Jerry Falwell, Tammy Faye.... They always go in threes....
The Rev. D. James Kennedy, the controversial televangelist who built Fort Lauderdale's Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church into a politically powerful house of prayer on a foundation of Biblical fundamentalism, died Wednesday morning.
He suffered a heart attack on Dec. 28, 2006, and never returned to the pulpit. He gave his last sermon four days earlier on Christmas Eve. Last week, at 76, he retired as the church's senior pastor.
For nearly 50 years, Kennedy led a congregation that grew from 45 in the McNab Elementary School auditorium to an estimated 10,000 at what's now a megachurch at 5555 N. Federal Highway -- the fastest-growing church in America from the late 1960s through much of the 1980s.
A leader of the schism that created the conservative Presbyterian Church in America in 1973, Kennedy co-founded the Moral Majority, the Coalition on Revival and the Alliance Defense Fund, which brings ''religious liberty'' and ''family preservation'' litigation.
He also served on the national board of the Coalition for Religious Freedom, underwritten by Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church.
Kennedy campaigned tirelessly to tear down the constitutional wall separating church and state. In 2005, Rolling Stone called him ``the godfather of the Dominionists [and] the most influential evangelical you've never heard of. A former Arthur Murray dance instructor, he launched his Florida ministry in 1959, when most evangelicals still followed Billy Graham's gospel of nonpartisan soul-saving.
''Kennedy [preached] that it was time to save America -- not soul by soul but election by election ... [George W.] Bush sought his blessing before running for president ...'' the Rolling Stone piece said.
Kennedy once preached that he and his followers' ''job'' was to ``reclaim America for Christ, whatever the cost. As the vice regents of God, we are to exercise godly dominion and influence over our neighborhoods, our schools, our government, our literature and arts, our sports arenas, our entertainment media, our news media, our scientific endeavors -- in short, over every aspect and institution of human society.''
Fort Lauderdale gay-rights activist Wayne Besen calls him something else: 'a source of great pain for gays and lesbians, distorting our lives on a national level. The whole `ex-gay' movement we see nationally was jump-started by Coral Ridge Ministries ... Kennedy popularized this idea that has caused a lot of suffering for gay people,'' that homosexuality could be ``prayed away.''
He was ''far to the right of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell,'' Besen said. ''He gave a platform to Roy Moore,'' the Alabama judge who lost his job in 2003 for refusing to remove a Ten Commandments monument from courthouse grounds and in a 2002 ruling called homosexuality an ''inherent evil'' that makes gays ''presumptively unfit'' to raise children.
Although Kennedy never directly affiliated with the extremist Christian Reconstructionist movement -- which prescribes the death penalty for ''practicing'' homosexuals -- he was closely allied with several movement leaders, including George Grant, a former Coral Ridge vice president.
The ministry's political-outreach arm, the Center for Reclaiming America, sponsored efforts like the 1998 ''Truth in Love'' campaign that promoted ''ex-gay'' ministries offering to ''cure'' homosexuals. Grant and movement leaders appeared on The Coral Ridge Hour and at church-sponsored Reclaiming America for Christ conferences.
Born Nov. 3, 1930, in Augusta, Ga., into a family of non-churchgoing Methodists, Kennedy attended the University of Tampa on a music scholarship -- he played the clarinet -- but dropped out after two years to teach at an Arthur Murray dance studio.
There he met his future wife, Anne Lewis, sold her $500 worth of lessons and fell in love.
More info on my favorite closed minded racists assholes that claim to preach "God's word" and teach the lessons of Jesus Christ..... and sprinkle in their political views.... and sometimes hateful
rhetoric .... and sometimes steal money from ignorant "believers" ....... If there is a hell......
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._James_Kennedy
The Rev. D. James Kennedy, the controversial televangelist who built Fort Lauderdale's Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church into a politically powerful house of prayer on a foundation of Biblical fundamentalism, died Wednesday morning.
He suffered a heart attack on Dec. 28, 2006, and never returned to the pulpit. He gave his last sermon four days earlier on Christmas Eve. Last week, at 76, he retired as the church's senior pastor.
For nearly 50 years, Kennedy led a congregation that grew from 45 in the McNab Elementary School auditorium to an estimated 10,000 at what's now a megachurch at 5555 N. Federal Highway -- the fastest-growing church in America from the late 1960s through much of the 1980s.
A leader of the schism that created the conservative Presbyterian Church in America in 1973, Kennedy co-founded the Moral Majority, the Coalition on Revival and the Alliance Defense Fund, which brings ''religious liberty'' and ''family preservation'' litigation.
He also served on the national board of the Coalition for Religious Freedom, underwritten by Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church.
Kennedy campaigned tirelessly to tear down the constitutional wall separating church and state. In 2005, Rolling Stone called him ``the godfather of the Dominionists [and] the most influential evangelical you've never heard of. A former Arthur Murray dance instructor, he launched his Florida ministry in 1959, when most evangelicals still followed Billy Graham's gospel of nonpartisan soul-saving.
''Kennedy [preached] that it was time to save America -- not soul by soul but election by election ... [George W.] Bush sought his blessing before running for president ...'' the Rolling Stone piece said.
Kennedy once preached that he and his followers' ''job'' was to ``reclaim America for Christ, whatever the cost. As the vice regents of God, we are to exercise godly dominion and influence over our neighborhoods, our schools, our government, our literature and arts, our sports arenas, our entertainment media, our news media, our scientific endeavors -- in short, over every aspect and institution of human society.''
Fort Lauderdale gay-rights activist Wayne Besen calls him something else: 'a source of great pain for gays and lesbians, distorting our lives on a national level. The whole `ex-gay' movement we see nationally was jump-started by Coral Ridge Ministries ... Kennedy popularized this idea that has caused a lot of suffering for gay people,'' that homosexuality could be ``prayed away.''
He was ''far to the right of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell,'' Besen said. ''He gave a platform to Roy Moore,'' the Alabama judge who lost his job in 2003 for refusing to remove a Ten Commandments monument from courthouse grounds and in a 2002 ruling called homosexuality an ''inherent evil'' that makes gays ''presumptively unfit'' to raise children.
Although Kennedy never directly affiliated with the extremist Christian Reconstructionist movement -- which prescribes the death penalty for ''practicing'' homosexuals -- he was closely allied with several movement leaders, including George Grant, a former Coral Ridge vice president.
The ministry's political-outreach arm, the Center for Reclaiming America, sponsored efforts like the 1998 ''Truth in Love'' campaign that promoted ''ex-gay'' ministries offering to ''cure'' homosexuals. Grant and movement leaders appeared on The Coral Ridge Hour and at church-sponsored Reclaiming America for Christ conferences.
Born Nov. 3, 1930, in Augusta, Ga., into a family of non-churchgoing Methodists, Kennedy attended the University of Tampa on a music scholarship -- he played the clarinet -- but dropped out after two years to teach at an Arthur Murray dance studio.
There he met his future wife, Anne Lewis, sold her $500 worth of lessons and fell in love.
More info on my favorite closed minded racists assholes that claim to preach "God's word" and teach the lessons of Jesus Christ..... and sprinkle in their political views.... and sometimes hateful
rhetoric .... and sometimes steal money from ignorant "believers" ....... If there is a hell......
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._James_Kennedy
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