGY

The staff at NumbersUSA are members of the Evangelical, Catholic, Jewish, Mainline Protestant, Liberal Protestant and no religious faith. We all believe in ethical systems that say it is wrong to run an immigration policy that hammers down the weakest, poorest and unemployed members of our society while making it impossible to achieve environmental sustainability. It grieves our hearts to see evangelical leaders join national Jewish, Catholic, mainline Protestant and liberal Protestant leaders who have already fully endorsed amnesty and massive increases in foreign workers and U.S. population growth.

We have no doubt that all these national religious leaders have failed in their duties of fact-gathering and thoughtful analysis. They bring discredit on their religious faiths from their sloppiness in truth seeking and their lack of intellectual integrity.

We call on all NumbersUSA members of faith to point us to leaders in their own religious traditions who are open to discussing the full ethical issues involved in immigration.

The NAE's call for forgiveness seems to ignore the Gospel context of "go and sin no more."

We do not call for a policy that locks up and throws away the key on foreign citizens who have broken our immigration laws. Most of us are willing to let most illegal aliens return to their home countries under no penalty whatsoever.

But the NAE has proclaimed that our forgiveness of illegal aliens should allow them to keep the very things they broke the law to steal: U.S. jobs and access to U.S. infrastructure.

How many billions of people in the world would like to line up for that kind of forgiveness?

We have pled with the NAE leaders (as we have with leaders of all other faith traditions) to talk to them about how mercy shown by governments can easily create injustice against a society's weakest members. In general the Judeo-Christian scriptures call on individuals to show mercy but governments to provide justice.

When the government shows mercy, it allows people to break the rules. But if breaking the rules harms law-abiding members of society, that mercy creates an injustice against them.

I am especially devastated by the national evangelical leaders' callous disregard for the U-6 unemployment rate of nearly 20% -- job-seekers (active and recently discouraged) who cannot find any job or who have been forced into involuntary part-time work.

It is incredible to read Rev. Anderson's testimony talking about the failure in having enough immigration visas to fill the needs of the U.S. business community!

I am embarrassed for him and his 74 colleagues. I am sure they do not mean such inhumane treatment of their fellow Americans. And I am sure they dug themselves into this shameful hole with the most well-intentioned of shovels.

I suggest that the readers of this blog consider forgiveness toward these religious leaders while thoughtfully guiding them to see all the shades and complexities of the immigration issue to which they weren't exposed by the NAE staff and the open-borders lobby which led them to this pro-amnesty position.

ROY BECK is Founder & CEO of NumbersUSA. He was honored with dozens of religion journalism awards during the 1980s for national and international reporting on the intersection of Protestant churches and social issues. He is an active member of a Mainline Protestant congregation and 20-year leader of youth mission teams providing better housing for poor Americans.

http://www.numbersusa.com/content/nusab ... today.html

I AM EMBARRASSED BY ALL OF THEM FOR THEIR INHUMANE TREATMENT OF AMERICA.

The web grows larger by the minute. I am finding it hard to breathe.

These churchs have not only betrayed the American people, they have violated the word of God.


The bible doesn't teach us to lie, cheat and/or steal and/or support those that do. In fact the bible is very clear about us confronting sinners in a calm, loving yet firm way. If Christians support illegals ( sinners) they become part of the sin.

This is a very sad day, the business of church has won out over the business of God.

Religious Leaders Support Amnesty During Senate Immigration Subcommittee Hearing

Thursday, October 8, 2009, 4:21 PM EDT

Five leaders from the religious community offered testimony to the Senate Immigration Subcommittee and provided unanimous support for amnesty. Leith Anderson, President of the National Association of Evangelicals representing 40 denominations, offered their unanimous support behind Subcommittee Chair Chuck Schumer and the amnesty position.

In his statement to the Subcommittee, Anderson said a large number of Evengelical denominations are growing through immigration. In some cases, 50 percent of the growth is due to immigration.

Anderson said the National Association for Evangelicals is for strong borders, not open ones. Anderson's statement appeared to put family unification ahead of jobless Americans, saying that immigration has an overall positive impact on the economy.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops have been long-time supporters of amnesty, and Cardinal McCarrick from the Diocese of Washington D.C. reiterated that position in his statement. Cardinal McCarrick said that immigration reform should include family reunification and an orderly guest worker program.

President of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, Reverend Samuel Rodriguez also offered his organization's support for amnesty, family reunification and a market-driven guest worker program. In a more emotion-filled testimony, Rev. Rodriguez spoke out against xenophobia and said that our current immigration policy "tarnishes the American soul."

James Tolle, Senior Pastor from The Church on the Way, directed some of the attention on the children of illegal aliens, saying that these children don't have the same opportunities others have after graduating from high school.

Subcommittee Chair Schumer (D-N.Y.) again expressed his support for amnesty during his opening statement, saying that immigration reform should end the flow of illegal aliens.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said he's eager to work with Sen. Schumer to create legislation that "is a practical and compassionate solution."

Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) was also at the hearing, but Sen. Sessions was cutoff by Sen. Schumer during the Q&A segment of the hearing because a vote had come up on the Senate floor. Unlike Senators Schumer and Cornyn, Sen. Sessions was unable to ask the panelists any questions.

Testimony

His Eminence Theodore E. McCarrick
Cardinal Archbishop Emeritus - Diocese of Washington

The Reverend Samuel Rodriguez
President - National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference

James Tolle
The Church on the Way - Van Nuys, CA

Michael Gerson
Institute for Global Engagement - Center on Faith and International Affairs

Leith Anderson
Senior Pastor - Wooddale Church

[Please go to link below to access links to the personal Testimony of each of the above Evangelical leaders.]

http://www.numbersusa.com/content/news/ ... aring.html

Over the past few years I have both Catholic and Protestant leaders support illegal immigration. There are some Catholic priests and Protestant ministers that are against illegal immigration. A priest who served at my church was against illegal immigration. But for the past ten years here in New Mexico several Assemblies of God ministers and their churches have endorsed illegal immigration mainly because they often hire illegals do work for them and often times some these illegals are Catholic but they later leave the church and joined Assemblies of God churches. My uncle worked next to an Assemblies of God church that had a large illegal alien membership.