Power blocs

COLORADO SPRINGS — A photo of pastor Brady Boyd together with George W. Bush is prominently displayed in the office of the head of New Life Church. 

The photo was taken in early 2008, when Bush attended a fund-raising event in this city for the Republican candidate for the Senate race. 

Boyd was chosen to take over the evangelical Christian church after its founding pastor Ted Haggard resigned in November 2006 over accusations that he used cocaine and for three years paid a male escort for sex. In early 2009 Haggard was also accused of having an inappropriate relationship, while pastor of New Life, with a man in his 20s. New Life reportedly reached a six-figure settlement with the man.

These scandals have not stopped politicians from seeking the support of one of America’s largest evangelical Christian churches, which opposes same-sex marriage. Boyd, a charismatic 45-year-old, related this to our group of visiting Asian journalists last Sunday. With a hint of pride, he told us he had turned down several requests for meetings with US President Barack Obama, believing that they were meant chiefly as publicity stunts.

Boyd met with us after presiding over last Sunday’s worship at the sprawling New Life campus here. The service, which lasted nearly two hours, was conducted mainly through music provided by a live band whose vocalist, 42-year-old Brad Parsley, heads the church’s music ministry.

Watching the worship service, you can understand the attraction of evangelical Christian churches. New Life Church has 10,000 members; other churches are much smaller. Despite the separation of church and state, politicians seek them out, giving the Christian Right a strong voice in US policy making on issues ranging from American military engagement overseas to abortion, capital punishment, and religious controversies.

“For us to totally ignore politics would be bad,” Boyd told us. “We do want our voices heard. It’s a democracy.”

Focus on the Family is an evangelical Christian tax-exempt non-profit organization based in a complex of four buildings sitting on 19 hectares of land in Colorado Springs. Founded in 1977 by psychologist James Dobson, it is not supposed to endorse political candidates, but it has a sister organization that airs the group’s positions on issues that influence political campaigns.

It was widely seen to have supported the Republican ticket of John McCain and Sarah Palin. Its spokesman told us with pride last Monday that Dobson advised US presidents starting with Jimmy Carter. Dobson’s successor Jim Daly was also an adviser of George W. Bush, whose administration cut off US government funding for contraception programs in countries including the Philippines.

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In this heart of American evangelical Christianity, it seems there is a different church denomination at almost every street corner. All but one of them, and only recently, showed interest in meeting with the Muslim minority in the city after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, according to Arshad Yousufi, spokesman for the Islamic Society of Colorado Springs (ISCS).

Yousufi said New Life Church and other “fundamentalist evangelists” have been chiefly responsible, along with “the pro-Israeli lobby,” for portraying Islam in America as “an evil religion.”

Built in 1995, the ISCS mosque in Colorado Springs didn’t have any identifying sign outside for several years.

“There was enough anti-Muslim sentiment after 9/11 that we didn’t want to advertise that it was a mosque,” Yousufi explained to us last Monday.

He said anti-Muslim sentiment in America was already there long before 9/11, during the first Gulf War.

Yousufi counts about 300 Muslims from Colorado Springs who go to the mosque regularly, but he said the number of Muslims in the city is larger, with the arrival of Muslims from Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iran.

In this city, only the Village 7 Presbyterian Church is reaching out to Muslims, he said.

Ten years after 9/11, he said Muslim relations with “progressive Christians” are getting better, but with fundamentalist Christians, things are “getting worse.”

“Right now Christians are becoming more aggressive in their lobby against Muslims,” Yousufi said. “We’ve got challenges ahead of us.”

Focus on the Family spokesman Gary Schneeberger, on the other hand, lamented portrayals of Focus on the Family as a hate group. “We don’t hate anybody,” he told us. “We just look at what’s good for society.”

Boyd also lamented the “demonization” of the Christian Right.

Yousufi, on the other hand, said Christian evangelists were simply “not interested in meeting with us.”

He also noted that racial segregation runs deep among Christian and Catholic churches. “That whole business of racism, it’s still there,” the Pakistani-born Yousufi told us. As far as he is concerned, this is evident in Colorado Springs, his home for the past 27 years, which he describes as “the mecca of Christian organizations.”

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Scott Hente, president of the city council here, has a different view. He thinks the presence of five military facilities in the city means a large population that has been exposed to different cultures around the world, and therefore more comfortable with diversity. Of the city’s population of 410,000, 100,000 are retired military personnel or veterans.

“Diversity is our strength, not our liability,” he said.

City council sessions, he said, start with prayers led by representatives of different faiths.

He admitted that average Americans have a “distorted view of the Islamic faith… they view the average member of the Islamic faith as a terrorist.”

A Lutheran, he said that view is not prevalent in Colorado Springs. Asked if the city government had reached out to the Muslim community here, he said the Islamic population in the city is so small the council wouldn’t know whom to reach out to for inter-faith dialogues.

Hente attended the US Air Force Academy in this city. The main attraction in the facility is the Cadet Chapel, towering 150 feet high. It is unique not only because of its design based on aviation motifs, but also because the building houses separate chapels for Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, and the latest – Buddhists.

At the top of a hill overlooking the chapel, reached through a trail used for endurance training by cadets, an outdoor worship area for “earth-centered spirituality” – meaning Wiccans, pagans and Druids – was also inaugurated on May 3 this year.

Americans have told me that the military has always led the way in implementing policies of social diversity and religious accommodation or tolerance in the United States.

As we saw in this city, those policies can take a longer time to take root in the rest of America.