Christian homeless shelter accused of requiring attendance, tithing at Alabama’s largest megachurch
A Christian women’s shelter in Alabama is being accused of forcing homeless residents to attend the state’s largest megachurch and when they finally get employed, tithe 10 percent of their income to the church. AL.com reports Jessie’s Place, a women and children’s shelter in downtown Birmingham, is asking the women who stay there to specifically attend Alabama’s largest megachurch, Church of the Highlands, regardless of their church preferences. And ultimately, once employed, to tithe the Bible-recommended 10-percent to the church. Dana Johnson, who has been homeless on and off for two years, told AL.com her story saying that the shelter required her to attend Church of the Highlands rather than her own church, First Presbyterian Church of Birmingham. When her pastor at the First Presbyterian, Rev. Shannon Webster, found out, she reached out to Jessie’s Place asking why the women were all required to attend the same church. LaTonya Melton, director of Jessie’s Place, responded to Webster explaining the shelter policy “prevents women from lying and saying they went to church when they didn’t. She also said that tithing is required, but the women can tithe to whichever church they want.” Tony Cooper is the executive director of Jimmie Hale Mission, which operates Jessie’s Place, says he has no problem with the tithing, but does take issue with telling the women where to specifically tithe. “We are a Christian ministry,” Cooper told AL.com. “Tithing is just a part of our Christian walk. We’re trying to get them to exercise the discipline of giving back to God what’s his. We charge them nothing. It’s not like we’re trying to get their money. The tithe does not go to us. We’re trying to teach them Christian discipline. Tithing is part of the budgeting process. Whatever your policies are, they’re not going to please everybody.”
6 Republican 2016 hopefuls woo faithful at Texas megachurch
A half-dozen Republican presidential hopefuls worked to woo thousands of evangelicals at a Texas megachurch in suburban Dallas on Sunday, declaring their unwavering support for “religious liberty” even after the U.S. Supreme Court legalized gay marriage and their defense of life in abortion cases and beyond. Some of those making personal appeals – Sen. Ted Cruz, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee – are already darlings of Christian conservatives. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and ex Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, meanwhile, might like to be. But the four-plus-hour event before what organizers said was a crowd of 7,000 at the Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano underscored the importance of the religious right, as well as the potentially pivotal role Texas’ earlier-than-usual primary could play in the 2016 race. Prestonwood claims nearly 40,000 members over multiple Dallas-area campuses. “I’m trying to separate church and politics, but Hillary Clinton said people of faith, ‘Just have to get over it,’” Bush said. “That’s just wrong.” Not attending was GOP front-runner Donald Trump. “Everyone was invited to come but we believe the right people are in the room today,” said Pastor Jack Graham, who interviewed all the candidates about the importance of faith in their lives. He identified those gathered as evangelicals whom he called “Christians who believe the Bible.” Santorum subsequently declared himself an “evangelical Catholic.” Responding to questions about his church’s nonprofit status perhaps being violated because the event was political, Graham said that Democratic presidential hopefuls were also invited — but didn’t appear. Carson declared, “It’s time for us to bring God back to our country,” bringing the crowd to its feet despite his self-admitted “calm demeanor that people mistake as softness.” “It’s not softness; it’s just the ability to look at things from multiple perspectives without getting angry about it,” Carson clarified, saying God gave him the ability to do so. Cruz said faith in America “was under assault,” prompting some in the sprawling, stadium-style sanctuary to bellow “Yes!” He pointed to the Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage, and to businesses that he said had faced boycotts because they opposed same-sex weddings on religious grounds. “I believe that 2016 is going to be a religious-liberty election,” Cruz said to raucous applause. “As these threats grow darker and darker and darker, they are waking people up here in Texas and all across this country.” Fiorina was more subdued, saying her faith was once “a little abstract” since “I came to think of God as a CEO of a big enterprise. He was in charge, but he couldn’t possibly know every little detail.” But, she told the faithful, she later discovered that “each one of us can have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.” “God knows what’s going on in our lives,” she said, “and that personal relationship saw me through many hard times.” All candidates decried abortion. But Bush highlighted what he called his record of “defense of life” while governor, reminding the crowd that he intervened in the case of Terri Schiavo, a brain-damaged Florida woman at the center of a protracted court fight over having her feeding tube removed. “I didn’t talk about it,” Bush said. “I got to act.” Grassroots groups in Tea Party-dominated Texas largely have shunned Bush in favor of insurgent candidates like Cruz or Trump, but Bush has courted Christian conservatives at many events across the country organized by the Faith and Freedom Coalition, which also helped put together Sunday’s gathering. Bush spoke last and some streamed for the exits as he took the stage — after sitting through hours of candidates and intermissions featuring gospel music and a choir rendition of “America the Beautiful.” The Plano forum also offered presidential hopefuls a chance to make inroads in Texas, the country’s largest conservative state. Officials moved the presidential primary up from May to March 1, and Texas is now set to be the largest of 13 states voting on “Super Tuesday.” Bush was born in the oil-patch town of Midland, his brother George W. was Texas governor before he was president and his father, George H.W., lives in Houston. Graham declared, “Welcome to Bush country.” Bush smiled and replied, “Is that named after my brother or my dad?” Reprinted with permission of The Associated Press.
