The Christian right is up in arms. On April 15, 2010 a Wisconsin U.S. District Judge ruled the annual National Day of Prayer is unconstitutional. Wrote Judge Barbara Crabb, "It goes beyond mere 'acknowledgment' of religion because its sole purpose is to encourage all citizens to engage in prayer, an inherently religious exercise that serves no secular function in this context." In reaction, the White House tweeted that President Obama still "intends to recognize a National Day of Prayer."
The National Day of Prayer purports to be religiously generic and nonpartisan. But National Day of Prayer heavyweights James and Shirley Dobson (NDAP Chairman) have backed TheCall Founder Lou Engle, who claims gays are possessed by demons and, this May 1st, 2010, plans to stage one of his anti-gay TheCall events in Uganda - where a bill now before Uganda's Parliament threatens to execute or imprison the entire gay Ugandan population.
How nonpartisan is that ?
[video, below: Lou Engle talks about casting out gay demons]
Regardless of where a higher court (e.g. the US Supreme Court) might stand on the Constitutionality of Judge Crabb's ruling, even a cursory examination of leaders associated with the National Day of Prayer would convince any rational observer that the event is politically and religiously sectarian to the point of absurdity.
For example Oliver North, charged in the Iran Contra scandal with secretly selling US weapons to Iran and funneling the profits to a covert war to overthrow the government of Nicaragua, was 2004 Honorary Co-Chair of the National Day of Prayer. North has also been accused of illegal drug trafficking and been barred from entry into the nation of Costa Rica on that basis.
Among the videos showcased on the National Day of Prayer web site is one that features a speech by Oliver North in which he states, "When Jim and Shirley Dobson asked me to serve as the honorary chairman this year I said, 'I don't feel worthy of that task.' "
On November 1st, 2008 Focus on the Family Founder James Dobson, and his wife Shirley spoke at TheCall Founder Lou Engle's TheCall San Diego rally, at Qualcomm Stadium, that was the capstone event in the successful push to pass California's anti-gay marriage Proposition Eight in the November 4th, 2008 election.
Towards the end of that stadium event, attended by an estimated 30,000 people, Lou Engle and one of his young bearded disciples made calls from onstage for acts of Christian martyrdom to stop gay marriage and abortion. Engle has written that God is "the most dangerous terrorist" and predicted legal abortion will lead to a second American civil war.
Engle's TheCall maintained eight field offices for the 2008 church-based pro-Prop 8 push in California and Engle says he personally called 3,000 pastors and leaders in support of the resolution. Lou Engle teaches that homosexuality is caused by demon possession. One of Engle's sons specializes in casting out those alleged gay demons.
According to Lou Engle, San Francisco's Castro District is "where the homosexuals boast the dominion of darkness."
On May 1st, 2010 Engle will hold one of his anti-gay marriage, antiabortion, sexual-purity obsessed TheCall events at the Makerere University Sports Field in Kampala, Uganda's capital.
According to TheCall Uganda's website, the planned May 1st rally is "intended to awaken and revive the young and the old, men and women, church and family, government and the public and to fight vices eating away at our society." "Vices" detailed include "Witchcraft and human sacrifice," "Homosexuality and increased immorality," and "The decay of morals."
At the 2010 National Prayer Breakfast President Barack Obama called Uganda's widely condemned Anti Homosexuality Bill "odious" and, on April 14, 2010, the United States Senate unanimously passed a bipartisan resolution calling on Uganda's Parliament to withdraw it.
But, as quoted in an April 16, 2010 story in the Uganda Daily Monitor, Ugandan Parliament Speaker Edward Ssekandi told the Monitor that, "The resolution may influence us but there is no procedure [currently available] that we can take of totally rejecting the Bill."
As the Monitor described, the anti-gay bill "seeks to toughen laws against homosexuality by putting to death gays who have previous convictions, are HIV-positive or engage in homosexual sex with minors, and hands down a three year jail sentence to Ugandans who fail to report homosexual activity" - which in Uganda is already a crime punishable by life in prison.
Lou Engle is one of little-known but globally influential religious leader C. Peter Wagner's "prophetic elders" who, along with Sarah Palin's prayer group leader Mary Glazier, sits on Wagner's prestigious Apostolic Council of Prophetic Elders, one of the key leadership groups in a sprawling new incarnation of the Religious Right known as the New Apostolic Reformation that is fighting gay rights and inciting anti-gay hatred on a worldwide scale.
In December 2009 Purpose Driven Life megapastor Rick Warren released a public statement denouncing the Uganda Anti Homosexuality Bill. Warren has been accused of inciting anti-gay hatred in the US and in Uganda.
In the statement Warren denied that he and a religious leader named C. Peter Wagner "were attempting to rid the world of homosexuals" and wrote that "I have not had contact with Peter Wagner for many years and am certainly not conspiring with him for any purpose." Peter Wagner was academic adviser ("mentor") for Warren's 1993 Doctorate of Ministry dissertation from Fuller Theological Seminary.
In Peter Wagner's 2008 book Dominion Wagner describes the process through which his brand of Christianity can take dominion over government and society. Wagner claims that this can be accomplished within a democratic framework and clearly states that Rick Warren's global P.E.A.C.E. Plan is an example of "stage one":
"I think the P.E.A.C.E. plan fits most comfortably into Phase One, the "social action" phase of strategies for obeying God's cultural mandate.
Rick Warren and Peter Wagner are listed together on the National Day of Prayer's Board of Reference. Two current apostles, Negiel Bigpond and Barbara Byerly, from C. Peter Wagner's International Coalition of Apostles are listed on NDAP's National Prayer Committee and one of Wagner's prophets from his Apostolic Council of Prophetic Elders, Bishop Harry Jackson, is on NDAP's National Advisory Committee. Jackson led a recent anti-gay marriage initiative in Washington, DC.
In his 1999 book Churchquake: How the New Apostolic Reformation Is Shaking Up the Church As We Know It C. Peter Wagner wrote,
"If I were to select three of the moral nonnegotiables I have observed in New Apostolic churches, they would be the following:
- Human life begins at conception.
- Homosexuality is a sin against God.
- Extramarital heterosexual relationship are also sin."
Both Rick Warren and Peter Wagner are also listed together on the Advisory Board of TheCall International, which is staging Lou Engle's anti-gay rally in Uganda on November 1st.
Over its ten year existence TheCall has held numerous rallies in the United States and TheCall International has held rallies in Canada, Brazil, France, England, Mozambique, Kenya, Israel, Indonesia, The Philippines, Holland, and Australia.
Lou Engle is not fringe. In late 2009 he led the Family Research Council's December 16 anti-health care reform "Prayercast" event attended by Republican US Senators Sam Brownback and Jim DeMint and by GOP Congress Members Michelle Bachmann and Randy Forbes. And this month, Lou Engle led a session on prayer and revival at the 2010 Freedom Federation "Awakening" Conference April 15-16.
In the summer of 2009 Engle publicly blessed and anointed Mike Huckabee and Newt Gingrich and, as Lou Engle told members of a Boston church in 2006, in 2000 he lived for seven months in a Washington DC condo with US GOP Senator Sam Brownback.