December (Web-only) 2000

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After over a month of bitter court wrangling, George W. Bush last night emerged as President-elect. Before a prime-time television audience Wednesday night, Vice-President Al Gore conceded the race and urged the nation to remember that "in one of God's unforeseen paths, this belatedly broken impasse can point us all to a new common ground."

Most evangelical leaders that were interviewed from around the nation and across the political party divides were remarkably united in their belief that God had prepared the way for healing and a new spiritual charge to the nation.

African-American Bishop Harold Calvin Ray of Redemption Life Fellowship, West Palm Beach was at ground zero of the political trench warfare in Florida. With chads all around and "thousands screaming and fighting," Ray, a leader in Florida's African American community, thought, "I have been here before" during other times of great national crisis.

Along with the army of lawyers, Ray was swept along into the U.S. Supreme Court, where he witnessed the intensifying bitterness. Yet, Ray says that at the first hearing of the Court he sensed even then that God was at work.

"A gentleman dressed as a homeless person was off by himself on that Thursday afternoon outside of the Supreme Court. He was walking back and forth with a sign, 'It is time to heal the wounds.'"

There on the steps of the Court, Ray says he realized that he was part of a history that God was making. "That man on Thursday—the Man Thursday, was a prophet of God for us. God is going to heal the wounds."

Other evangelical leaders had similar experiences. Coming out of an emotional meeting with Andrew Cuomo, Clinton's U.S. Secretary of Housing, editor and author Jim Wallis observed too that the bitterness was ...