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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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[PDF]
The Black Church Culture and Politics in the City of Detroit
www.cus.wayne.edu/content/publications/BlackChurches.pdf
Detroit, MI 48202 Ronald E. Brown, Ph ... pastor of Second Baptist Church, ran unsuccessfully for a Common Council seat; ... became more militant in the 1930s and |
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Fri Apr 18, 2014 10:39 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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USA TODAY On Politics
Michigan minister runs for Congress from prison
Posted 10/24/2008 2:25 PM
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — The Rev. Edward Pinkney's congressional campaign has many obstacles to overcome, not the least of which is that he's currently behind bars.
Pinkney, who turns 60 on Monday, is the Green Party candidate for Michigan's 6th Congressional District. Among his opponents is 55-year-old incumbent Fred Upton, a Republican who has occupied the seat since 1987.
Besides battling for a spot in the U.S. House of Representatives, Pinkney also is fighting what he considers to be a corrupt legal system that has imprisoned an innocent man. The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan is working to overturn his convictions on election fraud and other charges.
"Life is tough here. It's definitely not peaches and cream, that's for sure," he told The Associated Press during a recent telephone interview from the Ojibway Correctional Facility in the Upper Peninsula. The state prison is about 10 miles from the Wisconsin line and roughly 600 miles from the district he'd like to represent in Congress.
Pinkney, a Benton Harbor resident and longtime community activist, was sentenced to five years of probation after a jury convicted him in March 2007 of felony and misdemeanor fraud charges stemming from a successful recall election of a local official that he led in 2005. He was accused of paying some people to vote absentee and of improperly handling valid absentee ballots.
Then in June of this year, Pinkney was sent to prison for three to 10 years after being convicted of violating his probation by writing something in a progressive Chicago newspaper that a judge ruled as a threat to a fellow judge. Pinkney and his Detroit attorney, Hugh "Buck" Davis, say he was only paraphrasing some Bible verses from the book of Deuteronomy.
"As far as I know, Pinkney's the first preacher in the history of America to get locked up for quoting the Bible," Davis says.
Davis is appealing the conviction and supporters have presented a clemency petition with several thousand signatures to Gov. Jennifer Granholm.
Pinkney says he's being harassed for his outspoken opposition to an upscale, 530-acre residential and commercial development in southwestern Michigan. Pinkney is upset that Benton Harbor city leaders are allowing the developers to use 22 acres of a city park that borders Lake Michigan for three holes of a Jack Nicklaus-designed golf course that is the heart of the project.
Pinkney decided to run for Congress to bring attention to his situation and "stand up for what is right."
"The only way that we can get the word out and bring these people to justice is if I ran for office," Pinkney says.
Others running for Upton's seat include Democrat Don Cooney, 71, of Kalamazoo and Libertarian Greg Merle, 41, of Vicksburg.
Pinkney's lawyer, Davis, says there is nothing in federal election law prohibiting Pinkney or any other convicted felon from seeking, winning or holding elected office, regardless of whether that person is incarcerated.
Only one person has been elected to Congress while incarcerated. Matthew Lyon of Vermont was re-elected to Congress in 1798 while serving time for sedition after criticizing President John Adams.
More recently, James Traficant of Ohio ran for re-election as an independent from a prison cell in 2002 but lost.
Also, Socialist Eugene Debs ran for president from prison in 1920; James Michael Curley was elected to the Boston Board of Alderman in 1904 while serving time for fraud -- and later became mayor of the city; and earlier this year Michael McGee lost a re-election bid to the Milwaukee Board of Alderman while serving time on corruption charges.
While Pinkney isn't given much shot of winning, he says he's still trying to do some good where he can. As a minister, he says he often counsels other inmates about their problems and, with his wife, Dorothy, tries to help them find support when they get out.
"The people here have accepted me with open arms and they understand why I'm here and the reason behind it," he says. |
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Fri Apr 18, 2014 10:57 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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Fri Apr 18, 2014 8:38 pm |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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CHRISTIAN POST
Do Americans Disagree When Church Leaders Mix Religion, Politics?
Most Americans Unhappy with Church, Politics Combo
By Stephanie Samuel, Christian Post Reporter
August 23, 2011|10:38 pm
The majority of Americans disapprove of their religious leaders getting involved in politics, reveals data collected from the General Social Survey. And according to one professor, the disapproval has only grown over the past two decades.
"The percent of people who say they strongly agree that religious leaders should not do those things really went up quite dramatically,” said Duke University Sociology and Religion Professor and American Religion author Mark Chaves to The Christian Post.
"Three times since 1991 – once in 1991, once in 1998 and most recently in 2000 – [the General Social Surveys] ask whether they (respondents) agree or disagree with two different statements. One of them is 'Religious leaders should not try to influence how people vote in elections' and the other one is 'Religious leaders should not try to influence government decisions,'" he described.
In 1991, 30 percent of respondents said they strongly agree that religious leaders should not influence voters in an election. In 2008, that number rose to 44 percent, he said. Combine that with those who simply agreed with the statement, Chaves says the survey shows a solid majority of Americans (73 percent) agree that religious leaders should not influence elections.
"It's a clear trend in the direction of disapproval of religious leader involvement in politics," he concluded.
But Southern Baptist ethicist Dr. Richard Land says survey data in the recently published American Religion: Contemporary Trends are too vague to accurately suggest Americans do not want religion mixed into their politics. Land also says evangelicals are growing in number despite the book's claims of the declining religious base for the Tea Party and the religious right.
Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, noted, "There's no definition for 'religious leaders,' there's no definition for 'involved,' there's no definition for 'politics.' So people are left to their own interpretation, which basically makes the survey rather meaningless."
Land, who is also executive editor of The Christian Post, says most people would likely interpret the statements to mean they want their pastors, elders, priests and church leaders to endorse political candidates or get involved in campaigns.
"I don't think that religious leaders ought to do that," he said.
However, Land does believe that “religious leaders ought to deal with what the Bible has to say with public policy issues, and we should be looking for candidates who endorse us."
Chaves acknowledged the data leaves respondents to rely on their own interpretations of a "religious leader."
However, he stands by what he believes is a growing disapproval of religious involvement in politics and says he personally believes that this growing disapproval is the reason why the public is lashing out at the Tea Party.
Just last week, Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) remarked at a Los Angeles town hall, "The Tea Party can go straight to hell."
Nearly a third of the grassroots conservative movement identify themselves as evangelicals, a Public Opinion Strategies survey found, and are prone to gravitate to candidates who esteem religious values as part of their political platform.
"It is precisely this infusion of religion into politics that most Americans increasingly oppose," David Campbell and Robert Putnam, professors and authors of American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us, asserted in an August 16 editorial.
Campbell and Putnam noted that the Tea Party ranks lower in a New York Times/CBS public opinion poll than often maligned groups atheists and Muslims.
Twenty percent have a favorable opinion of the Tea Party while 40 percent hold a negative opinion of the group.
Chaves also notes in his book that American religiosity is in a state of slow decline. He says the proportion of Americans who believe in God or a higher power has dropped from 99 percent in the 1950s to 93 percent in 2008.
Land admits the membership among the Mainline Protestant churches is declining, but asserts that evangelical membership is growing.
"If you look at the percentage of Americans who identify themselves as evangelicals and born-again Christians, then according to [pollster the Barna Group] it's going up," he cited. "In the early 1980s it was 31 percent; now ... 45 percent of adult Americans [claim] to be born-again Christians."
Both Chaves and Land agree that America is still a very religious nation compared to Europe, Canada and Australia. |
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Sat Apr 19, 2014 6:05 am |
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