Beyond Rick Perry's high-profile Friday endorsement from Baptist pastor Robert Jeffress, who openly calls Mormonism a "cult", Perry has worked closely with the charismatic evangelical tendency known as the New Apostolic Reformation, which dominated Perry's August 6th presidential campaign launch event, The Response, and whose top leaders advise burning Books of Mormon.
On Friday, October 7th 2011, Texas Baptist megachurch pastor Robert Jeffress introduced Rick Perry's speech at the 2011 Family Research Council Voter Values Summit and endorsed presidential hopeful Perry (a key endorsement for Perry's campaign according to the LA Times.) Perry's presidential campaign specifically approved of the choice of Jeffress to introduce Perry's speech at the event.
On the same day, pastor Jeffress attacked Mormonism, the faith of presidential hopeful Mitt Romney. As Jeffress stated in an interview with American Family Association spokesperson Bryan Fischer, "We need to understand, it [Mormonism] is not Christianity, it is not a branch of Christianity, it is a cult" (see video at Right Wing Watch.)
The Perry campaign, now in damage control mode, has responded with a statement that "The governor does not believe Mormonism is a cult." But Perry's ties to overtly anti-Mormon tendencies include his alliance with the rapidly growing movement on the charismatic evangelical right known as the New Apostolic Reformation, whose leading figure C. Peter Wagner has also labeled Mormonism a cult and whose top leaders (Wagner included) advise burning books of Mormon.
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There is no question as to the facts; repeatedly in their in-print books, Wagner and his top NAR movement leaders (including Cindy Jacobs, Ed Silvoso and Chuck Pierce) have detailed the need for believers to burn, smash, flush down toilets or otherwise destroy allegedly evil and idolatrous objects including Books of Mormon, statues of Catholic saints and rosary beads, and native art, such as ceremonial masks and totem poles.
Lists of items slated for destruction by Wagner’s movement include those associated with Mormonism, Islam, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Hinduism, eastern religions, Christian Science, native religions, and Baha’i. The movement also targets, for destruction, objects associated with the Catholic faith including statues of Catholic saints, crucifixes, and rosary beads.
[read this full story here, at Alternet.org]