Now straddling both Christ Fellowship and the Catholic Church, Marco Rubio seems positioned to appeal both to conservative Catholics but also the anti-LGBT, demon-casting, creationist segment of the Protestant evangelical right.
Though he’s now primarily and “firmly” Catholic, Rubio has recently told Religion News Service reporter Sarah Pulliam-Bailey that he has “maintained the relationship with Christ Fellowship” and often attends services at the church.
During his Protestant years, Rubio revealed in his 2012 memoir, he nonetheless “craved, literally, the Most Blessed Sacrament, Holy Communion” (of the Catholic Church.) So, the rising GOP star found a practical, buffet-style solution. Rubio divulged that on Saturday nights he brings his family to worship at Christ Fellowship, and on Sunday the Rubio family attends St. Louis Catholic Church.
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In accord with the religious right’s increasingly tortured effort to come to terms with growing public acceptance of same-sex marriage and LGBT rights, “one of the leading experts in our country on marriage and families”, Dr. Bob Barnes, was in April 2012 brought in to Christ Fellowship for a guest sermon, “Why Family?” in which he explained that homosexuality was a form of addiction :
“Homosexual sin is no worse than heterosexual sin. There is not a hierarchy of sins. Sin is sin. But, if I find somebody that has a predisposition, a genetic predisposition, or a chromosomal predisposition toward substance abuse, it doesn’t mean I should cave in to substance abuse. There are people who just have a predisposition to addiction.”
Christ Fellowship’s position is even more evident in a July 2014 sermon by Pastor Ken Weathersby, who explained that any sex outside “marriage between a man and a woman” is “not pleasing to God” and proffered,
“Scripture reminds us that we have to put aside what oftentimes we really don’t want to deal with. Impurity, evil desires, passion, greed, and covetousness… God is saying to us, we must put that lifestyle down.”
Such ever present “evil desires” can lead to addiction. Accordingly, Christ Fellowship has a men’s group that helps those so-afflicted to fight their “predisposition to [sexual] addiction”, a “Men’s Sexual Integrity” group that meets every Thursday at 7 PM.
But in the case that small group therapy should prove inadequate to the task, Christ Fellowship has another therapeutic method, exorcisms – the expelling of demons that possess people and control their behavior, by bible verse reading:
Anti-Gay Policy, Exorcisms, and Creationism At Marco Rubio’s Miami Church | TWO Care
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