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Who knew prayer may very well be so offensive to so many?
That’s precisely the response Pastor Jack Hibbs acquired from a number of members of Congress after he supplied a prayer to open their session a number of weeks in the past.
Hibbs is pastor of mega church Calvary Chapel in Chino Hills, California. House Speaker Mike Johnson invited him to ship the invocation on Jan. 30, as one of the numerous visitor chaplains who’re requested to render a blessing to start lawmakers’ assemblage.
In his prayer, Hibbs referred to as for “humility and repentance of national sins in a time of great need.”
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But in a letter addressed to Speaker Johnson, 26 Democrats accused Hibbs afterward of being “an ill-qualified hate preacher” who was pushing a “Christian nationalist agenda,” in accordance to a Roll Call account in mid-February.
Fox News reached out to the Speaker’s Office for remark.
During a latest episode of “Lighthouse Faith” podcast, Pastor Hibbs reacted to the Democrats’ accusations, saying, “You know, I was honored to pray. And what a lot of people don’t realize is that … two thirds of my prayer was simply lifted, in part, from ancient prayers, so to speak, from 1774.”
Pastor Jack Hibbs of Calvary Chapel in Chino Hills, California, stated he was “honored to pray” earlier than Congress earlier this yr, and that the majority of what he prayed was “lifted, in part, from ancient prayers.” (Calvary Chapel Chino Hills)
Hibbs was referring to the First Prayer of the Continental Congress given by the Rev. Jacob Duche, rector of Christ Church of Philadelphia, on Sept. 7, 1774.
It begins this manner: “O Lord our Heavenly Father, high and mighty King of kings, and Lord of lords, who dost from thy throne behold all the dwellers on earth and reignest with power supreme and uncontrolled over all the Kingdoms, Empires and Governments; look down in mercy, we beseech Thee, on these our American States, who have fled to Thee from the rod of the oppressor and thrown themselves on Thy gracious protection, desiring to be henceforth dependent only on Thee.”
“This is just part of their way of labeling and is void of fact.”
Reps. Jared Huffman of California, Jamie Raskin of Maryland and Mark Pocan of Wisconsin had been the highest organizers and signers of the two-page letter, in accordance to Rep. Huffman’s web site.
The letter said within the opening graph that “Pastor Hibbs is a radical Christian nationalist who helped fuel the January 6th insurrection.”
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In an announcement to Fox News, Hibbs stated, “I’m quite impressed, as I didn’t know I had such power. This is just part of their way of labeling and is void of fact.”
He additionally stated that “when these progressives speak about ‘radical Christian nationalists,’ they’re using verbiage reminiscent of the rise of the Third Reich under the leadership of Adolf Hitler. Hitler, as well as communists, Marxists and socialists, are known to label and vilify those who disagree with their ideologies.”
During his prayer to Congress on Jan. 30, Pastor Hibbs referred to as, partially, for “humility and repentance of national sins in a time of great need.” (iStock)
Author of the latest ebook, “Daze of Deception: How to Discern Truth from Culture’s Lies,” Hibbs makes no excuses for being a Christian with orthodox — some would say extraordinarily conservative — beliefs.
Theologian, creator and speaker Dr. Alex McFarland, primarily based in North Carolina, stated that Christian nationalism is a phrase that the left roughly coined to strike worry within the hearts of liberals to equate it virtually as terrorism.
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Yet McFarland stated, “I really like God. I really like my nation. If that makes me a Christian nationalist … I’m proud to be one.”
Hibbs agreed, saying, “The fact is that a Christian nationalist is a Christian who happens to live in a nation … Jeremiah 29:7 says that you should ‘seek the welfare of the city in which I have planted you for the betterment of all.’”
The letter does not even point out the precise prayer that Pastor Hibbs shared on Jan. 30.
Yet the letter to Speaker Johnson wasn’t nearly what Hibbs prayed earlier than Congress.
The letter blasts Hibbs himself and what he preaches and stands for, saying that the pastor “has a long record of spewing hateful vitriol toward non-Christians, immigrants and members of the LGBTQ community. He should never have been granted the right to deliver the House’s opening prayer on Jan. 30, 2024.”
Hibbs can be underneath fireplace from the atheist group Freedom From Religion.
It’s calling on the Internal Revenue Service to take away the tax-exempt standing of his church after Hibbs endorsed Republican Senate candidate Steve Garvey from the pulpit.
Morality, deciding what is nice or dangerous, is implicitly based in non secular values, not science.
Hibbs has since apologized for violating legal guidelines barring church buildings from supporting political candidates.
But Hibbs’ prayer may very well be one more instance of a conflict of orthodoxies in political circles. Roll Call reported that Huffman calls himself a “nonreligious humanist.”
He, together with Raskin, based the Congressional Freethought Caucus.
Its said mission is to “promote public policy formed on the basis of reason, science and moral values.” That may very well be the battle in a nutshell.
Lauren Green is chief faith correspondent at Fox News Channel. She can be host of the “Lighthouse Faith” podcast. (Fox News/iStock)
The majority of theologians agree that there is no such thing as a such factor as a “non-religious” individual, that there is no such thing as a impartial place when it comes to faith; all of us have a stake in what would be the grand non secular narrative of creation.
Morality, deciding what is nice or dangerous, is implicitly based in non secular values, not science.
As Oxford University mathematician and Christian apologist Dr. John Lennox stated in a debate with atheist Richard Dawkins, “Science can tell you what will happen when you put arsenic in your Aunt Tilley’s tea, but it cannot tell whether or not you should.”
Theologian Dr. Timothy Keller, in a sermon on exclusivity, stated that “religion in the larger sense is a set of answers to the big questions of life.”
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He famous, “Why are we here? What is right and wrong for human beings to be doing? What’s wrong with the human race, and how can we fix it? How do we decide right and wrong? What should we be spending our time doing?”
He additionally stated, “Nobody can operate in life without a set of answers to those questions. And those answers are at least implicitly religious.”
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Politics at the moment, it appears, has grow to be extra of a non secular battleground than a platform for public servants diplomatically deciding what’s greatest for the nation.
Hibbs’ battle with a bunch of Democrats is only one of the battles in a warfare of beliefs that continues to develop and fester.
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