Family Research Council recently elevated the criticism of President Obama, saying the President disrespects Christianity and is creating an environment “hostile” to Christianity.
During last week’s broadcast of Family Talk with Dr. James Dobson, FRC president Tony Perkins joined a discussion over the Air Force Academy’s apology for promoting participation in the Operation Christmas Child program conducted by Samaritan’s Purse. Host James Dobson said he suspected that the Obama administration influenced the apology (though he suggested he had no proof of this). Perkins said the President disrespected Christianity:
I have no doubt, as you look back over the last two and a half of years of this administration, that the President has used his bully pulpit—he has done public policy but beyond the public policy that he’s pushed for—that it’s created an atmosphere that is hostile toward Christianity. And we’re seeing this played out all across this culture. And the courts have been emboldened by this. And now you see the military doing it as well. There’s no end to this as long as you have someone who is the Commander-in-Chief, who is the president of this country that has a disdain for Christianity.
Alliance Defense Fund president Alan Sears and American Values president Gary Bauer joined Perkins on Dobson’s show.
Perkins’s statement on Family Talk came after a similar statement to Fox News last week. Fox reported on the Bureau of Land Management’s decision to oppose the addition of President Franklin Roosevelt’s D-Day prayer to the World War II Memorial at the Washington Mall.
“This is further evidence that the administration has created an environment that is hostile towards American history – but in particular towards Christianity. I hope America wakes up and realizes what this administration is doing to this country and how they want to radically and fundamentally change America,” Perkins said. “They want to erase every aspect of America’s heritage. Any president, any official in history that has embraced Christianity, is no longer welcome in this administration. That’s the environment they are creating.”
A year ago, Samaritan’s Purse president Franklin Graham said that while Obama himself was not hostile to Christianity, some in the White House were. In an interview on CNN, Graham was asked by Campbell Brown if he believed the president was “hostile to evangelicals.”
“I don’t think there’s any hostility [from Obama]. But I certainly think there are probably some people under him that would be hostile towards evangelicals,” Graham said. “It’s interesting, Campbell, that the evangelical community has been disenfranchised in this administration. I think they need to understand that there are millions of evangelicals that voted for President Obama this last election. But there has not been a movement towards this administration, toward the evangelical community at all.”
