David Brody

Bryan Fischer, Mike Huckabee and James Dobson’s claims that the school shooting in Connecticut represents God’s judgment on the U.S. are no anomalies. Indeed, many other Religious Right commentators have also claimed that the Sandy Hook shooting is part of divine punishment.

David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network defended Fischer and Huckabee’s statements that the prohibition on state-mandated school prayer was responsible for the shootings:

Guess what folks? Huckabee and Fischer are not alone. There are millions of evangelicals who believe the same thing. This is not heartless. It’s based on the biblical principle of reaping and sowing. Not that these little children sowed anything but are our schools left unprotected because of the past actions of our nation when it comes to removing God from our public schools?

The conversation is now all about banning guns but should the conversation really be about allowing God back into public schools? Food for thought. It's a discussion worth having.

Connecticut Pastor Clive Calver in Charisma similarly argued that the shooting is a “wake-up call” from God to secular New Englanders:

Our prayer is that this evil, this unspeakable horror, would be the turning point for what God is doing in New England. We’ve spent the last nearly eight years here, breaking up the land and laying seed for a harvest—or revival in New England.

Maybe, just maybe, this is the wake-up call. Maybe, just maybe, this is when the church springs into action, being the hands and feet of Jesus and shining His light in this darkness. People here need Jesus and it’s our job to introduce Him to them.

Charisma’s news editor Jennifer LeClaire maintained that state-sponsored prayers in public schools “could have prevented” the shooting:

But if God is for us, who can be against us? I believe God has been waiting for His people to rise up with a unified voice of righteousness against the immorality in this nation. I believe God has been patient through our prayerlessness. And I believe if we set our hearts toward reinstituting Christian prayer in schools it could help fuel the prophesied Great Awakening in this generation.

Some experts are reporting that nothing could have prevented the Newtown school shooting. Again, I beg to differ. I think prayer could have prevented it. And I think reinstating prayer in public schools can prevent the next mass murdering from stepping foot on campus and prematurily ending more innocent lives.

So, in the wake of yet another tragedy, can we please put prayer back in schools now?

William Murray of Government Is Not God PAC also said the lack of government-dictated prayer in public schools is to blame:

In the vast majority of America’s public schools, the authority of God has been replaced with the authority of the iron fist of government. Morals? Without the authority of God, there are no morals, and none are taught in the public schools today. The ethics that are taught are situational, perhaps the same situational ethics that led to the logic that caused the tragic shootings in Newtown.

WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah claimed the shooting was God’s judgment over America’s “abandonment of God and His righteous laws” and for apparently following the path of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union:

But, of course, that’s just a Band-Aid on a culture mortally wounded by its abandonment of God and His righteous laws.

And that’s why we all need to expect more Sandy Hooks, not fewer.

What should we expect when we not only prohibit weapons of self-defense in our schools, but when we banish the Creator from them?

Next year will mark the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court decisions that removed prayer from the public schools of America. Just look what has happened since. It’s not that God is exacting punishment on America as a result. He is giving America over to the desires of its wicked heart.

…

Think of the societies and governments that have chosen this path before us – Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Soviet Union, Mao’s China. Were those societies better off as a result? Or were their judgments quickened? Did the bloodshed cease? Or did it increase beyond the imagination of anyone except the tyrants who imposed it?

I don’t fear guns. But I do fear the wrath of a God who turns His back on a nation like America has turned its back on Him.

How many more Sandy Hooks do we need to see before we realize something has gone very wrong in America?

After warning that the re-election of Obama will bring God’s judgment and ultimate destruction, Franklin Graham while speaking to David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network asserted that Obama’s second term will “usher in the largest changes in our society since the Civil War.” He later maintained that Obama’s re-election is proof that Americans have “turned our back on God,” and said that “we need someone like a Jerry Falwell to come back and resurrect the Moral Majority movement.”

Graham also told Brody that same-sex marriage puts society in jeopardy because it “takes the family away and there is no way you can have a family with two females or two males, if you just think biologically how God made us our plumbing is completely different.” “There is no room for us to consider gay marriage or same-sex marriage,” Graham continued, “that is redefining what God gave us.”

While talking with David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network at the Republican National Convention, Newt Gingrich demanded that President Obama release his college application, senior paper, and other records. “What I said to the conservative movement is we know so little about this President that it’s perfectly reasonable for conservative activists to ask lots of questions: where’s his senior paper at Columbia? Where’s his application to go to Columbia? All sorts of stuff that we don’t know.” Gingrich claimed, “In some ways we know less about this president than almost any president in modern times.” While Gingrich said Mitt Romney “should get involved in that kind of stuff, it’s perfectly legitimate for conservatives as citizens to raise a whole range of questions about Barack Obama.”

Gingrich’s statements appear to leave the door open for questions about the validity of his birth certificate, which Romney doesn’t seem to have a problem doing, along with conspiracies that Obama received poor grades and was a foreign student.

As FactCheck.org notes, “It would be illegal under federal law (the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974) for Occidental, Columbia or Harvard Law School to give any former student’s records to reporters or members of the public without that person’s specific, written permission. Obama hasn’t released them, but neither have other presidential candidates released their college records.” Furthermore, his former professor likely lost the only copy of his senior paper, which was about negotiations over nuclear disarmament.

Recently, Tony Perkins and Harry Jackson sat down for a half-hour interview with CBN's David Brody to discuss President Obama's support for marriage equality and what it will mean for the 2012 election.

Brody has posted the entire interview on his blog, in which Perkins compared the issue of gay marriage to the issue of abortion, declaring that Americans will never accept the legitimacy of gay marriage, regardless of what the courts rule, because "same-sex marriage violates reason and natural law" and warning that any Supreme Court ruling upholding the legality of gay marriage will "create great unrest in this society": 

For his part, Jackson saw the President's statement as an opportunity to create a new "Black-Brown coalition" among African Americans and Hispanics rooted in opposition to the Democratic Party's growing support for gay rights and fueled by resentment against gay activists who are trying to push minorities to the back of the line. 

Jackson said comparisons between the push for gay rights and the struggle for civil rights are nonsense because systematic discrimination and violence against the gay community "never happened" and warned that if African Americans and Hispanics don't escape the "Democratic Party plantation," then "America's best days are over": 

Samuel Wurzelbacher, better known as Joe the Plumber, has turned himself from Tea Party activist to Republican congressional candidate and talked to David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network this week where he explained that President Obama’s “views are socialist” and his “ideology is anti-American,” adding, “I’ll say that every day and I won’t shut up about it.” “It’s connecting the dots, it’s very simple, it’s not a conspiracy theory, it’s not much a hoopla, it’s real,” Plumber added. Plumber also backed Mitt Romney although he wished Herman Cain, whom he called a “Godly man,” was the nominee:

While speaking to Brody, he also said that after he was criticized over his conversation with President Obama, said that he was upset by a Huffington Post story about him and said that he was reassured after prayer, knowing that “God's on my side.”

Earlier today we noted that Greenwell Springs Baptist Church pastor Dennis Terry is now trying to claim that he is being misquoted and his views misrepresented over the heated rhetoric he used on Sunday evening at an event with Rick Santorum when he told those who "don’t like the way we do things" that they can "get out" of the country.

Terry has now turned to CBN's David Brody to present his side of the story because Brody is the one Religious Right journalist that they can reliably count on to take whatever they say at face value and report it.

So here is the statement Terry released exclusively to Brody:

Sunday night our church was privileged to host Sen. Rick Santorum, a candidate in the Republican Presidential contest. As stated Sunday night, Greenwell Springs Baptist church has invited all of the candidates, including President Barack Obama to visit our congregation.

Prior to Senator Santorum speaking on Sunday night I gave a short exhortation to our congregation on why we as Christians should be involved in the political and public policy process. My message was based in 1 Peter 2:11-17. In my remarks I said the following:

“This nation was founded as a Christian Nation. The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob, there is only one God. There is only one God! And his name is Jesus!

I’m tired of people telling me I can’t say those words, I’m tired of people telling us as Christians that we can’t voice our beliefs or we can no longer pray in public. Listen to me if you don’t love America or you don’t like the way we do things I‘ve got one thing to say get out!”

These comments have been misreported saying that I suggested those who do not believe like me should leave the country. I said no such thing. I said those who do not love America and what she stands for should leave. Chief among the principles that America is founded upon is that of religious freedom, and that includes Christianity. I will not be made to feel as if we as Christians should apologize for our faith or that we should take the backseat as America is morally and spiritually being driven in the wrong direction.

Muslims, Hindus, people of different religions or no religions have the right to be here in America, but they do not have the right to force me to be silent while they work to transform our nation.

My comments on Sunday night were my comments as a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The validation of my comments is found in the response by those who are screaming separation of church and state.

You will notice that Terry conveniently left off the intro sentence of his statement where he declared "I don't care what the liberals say, I don't care what the naysayers say, this nation was founded as a Christian nation  ..." 

That is kind of a key element to understanding what Terry was saying since he was not simply saying that those who don't love America should leave but was specifically talking about liberals, claiming that liberals are the ones who are telling him he can't pray in public and that if they don't love America and don't share his views, they ought to "get out" of the country.

The video speaks for itself, as anyone who watches it can see.  But Brody, of course, simply accepts Terry's claims wholesale and reports that the controversy Terry has created is "a good example of how the mainstream media just doesn’t understand the evangelical worldview."