They may not be as large as Catholics or as active as evangelicals, but white mainline Protestants have a big thing going for them this election cycle: they are divided, and possibly persuadable.

That’s according to a new poll released Thursday  that found white mainline Protestants are more evenly split between President Obama and his Republican challengers than other religious groups.

“They’re the most important ignored religious group in the country,” said Dan Cox, research director at the Public Religion Research Institute, which conducted the poll in partnership with Religion News Service.

In a matchup between Obama and GOP front-runner Mitt Romney, mainline Protestant voters are nearly evenly divided, with 41 percent supporting Obama and 43 percent for Romney. The same holds true between Obama and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich — each is the choice of 41 percent of white mainline Protestants.

Mainliners — Lutherans, Presbyterians, United Methodists and others — tend to be well educated and civically engaged. They represent about 16 percent of the electorate, and are clustered in some key battleground states like Ohio and Pennsylvania.

While the poll found lingering evangelical Republican wariness over Romney and a striking preference for Gingrich to lead the party into November, Romney’s campaign remains confident. In a matchup between Obama and Romney, Romney carries evangelicals over Obama, 60 to 22 percent, according to the poll.

“As we’ve seen in the early primaries in South Carolina and Florida, Gingrich has had an edge among these white evangelical Protestant voters,” said Romney pollster Neil Newhouse.

“But importantly, when you look at the general election, Mitt Romney does better at coalescing that voter group against President Obama than Newt Gingrich.”

At 27 percent of the electorate, Catholics remain the largest and most unpredictable swing group. Overall, Catholics went for Obama in 2007, although white Catholics supported McCain while Obama drew support from Hispanic Catholics.

According to the new poll, Catholics support Obama over Gingrich 56 to 32 percent, and also support Obama over Romney, but by a smaller margin: 48 to 40 percent.

Newhouse points out Romney’s relative appeal among Catholics who voted in Florida’s GOP primary on Tuesday: CNN exit polls showed Romney capturing 56 percent of the Catholic vote, compared to Gingrich’s 30 percent and former Sen. Rick Santorum’s 10 percent.

Romney belongs to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Gingrich and Santorum are Catholics.

Romney’s appeal, however, is shaky among white evangelicals, an important Republican voting block and about 23 percent of the general electorate. Many evangelicals have deep-seated wariness about Mormonism.

Despite Romney’s decisive win in Florida, Gingrich edged out Romney among white evangelicals, 38 percent to 36 percent, according to the CNN exit poll. In South Carolina, white evangelicals broke for Gingrich over Romney by a 2-to-1 margin.

So what’s going on with Romney among white evangelicals?

The new poll shows that Romney is not their first choice. Among white evangelical Republican voters, Gingrich drew twice as much support as Romney on who they’d like to see nominated, 35 percent to 17 percent. Santorum drew 22 percent.

“Romney is still having trouble sealing the deal with white evangelical Protestants,” said Cox.  “In Florida, percentage-wise among GOP primary voters, he’s been in the high 40s and in the 50s with women, seniors and many other groups. But with white evangelical Protestants he’s having trouble breaking 4 in 10.”

In other poll findings:

– Issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage take a back seat to the economy. Jobs and unemployment was considered a critical issue by 83 percent of all voters, compared to abortion at 29 percent, and same-sex marriage at 25 percent.

– Even among white evangelicals, social issues pale against economic ones, with 82 percent calling jobs and unemployment a critical issue. Just 41 percent called abortion a critical issue, followed by same-sex marriage at 38 percent.

– Fewer white evangelical Protestants (33 percent) consider the growing gap between rich and poor a critical issue than any other religious group, including white mainline Protestants (48 percent) and Catholics (47 percent).

The PRRI/RNS Religion News Survey was based on telephone interviews with 1,005 adults between Jan. 25 and 29. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

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President Obama told a supportive crowd of Reform Jews here on Friday (Dec. 16) that no other administration in U.S. history “has done more in support of Israel’s security.”

“Don’t let anybody else tell you otherwise. It is a fact,” Obama told more than 4,500 people attending the biennial convention of the Union for Reform Judaism.

The audience of rabbis, lay people and members of an enthusiastic contingent of Reform teenagers were on their feet numerous times during his 30-minute speech.

Obama credited the Reform movement — representing 1.5 million people and 900 synagogues in North America — with contributing to a range of social justice issues, including helping draft civil rights legislation. “Without these efforts I probably wouldn’t be standing here today,” he said.

Obama ticked off his accomplishments, such as repealing the ban against openly gay military members, working for equal pay and health care reform.

He also made a special case for his administration’s Israel policy, which has been criticized by some conservative Jewish groups as too pro-Palestinian, and caused some to wonder if some Jewish voters will abandon Obama in next year’s elections.

“As president, I have never wavered in pursuit of a just and lasting peace — two states for two peoples, an independent Palestine alongside a secure Jewish State of Israel,” he said.

Obama added that he has worked with allies against a particular threat to Israel by trying to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Washington-based Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, said after the speech that his organization has appreciated that Obama has made the Iranian threat “a major priority.”

Earlier in the meeting, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak stated his assurance of the strong links between the U.S. and Israel, including work to deter Iran.

“The unshakeable bonds between Israel and America and their respective Defense establishments under the guiding hand of President Barack Obama are stronger and deeper than ever, and we are very thankful and appreciative of that,” he said in remarks on Thursday.

Obama’s speech came within weeks of the Washington meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition, where most of the GOP presidential candidates hammered Obama on his Middle East policy.

On Thursday, the “Emergency Committee for Israel” took out ads in major U.S. newspapers questioning Obama’s record on Israel.

The ads accused the Obama administration of treating Israel “like a punching bag,” and quoted “cheap shots” made by U.S. officials about the Jewish state.

David A. Harris, president and CEO of the National Jewish Democratic Council, countered the ads saying the Republicans who placed them “have plenty of cash on hand to spread myths about this president, and to shamefully turn support for Israel into a partisan football.”

Pollster Jim Gerstein, writing last month (November) in The Forward, a prominent Jewish publication, predicted that Jews’ approval of the president’s job performance — which is higher than the approval of the American electorate — and their general opposition to political conservatives and the Republican Party will help Obama in the 2012 election.

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Some wounds of war are all too visible — a missing leg, a shattered arm. The invisible wounds of mind and soul are often more difficult to spot, and equally hard to treat.

But those who know where to look can help them heal, and it’s a message that is hitting home for U.S. congregations as more than 1.35 million veterans adjust to civilian life after deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan.

With symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) affecting an estimated one-in-six returning service members, congregations are coming face-to-face with the tolls of war.

Experts say faith groups have much to offer, even when the wounds include PTSD and traumatic brain injury.

“Churches are kind of in the dark about how to help, unfortunately,” said Peter Bauer, an ordained minister and clinical social worker with the Veterans Administration in San Antonio.

“But they don’t have to stay there. There are some very easy things that churches can do to be proactive and help with this population.”

Bauer, a former Navy chaplain, recently convened workshops on PTSD and traumatic brain injury for pastors and seminarians at Andover Newton Theological School in Newton, Mass. His educational outreach builds on other small-scale initiatives that have gained momentum in recent years.

Since forming in 2009, the non-profit group Care for the Troops has equipped 37 Georgia congregations to convene peer groups, identify local clinicians with military experience and otherwise support soldiers’ families.

The project is now adding congregations in Tennessee, California and other states.

Illinois-based Wheat Ridge Ministries has been circulating Lutheran liturgies and other resources to help churches build bonds with military families.Point Man Ministries in New York has partnered with about 250 U.S. congregations to host veteran-led, peer support groups for those dealing with PTSD.

Last year, Army Chaplain Jeremy Pickens launched the Massachusetts Military Spiritual Strength Network, where clergy and laypeople receive training in how to make religious programs more military-friendly. The network now includes 60 local churches.

“Sometimes we hear people say, ‘We don’t have the training to deal with PTSD,’” Pickens said. “But (to minister effectively), I don’t need to know what it means to have PTSD. I just need to know how to listen. It’s a matter of providing open space where people can talk.”

In his presentation, Bauer shared sobering facts about struggles faced by those returning from war. Example: in 2010, the military had more suicides (468) than deaths in combat (462).

The roots of trauma often go back to childhood, Bauer said, where 60 percent of veterans experienced physical abuse and 40 percent experienced sexual abuse. Such psychological wounds can get re-opened in combat, and by the time a soldier comes home, mental and emotional patterns can be habitual and difficult to overcome.

Hidden wounds can be tricky to manage, Bauer said, in part because they’re not easy to diagnose. Depression is common in the 3.2 million Americans who’ve suffered traumatic brain injury, he said. He urged members of faith communities to take note when someone seems overwhelmed by normal levels of light or sound, and make referrals for medical evaluations.

Congregations, however, can do much more than refer. Bauer suggested helping veterans find contemplative or more traditional worship services as an alternative to contemporary services where loud bands and bright lights can trigger anxious reactions.

Churches can show ongoing care in simple ways, Bauer said, such as hosting a monthly support dinner for military family members.

They should also appoint a volunteer sponsor to check in monthly with a deployed serviceman or woman, and a second sponsor for his or her loved ones at home, during deployments.

“It’s unforgiveable in 2011 that someone (who belongs to a church) would be deployed to Afghanistan, and no one from that church would be willing to step up to the plate, be a sponsor and make sure they’re OK,” Bauer said. “That is a crime.”

Veterans say churches are finding their way in a new ministry landscape, though not always with success. James Knudsen, a Vietnam War veteran and PTSD sufferer in Marion, Iowa, says churches in his area have resisted requests for them to host support groups for veterans.

“I have not heard of any churches in my area that are helping veterans,” Knudsen said.

“They have other interests.”But in western Massachusetts, 29-year-old Robert Henry Hyde, an Air Force veteran who served from 2000 to 2004 and deployed to Iraq, helped raise awareness in local churches before he left the area to attend seminary.

“Ministers, though they might not have served in the military and might not understand it, have the tools to help people handle PTSD or brain trauma, or at least refer people to the right professionals to get help,” Hyde said.

“So in that sense, churches need to be a part of this” healing effort.Even churches with a history of ministry to veterans see new opportunities now to branch out. The Rev. Jeremi Colvin, assistant rector for mission in homeless ministry at the (Episcopal) Church of the Holy Spirit in Fall River, Mass., hopes her church will soon begin hosting peer support groups for veterans.

“There could be more outreach,” Colvin said at Bauer’s workshop. “We have a ministry of outreach to veterans and military families, but we need to spread out, talk to people, talk to hospitals, and make it more known that we’re there.”

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• 

The Jews of old wandered the wilderness for 40 years before entering the Promised Land. For the exiled Jews of Libya, it’s already been 44.

The struggle to reopen a synagogue in Libya, 44 years after the forced departure of the country’s last Jews, is emerging as a high-profile test of the new Libyan government’s commitment to freedom in the post-Moammar Gadhafi era.

On Oct. 2, David Gerbi, a Libyan Jew who immigrated to Rome in 1967 at age 12, used a sledgehammer to enter the closed Dar Bishi synagogue in Tripoli. Two Muslim clerics lent their support, and some neighborhood residents offered help with cleanup.

But when Gerbi returned the next day, he found the door locked and was told to stay away or risk losing his life.

“If they want to prove that it’s different from Gadhafi … they need to do the opposite,” a tearful Gerbi told reporters after being turned away.

Meanwhile in Rome, leaders in the Italian-Libyan Jewish exile community watch such developments with a mix of apprehension and cautious optimism. Post-Gadhafi Libya, they hope, might ultimately prove itself more tolerant and just than the land they left.

The Jewish presence in Libya dates back more than 2,000 years; at the end of World War II, the country’s Jewish population still numbered more than 40,000. But their environment grew increasing inhospitable over the following two decades, with outbreaks of anti-Semitic violence linked to conflicts between the new State of Israel and its Muslim-majority neighbors.

Libyan Jews began to emigrate, most of them to Israel; by 1967 there were only about 6,000 Jews left in the country, almost all of them in the capital city of Tripoli.

After Israel won the Six-Day War against Egypt, Jordan and Syria in June 1967, the reaction in Tripoli finally made the Jews’ situation intolerable.

“They killed two entire families, took them out of their houses, shot them with machine guns,” said Shalom Tesciuba, president of the Welfare Committee of the Jews of Libya.

Mobs injured more than 200 other Jews, burned synagogues and looted Jewish shops, while the police made it clear that they would offer no protection.

All of Libya’s remaining Jews left shortly thereafter. Because the Libyan government blocked direct access to Israel, most refugees fled to Italy. With Italian schools a legacy of Italy’s colonial presence in Libya from 1912 to 1947, the refugees were familiar with their new country’s language and culture. The Dar Bishi synagogue, Tesciuba noted, had been modeled on the Great Synagogue of Rome.

Almost all of the “Tripolitani” settled in Rome, where Tesciuba, 77, now serves as one of the rabbis at the Beth-El Synagogue.

He was part of a delegation of Italian-Libyan Jews that was invited to Tripoli in 2004 by the Gadhafi regime to discuss possible compensation for the money and property they had left behind.

The visitors were treated with shows of the “greatest respect,” Tesciuba recalled, including lodging in a luxury hotel and personal bodyguards. One government official asked why the Jews had ever left Libya.

“We hadn’t left,” Tesciuba replied. “They’d thrown us out.”

Gadhafi, who came to power two years after the last Jews left the country, made his 2004 overture amid a wider campaign for better relations with the West, which also included renouncing weapons of mass destruction. But the negotiations never led to any concrete agreement.

Libya’s new ruling power, the National Transitional Council, reached out to Tesciuba’s committee during the civil war against Gadhafi, seeking the Jewish group’s endorsement as the NTC pursued American support.

Some NTC representatives have privately promised to compensate the Jews for their losses, said another committee member, Elio Raccah, 59, adding that those promises have been “fluid, nebulous, (and) ambiguous,” particularly with regard to timing.

The post-Gadhafi regime has also offered help with reconstructing the Dar Bishi synagogue, Raccah said. In 1967, Libya had a total of 78 synagogues, 44 of them in Tripoli. Most were later reduced to rubble, and three in Tripoli were converted into mosques.

The welfare committee decided that any effort to restore Dar Bishi would be “premature,” Raccah said, until they could determine whether “popular feeling” in Tripoli was still hostile to the Jews.

In a press conference on Monday, the NTC’s head Mustafa Abdul-Jalil also said the synagogue question was “premature and we have not decided anything in this regard.”

Even as the situation in Libya remains unsettled, the exiles clearly retain strong emotional ties to their homeland. Tesciuba says his nostalgia grows particularly acute this time of year during the Jewish High Holy Days.

“I remember those beautiful moments when we made the unleavened bread at home, the evening of Rosh Hashanah, when there was a table four meters long with every sort of good thing: sweets, dates, pomegranates,” he said.

After more than four decades in Italy, however, with children and grandchildren who do not speak Arabic, the exiled leader believes few Libyan Jews would seriously consider moving back.

But he said he and many others would be eager to return on a personal pilgrimage. “If tomorrow it becomes tranquil,” Tesciuba said, “I guarantee that a thousand people will go every month.”

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The Episcopal Church expressed recently its support for a measure that will facilitate access to higher education to undocumented youths in the U.S.

Bishop David C. Jones of Virginia represented the Episcopal Church at a press conference on July 12 on Capitol Hill to express support for the DREAM Act.

The Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors seeks to allow “conditional permanent resident” status to undocumented youth “with good moral character who have lived in the U.S. for at least five years and graduated from high school. Permanent resident status would be available upon completion of two years of higher education or military service,” Episcopal News Service reported.

Jones, in a statement to ENS said, “The DREAM Act points to a moral good — access to education. Young people, having graduated from high school and having done no wrong, should not be barred from access to college loans, grants and scholarships simply because of the actions of their parents.”

“They are, like their classmates, inheritors of the American Dream. They should not be denied opportunity. The DREAM Act opens the door to that opportunity,” Jones said, according to ENS.

Other Christian churches and organizations that support the DREAM Act include  the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s Metropolitan Washington, D.C. Synod, and the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference.

Other faith organizations and groups also in support of the DREAM Act are the Islamic Society of North America, the American Jewish Committee, and The United Sikhs, among others.

The Interfaith Immigration Coalition is also enlisting various churches to participate in The Dream Sabbath, to be held from Sept. 16-Oct. 19. Under Dream Sabbath, churches may request that a student from DREAM Act attend their worship service and share their story.

The Episcopal Church decided to support the DREAM Act during its General Convention 2009 through Resolution B006. Alex Baumgarten, who is director of the church’s Office of Government Relations said in a statement, “The DREAM Act would help thousands of youth who came to our country as undocumented to receive legal status, thereby granting untold opportunities on their way to becoming United States citizens.”

Some 65,000 undocumented students graduate from U.S. high schools annually.

“Withholding legal status from these children not only hurts them, but it deprives America of future generations of dedicated citizens, innovators, entrepreneurs and public servants,” Ana White, the Episcopal Church’s immigration and refugee policy analyst, said in a statement.

The DREAM Act is an initiative of assistant senate majority leader Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) and Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nevada) in the Senate; and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Florida), Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-California) and Howard Berman (D-California) in the House of Representatives.

Sources:

http://www.episcopalchurch.org/79425_129034_ENG_HTM.htm

http://www.episcopalchurch.org/newsline_128976_ENG_HTM.htm

http://www.interfaithimmigration.org/

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Christian leaders and heads of other faith groups gathered recently in Washington D.C. to support a bill that will enhance U.S.foreign policy in support of global religious freedom.

The interfaith leaders attended a one-day conference, Stop Religious Persecution Now, at The Washington Times. Addressing the group was Suzan Johnson-Cook, the State Department’s ambassador-at-large for religious freedom.

“Everyone should have the right to believe or not believe,” Cook told the participants, adding, “That is their God-given right,” according to The Washington Times.

Included among the participants were Moslems, Sikhs, Hindus and other religious leaders, lawmakers, government officials, and citizen advocate groups for global religious freedom.

The conference was also designed to rally support for HR 1856, and to form a faith coalition to draw the attention of Congress, media and social networks towards issues of religious persecution.

The bill, authored by Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Virginia), will enhance the role of the State Department in advocating global religious freedom.

Also present at the conference was Carl Moeller, president of Open Doors. In his website he said of the event, “[The conference] not only focuses on Christians who face persecution, but people of all faiths who are persecuted for their beliefs. Nearly every global faith is represented at this conference.”

Moeller, in the Open Doors website described HR 1856 as “one of the most important initiatives to promote worldwide religious freedom.” First, because it reauthorizes the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, which monitors religious freedom and makes independent policy recommendations to the President, for seven more years.

Second, it addresses weaknesses in the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act including ensuring that the IRF Ambassador reports directly to the Secretary of State.

Moeller said in the website, “All of these changes are critical to improving the way the US government promotes international religious freedom and helps us achieve our goal of serving persecuted Christians.”

Generally, it was felt that while persecution is not a major problem in the U.S., there is the issue of discrimination.

“The U.S. is surely one of the freest of countries,” Ramesh Rao of the Hindu America Foundation said, “but even we have discrimination problems,” citing problems the group has encountered in seeking permission to build temples in the US, The Washington Times said.

Another speaker at the conference, Hansdeep Singh of the United Sikhs, said that in airports across the country he is often patted down like a “caged animal” at airports before even going through the metal detector because of his turban. “What did I do wrong?” The Washington Times reported.

“The problem is that no faith community is safe,” Tina Ramirez, Becket Fund for Religious Liberty’s director of government relations, said. “You might be the persecutor in one but the persecuted in another. So, unfortunately, religious persecution knows no bounds,” The Washington Times said.

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For the eighth consecutive week, authorities of Beijing arrested members of the Christian Shouwang church for showing up for Sunday service in an open air venue last May 29.

Authorities in Beijing arrested 22 members of Shouwang church, which has been trying to hold worship services outdoors after it was evicted from a facility it was renting and not allowed to inhabit a building that it paid for, according to the Baptist Press.

The number of arrests would probably have been much higher, but most of the 1,000-strong members of the church had been placed under house arrest. Of those arrested, 21 were set free at midnight, and the last one was released the following day, BP
said.

In a statement, the church said, “After eight outdoor worship services, we may feel tired and may sometimes unconsciously become lax in our spirits and actions. Therefore, in this continuing fight, we need all the more to pray for our alertness, support each other, encourage each other and press forward with the extra strength and power given by the Lord,” BP reported.

The arrests of Shouwang church members is as follows: “More than 160 were arrested the first week…about 50 were arrested the second week, approximately 40 on the third week, about 30 on the fourth week, 13 the fifth week, 20 the sixth week and 25 the seventh week,” the BP said.

Petition

A petition that was submitted on May 10 and signed by 17 pastors of house churches in different cities in China aired its support for Shouwang and asked the National People’s Congress to act on the issue, the China Aid Association website said.

The petition requested the NPC to investigate the Shouwang incidents, review the Regulations on Religious Affairs and enact a law of the People’s Republic of China on the Protection of Freedom of Religious Beliefs, the CAA website reported.

Defamation campaign

The Chinese government has responded by implementing a defamation campaign against Shouwang church. Rev. Bob Fu, CAA president said on its website, “Last week, the director of the State Administration for Religious Affairs of the State Council convened a nationwide meeting of leaders of Three-Self churches from 15 provinces and municipalities.”

Fu said on the CAA website that the government was telling the Three-Self churches “not to heed Shouwang Church’s own statement of faith and [was] repeatedly slandering Shouwang Church. One can see that the authorities are getting ready for a  large-scale defamation campaign against Shouwang Church.”

After the May 10 petition was submitted by house churches, authorities began to use words such as “anti-cult” in reference to its actions against Shouwang. Fu added that detained church members, when interrogated, were told that Shouwang is a cult and that they were brainwashed, the CAA website said.

Fu believes this indicates the Chinese government will try to destroy Shouwang’s reputation to isolate it from other house churches. The government will say Shouwang is not representative of Christianity, the CAA website reported.

Mainstream Catholic church

However, the Chinese government may have a difficult time doing this. Recently, a joint declaration signed by 500 international church leaders was signed in support of Shouwang, the CAA website said. Signatories included Chuck Colson and the president of Advocates International, which is the largest Christian lawyers organization in the world.

It will also be difficult to misrepresent Shouwang because the church is part of the mainstream Catholic church with Shouwang members in mainstream churches in Canada and the U.S., the CAA website said.

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• 

The daughter of Martin Luther King Jr. announced recently that she is leaving a megachurch that she has been with for eight years to pursue her own ministry.

Bernice King, the youngest daughter of the late civil rights leader, said in a radio program in Praise 102.5 that she will leave New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, headed by the controversial Bishop Eddie Long, to begin a ministry of her own.

King, who is an ordained minister, did not give details of her plans, but said, “I’m not calling it a church right now,” the AP reported.

Last year Long was sued by four young men who accused him of coercing them into engaging in sex acts with him. However, last week the lawyer for the men said the matter had been “resolved” out of court, Reuters said.

Pastoral calling

When asked about the timing of King’s announcement she said, “I’ve always followed what I believed to be the voice of God and I’ve sought to be obedient to that voice. I know that I have a pastoral calling on my life and I have to accept it. I’m in the process of pursuing that,” The Christian Post reported.

King said on the radio program, “I did what I felt what was appropriate in leadership, which was sit down and talk with him and gave him the timetable of when I would leaving. I didn’t just leave. That was the decision the Holy Spirit placed in my heart, which was Sunday, May 29. I have never wavered from that,” according to The Christian Post.

King also said that she had spoken to Long about her choice to leave so that she could start her own ministry, which she felt a strong leaning to do especially after her mother died in 2006, according to Reuters.

In a statement, Long said that he had been “in discussion and prayer” with King for some time, and that she wished to pursue the legacy of her parents, according to the AP.

Long said in his statement, “I am in full support of her decision to leave New Birth in pursuit of this worthy endeavor. Reverend Bernice King has made tremendous and profound contributions to New Birth as an elder and faithful servant. We ask that you join us in extending unequivocal support and love for Reverend King as she embarks on this new calling,” the AP reported.

Gratitude

King said that she is grateful to Long and to New Birth for having helped her weather many difficult events in her life, in particular the deaths of her mother, Coretta Scott King, and her sister.

King said on the radio program, “I want to thank him and all the New Birth family for all their love and support for all the time I was at New Birth and for all of their prayers,” The Christian Post reported.

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With the announcement of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee’s decision not to run for the presidency, who stands to gain the evangelical votes that would otherwise have gone to him?

Evangelicals comprise one of the largest voting communities in the Republican Party, and landed Huckabee, a Baptist minister, eight states (including Iowa), although he didn’t get the GOP nomination in 2008.

Now that Huckabee isn’t running, speculation is rife as to who will benefit most. Ralph Reed, who heads the Faith and Freedom Coalition, told CNN, “Whoever does the best job of securing a plurality of Huckabee and social conservative voters in Iowa, South Carolina, Florida and other early primary states will likely emerge as the Republican standard-bearer.”

Christian activist Michael Farris told CNN that if Christians revolve around one candidate again, as they did in 2008, it could be former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty, who is also an evangelical Christian.

Pawlenty has a track record in Minnesota, where he supervised his own government shutdown, increased cigarette taxes, supported re-importation of prescription drugs from Canada, and balanced the budget, The Washington Post said.

Pawlenty also raised Minnesota’s standard of education, lobbied for market-based health reforms, and proposed funding for alternative energy. He governed as a conservative, at the same time was a change agent, according to The Washington Post.

Pawlenty’s conservatism gives him the chance of getting support from Tea Party voters. His fiscal performance may win the vote of mainstream Republicans. In due time, independents may go his way. The Washington Post said his candidacy has “great potential breadth,” but right now, he is not widely known and his work is cut out for him.

If Pawlenty lands the GOP and makes it to a general election, he could refer to his performance as Minnesota governor to show that while conservative, he has free-market ideas and a creative economic approach that can lead the country to economic mobility, The Washington Post said.

Pawlenty’s biggest competition in Iowa is Newt Gingrich. However, both Gingrich and Mitt Romney got the ire of conservatives recently , The New York Times said, when they endorsed the concept of an individual mandate regarding health care.

Other possibilities

Rick Tyler, spokesman for Gingrich, told CNN the candidate has met with a lot of Iowa pastors in the last four years, which should reap hefty evangelical support. But Gingrich’s personal life, having married three times and admitting to an affair with his current wife, Callista, while still married to his second wife, does not shine well with evangelicals.

Romney may be conservative enough for evangelicals, but his Mormon faith may be an obstacle. Other possible, though long-shot beneficiaries are Michelle Bachmann, former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum, and Herman Cain, former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza, all of whom are social conservatives, msnbc said.

There is also the possibility that the evangelical votes may be split among two or more candidates. Mark DeMoss, an adviser to Romney, told CNN, “I don’t think anybody lays claim to the so-called evangelical vote. It’s much less monolithic than it may have been in previous elections.”

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More than one million children in the world are victims of Christian persecution, the leader of a Christian group said in a recently-held conference in Germany.

Markus Rode, who heads the German office of Open Doors, said recently at a yearly gathering of the international organization that this figure was revealed in a recent study, according to BosNewsLife.

To address this, Open Doors Germany launched Giving a Future, or Zukunft geben, a campaign to raise support for Christian children living in troubled circumstances, BosNewsLife said.

Rode said at the meeting, which was held in Wetzlar, Germany, “Children often pay a high price for their own faith or for the fact that their parents are faithfully following Jesus,” according to BosNewsLife.

Rode said that many children grow up in impoverished circumstances because of the family faith. He added that children “are being a taken away from their parents or kidnapped.” Sometimes, he added, “They see how their parents are shot and killed in front of their eyes,” BosNewsLife reported.

The Open Doors Germany website noted that children who are impoverished and traumatized because of persecution from the Christian faith today will be tomorrow’s underground church leaders. Because of this, they need support from the free world.

Such children usually become orphans, refugees, children who must be secretive about their faith, children who are bullied, hurt and killed, or children who pay the consequence for the faith of their families, the website said.
One example is the experience of two boys, Rahaman, 11, and Hussain, 12, from Somalia who were decapitated because Muslim extremists could not find their father, who is a pastor. Their youngest brother, seven-year-old Abdulahi, witnessed the traumatic incident, the website said.

Another example is the experience of Amr from Egypt who, at the age of three, witnessed his house being broken into and searched by the police. He then saw the police beat up his father and take him to prison, according to the website.

Amr was forced to lead a double life, where at home he could openly talk about Jesus, but at school he had to hide his faith and make excuses when the children would go to the mosque, the website said.

When his schoolmates found out about his Christian faith, Amr they teased, bullied and would not play with him. Through Open Doors, Amr, now 11, came to know new children who are Christians who also once had a Muslim background.

A third example cited in the website is that children from North Korea, who are used as political agents and are told to spy on their parents to see if they have a bible.

From the time a child can speak, parents have to teach their children to say, “Thank you, Father Kim Il-Sung,” in prayer. The children also are taught to worship Kim Jong-Il. In school, teachers ask children to tell them if their parents read a “black book,” and say the Christian faith is bad.

Jong-Cheol, 11, fled from North Korea into China, where he was a street child until staff from Open Doors found him and matched him with a Christian family. However, police in China found out about him, interrogated and beat him to death, the website said.

Although the Open Doors study says at least 100 million Christians are persecuted globally, other sources say the figure is conservative and the true figure may be as high as 200 million, BosNewsLife said.

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