“Catholic teaching maintains that marriage is a faithful, exclusive and lifelong union between one man and one woman joined in an intimate partnership of life and love—a union instituted by God for the mutual fulfillment of the husband and wife as well as for the procreation and education of children.

“Partnerships of committed same-sex individuals are already legal in California. Our state has also granted domestic partners spousal-type rights and responsibilities which facilitate their relationships with each other and any children they bring to the partnership. Every person involved in the family of domestic partners is a child of God and deserves respect in the eyes of the law and their community. However, those partnerships are not marriage—and can never be marriage—as it has been understood since the founding of the United States. Today’s decision of California’s high court opens the door for policymakers to deconstruct traditional marriage and create another institution under the guise of equal protection.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Marriage & Family • Sexuality • Civil Unions & Partnerships • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic

In regard to this decision of the court, the Catholic Bishops of California have said that "Catholic teaching maintains that marriage is a faithful, exclusive and lifelong union between one man and one woman joined in an intimate partnership of life and love-a union instituted by God for the mutual fulfillment of the husband and wife as well as for the procreation and education of children."

This teaching of the Church follows forth from the teaching of Jesus Christ: "Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator 'made them male and female' and said, 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'?" (Matthew 19: 4-5)

At a moment in our society when we need to reinforce the strength of marriage and family this decision of the Supreme Court takes California in the opposite
direction. This action challenges those in society who believe in the importance of the traditional understanding of marriage to deepen their witness to the unique and essential role that marriage between a man and a woman has in the life of society.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Marriage & Family • Sexuality • Civil Unions & Partnerships • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic

There were many remarkable aspects to Pope Benedict XVI’s recent trip to America. Among those not remarked upon, however, were two that stand out:

1) the degree to which Benedict’s message matched Pope John Paul II’s message in the latter’s profound 1993 encyclical Veritatis Splendor (The Splendor of Truth), and

2) the degree to which that message continues to resonate with so many Americans struggling to find and bring truth to our post-modern culture, including non-Catholic Americans.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • Pope Benedict XVI

Pope Benedict, speaking a day after a California court ruled in favour of same-sex marriage, firmly restated on Friday the Roman Catholic Church's position that only unions between a man and a woman are moral.

Benedict made no mention of the California decision in his speech to family groups from throughout Europe, but stressed the Church's position several times.

"The union of love, based on matrimony between a man and a woman, which makes up the family, represents a good for all society that can not be substituted by, confused with, or compared to other types of unions," he said.

The pope also spoke of the inalienable rights of the traditional family, "founded on matrimony between a man and a woman, to be the natural cradle of human life".

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Filed under: * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • Pope Benedict XVI • Sexuality Debate (Other denominations and faiths) • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

As Marcia Macy chatted with her dog walker in the driveway of her Wheaton home Thursday, a young Muslim man passed her and hooked a plastic bag containing a Quran on her doorknob.

Unlike most religious solicitors, the man didn't try to speak with her or engage her in debate. He simply left her a 378-page paperback English translation of the holy book of Islam.

"I'd read it just to see what it says, but I believe in Jesus, not Allah," said Macy, a longtime Christian. "They have a right to do it . . . but I feel pretty strong in my faith."

If Macy reads the text, she will have fulfilled the goal of the Book of Signs Foundation. The Addison-based Muslim organization says that since July it has distributed more than 70,000 free English Qurans to homes in the Chicago area and another 30,000 around Houston.

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More evangelical couples -- once embarrassed and prudish about sex -- are now leaving their Christian inhibitions at the bedroom door.

For this growing group of younger, more progressive Christians, guilt is out and pleasure is in.

"We discovered that God's word is holy and hot & filled with invaluable wisdom for our sexual relationship," says intimateissues.com, one of the most popular Christian Web sites. It is based on a 1999 book by the same name.

The Christian wife has come a long way, baby, as a variety of sex advice books with titles like "Intimacy Ignited," "Gift-Wrapped by God" and "Satisfy My Thirsty Soul" are emphasizing the earthly as well as the heavenly side of love.

Pastors are sermonizing and sexologists are offering conferences to help couples overcome their guilt about a once-touchy subject. And, they offer new translations of scripture to give biblical clout to their message.

"People carry a lot of guilt from parents who said sex is bad," said the Rev. Kerry Shook of the Woodlands Church outside Houston. "We help them to have a healthy sex life. One of the things we cover in scripture is how to meet each other's needs in bed."

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I will consider posting comments on this article submitted first by email to Kendall’s E-mail: KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.

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The brief policy statement on embryonic stem-cell research that is to come before the U.S. bishops at their June 12-14 meeting in Orlando, Fla., is designed to set the stage for a later, more pastoral document explaining why the Catholic Church opposes some reproductive technologies.

"While human life is threatened in many ways in our society, the destruction of human embryos for stem-cell research confronts us with an issue of respect for life in a stark new way," says the statement drawn up by the Committee on Pro-Life Activities of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Although the topic of embryonic stem-cell research has been raised in several broader USCCB documents and has been the subject of testimony and many letters to Congress, there has never been a formal statement on the issue from the full body of bishops, said Cardinal Justin Rigali of Philadelphia, chairman of the pro-life committee, in an introduction to the draft document.

"The issue of stem-cell research does not force us to choose between science and ethics, much less between science and religion," the document says. "It presents a choice as to how our society will pursue scientific and medical progress."

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I would like to reflect on a particular aspect of the Holy Spirit, on the intertwining of multiplicity and unity. The second reading speaks about this, treating of the harmony of the different charisms in the communion of the same Spirit. But already in the passage from Acts that we have listened to, this intertwining reveals itself with extraordinary evidence. In the event of Pentecost it is made clear that multiple languages and different cultures belong to the Church; they can understand and make each other fruitful. St. Luke clearly wants to convey a fundamental idea, namely, in the act itself of her birth the Church is already "catholic," universal. She speaks all languages from the very beginning, because the Gospel that is entrusted to her is destined for all peoples, according to the will and the mandate of the risen Christ (cf. Matthew 28:19). The Church that is born at Pentecost is not above all a particular community -- the Church of Jerusalem -- but the universal Church, that speaks the language of all peoples. From her, other communities in every corner of the world will be born, particular Churches that are all and always actualizations of the one and only Church of Christ. The Catholic Church is therefore not a federation of churches, but a single reality: The universal Church has ontological priority. A community that is not catholic in this sense would not even be a Church.

In this regard it is necessary to add another aspect: that of the theological vision of the Acts of the Apostles in respect of the journey of the Church from Jerusalem to Rome. Luke notes that among the peoples represented in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost there are also "foreigners from Rome" (Acts 2:10). At that time Rome was still distant, "foreign" for the nascent Church: It was a symbol of the pagan world in general. But the power of the Holy Spirit will guide the steps of the witnesses "to the ends of the earth" (Acts 1:8), to Rome. The Acts of the Apostles ends precisely when Paul, by providential design, arrives at the empire's capital and proclaims the Gospel there (cf. Acts 28:30-31). Thus the journey of God's Word, begun in Jerusalem, arrives at its goal, because Rome represents the whole world and thus incarnates the Lucan idea of catholicity. The universal Church is realized, the catholic Church, which is the continuation of the chosen people and makes its history and mission her own.

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Church Year / Liturgical Seasons • Pentecost • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • Pope Benedict XVI

Influential and controversial televangelist John Hagee has apologized to Catholics for referring to the Roman Catholic Church as the "great whore." Hagee is supporting Sen. John McCain for president, which has led some Catholic leaders to criticize McCain.

Listen to it all from NPR.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • US Presidential Election 2008 • * Religion News & Commentary • Ecumenical Relations • Other Churches • Evangelicals • Roman Catholic

With the economy down and needs up for the homeless, the hungry and the elderly, donations to South Florida churches and other religious institutions are straining to keep up with soaring needs, leaders say.

At the Miami Archdiocese, collection-plate revenues are steady, but assessments that individual parishes pay are slow in coming or are down, and needs are up sharply, resulting in the layoff of 49 of the 182 staff members at its Pastoral Center on Biscayne Boulevard, said spokeswoman Mary Ross Agosta.

In a letter to parishioners, Archbishop John C. Favalora said: ``Each year, a greater number of parishes and programs are seeking our financial help, and, therefore, we must prioritize. We can only work with what we have.''

South Florida's Jewish, Methodist, Episcopal and other faithful face similar problems.

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Economy • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Iraq War • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is one of the nation's most powerful Catholics, but this year the only commencement address she gave was at one of the eight campuses of Miami Dade College.

Senator John F. Kerry is headlining three commencements this year - the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, UMass Lowell, and Wheelock College - but it's been nine years since he's done one at a Catholic institution, Boston College Law School.

As for the scion of the nation's most famous Catholic family, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, his major commencement address this year is at Wesleyan University, founded by Methodists.

After repeatedly getting criticized by conservative Catholics, and after years of pressure from the Vatican and some American bishops, Catholic colleges and universities are now shying away from politicians - especially those who, like Kennedy, Kerry, and Pelosi, support abortion rights - as commencement speakers and honorary degree recipients.

Instead, the schools are scrutinizing the public records of potential honorees for evidence of open dissent from key church teachings, especially on abortion, and they are choosing noncontroversial church insiders or nonpolitical figures for their most prominent honors. "I think there's a concerted effort to use the moment of naming people who reinforce the Catholic identity of our institutions, and I'm pleased by that," Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley of Boston said in an interview.

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1. The .. experience [in the Episcopal Church] was primarily one of inward-looking mediation and reconcilliation attempts from day one, and all along Lipscomb was less and less able to be at peace about what he was doing. First, ECUSA continually took positions which refuted sound moral theology. Secondly, the 'gifts' of catholicity that Lipscomb had hoped to infuse into ECUSA were simply not wanted. And, he was just so tired of the jargon which carefully differentiated 'Anglicanism' from ECUSA, and shopped for bishops; to have such a misguided sense of boundaries in the Church is not 'catholic' at all.

2. The unity which John 17 calls for is a unity for the purpose of a united mission. This had become impossible in ECUSA. And, ECUSA's brand of ecumenism apart from truth could never produce any sense of unity at all; added to that is the fact that the English Reformation was about rebellion from the outset, the quest for unity becomes futile. In other words, the Anglican crisis is 500 years old....

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops • TEC Conflicts • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • * Theology • Ecclesiology

Widely celebrated for its coffee and long-distance runners, but notorious for its extreme poverty, Ethiopia is the only sub-Saharan nation with a Christian culture dating to the earliest days of the church – a little known fact that it shares with Eritrea, its former province and northern neighbor. About 50 percent of Ethiopia’s estimated 77 million people belong to the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, a dominant force that, with Ethiopia’s monarchy, had defined this ancient land and its people for more than 16 centuries.

But the entrenched church is losing ground to a burgeoning Sunni Muslim population in the country’s south and southwest – who now account for almost half of the nation’s people – and to successful proselytizing efforts among the Orthodox by evangelical Christians from the West.

Some 500 years ago Ethiopia’s distinctive Orthodox Christian community faced the Counter Reformation zeal of the Jesuits, who worked to restore full communion between the Roman Catholic and Ethiopian Orthodox churches. The Jesuits failed and Ethiopia slipped into civil war. Once the dust settled, hundreds of Catholic missionaries were expelled or put to death. Europeans were forbidden to enter this “African Zion,” which, more than any other factor, preserved Ethiopia’s independence during Europe’s empire-building land grab centuries later.

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Filed under: * International News & Commentary • Africa • Ethiopia • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic

Asserting that "all peoples have a right to be given equal opportunities to flourish," Pope Benedict XVI on Monday voiced concern for Israel's dwindling Christian minority, and called for a relaxation of travel restrictions on the country's Palestinians.

The pope made his remarks on in a meeting with Mordechay Lewy, the new Israeli ambassador to the Holy See.

Benedict also called for a "positive and expeditious resolution" of longstanding tax and legal disputes between Israel and the Vatican.

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Filed under: * International News & Commentary • Middle East • Israel • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • Pope Benedict XVI

Saying "I divorce thee" three times, as men in Muslim countries have been able to do for centuries when leaving their wives, is not enough if you're a resident of Maryland, the state's highest court ruled yesterday.

[Last week] the Court of Appeals rejected a Pakistani man's argument that his invocation of the Islamic talaq, under which a marriage is dissolved simply by the husband's say-so, allowed him to part with his wife of more than 20 years and deny her a share of his $2 million estate.

The justices affirmed a lower court's decision overturning a divorce decree obtained in Pakistan by Irfan Aleem, a World Bank economist who moved from London to Maryland with his wife, Farah Aleem, in 1985.

Both of their children were born in the United States.

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What makes the governor’s rhetoric and actions even more troubling has been her acceptance of campaign contributions from Wichita’s Dr. George Tiller, perhaps the most notorious late-term abortionist in the nation. In addition to Dr. Tiller’s direct donations to her campaign, the governor has benefited from the Political Action Committees funded by Dr. Tiller to support pro-abortion candidates in Kansas.
In her veto message, the governor took credit for lower abortion rates in Kansas, citing her support for “adoption incentives, extended health services for pregnant women, providing sex education and offering a variety of support services for families.” Indeed, the governor and her administration should be commended for supporting adoption incentives and health services for pregnant women.

However, the governor overreaches by assuming credit for declining abortion rates in Kansas. Actually, lower abortion rates are part of a national trend. Our neighboring state of Missouri has actually had a steeper and longer decline in its abortion rate.

Governor Sebelius’ inclusion of public school sex education programs as a factor in the abortion rate decline is absurd. Actually, valueless sex education programs in public schools have been around for years, coinciding with increased sexual activity among adolescents, as well as increases in teen pregnancy and abortion. On the other hand, the governor does not acknowledge the significant impact of mass media education programs, such as those sponsored by the Vitae Caring Foundation, or the remarkable practical assistance provided by Crisis Pregnancy Centers which are funded through the generosity of pro-life Kansans.

What makes the governor’s actions and advocacy for legalized abortion, throughout her public career, even more painful for me is that she is Catholic.

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Just as the Christian church patronized the arts, so it vigorously supported scientific research. The caricature of an obscurantist, ignorance-promoting church simply doesn’t correspond to historical truth.

Some of history’s greatest scientists — Newton, Pasteur, Galilei, Lavoisier, Kepler, Copernicus, Faraday, Maxwell, Bernard and Heisenberg — were all Christians, and the list doesn’t stop there. Some important scientists, such as astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, were actually Catholic priests!

Christianity is not against science, but against an absolutist reading of science. The empirical sciences cannot do everything, and hold no monopoly on knowledge and truth. Many important questions — the most important, really — fall outside the purview of science.

What is the meaning of life? How should people treat one another? What happens to us when we die?

No matter how long a white-coated scientist toils and sweats in his laboratory, his instruments will never reveal the answers to these questions. Science is the wrong tool for the job.

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But one thing the document is not is a manifesto. A genuine manifesto is sharp, punchy and, ideally, short. A proper manifesto -- say, the absurdist Dada Manifesto of 1921, which begins "DADA EXCITES EVERYTHING. DADA knows everything. DADA spits everything out" -- is just a few hundred words long. If the thing's going to be extensive, like the Communist Manifesto, it should at least begin with a memorable statement ("A spectre is haunting Europe") and clearly specify its agenda. The true manifesto is bold, even extreme: It leaves us in no doubt about its commitments.

The Evangelical Manifesto, by contrast, is both long and insistently moderate. After the apparently self-undercutting statement that "no one speaks for all Evangelicals, least of all those who claim to," it launches into a lengthy catalog of theological statements that effectively duplicates Lausanne. To whom is this directed? Who wants or needs an overview of evangelical theology? The document never says.

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When Ali Ardekani started fishing around on the Internet a couple of years ago for video blogs about Muslims, he did not like what he found: either the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims were depicted as bloodthirsty zealots, or they were offering defensive explanations as to why they were not.

“Arabic sounds foreign and scary — you don’t know what is going on,” Mr. Ardekani said in an interview at his small Sherman Oaks apartment, its walls decorated with Koranic verses. “Or they show a woman with the veil, who doesn’t speak, and it is assumed if she did speak she would say, ‘Help me!’ ”

So Mr. Ardekani, a 33-year-old Web designer, cast himself on his video blogs as Baba Ali, an outsize character with a serious religious message who both dissects and lampoons the lives of American Muslims.

Mr. Ardekani is among the most visible of a new wave of young American Muslim performers and filmmakers trying to change the public face of their religion. His most popular video posting — “Who Hijacked Islam?” — has garnered more than 350,000 hits on YouTube since July 2006. Of course the uphill battle such efforts face is reflected in the comments section. One viewer remarked darkly, “It’s Muslims that do the hijacking.”

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Filed under: * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Islam

Boris Johnson, the new mayor of London, has claimed that evangelical faith communities are being shunned in modern society.

In an interview with ReligiousIntelligence.com, he said that the good work done by many Christian and evangelical groups is often just ignored and derided. “I think there is a culture now in our society where if something is even vaguely Christian, if there is a whiff of evangelical fervour about it then it’s almost somehow verboten to fund it,” he told the paper at a hustings event in the lead-up to the election.

He continued: “I think that’s quite wrong because if you look at the good that these groups do and you look at the way we’re going to transform society and undo the breakdown that we’ve seen in family life, the growing-up of kids without boundaries and all the rest of the things we’ve been talking about in this campaign, the Christian groups are essential.”

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Evangelicals

An "evangelical manifesto" being released today by a group of Christian scholars and theologians is expected to try to take back the term "evangelical" from politics and return it to its theological roots.

"Evangelical" has been widely used to refer to Christians who have conservative political views, but the Evangelical Theological Society requires members to agree on just two points: inerrancy of Scripture, and belief in God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit as "separate but equal in attributes and glory" and essential for salvation.

First read the full manifesto, then read the rest of the article about it.

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The average Roman Catholic priest being ordained in 2008 is 37 years old, white and born in the U.S. He was raised by two Catholic parents, attended Catholic elementary school, worked a full-time job before entering the seminary, and a friend or classmate has tried to talk him out of joining the priesthood.

Since 1998, the U.S. bishops' conference has been keeping tabs on men entering the priesthood through yearly surveys. This year's class, which includes 401 potential ordinands (335 responded to the survey), largely continues recent trends. Georgetown University's Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate conducted the survey for the bishops.

Though the survey did not mention it, the 2008 class--particularly its size--also exhibits the church's steep decline in vocations. In 2000 the church ordained 442 priests.

Men, especially those joining religious orders, are entering the priesthood later in life. Half of the ordinands are 34 or older; the average age is 37; among men joining religious orders it's 39; priests ordained for dioceses on average are 36.

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic

The Vatican has said that the time has come for the Anglican Church to choose between Protestantism and the ancient churches of Rome and Orthodoxy.

Speaking on the day that the Archbishop of Canterbury met Benedict XVI in Rome, Cardinal Walter Kasper, the president of the Pontifical Council of Christian Unity, said it was time for Anglicanism to "clarify its identity".

He told the Catholic Herald: "Ultimately, it is a question of the identity of the Anglican Church. Where does it belong?

"Does it belong more to the churches of the first millennium -Catholic and Orthodox - or does it belong more to the Protestant churches of the 16th century? At the moment it is somewhere in between, but it must clarify its identity now and that will not be possible without certain difficult decisions."

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Abp of Canterbury Rowan Williams • Anglican Identity • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • * Theology • Ecclesiology

At the east end of the giant Wal-Mart parking lot in this northern Indiana town of about 32,000, there's a metal-roofed building accommodating as many as 20 horse-drawn buggies. People in plain dress—flat black hats, white bonnets—can be seen around town.

Goshen is a population center for Mennonites and their religious "cousins," the Amish. Both are Protestant Christian faiths built on foundations of pacifism and keeping government, politicians and politics at arm's length.

The Amish remain non-voters who believe in the strict separation of church and state. However, some Mennonites, especially younger members such as those on the campus of church-founded Goshen College, are seeing an opportunity now to integrate politics into their lives in a way that furthers rather than diminishes their religion.

Emily Miller, for instance, is a 20-year-old sophomore social-work major from Waco, Texas, and—like 60 percent of the nearly 1,000 Goshen students—a Mennonite. Though her dorm room features the book bag and flip-flops you'd expect with any kid away at school, there's a sign on her door that stands out, considering where and who she is. It says: "Change We Can Believe In," and in smaller letters: "BarackObama.com."

When a CNN film crew recently asked if there might be a handful of Mennonite students at Goshen willing to talk about being first-time voters, 50 volunteers stepped forward to say whom they supported and why. When students manned registration tables in the student union, more than 300 new voters signed up.

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Sitting cross-legged in the dirt beneath a canopy of jungle vegetation, Nasruddin Anshory, with his Koran open in front of him, was telling a group of visitors about their ordained responsibility to protect the environment.

"As a Muslim," he said, "you have to do something."

His visitors were a mix of people from universities and mosques all over the island of Java, seeking to broaden their understanding of Islam. Off to the side were several students from Gajah Mada University nearby, eagerly taking notes in preparation for their dissertations, all of which will focus on promoting conservation through Islam.

Nasruddin founded Ilmu Giri, an Islamic school devoted to environmentalism, five years ago. But in the past couple of years, as global awareness of climate change and related problems has increased, interest in the school has swelled.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Energy, Natural Resources • * International News & Commentary • Asia • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Islam

Listen to the whole RealAudio report (An MP3 is also available if you follow the link provided on this page).

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Abp of Canterbury Rowan Williams • * Religion News & Commentary • Ecumenical Relations • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • Pope Benedict XVI

The archbishop of Canterbury, ahead of a private meeting with Benedict XVI, acknowledged that the Anglican Communion is going through an "unprecedentedly difficult time."

Archbishop Rowan Williams told Vatican Radio before his encounter with the Pope today that he was expecting "a fairly informal and low-key meeting."

Williams added: "I hope to bring him up to date on our plans about the Lambeth conference, perhaps to discuss with him a little what's going to be happening at the [Christian-Muslim] conference this week at Palazzola and just touch base with him about China, the initiatives we're involved in with regard to the churches in China."

The Anglican leader is in Rome this week for the 7th Building Bridges seminar with Christian and Muslim scholars, scheduled for Tuesday through Thursday.

And he explained some of the initiatives regarding China: "We've been trying to build relationships with scholars of religious studies in China. We brought a group over a little while ago to meet some British theologians and that was very constructive; so it's really a question of keeping the door open for something more than polite exchanges but more real theological dialogue."

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Abp of Canterbury Rowan Williams • * Religion News & Commentary • Ecumenical Relations • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • Pope Benedict XVI

For the Rev. Nino Gonzalez, last year's contentious debate over immigration reform was a rude awakening -- one that has propelled him into the political arena.

Mainstream white and black evangelical leaders initially denounced the bipartisan effort to create a path to legalization for undocumented workers. Some even argued for the roundup and deportation of millions of Hispanic immigrants in the U.S., the very people to whom Gonzalez ministers every day at Iglesia el Calvario just south of Orlando.

"I was stunned, shocked and surprised," Gonzalez said of the initial reaction of those he thought of as his spiritual allies. "They turned their backs on the Hispanics."

Gonzalez and other Hispanic pastors across the country seized on the debate to come together as a political force gaining momentum. Hispanic Pentecostals, some experts say, can become an important swing vote in the 2008 elections in key demographic battlegrounds such as Florida, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and North Carolina.

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