Concern over Lou Engle’s Views as Prayer Summit Comes to Detroit: MyFoxDETROIT.com
Prayer Rally Planned to Oppose Michigan TheCall Event
Updated: Wednesday, 09 Nov 2011, 3:57 PM EST
Posted By: myFOXDetroit.com Staff
DETROIT (AP) – A coalition of Detroit clergy and community activists plan to march to a downtown football stadium and hold a prayer rally while thousands gather inside for a 24-hour Christian event known as TheCall.
The gathering inside Ford Field espouses anti-Muslim, anti-homosexual and anti-abortion beliefs and is designed to separate people of various faiths, the Rev. Charles Williams II told reporters Wednesday.
TheCall is scheduled to start at 6 p.m. Friday. Organizers have said Detroit is a “microcosm of our national crisis” that includes economic and racial struggles, as well as “the rising tide of the Islamic movement.”
Detroit area Muslim leaders have said they fear some attendees might provoke or disrupt Friday prayers at local mosques.
“We certainly don’t believe that the Muslim community is what cast a dark shadow over the city of Detroit in terms of economics,” said Williams, pastor of Historic King Solomon Church in Detroit.
“Our prayer will be a prayer where we will be calling on God to help us solve the foreclosure crisis; to help us solve the job crisis; to help us solve the education crisis. This is the prayer we should be calling on, not a message of hate against those who are United States residents.”
The Associated Press left a message Wednesday seeking comment from Lou Engle, co-founder of TheCall assemblies.
Concern over Lou Engle’s Views as Prayer Summit Comes to Detroit
Updated: Tuesday, 08 Nov 2011, 10:07 PM EST
By BILL GALLAGHER
WJBK | myFOXDetroit.com
DETROIT (WJBK) – Lou Engle is leading a prayer summit at Ford Field in Detroit this Friday and Saturday. His controversial remarks about homosexuals have raised concerns from Detroit religious leaders.
Rev. Charles Williams II, pastor of the historic King Solomon Baptist Church, is one of those leaders worried about Engle’s views.
“Any man who stands in Uganda and promotes a policy that would kill thousands of homosexuals [there] I think, obviously, is on the outside of what the real call for our Christian mission should actually be,” said Williams.
Muslim leaders are concerned about Engle’s belief that people of that faith are demonically possessed and require conversion to Christianity. The head of the Council on American Islamic Relations has spoken out against the call session in Detroit.
Meanwhile, Rev. Williams is calling for religious tolerance.
“I don’t believe, quite frankly, that the way he goes about his mission in terms of berating Muslims and Islam itself is the way to do that,” he said.
Lou Engle says Detroit needs economic and spiritual salvation.
Williams says Engle should concentrate his prayers on his native Minnesota.
“I would say to him that he can go back to Minnesota and spend his time praying in Minnesota, hopefully, that they might be able to be saved also,” he told us.
Williams says he welcomes prayers for Detroit, but not divisive rhetoric.
“I think most of us in the City of Detroit and I think most Christians have much more sense then some of [these] radical religious right values that this guy’s promoting,” he explained. “We just don’t need that kind of politics of deception nor fear here in Detroit.”
Engle and representatives of TheCall did not return phone calls for comment.
“We just don’t need that politics of deception nor fear here in Detroit”
Rather an ironic comment…