Dennis James Kennedy, Ph.D., (born November 3, 1930 in Augusta, Georgia) is the pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, Florida and founder of Coral Ridge Ministries, a US$37-million-a-year non-profit corporation with an audience of 3 million which he founded in 1974. His weekly television program, The Coral Ridge Hour, is carried on the Trinity Broadcasting Network and INSP Network, and syndicated on numerous other stations. His daily radio program, Truths That Transform, is heard across radio stations in the United States and is available as podcast on the program's website.

Biography

Template:Dominionism Kennedy is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church in America, having transferred his membership there in the late 1970s from the Presbyterian Church in the United States. He is considered a conservative evangelical minister who is often involved in political activities within the Christian right and has been identified as a leader of the Dominionism movement.^[1][2][3][4] He has written and coauthored several political works such as What if America Were a Christian Nation Again? and The Rewriting of America's History, arguing that the United States was founded as a Christian nation. Critics contend that he is excessively conservative on certain politically charged topics such as abortion and homosexuality. Kennedy ran The D. James Kennedy Center for Christian Statesmanship, an evangelical ministry on Capitol Hill. The Center awards a "Distinguished Christian Statesman Award" annually to high profile Christian political leaders. Past recipients include Tom DeLay, Sam Brownback and John Ashcroft. In April 2007 the Center shut down and was reopened two weeks later as "Evangelism Explosion International."^[5][6]

According to his official biography he earned a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Tampa, a Master of Divinity from Columbia Theological Seminary, a Master of Theology from Chicago Graduate School of Theology (an unaccredited institution^[7]), and a Ph.D. from New York University.^[8] His Ph.D. was in religious education, with a dissertation on the history of an evangelism program he founded.^[9]

His theological works include Why I Believe, What If Jesus Had Never Been Born, Skeptics Answered, and Truths That Transform. He also developed the Evangelism Explosion (EE) method of evangelism and holds to a traditional Calvinist theology. He has also worked with other Christian ministers such as R.C. Sproul, a faculty member at the Knox Theological Seminary which Kennedy founded.

Kennedy is also involved in Christian apologetics and is critical of groups such as the Roman Catholic Church and the Freemasons, working with such people as Sproul and John F. MacArthur, Jr. against Catholicism and Ron Carlson against Freemasonry. ^{[citation needed]}

Kennedy was a co-signer of the "Land Letter" sent to President Bush in October 2002 which outlined a "just war" rationale for the military invasion of Iraq.^[10]

Health Problems

Kennedy suffered a cardiac arrest at his Fort Lauderdale home on Thursday evening, December 28, 2006.^[11] He was taken to Holy Cross Hospital in Fort Lauderdale, and remains hospitalized as of April 2007. The diagnosis was heart arrythmia as a cause of the cardiac arrest, and Kennedy was given a pacemaker in his heart.^[12] He has since been taken out of intensive care and has been receiving physical therapy.^[13]

Notable issues and views

• Same-sex marriage: Kennedy is strongly opposed to same-sex marriage and calls for a constitutional "Firewall" to protect the nation from "counterfeit marriage."^[14]
• Apologetics: Kennedy has frequently claimed that if Christianity is not true then it is a massive fraud and hoax perpetrated by evil men bent on making the world a place where Christ's commandment to 'Love thy neighbor' reigns supreme, which is the antithesis of the criminal mind, and hence the theory that Christianity is a fraud is entirely incompatible with logic and human nature.
• Constitution Restoration Act: a bill promoted during the 2005 Confronting the Judicial War on Faith conference that sought to authorize Congress to impeach judges who fail to acknowledge "God as the sovereign source of law, liberty, or government" and to limit the power of the federal judiciary to rule in religious liberty cases.
• Creation-evolution controversy: Kennedy is a Young Earth Creationist who rejects the theory of evolution and believes that it "led to the death of nine million people in Nazi Germany.... The greatest mass murderers of all time [are] all compliments of evolution."^[15] , an idea reflected in Coral Ridge's controversial documentary Darwin's Deadly Legacy in 2006.
• Kennedy seeks to "reclaim America for Christ" in which government policies and laws would be consistent with evangelical Christianity. Many of his public messages on this topic focus on his assertion that the Founding Fathers of America were Christian and had intended to establish a Christian constitution.
• Kennedy was a notable member of the Moral Majority polical movement in the 1970s and '80s.

Criticism and controversy

Americans United for the Separation of Church and State (AUSCS), a religious freedom advocacy group, has criticized Kennedy's founding of Center for Reclaiming America for being "just another Religious Right outfit obsessed with opposing legal abortion and gay rights and bashing public education."^[16] AUSCS also says that "Kennedy's ministry has always promoted right-wing politics," and "it isn't uncommon to tune in to "The Coral Ridge Hour" and hear him preach against legal abortion, anti-discrimination protections for gays or the teaching of evolution in public schools." AUSCS also criticized Kennedy and his ministry for that it "frequently sends out fund-raising appeals." such as, "One recent letter asked for funds to stop PBS stations from airing a 'homosexual-propaganda program' called It's Elementary."

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has severely criticized^[17] the neo-creationist documentary produced by the Coral Ridge Ministries "Darwin's Deadly Legacy,"^[18] which attempts to link evolution to Hitler: "This is an outrageous and shoddy attempt by D. James Kennedy to trivialize the horrors of the Holocaust. Hitler did not need Darwin to devise his heinous plan to exterminate the Jewish people. Trivializing the Holocaust comes from either ignorance at best or, at worst, a mendacious attempt to score political points in the culture war on the backs of six million Jewish victims and others who died at the hands of the Nazis." The ADL further denounced Kennedy as "a leader among the distinct group of 'Christian Supremacists' who seek to 'reclaim America for Christ' and turn the U.S. into a Christian nation guided by their strange notions of biblical law." The ADL's response also quotes scientist Francis Collins, who was cited in the show as supporting its views, repudiating it, saying he was "absolutely appalled by what Coral Ridge Ministries is doing. I had NO knowledge that Coral Ridge Ministries was planning a TV special on Darwin and Hitler, and I find the thesis of Dr. Kennedy's program utterly misguided and inflammatory,".^[19] Coral Ridge Ministries described the ADL's criticisms in a press release^[20] as "harsh" and "unfounded" while reiterating points made in the documentary, along with citing Scottish anatomist and anthropologist Sir Arthur Keith who the center cites as saying in the 1940's, "The German Führer, as I have consistently maintained, is an evolutionist. He has consciously sought to make the practice of Germany conform to the theory of evolution". Furthermore, Daniel Lapin, a Jewish Orthodox rabbi, issued a statement^[21] criticizing the ADL for what he claims was a miscategorization of Jewish opinion, and said "...the ADL, though filled with good intent, is utterly, completely clueless." Also, the center released a statement^[22] concerning the ADL's quote of Dr. Francis Collins saying he was misled in the documentary, saying that he signed a "Talent release," giving the center rights to use his statements, and denying that Collins had "NO knowledge that Coral Ridge Ministries was planning a TV special on Darwin and Hitler" as the ADL put it.

Kennedy has also hosted Christian Reconstructionists Rousas John Rushdoony and Gary North on his program. However, he denounced any attempts to link him to Reconstructionist movement as a McCarthyist technique of guilt by association, and that he does not approve of their theology.^[23][24] Dominionism represents the political theory which springs from Christian Reconstructionism.^[25] Frederick Clarkson argues that despite his denial, Kennedy meets the criteria for being a dominionist.^[26]

References

External links

Official

• Bio of Kennedy From the Coral Ridge Website
• The Coral Ridge Hour at the Trinity Broadcasting Network
• James Kennedy's ProCon.org Biography
• Center for Reclaiming America for Christ Kennedy's Political Action Center
• Truths That Transform daily radio broadcast on OnePlace.com
• D. James Kennedy at IMDb

Critical

• D. James Kennedy: General Teachings/Activities from Biblical Discernment Ministries
• D. James Kennedy: Who is He? From the Americans United for the Separation of Church and State
• Theocracy Watch