Ford Field prayer rally provoking controversy

The Nov. 11 prayer rally at Ford Field being organized by The Call, one of the groups that was also behind Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s August prayer rally in Houston, is provoking controversy on many fronts.

As we reported last week, the man leading the rally, Lou Engle, has explicitly said that one of his main goals is to convert Muslims. He also made the entirely unsupported claim that Muslims are trying to turn Michigan into the nation’s first Muslim state.

Some of the local ministers planning to take part in the event are being questioned on some of the more controversial things Engle has said over the years. In addition to his stated desire to convert millions of Muslims, he has also said that the purpose of these prayer rallies is to convert gay people into straight people “by the power of God.”

Engle held a similar rally in Uganda last year, during which his fellow “apostles” promoted and supported a bill still being considered by that country that would put many gay people to death and imprison anyone found to be gay. Engle put out a press release saying that he did not support the bill and that it was promoted only after he had to leave early to catch a plane, but in fact the person speaking before him on the stage had called for its passage. Engle said he supported those who wanted to “lessen the penalties” in the bill, but not eliminate them.

And just this week, Engle told a church group that if the Detroit prayer rally is not sustained, “you open a vacuum for demons seven times worse to come in , if black and white can’t move together in prayer and sustain it, forget it let’s not even go there, you get demons seven times worse.”