The American Muslim (TAM)

Pastor Maury Davis and the Cornerstone Church

Sheila Musaji
Posted Jan 15, 2012 •Permalink • Printer-Friendly Version

Pastor Maury Davis and the Cornerstone Church

by Sheila Musaji

In my article collection of anti-Muslim statements by Christian clergy Christian Brotherly Love Difficult For Some To Attain, the entry on Maury Davis reads

Rev. Maury Davis pastor of Cornerstone Church in Nashville, began the first sermon of his series titled, “Hard Questions — Real Answers. Islam…The Evil Religion,” 2002 Davis also said ’‘I want to go on record as telling you that I believe the greatest threat to the American way of life, to the Constitution of the United States of America and to the gospel of Jesus Christ, is the religion of Islam as it stands today.’‘

Davis hosted a viewing of the anti-Muslim film ” The Forgotten People: Christianity and the Holocaust” in his church.

Davis’ Cornerstone Church hosted an anti-Sharia Conference in November of 2011. Leah Nelson notes on the SPLC site

The anti-Shariah conference to be held tomorrow at an Assemblies of God megachurch in Madison, Tenn., was very nearly canceled. A few weeks ago, the Nashville hotel that was scheduled to host it abruptly canceled its contract. Maury Davis, flamboyant pastor of the Cornerstone Church, saved the day when he agreed to let the coalition rent his church for the event.

According to the Tennessean, Cornerstone Church has been a hotbed of anti-Islam sentiment since at least 2009, when Davis delivered a sermon titled “Islam: the Evil Religion,” warning his congregants to take a “love the sinner, hate the sin” approach to Islam.

“Islam is evil,” he reportedly said. “But not all Muslims are evil.”

Also in 2009, the church hosted a viewing of “The Forgotten People,” a film upbraiding Christians for allowing the Holocaust to happen and warning that radical Islam could be the cause of another Holocaust. Dutch politician Geert Wilders, who once called Islam “the ideology of a retarded culture,” spoke at Cornerstone last May.

Muslims aren’t the only target of Davis’ sermonizing. In 2009, he said that people who support gay marriage do so “out of the issues of a bad heart.” And in a 2010 column for the Tennessean, he wrote that “Jesus made it clear that Heaven is intolerant of any attempt at illegal immigration.”

In an article written after the “Constitution or Shariah: Preserving National Freedom” Conference, Leah Nelson noted

The conference was sponsored by a motley crew of anti-Muslim organizations including Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy, Joseph Farah’s far-right online publication World Net Daily (WND), and the ironically named Religious Freedom Coalition, which declares itself “dedicated to the equality of all mankind and the freedom of religious expression.” Among the co-sponsors were the Traditional Values Coalition (a relative newcomer to the anti-Shariah bandwagon that has long been listed by the SPLC as an anti-gay hate group); Pat Robertson’s American Center for Law and Justice; and Vision America, a network of “Patriot pastors and Patriot Partners” with a history of gay-bashing.