Yesterday in New York, Faithful America members and faith leaders including Bishop Gene Robinson, Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire, gathered at MSNBC studios to deliver 20,000 signatures calling on the network to stop inviting hate group leader Tony Perkins onto their news programming.
MSNBC sent down representatives to accept the petitions but remained non-committal about their willingness to change their policy.
Here’s video of their delivery combined with footage of Perkins on MSNBC:
Last month, Faithful America launched a petition calling on MSNBC to stop inviting Family Research Council President Tony Perkins and other FRC spokespeople on its network to represent Christians.
Since the start of the campaign, over 20,000 people of faith have signed on. Unfortunately, MSNBC has not only failed to stop booking Perkins, they’ve gotten worse — inviting him to appear a staggering 11 times already this year.1
Today at 11am, Faithful America members are upping the ante. Joined by Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson and local New York clergy, they’ll deliver their petition signatures to MSNBC representatives and hold a press conference outside network headquarters in Rockefeller Plaza.
The faith leaders will confront MSNBC about its decision to continue booking spokespeople from an organization that has been officially designated as a hate group for its history of spreading false, hateful claims about the LGBT community and challenge the network to find other guests more representative of the broader Christian community.
Joining Bishop Robinson at today’s event are:
Rev. Jacqui Lewis, Senior Minister, Middle Collegiate Church, New York, NY Rev. Michael Ellick, Minister, Judson Memorial Church, New York, NY Rev. Chloe Breyer, Executive Director, Interfaith Center of New York Rev. Earl Kooperkamp, Pastor, St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, New York, NY
The Family Research Council is a hate group, and journalists ought to treat it as such. MSNBC must stop inviting Family Research Council spokespeople on the air to represent the views of Christians and other people of faith.
After Kansas House Speaker Mike O’Neal (R – Hutchinson) forwarded around an email using the Bible to pray for President Obama’s death, Faithful America members quickly responded with a petition calling for his resignation. In just over a week, the petition has amassed over 30,000 signatures nationwide.
Today, two Kansas pastors, Rev. Tobias Schlingensiepen and Rev. Jim McCullough, gathered at the State Capitol to deliver the petitions and reiterate the signers’ demand. Rev. Schlingensiepen explained his motivation for signing:
Speaker O’Neal’s behavior is an affront to the Christian faith and unworthy of his office. It’s unpatriotic and offensive for an elected representative to wish harm upon the President of the United States. His refusal to show remorse shows that it’s time for him to resign, and to reflect upon the true foundations of his faith.
After Kansas Speaker of the House Mike O’Neal forwarded an email invoking Scripture to pray for President Obama’s death, people of faith across the country quickly condemned this reprehensible exploitation of faith.
Over 25,000 people have now signed Faithful America’s petition calling on Speaker O’Neal to resign, and Kansas media outlets are asking O’Neal about his comments.
In an Associated Press story, Speaker O’Neal finally responded to the controversy with a classic non-apology apology.
“I understand the debate over the verse interpretation, about which I have explained and for which I have repeatedly apologized to the extent anyone misconstrued my intent or was otherwise offended”
Unfortunately for Speaker O’Neal, there’s no real debate about the verse. His email asked readers to go look up Psalm 109:8, so surely he opened the Bible and saw that the “may his days be few in number” verse is followed immediately by “may his children be fatherless and his wife a widow.”
That Speaker O’Neal knowingly sent around and endorsed a verse that is obviously about the death of a political leader shows a tremendous lack of judgment that his evasive half-hearted apology only further confirms.
A popular conservative meme after President Obama’s election were bumper stickers issuing a “tongue-in-cheek” call to pray for the President, referencing Psalm 109 in the Bible, which actually is a prayer for the death of a leader.
The psalm reads in part:
Let his days be few; and let another take his office
May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow.
May his children be wandering beggars; may they be driven from their ruined homes.
May a creditor seize all he has; may strangers plunder the fruits of his labor.
May no one extend kindness to him or take pity on his fatherless children.
Now the Speaker of the Kansas House has come under fire for forwarding this same prayer around in a personal email. When the Psalm 109 email was discovered, Speaker Mike O’Neal was already facing backlash for a racist email he sent describing First Lady Michelle Obama as “Mrs. YoMama” and making fun of her appearance when a second email including the prayer was unearthed. O’Neal added his own endorsement to the Psalm:
At last — I can honestly voice a Biblical prayer for our president!” O’Neal wrote. “Look it up — it is word for word! Let us all bow our heads and pray. Brothers and Sisters, can I get an AMEN? AMEN!!!!!!
To send a clear rejection of this kind of exploitation of faith in service of hateful political attacks, Faithful America launched a petition calling on Speaker O’Neal to resign. The petition has already garnered over 5,00013,00018,000 25,000 signatures.
Speaker O’Neal’s office refuses to even apologize for the email, demurring that he only was referencing verse 8 of the Psalm to call for an end to President’s days in office. But as Rockford Register Star columnist Pat Cunningham explained to a reader attempting this same defense, that’s a poor excuse:
You say that verse 8 of Psalm 109, as applied to President Obama, does not suggest a wish for his death. But the first five words of verse 8 are: “Let his days be few.” And verse 9 says: “Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.”
The clear implication is not changed by the intervening words: “And let another take his office.”
You suggest yourself that scripture should not be “taken out of context.” Well, the context of Psalm 109 is a wish for someone’s death. As O’Neal says himself: “Look it up — it is word for word!”
Does he expect that anyone who looks up Psalm 109 is going to isolate the second half of verse 8 from the rest of that Psalm?
Speaker O’Neal should know better than to use the Bible to joke around with implicit threats to the President’s life and well-being. His actions run counter to his office and basic religious and American values.
Update: In under 24 hours the Faithful America petition has already garnered over 13,000 signatures and counting.
Update II: As of Friday at 2:15pm the petition is up to 18,000 signatures.
Update III: As of Wednesday, 1/18 at noon, the petition has over 25,000 signatures.
