Repent Amarillo, also known as "God and Country" or "Last Front Evangelist", is a small Amarillo, Texas-based group which advocated for the spiritual mapping and targeting of specific local areas and venues in order to exorcise demons from those areas. Because of the group's alleged tactics and targeting of perceivably-vulnerable minorities, the group has gained infamy from many critics who label the organization as a "hate group" or a "Christian" analogy for the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah (lit. 'Party of God'). [1]
The group was led by former Department of Energy security guard David Grisham. [2]
Among the number of notable actions and campaigns taken by the group include protests against supposed swingers, LGBT people, abortion clinics, Muslims, Buddhists, Wiccans, Episcopalians, Methodists, Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholics, and a myriad of other groups. [3] [4]
In January 2010, the group launched a boycott campaign against the city of Houston, Texas, due to the election of openly gay mayor Annise Parker and the construction of an abortion clinic in the city. [5]
The group is a source of debate within Christian circles whom disagree with or reject the doctrine of spiritual mapping and territorial spirits, among other doctrinal issues. [6]
Amarillo Citizens against Repent Amarillo, also known by the acronym ACARA, is the counter-movement to Repent Amarillo. They are protesters made up of Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists and atheists who gathered at Sam Houston Park in order to challenge Grisham's plan to burn the Quran on a grill (the book had been doused with kerosene). While Grisham was arguing with a group of women that placed their hands on the grill asking if he would burn them too, it was when Grisham lit his lighter anyway that a 23-year-old named Jacob Isom snuck up from behind him, grabbed the Quran from Grisham's hands, and ran off after saying, "Dude, you have no Quran"; [7] afterwards, Isom handed the book to a religious leader from the Islamic Center of Amarillo. Isom was presented with a "Medal of Reasonableness" at the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear for his action. He immediately threw the medal into the crowd. [8]
Of notable mention is the wide range of classes ACARA has within its ranks. Two well-known members ran for Mayor of Amarillo, contesting Grisham every step of the way. Cory "Grady" Traves is the head of ACARA's Peace Keepers detail, [9] responsible for keeping the peace at the David Grisham for Mayor Rally.
In December 2016, Grisham accosted a group of children and their parents who were waiting to see Santa Claus at Westgate Mall. [10]
Kenneth Livingstone Campbell was a Canadian fundamentalist Baptist evangelist and political figure. He was the final leader of the Social Credit Party of Canada from 1990 to 1993.
Operation Save America is a fundamentalist Christian conservative organization based in Concord, North Carolina, a suburb of Charlotte, that opposes human induced abortion and its legality, Islam, and homosexuality. In 1994, Flip Benham became the director of the organization, then called Operation Rescue National. Benham replaced Keith Tucci, who had replaced Randall Terry. Terry, Tucci and Benham have all been convicted of crimes related to their protest activities. Rusty Thomas became the national director after Flip Benham stepped down.
John Charles Hagee is an American pastor and televangelist. He founded John Hagee Ministries, which telecasts to the United States and Canada. He is also the founder and chairman of the Christian Zionist organization Christians United for Israel.
The Neo-charismaticmovement is a movement within evangelical Protestant Christianity that is composed of a diverse range of independent churches and organizations that emphasize the current availability of gifts of the Holy Spirit, such as speaking in tongues and faith healing. The Neo-charismatic movement is considered to be the "third wave" of the Charismatic Christian tradition which began with Pentecostalism, and was furthered by the Charismatic movement. As a result of the growth of postdenominational and independent charismatic groups, Neo-charismatics are now believed to be more numerous than the first and second wave categories. As of 2002, some 19,000 denominations or groups, with approximately 295 million individual adherents, were identified as Neo-charismatic.
The Brennan Family Restaurants are a group of restaurants owned or operated by family members of the late Owen Brennan of New Orleans, Louisiana.
Acara may refer to:
TheCall was an organization which sponsored prayer meetings led by Lou Engle along with other Christian leader pastors in the United States. The meetings requested prayer and fasting by Christians in protest against issues such as same-sex marriage and legal access to elective abortion. TheCall drew support from American Evangelical leaders, but was also criticized for intolerance.
Dove World Outreach Center is a 50-member non-denominational charismatic Christian church led by pastor Terry Jones and his wife, Sylvia. After spending more than 25 years in Gainesville, Florida, the church sold its 20 acres of property in July 2013 and plans to relocate to Tampa. The church first gained notice during the late 2000s for its public displays and criticism of Islam and gay people, and was designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. It became widely known for its pastor's controversial plan to burn Qur'ans on the ninth anniversary of the September 11 attacks.
In July 2010, Terry Jones, the pastor of the Christian Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida, U.S., announced he would burn 200 Qurans on the 2010 anniversary of the September 11 attacks. He gained media coverage, resulting in international outrage throughout the Islamic world over his plans and pleas from world leaders to cancel the event. Jones' threat sparked protests in the Middle East and Asia, in which at least 20 people were killed. In early September 2010, Jones cancelled and pledged never to burn a Quran.
Robert Leonard Schenck is an American Evangelical clergyman who has ministered to elected and appointed officials in Washington, D.C. and serves as president of a non-profit organization named for Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Schenck founded the organization Faith and Action in 1995 and led it until 2018. He is the subject of the Emmy Award-winning 2016 Abigail Disney documentary, The Armor of Light. Schenck stated that he was part of a group that paid Norma McCorvey to lie that she had changed her mind and turned against abortion. Once a prominent anti-abortion activist, Schenck has since repudiated this work and expressed support for the legality of abortion. In 2022, Schenck testified before the House Judiciary Committee concerning his allegation that a member of the Supreme Court leaked information about a pending case before the Court.
The Restoring Honor rally was held August 28, 2010 at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., and was organized by Glenn Beck to "restore honor in America" and to raise funds for the non-profit Special Operations Warrior Foundation. Billed as a "celebration of America's heroes and heritage," several veterans were honored. Along with Beck, the speakers included former Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin and activist Alveda King, a niece of Martin Luther King Jr.
Terry Jones is an American anti-Islamic right-wing activist and the pastor of Dove World Outreach Center, a small nondenominational Christian church located, until July 2013, in Gainesville, Florida. He is the president of a political group, Stand Up America Now. He first gained national and international attention in 2010 for his plan to burn Qurans, the scripture of the Islamic religion, on the ninth anniversary of the September 11 attacks and for burning the Koran afterward.
The Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear was a gathering that took place on October 30, 2010, at the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The rally was led by Jon Stewart, host of the satirical news program The Daily Show, and Stephen Colbert, in-character as a conservative political pundit, as on his program The Colbert Report, both then seen on Comedy Central. About 215,000 people attended the rally, according to aerial photography analysis by AirPhotosLive.com for CBS News.
Justice House of Prayer (JHOP) is a neocharismatic Christian organization based in Kansas City, Missouri that focuses on continual prayer. It was founded by Lou Engle in 2004 and now has locations in five U.S. cities. They are in close association with the International House of Prayer-Kansas City and TheCall.
Sylvester Turner is an American attorney and politician who was the 62nd mayor of Houston, Texas. A member of the Democratic Party, Turner was a member of the Texas House of Representatives from 1989 until 2016. He attended the University of Houston and Harvard Law School. Turner ran for mayor of Houston in 1991, losing in the runoff election to Bob Lanier. He lost again in 2003, coming in third and thus missing the runoff.
In 2015, an anti-abortion organization named the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) released several videos that had been secretly recorded. Members of the CMP posed as representatives of a biotechnology company in order to gain access to both meetings with abortion providers and abortion facilities. The videos showed how abortion providers made fetal tissue available to researchers, although no problems were found with the legality of the process. All of the videos were found to be altered, according to analysis by Fusion GPS and its co-founder Glenn R. Simpson, a former investigative reporter for The Wall Street Journal. The CMP disputed this finding, attributing the alterations to the editing out of "bathroom breaks and waiting periods". CMP had represented a longer version of the tapes as being "complete", as well as a shorter, edited version. The analysis by Fusion GPS concluded that the longer version was also edited, with skips and missing footage. Nonetheless, the videos attracted widespread media coverage; after the release of the first video, conservative lawmakers in Congress singled out Planned Parenthood and began to push bills that would strip the organization of federal family planning funding. No such attempts by Congress to cut federal family planning money from Planned Parenthood have become law. Conservative politicians in several states have also used this as an opportunity to cut or attempt to cut family planning funding at the state level.
Abortion in Texas is illegal in most cases. There are nominally exceptions to save the mother's life, or prevent "substantial impairment of major bodily function", but the law on abortion in Texas is written in such an ambiguous way that life-threatening or harmful pregnancies do not explicitly constitute an exception.
Baitus Samee Mosque is a prominent Ahmadi Muslim mosque in Houston, in the U.S. state of Texas. It was developed in stages during 1998 to 2004; its doors opened in 2001 or 2002.
Abortion in the District of Columbia is legal at all stages of pregnancy. In 1971, in United States v. Vuitch, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a law saying abortion was allowed for health reasons, which include "psychological and physical well-being". Consequently, the District of Columbia became a destination for women seeking abortions starting that year.
A series of ongoing protests supporting abortion rights and anti-abortion counter-protests began in the United States on May 2, 2022, following the leak of a draft majority opinion for the U.S. Supreme Court case Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which stated that the Constitution of the United States does not confer any Reproductive rights, thus overturning Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court officially overturned Roe and Casey in Dobbs, resulting in further protests outside of the U.S. Supreme Court building and across the country, eventually to major cities across the world both in favor of and against the decision.
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