Nearly half of evangelical leaders want to see Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty win the Republican nomination for president in 2012, according to a poll of the National Association of Evangelicals.

Asked whom they would name the GOP nominee, 45 percent of the leaders said Pawlenty, the association reported Thursday. Fourteen percent said former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney; Twenty-two percent were undecided.

Pawlenty met with the association’s board of directors in 2008.

“Tim and Mary are devoted followers of Jesus, bright, articulate, a proven record and have none of the negatives of the other candidates,” said George Wood, General Superintendent of the Assemblies of God.

The National Association of Evangelicals posed the question in the June edition of the Evangelical Leaders Survey, its monthly poll of “CEOs of denominations and representatives of a broad array of evangelical organizations including missions, universities, publishers and churches.”

The association asked: “Assuming Barack Obama is the Democratic candidate, if you were to choose a preferred Republican presidential candidate for 2012, who would you name?”

Association President Leith Anderson said Pawlenty’s popularity “might be expected since he is so often identified as an evangelical.”

“Like the rest of the nation, there are still many undecided,” Anderson said. “With more than a year before the national nominating conventions, a lot can change.”

Romney is a Mormon. The association said none of the evangelical leaders polled mentioned Romney’s religious beliefs as a reason for naming another candidate.

Continue reading "Pawlenty leads GOP hopefuls in evangelical poll" »

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The National Association of Evangelicals is joining Jews and Muslims in opposition to the proposed ban on circumcision of male children in San Francisco.

“Jews, Muslims, and Christians all trace our spiritual heritage back to Abraham. Biblical circumcision begins with Abraham,” Leith Anderson, president of the Christian organization, said Thursday in a statement. “No American government should restrict this historic tradition. Essential religious liberties are at stake.”

Opponents of circumcision have gathered enough signatures to get the ban on San Francisco's city ballot in November. The measure would make circumcision of a male under 18 a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of up to $1,000.

The National Association of Evangelicals says the ban would violate the First Amendment guarantee of the freedom to exercise one’s religious beliefs. The organization says its guiding policy document affirms the principles of religious freedom and liberty of conscience, which it describes as both historically and logically at the foundation of the American experiment.

“While evangelical denominations traditionally neither require nor forbid circumcision, we join Jews and Muslims in opposing this ban and standing together for religious freedom,” Anderson said.

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Associated Press writer Julie Pace reports:

President Barack Obama says those opposing a pathway to citizenship for the millions of undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. shouldn't have amnesia about how the country began. He says America is a nation of immigrants.

Speaking at an annual Hispanic prayer breakfast in Washington, Obama also recalled times past when religious communities helped change the country. He talked about Episcopalians in Boston, where early patriots planned the Revolution, and Baptist churches in the South that sparked the civil rights movement.

Obama says he'll keep pushing and trying to work with Congress on the immigration issue. But he said again that building a widespread movement is the only way to get a comprehensive overhaul of the immigration system.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 12:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

In other Obama religious holiday news, the president extended best wishes to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu before the start of Passover, the White House reports.

The weeklong holiday, which marks the biblical story of the Israelites' exodus from Egypt, began Monday night with a traditional seder meal.

Obama hosted a seder at the White House for the third straight year, the Associated Press reported.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said Netanyahu expressed appreciation during their telephone conversation Monday for U.S. funding for a military weapons system that has intercepted several rockets aimed at Israeli communities, the AP rpeorted.

The leaders also discussed cooperation on counterterrorism, the Middle East peace process and violence in the Gaza Strip, Carney said.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 12:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

President Barack Obama hosted faith leaders and others Tuesday morning at the second annual White House Easter prayer breakfast. His remarks, as released by the White House:

"Well, it is absolutely wonderful to be here with all of you today. I see so many good friends all around the room.

"Before I begin, I want to acknowledge one particular member of my administration who I’m extraordinarily proud of and does not get much credit, and that is USAID Administrator, Dr. Raj Shah, who is doing great work with faith leaders. (Applause.) Where’s Raj? Where is he? There he is right there. Raj is doing great work with faith leaders on our Feed the Future global hunger program, as well as on a host of other issues. We could not be prouder of the work that he’s doing. I also want to acknowledge Congressman Mike McIntyre and his wife, Dee. (Applause.) Mike -- as some of you know, obviously, North Carolina was ravaged by storms this past weekend, and our thoughts and prayers are with all the families who have been affected down there. I know that Mike will be helping those communities rebuild after the devastation.

"To all the faith leaders and the distinguished guests that are here today, welcome to our second annual -- I’m going to make it annual, why not? (Laughter and applause.) Our second Easter Prayer Breakfast. The Easter Egg Roll, that’s well established. (Laughter.) The Prayer Breakfast we started last year, in part because it gave me a good excuse to bring together people who have been such extraordinary influences in my life and such great friends. And it gives me a chance to meet and make some new friends here in the White House.

"I wanted to host this breakfast for a simple reason -– because as busy as we are, as many tasks as pile up, during this season, we are reminded that there’s something about the resurrection -- something about the resurrection of our savior, Jesus Christ, that puts everything else in perspective.

"We all live in the hustle and bustle of our work. And everybody in this room has weighty responsibilities, from leading churches and denominations, to helping to administer important government programs, to shaping our culture in various ways. And I admit that my plate has been full as well. (Laughter.) The inbox keeps on accumulating. (Laughter.)

"But then comes Holy Week. The triumph of Palm Sunday. The humility of Jesus washing the disciples’ feet. His slow march up that hill, and the pain and the scorn and the shame of the cross.

Continue reading "Obama: 'There's something about the resurrection'" »

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Associated Press correspondent Tom Breen reports:

When Chad Holtz lost his old belief in hell, he also lost his job.

The pastor of a rural United Methodist church in North Carolina wrote a note on his Facebook page supporting a new book by Rob Bell, a prominent young evangelical pastor and critic of the traditional view of hell as a place of eternal torment for billions of damned souls.

Two days later, Holtz was told complaints from church members prompted his dismissal from Marrow's Chapel in Henderson.

"I think justice comes and judgment will happen, but I don't think that means an eternity of torment," Holtz said. "But I can understand why people in my church aren't ready to leave that behind. It's something I'm still grappling with myself."

The debate over Bell's new book "Love Wins" has quickly spread across the evangelical precincts of the Internet, in part because of an eye-catching promotional video posted on YouTube.

Bell, the pastor of the 10,000-member Mars Hill Bible Church in Grand Rapids, Mich., lays out the premise of his book while the video cuts away to an artist's hand mixing oil paints and pastels and applying them to a blank canvas.

He describes going to a Christian art show where one of the pieces featured a quote by Mohandas Gandhi. Someone attached a note saying: "Reality check: He's in hell."

"Gandhi's in hell? He is? And someone knows this for sure?" Bell asks in the video.

Continue reading "Who's in Hell? Pastor's book sparks eternal debate" »

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Associated Press correspondent Mike Glover reports:

Republican presidential candidates take note: the clout of social and religious conservatives is growing in politically crucial Iowa. And these activists are driving the debate here toward cultural issues — and away from the economy — just as the GOP sets out to find an opponent for President Barack Obama.

"They've gotten more involved in the party," said Norm Pawlewski, a lobbyist for the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition. "I've seen a change in the kind of people who are volunteering — and not only volunteering but working."

With Obama's re-election race looming next year, this constituency — made up heavily of evangelical Christians — is intent on playing a major role in choosing the winner of next year's Iowa GOP caucuses. It's seeking a repeat of 2008 when it coalesced around the underfunded former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee to give the Southern Baptist minister a surprise first place finish.

Since then, social and religious conservatives have stepped up their organization efforts, including hosting a series of forums for presidential candidates. Two are this week alone.

"They've harnessed the new technology and new methods to organize and activate their members," said veteran Republican strategist Bob Haus. "They are professionally run and they are a top-notch organization."

Maybe a force to be reckoned with, too.

As Drake University political science professor Dennis Goldford put it: "They have essentially the best organization of the various Republican constituencies."

Continue reading "Growing evangelical clout shaping Iowa debate" »

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Associated Press correspondent Dave Collins reports:

A federal prosecutor told a jury Monday that a man and two friends were racists so upset when Barack Obama was elected president in 2008 that they burned down a predominantly African-American church just hours after the voting ended.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul Smyth gave his opening argument on the first day of the trial of Michael Jacques, 26, in U.S. District Court.

"We are here today because of racism," Smyth told the 16 jurors, including four alternates. "We are here today because of the depth of their intolerance."

Jacques and two co-defendants, Benjamin Haskell and Thomas Gleason, were charged with using gasoline to set the Macedonia Church of God in Christ in Springfield on fire in the early morning hours of Nov. 5, 2008. The building was under construction at the time. A few firefighters were injured, but recovered.

Authorities say all three men, who are white, confessed to setting the fire. Haskell, 24, of Springfield, pleaded guilty to civil rights charges and was sentenced in November to nine years in prison. Gleason, 23, who lives on the same street as the church, pleaded guilty last year, awaits sentencing and will be testifying against Jacques.

Smyth told jurors that all three men confessed during videotaped interviews and there is also incriminating audio recordings.

Jacques lawyer, Lori Levinson, told the jury that there is no physical evidence against her client and that authorities coerced him into confessing during a grueling seven-hour interrogation during which he suffered withdrawal from addictions to Percocet and cigarettes.

"You will learn that getting his next dose of his drug of addiction is what became the most important thing in the world ... and he would say anything," Levinson said.

Continue reading "Trial starts in alleged anti-Obama church fire" »

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The Associated Press reports:

In the old translation of the world's most popular Bible, John the Evangelist declares: "If anyone says, 'I love God,' yet hates his brother, he is a liar."

Make that "brother or sister" in a new translation that includes more gender-neutral language and is drawing criticism from some conservatives who argue the changes can alter the theological message.

The 2011 translation of the New International Version Bible, or NIV, does not change pronouns referring to God, who remains "He" and "the Father." But it does aim to avoid using "he" or "him" as the default reference to an unspecified person.

The NIV Bible is used by many of the largest Protestant faiths. The translation comes from an independent group of biblical scholars that has been meeting yearly since 1965 to discuss advances in biblical scholarship and changes in English usage.

Before the new translation even hit stores, it drew opposition from the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, an organization that believes women should submit to their husbands in the home and only men can hold some leadership roles in the church.

The council decided it would not endorse the new version because the changes alter "the theological direction and meaning of the text," according to a statement. Similar concerns led the Southern Baptist Convention to reject the NIV's previous translation in 2005.

At issue is how to translate pronouns that apply to both genders in the ancient Greek and Hebrew texts but have traditionally been translated using masculine forms in English.

Continue reading "Gender-neutral Bible language draws critics" »

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Associated Press correspondent Hamza Hendawi reports:

Clashes that broke out when a Muslim mob attacked thousands of Christians protesting the burning of a Cairo church killed at least 13 people and wounded about 140, officials said Wednesday.

The Muslims torched the church amid an escalation of tensions over a love affair between a Muslim and a Christian that set off a violent feud between the couple's families.

The officials said all 13 fatalities died of gunshot wounds.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

The clashes late Tuesday night added to a sense of ongoing chaos in Egypt after the momentous 18-day democracy uprising that toppled longtime leader Hosni Mubarak on Feb. 11. The uprising left a security vacuum after police pulled out of Cairo and several other cities three days into the uprising.

The police have yet to fully take back the streets, leaving space for a wave of violent crime and lawlessness in some parts of the nation.

Continue reading "13 dead in Christian-Muslim clashes in Egypt" »

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The Associated Press reports:

The Supreme Court won't hear an atheist's latest challenge to the U.S. government's references to God.

The court on Monday refused to hear an appeal from Michael Newdow, who says government references to God are unconstitutional and infringe on his religious beliefs.

This appeal dealt with the inscription of the national motto "In God We Trust" on U.S. coins and currency. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco says the phrase is ceremonial and patriotic and "has nothing whatsoever to do with the establishment of religion."

The court refused to hear Newdow's appeal of that decision.

"In God We Trust" was first put on U.S. coins in the 1860s and on paper currency in the 1950s.

The case is Newdow v. Lefevre, 10-893.

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The Rev. Jason Poling is Pastor of New Hope Community Church in Pikesville.

Saturday saw the funerals of two men who took their own lives earlier this month. One was famous, the other known only among his family, friends and coworkers. I may well be the only person in the country to have known both, and I knew neither of them well enough.

I met Dave Duerson while in New Orleans for a conference in mid-November of 2009. Finding a cigar bar a few blocks down from my hotel, I settled in with a Romeo y Julieta. The TV was replaying the New England-Indianapolis game from Sunday night, the one where Belicheck went for it on 4th and 2 and lost. I made a comment or two to the mustachioed African-American gentleman next to men, but he was busy with his smart phone and didn't seem too sociable. But as we watched a crucial play, cigars smoldering, he suddenly broke out with the kind of analysis I'd heard only from the guys on TV.

"You really know your stuff," I said. He replied with practiced humility, "I used to play the game." Two minutes later I learned that I had been coughing up my very amateur opinions on a big game in the presence of an All-Pro safety elected to the Pro Bowl four years in a row, a member of the legendary "Super Bowl Shuffle" 1985 Chicago Bears squad.

Dave talked with pride about his children, and with sorrow about the failure of his marriage. He had come from a long line of Baptist pastors but converted to Catholicism to marry his wife Alicia, and between that and his success as a captain (and, later, trustee) at Notre Dame he spoke with profound affection about his Catholic identity even as he affirmed the spiritual force of his Baptist forebears. "I tell you what," he said as he ordered another Hennessy, "if I had it to do over again I'd go to Pope school. Those priests at Notre Dame, they drank more Chateau Lafite than I do, and I drank a lot of it." We exchanged a couple of emails the following week, and though from time to time I thought about dropping him a note I never did get around to it.

Continue reading "Poling: Two funerals, and one regret" »

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The Associated Press reports:

Oregon lawmakers say they will push to end legal protection for parents who rely solely on faith healing to treat their dying children.

A proposed bill targets the Followers of Christ, an Oregon City church with a long history of children dying from treatable medical conditions.

State Rep. Carolyn Tomei, D-Milwaukie, said the deaths of three children of church members in recent years prompted her to introduce the bill.

House Bill 2721 would remove spiritual treatment as a defense for all homicide charges.

Legislators and prosecutors hope the threat of long prison sentences will cause church members to reconsider their tradition of rejecting medical treatment in favor of faith healing.

"It's going to make it easier to hold parents accountable who don't protect their children," said Clackamas County District Attorney John Foote, whose office has prosecuted recent cases involving church members.

The legislation already has wide support from both political parties, prosecutors, medical providers and child-protection groups, and there is no organized opposition.

Followers of Christ Church leaders do not speak to the media and rarely issue statements, and the church did not respond to a request for comment.

The Christian Science Church, which opposed a similar bill that was proposed years ago, changed its position. The continuing deaths "reached a critical mass," said John Clague, Christian Science media and legislative liaison.

"This is not about Christian Science," Clague said. "This is all coming from another denomination. We should never risk the life of a child through the practice of spiritual care."

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The Associated Press reports:

A junior officer at a Connecticut submarine base has received an honorable discharge after suing the U.S. Navy, saying his religious beliefs prevent him from participating in the military.

Michael Izbicki, an ensign formerly stationed at the Naval Submarine School in Groton, was discharged Feb. 16 as a conscientious objector. The paperwork he filed to drop his lawsuit was approved and signed by U.S. District Court officials in Hartford on Tuesday.

Izbicki, who is Christian, said he plans to use the skills he learned in the Navy to remain in some type of public service outside the military.

The American Civil Liberties Union's Connecticut chapter sued the Navy on Izbicki's behalf last year after he was twice denied an honorable discharge, which he requested based on his religious opposition to all war and the potential that he might be expected to kill others.

"I believe that Jesus Christ calls all men to love each other, under all circumstances. I believe his teaching forbids the use of violence. I take the Sermon on the Mount literally," Izbicki wrote in his application for conscientious objector status.

Izbicki, 25, a native of San Clemente, Calif., has said he was following his family tradition by enlisting in the military and entered the Naval Academy in 2004 with plans of becoming an officer. He began to question his goals after graduating from the academy and beginning submarine training.

A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's office in New Haven, which represented the Navy, said they had no comment about the case.

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Associated Press correspondent Nedra Pickler reports:

A federal judge on has thrown out a lawsuit claiming that President Barack Obama's requirement that all Americans have health insurance violates the religious freedom of those who rely on God to protect them.

U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler in Washington dismissed a lawsuit filed by the American Center for Law and Justice, a Christian legal group founded by evangelist Pat Robertson, on behalf of five Americans who can afford health insurance but have chosen for years not to buy it.

The case was one of several lawsuits filed against Obama's requirement that Americans either buy health insurance or pay a penalty, beginning in 2014. Kessler is the third Democratic-appointed judge to dismiss a challenge, while two Republican-appointed judges have ruled part or all of the law unconstitutional. Kessler wrote that the Supreme Court will need to settle the constitutional issues.

Three of the plaintiffs — Margaret Peggy Lee Mead of Hillsborough, N.C., Charles Edward Lee of San Antonio and Susan Seven-Sky of West Harrison, N.Y. — are Christians who said they want to refuse all medical services for the rest of their lives because they believe God will heal their afflictions. They say being forced to buy insurance would conflict with their faith because they believe doing so would indicate they need "a backup plan and (are) not really sure whether God will, in fact, provide," the lawsuit said.

The two other plaintiffs — Kenneth Ruffo of San Antonio and Gina Rodriguez of Plano, Texas — have a holistic approach to medical care and prefer to pay for their health services out of pocket, in part because insurance often doesn't cover their chosen methods of healing.

Continue reading "Judge tosses health care religious freedom suit" »

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The Associated Press reports:

The University of California at Davis has eliminated from its website a definition of religious discrimination that offended more than two dozen Christian students.

The wording to which the students objected defined religious discrimination in the United States as "institutionalized oppressions toward those who are not Christian."

It appeared in an online glossary to a "Principles of Community" diversity statement to which students and students groups were asked to pledge their commitment.

The Arizona-based Alliance Defense Fund, a conservative legal aid group, says one of its lawyers notified UC Davis Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi on Wednesday that the language violated the constitutional rights of Christian students.

Campus spokeswoman Julia Ann Easley says the university removed the glossary the same day. The schools Office of Campus Community Relations estimates the definition had been around for six or seven years.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 12:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (10)
        

Associated Press writer Mark Niesse reports:

A group of nine Hawaii senators held hands, bowed their heads and sought God's blessing this week, signaling that they'll still pray despite a vote last week to abandon official invocations.

Fears of court challenges compelled the state Senate to end prayers, making it the first legislative body in the nation to do so.

The informal prayer Wednesday took place in the Senate chamber before the daily lawmaking session, convened in such a way so as not to contradict the decision to remove invocations from Senate business.

"The message is that not all senators have eliminated prayer," said Democratic Sen. Will Espero, who organized the group. "We're well within the confines of the law."

The 25-member Senate changed its rules in a unanimous voice vote last Thursday to end prayers after the American Civil Liberties Union sent lawmakers a letter complaining that the invocations often referenced Jesus Christ, contravening the separation of church and state.

Senate leaders said they wanted to avoid the potential for breaking the law, but lawmakers who participated in the quiet prayer Wednesday said their faith has a place in their work.

"It's nice to start off the day with a prayer because we need all the help we can get," said Democratic Sen. Mike Gabbard.

Continue reading "Hawaii lawmakers go ahead with prayer" »

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A leader of the Southern Baptist Convention has withdrawn from a coalition that supports the rights of Muslims to build mosques in their communities.

Richard Land, the head of the SBC's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, said he heard from many Southern Baptists who felt the work of the Interfaith Coalition on Mosques crossed the line from defending religious freedom to promoting Islam.

"I don't agree with that perception but it's widespread and I have to respect it," he told The Associated Press.

The Coalition was formed last year as an initiative of the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish group that fights discrimination. Its first action was to file a friend of the court brief opposing a lawsuit that sought to stop a planned mosque in Murfreesboro, about 30 miles southeast of Nashville.

"My constituents, many felt, 'Yes. We certainly believe in religious freedom. People ought to have a place of worship. But it's a bridge too far not only to advocate for that, but to file suit,'" he said.

Saud Anwar is the founder and co-chair of the American Muslim Peace Initiative and a member of the coalition. He said he was saddened and disappointed by Land's action, which he believes undermines Land's professions of support for religious liberty for all.

"The Southern Baptist community is one of the finest examples of faith in action that I know of," Anwar said. "You are setting an example by your action."

Continue reading "Southern Baptist leader leaves mosque coalition" »

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Categories: Christianity, Interfaith, Islam, People, Politics
        

The Associated Press reports:

The Air Force Academy superintendent's choice of speaker for a prayer luncheon in February has come under fire from a frequent foe of religious practices at the school.

Military Religious Freedom Foundation founder Mikey Weinstein says the choice of Marine 1st Lt. Clebe McClary shows superintendent Lt. Gen. Mike Gould is tilted toward evangelical Christianity and tolerates an environment where proselytizing is accepted.

McClary is a wounded Vietnam veteran who says he's in the "Lord's Army" and that the Marine initials USMC stand for "U.S. Marine for Christ." The school defends Gould's decision saying the luncheon is optional and that McClary is part of a broad spectrum of religious views.

Weinstein is calling for Gould's ouster over the choice.

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Associated Press writer Jay Reeves reports:

Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley told a church crowd just moments into his new administration that those who have not accepted Jesus as their savior are not his brothers and sisters, shocking some critics who questioned Tuesday whether he can be fair to non-Christians.

"Anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I'm telling you, you're not my brother and you're not my sister, and I want to be your brother," Bentley said Monday, his inauguration day, according to The Birmingham News.

The Anti-Defamation League on Tuesday called Bentley's remarks shocking.

"His comments are not only offensive, but also raise serious questions as to whether non-Christians can expect to receive equal treatment during his tenure as governor," said Bill Nigut, the ADL's regional director.

Speaking at Dexter Avenue King Memorial Church after the official inaugural ceremony, Bentley told the crowd that he considered anyone who believed in Jesus to be his brothers and sisters regardless of color, but anyone who isn't a Christian doesn't have that same relationship to him.

"If the Holy Spirit lives in you that makes you my brothers and sisters. Anyone who has not accepted Jesus, I want to be your brothers and sisters, too," Bentley said.

After his speech, Bentley said he did not mean to insult anyone.

Responding to questions about it, Bentley's office released a statement Tuesday saying he believes "he is the governor of all of Alabama."

Continue reading "Ala. Gov.: Only Christians are my family" »

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The Supreme Court has declined to hear the appeal of a Maryland pastor and others seeking to overturn the District of Columbia's same-sex marriage law.

Bishop Harry R. Jackson Jr., senior pastor of Hope Christian Church in Beltsville, has led the lawsuit against the district's elections board for rejecting a ballot measure defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman on the District of Columbia ballot.

The Supreme Court turned away the appeal on Tuesday without comment. Washington began recognizing sane-sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions in 2009, and began issuing marriage licenses to gay couples last year.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 12:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (12)
        

Sarah Palin is drawing condemnation from some Jewish leaders for her use of the phrase “blood libel” to describe criticism leveled against her following the Arizona shooting attack on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.

The former Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential nominee used the phrase Wednesday morning in her most expansive comments yet on the attack that left six dead and 14 more, including Giffords, wounded.

In the aftermath of the shootings, Palin’s opponents revived criticism of the violent imagery she used during the 2010 congressional campaign, when she urged supporters, “Don’t Retreat, Instead – RELOAD!” and posted a map of the United States with crosshairs over Democratic congressional districts, including Giffords’.

In a video released Wednesday, Palin deplored “the irresponsible statements from people attempting to apportion blame for this terrible event.”

"Journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence that they purport to condemn,” she said.

“Blood libel” most commonly refers to the claim, dating to Medieval Europe, that Jews used the blood of Christians in their rituals.

“Unless someone has been accusing Ms. Palin of killing Christian babies and making matzoh from their blood, her use of the term is totally out-of-line,” said Simon Greer, president of Jewish Funds for Justice.

“The term ‘blood libel’ is not a synonym for ‘false accusation,’ " Greer said. "It refers to a specific falsehood perpetuated by Christians about Jews for centuries, a falsehood that motivated a good deal of anti-Jewish violence and discrimination ...

“The fact that Rep. Giffords is Jewish and Ms. Palin is Christian makes the accusation even more grotesque.”

Continue reading "Palin drawing new criticism for use of 'blood libel'" »

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Associated Press correspondent Maggie Michael reports:

CAIRO – In the weeks before the New Year's Day suicide bombing of an Egyptian church, al-Qaida-linked websites carried a how-to manual on "destroying the cross," complete with videos on how to build a bomb and the locations of churches to target — including the one that was attacked.

They may have found a receptive audience in Alexandria, where increasingly radicalized Islamic hard-liners have been holding weekly anti-Christian demonstrations, filled with venomous slogans against the minority community.

The blast, which struck Saturday as worshippers were leaving midnight Mass at the Mediterranean city's Saints Church, killed 21 people.

President Hosni Mubarak has accused foreign groups of being behind the attack, which has sparked a wave of angry protests by Christians in Egypt.

But on the ground, investigators are searching in a different direction — scrutinizing homegrown hard-liners, known as Salafis, and the possibility they were inspired by al-Qaida.

Continue reading "Anti-Christian drumbeat grew before Egypt attack" »

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The Rev. Jason Poling is the pastor of New Hope Community Church in Pikesville.

A church service was held at New Hope on Sunday morning. This would be unremarkable were it not for the fact that it wasn't supposed to happen.

As the weather predictions grew more and more alarming on Saturday night, I tore myself away from the "A Christmas Story" marathon on TBS to email some of our leaders to get their thoughts on whether we should call off services the next morning. The response among those close to email was unanimous, and I figured we'd get ahead of things and call it early.

For a lot of us with young kids, Saturday night can look a lot different if you're not planning to get up in time to get everybody off to church in the morning -- all the more so if you're serving and need to show up early. So I sent out the email, changed the website, changed the phone message and alerted the media. I knew I'd have to figure out how to combine two sermons into one, but I decided to put off thinking about that and enjoy the evening with family.

Come Sunday morning I was nestled all snug in my bed, imagining a winter wonderland outside but not bothering to confirm it by opening the blinds. Bad move. Around ten -- when our service usually starts -- my parents came to say goodbye and mentioned that the weather outside was anything but frightful.

Meanwhile, seven or eight folks had shown up for church.

Continue reading "On snow closings ... and the idiots who call them" »

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Associated Press writer Mark Niesse reports:

KANEOHE BAY, Hawaii – President Barack Obama and his family took a break from their Hawaiian vacation to attend Sunday church services, a rare occurrence for a president who prefers to worship in private.

The first family arrived at a chapel at Marine Corps Base Hawaii mid-morning for a multi-denominational service. The Obamas were greeted by about 100 clapping parishioners and a band playing "Joy to the World" as they were led to their seats in the front row.

In his sermon, chaplain Steve Moses asked worshippers to recommit to God in the new year. He also joked that the reason God put him through a heart surgery was so he wouldn't suffer a heart attack while preaching before the president.

Obama was the first worshipper to take communion, dipping the wafer in wine before placing it in his mouth.

Though Obama speaks frequently about his Christian faith, his family rarely attends church services in Washington. The White House says the president hasn't joined a parish because his appearances would be disruptive to the rest of the congregation, though he does attend private services when he spends weekends at Camp David, the presidential retreat.

Continue reading "Obamas make rare public church appearance" »

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The Rev. Jason Poling is pastor of New Hope Community Church in Pikesville.

It’s that time of year again, and if you’re dreading the prospect of throwing the same old discs into the changer while you tend to the roast, here’s a rundown of several 2010 holiday offerings.

The Good

Erin Bode: A Cold December Night

This disc is by far my favorite of this year’s new holiday music, and I think Erin Bode is my favorite discovery of the year. With a voice and style reminiscent of Norah Jones, Bode displays both greater musical range and a deeper sense of perspective. The opening track, “Skating,” which Bode co-wrote with backing musician Adam Maness, establishes the mood right away: comfortable but not lazy, relaxed but not apathetic, friendly but not garrulous, thoughtful but not brooding, cool but not self-consciously hip. Much credit is due to Bode’s band; Syd Rodway’s basswork establishes a musical foundation that flows when it needs to and sits still when it should. The entire ensemble seems to be taking the music seriously, themselves not too.

Bode’s album succeeds where so many other solo female holiday albums fall short: Shawn Colvin’s Holiday Songs and Lullabies is heavy and over-produced, Sarah McLachlan’s Wintersong is thin and over-produced, and Sara Groves’ O Holy Night bears an unrelenting intensity that just doesn’t fit the artistic form. This is an album I wanted to listen to again after it was done, and I’ve kept coming back to it as often as possible.

The December People: Rattle and Humbug

What would your favorite Christmas carols sound like if they were played by the bands you hear on classic rock stations? Bassist Robert Berry gathered some of California’s top session and touring rock musicians to produce “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” as it would have been played by Boston, “Angels We Have Heard On High” as Peter Gabriel would have done it in the ‘80s, and a ‘90s U2 rendition of “What Child Is This?” Santana gets aped on “Feliz Navidad,” of course.

Continue reading "2010 Holiday Music: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" »

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Associated Press correspondent Maryclaire Dale reports:

A fundamentalist Christian couple who relied on prayer, not medicine, to cure their dying toddler son was convicted Friday of involuntary manslaughter and child endangerment. Herbert and Catherine Schaible of Philadelphia face more than a decade in prison for the January 2009 pneumonia death of 2-year-old Kent.

"We were careful to make sure we didn't have their religion on trial but were holding them responsible for their conduct," jury foreman Vince Bertolini, 49, told The Associated Press. "At the least, they were guilty of gross negligence, and (therefore) of involuntary manslaughter."

The Schaibles, who have six other children, declined to comment as they left the courthouse to await sentencing Feb. 2.

Experts say about a dozen U.S. children die in faith-healing cases each year. An Oregon couple were sentenced this year to 16 months in prison for negligent homicide in the death of their teenage son, who had an undiagnosed urinary blockage.

Assistant District Attorney Joanne Pescatore will ask the judge at sentencing to put the couple's other children under a doctor's care. She was not yet sure if she would seek prison terms for the two felonies.

Kent Schaible's symptoms had included coughing, congestion, crankiness and a loss of appetite, although his parents said he was eating and drinking until the last day, and they had thought he was getting better.

The lone defense witness, high-profile coroner Cyril Wecht, testified that a deadly bacterium could have killed him in hours.

Continue reading "Couple that only prayed convicted in toddler's death" »

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The Associated Press reports:

A social worker says the father of a dead toddler blamed the devil for the boy's death after he and his wife prayed for him rather than seek medical treatment.

Philadelphia social worker Kenneth Dixon testified this week that Herbert Schaible said "we tried to fight the devil, but in the end the devil won" when questioned about the January 2009 death of his 2-year-old son.

Schaible and his wife, Catherine, are on trial on involuntary manslaughter charges in the death of their son, Kent. Prosecutors say the boy died after a two-week battle with bacterial pneumonia because the couple failed to seek medical treatment for him.

Attorneys for the Schaibles say prosecutors cannot prove the couple knew the boy was in danger of dying.

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Associated Press correspondent Linda Stewart Ball reports:

A Texas woman who was promised a Christian working environment claims she was devastated after learning that her boss, a prominent televangelist, was having an affair and his company was trying to cover it up, according to a lawsuit she filed against her former employer.

Jeanette Hawkins levied the accusations against Daystar Television Network and its founder, the Rev. Marcus Lamb, in a lawsuit Wednesday — a day after Lamb and his wife told their television audience that three unnamed people who knew about the affair were trying to blackmail them for $7.5 million.

On Friday, Daystar countersued Hawkins, saying she and her attorney made "outrageous allegations" and amended their original lawsuit that they'd given to media outlets, according to a statement released by the company.

Lamb and his wife, Joni, said on the air Tuesday that they'd mended their marriage after his infidelity years ago, but decided to go public because they refused to pay extortionists.

Hawkins' attorney, James Fisher, declined to comment on the countersuit because he had not yet seen it. But he denied the claims of extortion, saying he met with Daystar attorneys last month about reaching a settlement for Hawkins and two other women in an effort to avoid filing any lawsuits.

"People have claims, which are legal rights. Not only is it common but it's Biblical to try to resolve disputes before going to court," Fisher told The Associated Press. "(Hawkins) didn't commit extortion. She hired a lawyer to present her claims and to explore the possibility of settling them, and that's not extortion."

Continue reading "Employee sues broadcaster over televangelist affair" »

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Associated Press reporter Timberly Ross reports:

A Christian group is proclaiming Jesus' return in billboards going up in Omaha, Neb., and other U.S. cities for the holiday season.

Allison Warden, of We Can Know, says an analysis of Scripture shows Jesus will come on May 21. She says the billboards showing three wise men following the star of Bethlehem are meant to spur the public's interest in the Bible, not frighten anyone.

Warden says the billboards have gone up in Omaha and Nashville, Tenn. She says they're also going up in Atlanta, Bridgeport, Conn.; Detroit; Fort Wayne, Ind.; Kansas City, Mo.; Little Rock, Ark.; Louisville, Ky.; and St. Louis. They'll be up for December.

We Can Know offers resources to learn about the coming of Jesus and the end of days through its website, wecanknow.com.

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Associated Press religion writer Rachel Zoll reports:

A prominent televangelist appeared before a worldwide television audience Tuesday to admit that he had an affair with a woman years ago — and to allege that three people had tried to extort millions of dollars from him to stay quiet about his infidelity.

The Rev. Marcus Lamb, who created DayStar Television Network with his wife Joni, said he and his wife had healed their marriage and had hoped to keep his adultery private, but went public because they would not pay extortionists. The three people demanded $7.5 million, he said.

"They're trying to take our pain and turn it to their gain," said Lamb, during a one-hour live broadcast with his wife by his side and supporters surrounding him. "We're not going to take God's money to keep from being humiliated."

A spokesman for the Lambs, Larry Ross, said they went to authorities with their allegations, but he said he could not discuss specifics for fear of interfering with any investigation. He said the extortion attempt was made within the past few weeks.

DayStar, based in Dallas, airs some of the highest-profile evangelists in the world, including Joel Osteen, T.D. Jakes, Benny Hinn, Kenneth Copeland, Creflo Dollar and Joyce Meyers.

The network says it operates more than 70 stations in major U.S. television markets and also broadcasts to more than 200 countries.

Joni Lamb described her husband's affair as "an emotional relationship" with a woman that became "an improper relationship." When she learned of his infidelity several years ago, she was devastated and prayed to the Holy Spirit, who told her, "He's worth fighting for."

Continue reading "Televangelist admits affair, alleges extortion attempt" »

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The Associated Press reports:

A pastor who said Facebook was a "portal to infidelity" and told married church leaders to delete their accounts or resign once testified that he had a three-way sexual relationship with his wife and a male church assistant.

The Rev. Cedric Miller confirmed the information reported Saturday by the Asbury Park Press of Neptune, which cited testimony he gave in a criminal case in 2003. The relationship had ended by that time.

Miller gained national attention when he issued the Facebook edict this week. He said it came about because much of the marital counseling he has performed over the past year and a half has concerned infidelity stemming from the social-networking website.

The 48-year-old leader of Living Word Christian Fellowship Church in Neptune Township had claimed Facebook ignites old passions, and he ordered about 50 married church officials to delete their accounts with the social networking site or resign from their leadership positions.

Miller had previously asked married congregants to share their login information with their spouses — as he does — and now plans to suggest that they give up Facebook altogether. The minister also said he would leave the site this week.

In court testimony he gave in April 2003, Miller said his wife had an extramarital affair with the church assistant. Miller said he participated in many of the sexual encounters and said the assistant's wife was sometimes present, too.

Continue reading "Facebook-banning pastor acknowledges threesome" »

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The Rev. Jason Poling is pastor of New Hope Community Church in Pikesville. He is traveling in Israel with the Maryland Clergy Initiative, sponsored by the Baltimore Jewish Council and the Institute for Christian & Jewish Studies.

JERUSALEM – I don’t know what I was expecting, but somehow it wasn’t what I expected.

Earlier this week I walked on the Temple Mount, the site where the first and second Temples stood. Today it houses the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock. For all the controversy that surrounds it, the Temple Mount is a very peaceful place – it’s a broad plaza populated by tourists, most of them apparently on organized tours.

For years I’ve studied various biblical passages about the events that took place on this site; I’ve looked at pictures and satellite images and helicopter flyovers to try to get something useful in my mind’s eye. It looked from a distance about how I thought it would, but the feeling of walking on it was the feeling of walking on an alien world. That’s not all too unusual, as that’s what walking through the rest of Jerusalem felt like too. But whatever connection I may have with the place spiritually, theologically … I don’t know that any connection was an experiential reality for me.

Some of this disconnect may come from the fact that I know enough about the history of the place to know that there is virtually no place one can stand that is as it was in the first century. Jerusalem has changed hands a number of times since then, and as we walked through the tunnels next to the Western Wall of the Temple Mount we learned about the ways successive administrations carried out massive building projects that would be impressive today but are stunning in scope for a pre-industrial age. The result of these building projects, though, is that streets in the neighborhood aren’t at the same levels they were two thousand years ago. So in a couple of days when we walk the Via Dolorosa, the path of Jesus’ journey carrying his cross, we will not be walking the same stones he walked.

Continue reading "Poling: A mountaintop experience…maybe" »

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Associated Press correspondent Wayne Parry reports:

Thou shalt not commit adultery. And thou also shalt not use Facebook.

That's the edict from a New Jersey pastor who feels the two often go together.

The Rev. Cedric Miller said 20 couples among the 1,100 members of his Living Word Christian Fellowship Church have run into marital trouble over the last six months after a spouse connected with an ex-flame over Facebook.

Because of the problems, he is ordering about 50 married church officials to delete their accounts with the social networking site or resign from their leadership positions. He had previously asked married congregants to share their login information with their spouses and now plans to suggest that they give up Facebook altogether.

"I've been in extended counseling with couples with marital problems because of Facebook for the last year and a half," he said. "What happens is someone from yesterday surfaces, it leads to conversations and there have been physical meet-ups. The temptation is just too great."

Miller is married and has a Facebook account that he uses to keep in touch with six children, but he will heed his own advice and cancel his account this weekend.

On Sunday, he plans to "strongly suggest" that all married people to stop using Facebook, lest they endanger their marriage.

"The advice will go to the entire church," he said. "They'll hear what I'm asking of my church leadership. I won't mandate it for the entire congregation, but I hope people will follow my advice."

Continue reading "Pastor: Thou shalt not use Facebook" »

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The Associated Press reports:

Colorado Republican Senate candidate Ken Buck has questioned the separation of government and religion, drawing criticism from Democrats who last week chided another tea party candidate for the same view.

Buck's opponents have been circulating a clip of him from a 2009 GOP forum in which he won applause from a conservative crowd at Colorado Christian University when he said the Constitution doesn't require church and state to be separate.

"I disagree strongly with the concept of separation of church and state. It was not written into the Constitution," Buck said on the video. "While we have a Constitution that is very strong in the sense that we are not gonna have a religion that's sanctioned by the government, it doesn't mean that we need to have a separation between government and religion."

Democrats spread the Buck video after Delaware Republican Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell was panned for questioning in a debate last week whether the separation of church and state is in the Constitution.

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee this week called Buck's remark "extreme" and "egregious."

Democratic allies also spread a clip from Buck earlier this year in which he repeated his opposition to abortion rights. Buck said he believes the Supreme Court wrongly cited privacy rights in its Roe v. Wade abortion decision.

Buck clarified his church-and-state position Tuesday on CNN.

"I agree with the idea that there is a separation of church and state. That teachers should not be leading prayer, a particular kind of prayer in classrooms.

"What I have said is that I think the federal government and we as a society have come too far in trying to separate good organizations that perform good functions for people just based on the fact one has a religious association and one doesn't," Buck said.

Continue reading "Another GOP candidate questions church-state divide" »

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Associated Press writer Dylan Lovan reports:

A Southern Baptist leader who is calling for Christians to avoid yoga and its spiritual attachments is getting plenty of pushback from enthusiasts who defend the ancient practice.

Southern Baptist Seminary President Albert Mohler says the stretching and meditative discipline derived from Eastern religions is not a Christian pathway to God.

Mohler said he objects to "the idea that the body is a vehicle for reaching consciousness with the divine."

"That's just not Christianity," Mohler told The Associated Press.

Mohler said feedback has come through e-mail and comments on blogs and other websites since he wrote an essay to address questions about yoga he has heard for years.

"I'm really surprised by the depth of the commitment to yoga found on the part of many who identify as Christians," Mohler said.

Continue reading "Southern Baptist leader: Yoga not Christian" »

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Associated Press writer Mark Sherman reports:

Supreme Court justices on Wednesday pondered the vexing question of whether the father of a dead Marine should win his lawsuit against a fundamentalist church group that picketed his son's funeral.

The complexity and weightiness of the First Amendment issue were palpable in the courtroom as justices heard arguments in the case of Albert Snyder. His son died in Iraq in 2006, and members of the Westboro Baptist Church protested the funeral to make their point that U.S. deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq are punishment for Americans' immorality, including tolerance of homosexuality and abortion.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the question is whether the First Amendment must tolerate "exploiting this bereaved family."

There was no clear answer from the court.

Snyder is asking the court to reinstate a $5 million verdict against the Westboro members who held signs outside the funeral of Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, including ones that read "Thank God for Dead Soldiers, "You're Going to Hell" and "God Hates the USA." The Marine was killed in a Humvee accident in 2006.

The church also posted a poem on its website that attacked Snyder and his ex-wife for the way they brought up Matthew.

Continue reading "Court considers anti-gay funeral protest" »

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The Rev. Jason Poling is the Pastor of New Hope Community Church in Pikesville.

Her tragic death notwithstanding, the career of Anna Nicole Smith delighted plastic surgeons, dieters and reality TV fans, not to mention readers of Playboy magazine and patrons of strip clubs. It was one of these last, J. Howard Marshall II, who became Mr. Anna Nicole Smith in the waning years of his life.

The facts are well-known to most readers: Ms. Smith, then 26, married Mr. Marshall, then 89, in 1994. Upon Marshall’s death 13 months later, his son E. Pierce Marshall contested Ms. Smith’s claim to half of his estate; the case ultimately wound up in the Supreme Court, which decided in Ms. Smith’s favor in 2006. Although both Ms. Smith and Mr. Marshall are now deceased, Mr. Marshall’s estate continued to pursue the matter, and the Supreme Court has announced that it will once again hear the case.

Oddly enough, this turn of events presents us once again with the reality that for a brief, shining moment, Ms. Smith replaced Michael Schiavo as the poster child for family values.

Obviously the disposition of a will can involve complicated decisions, and family tension is by no mean unknown in this sort of situation. Probate lawyers can explain all of the variables to anyone who’s interested in them, but the basic principle of law and the clear message of the Supreme Court’s 2006 ruling is this: If the choice is between a spouse and another family member, the spouse wins.

Much the same conflict was operative in the Schiavo case: Ultimately the courts decided that when Terry Schiavo’s husband and parents disagreed over her medical care, it was her husband’s right as her spouse to make decisions for her despite her parents’ disagreement with his choices.

Continue reading "Poling: Two Cheers for Anna Nicole Smith" »

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Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell's plan to put Virginia's state-run alcohol sales in private hands and triple the number of liquor stores scored a big endorsement from the Christian right, the Associated Press reports.

Jerry Falwell Jr., the chancellor of Liberty University and namesake son of the late minister and political activist, endorsed McDonnell's liquor privatization proposal Tuesday.

Falwell said he felt the founders never intended for government to be in the liquor retailing business.

But McDonnell has encountered resistance to his plan from an interfaith coalition concerned that boosting the number of stores from 332 now to 1,000 will worsen alcoholism, damage families and put more drunks on the highways.

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The prominent pastor of a 25,000-member megachurch near Atlanta denies allegations in a lawsuit that he coerced two young men from the congregation into a sexual relationship, his attorney said.

Lawyers for the men, now 20 and 21, say they filed the lawsuit Tuesday in DeKalb County Court against Bishop Eddie Long. The Associated Press generally does not identify people who say they were victims of sexual impropriety.

President George W. Bush and three former presidents visited the sprawling New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in the Atlanta suburb of Lithonia for the 2006 funeral of Coretta Scott King, the widow of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Long introduced the speakers and the Rev. Bernice King, the Kings' younger daughter, delivered the eulogy. She is also a pastor there.

The men who filed the suit were 17- and 18-year-old members of the church when they say Long abused his spiritual authority to seduce them with cars, money, clothes, jewelry, international trips and access to celebrities.

Craig Gillen, Long's attorney, says the pastor "categorically denies the allegations."

"We find it unfortunate that these two young men would take this course of action," Gillen said late Tuesday after news of the lawsuit broke. He said Long had not yet been served with copies of the lawsuits.

Continue reading "Megachurch pastor denies sex with young men" »

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A report from Jay Reeves of the Associated Press:

Stricken with cancer and fragile from chemotherapy, author and outspoken atheist Christopher Hitchens sits in an armchair before an audience and waits for the only question that can come first at such a time.

"How's your health?" asks Larry Taunton, a friend who heads an Alabama-based group dedicated to defending Christianity.

"Well, I'm dying, since you asked, but so are you. I'm only doing it more rapidly," replies Hitchens, his grin faint and his voice weak and raspy. Only wisps of his dark hair remain; clothes hang on his frame.

The writer best known to believers for his 2007 book "God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything" has esophageal cancer, the same disease that killed his father. He is fighting it, but the 62-year-old Hitchens is realistic: At the very best, he says, his life will be shortened.

For some of his critics, it might be satisfying to see a man who has made a career of skewering organized religion switch sides near the end of his life and pray silently for help fighting a ravaging disease.

He has an opportunity: Monday has been informally proclaimed "Everybody Pray for Hitchens Day."

Christopher Hitchens won't be bowing his head, even on a day set aside just for him.

"I shall not be participating," he said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Continue reading "Hitchens skipping day of prayer in his honor" »

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Natasha T. Metzler of the Associated Press reports:

President Barack Obama and his family attended an hourlong service Sunday morning at a church just across the street from the White House.

Accompanied by his wife, Michelle, and their daughters, Malia and Sasha, Obama strolled across Lafayette Square to attend St. John's Church. Sasha held her father's hand as they crossed the park.

Obama has attended the pale yellow Episcopal church three times previously, as well as other churches in the nation's capital. The Obama family hasn't settled on a new permanent congregation since coming to Washington.

A pew nine rows back from the altar at St. John's carries a small brass plaque designating it as "The President's Pew." Church history claims that every president since the nation's fourth chief executive, James Madison, has visited.

On Sunday afternoon, Obama played golf at Andrews Air Force Base.

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Britain's advertising watchdog has banned an Italian ice cream ad featuring a pregnant nun, saying it causes offense to Catholics, the Associated Press reports.

The magazine ad for ice cream maker Antonio Federici showed the nun eating a tub of ice cream, with text that read: "Immaculately conceived ... Ice cream is our religion."

The Advertising Standards Authority said Wednesday it has received 10 complaints from magazine readers who said the ad was offensive to Christians. The agency said imagery used to illustrate immaculate conception was likely to be seen as mocking the beliefs of Roman Catholics.

The Italian company said the idea of conception represented the development of their ice cream and the ad aimed to gently satirize religion.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 12:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)
        

The Rev. Jason Poling is Pastor of New Hope Community Church in Pikesville.

It’s been a tough year to be an evangelical pastor with a small congregation. The two best-known examples are Fred Phelps of Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, and Terry Jones of Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida. The former is best known for protesting military funerals and running www.godhatesfags.com. The latter is known for a plan to burn copies of the Qur’an on Saturday to commemorate the 9/11 attacks.

Well down the list would be me. Like Westboro and Dove, New Hope is small and independent of a denomination. One difference would be that the only thing we burn is cigars when our guys get together to play poker.

There are plenty of other differences as well. But every time I turn on the news and hear about a small evangelical church that’s planning to burn copies of the Qur’an I realize that there just isn’t room for the reporters to describe it as “fringe,” or “cult-like” (see their “Discipleship Manual” at The Smoking Gun), or “nutty.” No, they have to call them something, so “small evangelical church” it is.

I’m getting a taste of what it’s like for many of my Muslim colleagues.

A couple of years back I asked a local Imam what he thought about the blasphemy laws in many majority-Muslim countries that prescribe the death penalty for those converting from Islam to another religion. He told me he thought it was outrageous. I referenced the passages in the Qur’an used to justify the practice, and asked why other imams would endorse it on that basis. “Because they’re idiots,” he said.

Continue reading "Jason Poling: I'm with stupid" »

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An anti-Islamic preacher backed off and then threatened to reconsider burning the Quran on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, angrily accusing a Muslim leader of lying to him Thursday with a promise to move an Islamic center and mosque away from New York's ground zero, the Associated Press reports. The imam planning the center denied there was ever such a deal.

The Rev. Terry Jones generated an international firestorm with his plan to burn the Quran on Saturday, the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and he has been under intense pressure to give it up. President Barack Obama urged him to listen to "those better angels" and give up his "stunt," saying it would endanger U.S. troops and give Islamic terrorists a recruiting tool. Defense Secretary Robert Gates took the extraordinary step of calling Jones personally.

Standing outside his 50-member Pentecostal church, the Dove Outreach Center, alongside Imam Muhammad Musri, the president of the Islamic Society of Central Florida, Jones said he relented when Musri assured him that the New York mosque will be moved.

Musri, however, said after the news conference that the agreement was only for him and Jones to travel to New York and meet Saturday with the imam overseeing plans to build a mosque near ground zero.

Hours later, Jones said Musri "clearly, clearly lied to us."

"Given what we are now hearing, we are forced to rethink our decision," Jones said. "So as of right now, we are not canceling the event, but we are suspending it."

Jones did not say whether the Quran burning could still be held Saturday, but he said he expected Musri to keep his word and expected "the imam in New York to back up one of his own men."

Continue reading "Preacher cancels Quran burning, then reconsiders" »

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Hundreds of angry Afghans burned a U.S. flag and chanted "Death to the Christians" on Thursday to protest plans by a small American church to torch copies of the Muslim holy book on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, the Associated Press reports.

Religious and political leaders across the Muslim world, as well as several U.S. officials, have asked the church to call off the plan, warning it would lead to violence against Americans. Iraq, worried that it will unleash a backlash against all Christians, has beefed up security near churches.

The Rev. Terry Jones, of the Dove Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida, has vowed to go ahead with the bonfire on Saturday, even though he has been denied the required permit.

Local officials in Mahmud Raqi, the capital of Afghanistan's Kapisa province, estimated that up to 4,000 people took part in Thursday's demonstration. But NATO spokesman James Judge said the protesters numbered between 500 to 700.

"The Afghan national police prevented the protest from overwhelming an Afghan military outpost," and dispersed the demonstration, he told The Associated Press.

A cleric in Afghanistan's largely peaceful Balkh province also warned Thursday that, if the burning goes ahead, a protest will be held in the provincial capital Mazar-i-Sharif next Monday. Protesters could hurl stones at NATO-led troops stationed in the city — one of the country's main centers of the Islamic teaching.

In the central Pakistani city of Multan, about 200 people marched and burned a U.S. flag.

"If Quran is burned it would be beginning of destruction of America," read one English-language banner held up by the protesters, who chanted "Down with America!"

Continue reading "Afghans burn U.S. flag to protest Quran burning" »

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President Barack Obama is exhorting a Florida minister to "listen to those better angels" and call off his plan to engage in a Quran-burning protest this weekend, the Associated Press reports.

Obama told ABC's "Good Morning America" in an interview aired Thursday that he hopes the Rev. Terry Jones of Florida listens to the pleas of people who have asked him to call off the plan. The president called it a "stunt."

"If he's listening, I hope he understands that what he's proposing to do is completely contrary to our values as Americans," Obama said. "That this country has been built on the notion of freedom and religious tolerance."

"And as a very practical matter, I just want him to understand that this stunt that he is talking about pulling could greatly endanger our young men and women who are in uniform," the president added.

Said Obama: "Look, this is a recruitment bonanza for Al Qaida. You could have serious violence in places like Pakistan and Afghanistan." The president also said Jones' plan, if carried out, could serve as an incentive for terrorist-minded individuals "to blow themselves up" to kill others.

"I hope he listens to those better angels and understands that this is a destructive act that he's engaging in," the president said of Jones.

Continue reading "Obama urges pastor to drop Quran-burning plan" »

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Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski is calling plans by a Florida pastor to burn copies of the Muslim holy book on Saturday "disgraceful and un-American."

“The anniversary of the devastating terrorist attacks of 9/11 should not be marked with an act of hatred," the Maryland Democrat said in a statement. "Book burning is the action of fanatics and fascists. The Quran should be treated with the same respect given to the Bible and the Torah."

Terry Jones, pastor of the nondenominational Dove Outreach Center in Gainesville, Fla., says the church will proceed with "International Burn-a-Quran Day" despite condemnations by the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the White House.

Gen. David Petraeus warned in an e-mail to The Associated Press that "images of the burning of a Quran would undoubtedly be used by extremists in Afghanistan — and around the world — to inflame public opinion and incite violence."

Petraeus spoke with Afghan President Hamid Karzai about the matter Wednesday, the AP reports.

"They both agreed that burning of a Quran would undermine our effort in Afghanistan, jeopardize the safety of coalition troopers and civilians," spokesman Col. Erik Gunhus said, and would "create problems for our Afghan partners ... as it likely would be Afghan police and soldiers who would have to deal with any large demonstrations."

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates urged Jones to cancel the event, the AP reports.

Continue reading "Mikulski: Burning Quran 'disgraceful,' 'un-American'" »

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The leader of a small Florida church that espouses anti-Islam philosophy said Wednesday he was determined to go through with his plan to burn copies of the Quran on Sept. 11, despite pressure from the White House, religious leaders and others to call it off, the Associated Press reports.

"We are still determined to do it, yes," the Rev. Terry Jones told the CBS Early Show.

Jones says he has received more than 100 death threats and has started wearing a .40-caliber pistol strapped to his hip since announcing his plan to burn the book Muslims consider the word of God and insist be treated with the utmost respect. The 58-year-old minister proclaimed in July that he would stage "International Burn-a-Quran Day."

Supporters have been mailing copies of the holy text to his Gainesville church of about 50 followers to be incinerated in a bonfire on Saturday to mark the ninth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Kabul, took the rare step of a military leader taking a position on a domestic matter when he warned in an e-mail to The Associated Press that "images of the burning of a Quran would undoubtedly be used by extremists in Afghanistan — and around the world — to inflame public opinion and incite violence."

Petraeus spoke Wednesday with Afghan President Karzai about the matter, according to a military spokesman Col. Erik Gunhus. "They both agreed that burning of a Quran would undermine our effort in Afghanistan, jeopardize the safety of coalition troopers and civilians," Gunhus said, and would "create problems for our Afghan partners ... as it likely would be Afghan police and soldiers who would have to deal with any large demonstrations."

Jones responded that he is also concerned but is "wondering, 'When do we stop?'" He refused to cancel the protest at his Dove World Outreach Center but said he was still praying about it.

Continue reading "Pastor 'determined' to burn Quran" »

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A Christian minister said Tuesday that he will go ahead with plans to burn copies of the Quran to protest the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks despite warnings from the top U.S. general in Afghanistan and the White House that doing so would endanger U.S. troops, the Associated Press reports.

Pastor Terry Jones of the Dove World Outreach Center said he understands the government's concerns, but plans to go forward with the burning this Saturday, the ninth anniversary of the attacks.

He left the door open to change his mind, however, saying that he is still praying about his decision.

Gen. David Petraeus warned Tuesday in an e-mail to The Associated Press that "images of the burning of a Quran would undoubtedly be used by extremists in Afghanistan — and around the world — to inflame public opinion and incite violence."

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley echoed that later in the day, calling the plan to burn copies of the Quran "un-American" and saying it does not represent the views of most people in the U.S.

"While it may well be within someone's rights to take this action, we hope cooler heads will prevail," Crowley said. He said burning copies of the Quran would be "inconsistent with the values of religious tolerance and religious freedom," and potentially puts the lives of U.S. soldiers and diplomats at risk.

Jones told the AP in a phone interview that he is also concerned but wonders how many times the U.S. can back down.

Continue reading "Pastor plans to burn Quran despite military warning" »

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The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, President Barack Obama's controversial former pastor, accused people who wrongly believe Obama is Muslim of catering to political enemies during a fiery speech Sunday in Arkansas, the Associated Press reports.

In his sermon at New Millennium Church in Little Rock, Wright criticized supporters of the Iraq war and defended former state Court of Appeals Judge Wendell Griffen for speaking out against it. Griffen serves as the church's pastor.

Wright's only reference to Obama came when he compared Griffen's opponents to those who incorrectly think Obama is Muslim. The president, whose full name is Barack Hussein Obama, is Christian.

"Go after the military mindset ... and the enemy will come after you with everything," Wright told the packed church.

"He will surround you with sycophants who will criticize you and ostracize you and put you beyond the pale of hope and say 'you ain't really a Baptist' and say 'the president ain't really a Christian, he's a Muslim. There ain't no American Christian with a name like Barack Hussein,'" he added.

Continue reading "Wright criticizes those who say Obama is Muslim" »

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Strippers dressed in bikinis sunbathe in lawn chairs, their backs turned toward the gray clapboard church where men in ties and women in full-length skirts flock to Sunday morning services.

The strippers, fueled by Cheetos and nicotine, are protesting a fundamentalist Christian church whose Bible-brandishing congregants have picketed the club where they work, the Associated Press reports.

The dancers roll up with signs carrying messages adapted from Scripture, such as "Do unto others as you would have done unto you," to counter church members who for four years have photographed license plates of patrons and asked them if their mothers and wives know their whereabouts, AP correspondent Jeannie Nuss writes.

The dueling demonstrations play out in central Ohio, where nine miles of cornfields and Amish-buggy crossing signs separate The Fox Hole strip club from New Beginnings Ministries.

Club owner Tommy George met with the preacher and offered to call off his not-quite-nude crew from their three-month-long protest if the church responds in kind. But pastor Bill Dunfee believes that a higher power has tasked him with shutting down the strip club.

"As a Christian community, we cannot share territory with the devil," Dunfee said. "Light and darkness cannot exist together, so The Fox Hole has got to go."

AP Photo

Continue reading "It's Christians vs. strippers in rural Ohio" »

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President Barack Obama is a Christian who prays daily, a White House official said Thursday, trying to tamp down growing doubts about the president's religion, the Associated Press reports.

A new poll showed that nearly one in five people, or 18 percent, believe Obama is Muslim. That was up from 11 percent who said so in March 2009. The survey also showed that just 34 percent said Obama is Christian, down from 48 percent who said so last year. The largest share of people, 43 percent, said they don't know his religion.

White House spokesman Bill Burton said most Americans care more about the economy and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and "they are not reading a lot of news about what religion the president is." He commented on Air Force One as Obama headed for a vacation in Massachusetts on Martha's Vineyard.

Burton added, "The president is obviously a Christian. He prays everyday."

The survey, conducted by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center and its affiliated Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, is based on interviews conducted before the controversy over whether Muslims should be permitted to construct a mosque near the World Trade Center site. Obama has said he believes Muslims have the right to build an Islamic center there, though he's also said he won't take a position on whether they should actually build it.

Continue reading "White House: Obama is a Christian, prays daily" »

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It's a plain wooden cross almost austere in its simplicity.

But as Associated Press writer Vanessa Gera reports from Warsaw, it is stirring passions in heavily Roman Catholic Poland that expose bitter divisions which make it seem like two separate nations sharing the same land and language.

The pale wood cross about four meters (13 feet) high was erected in front of the presidential palace by Boy and Girl Scouts days after the April plane crash in Russia that killed President Lech Kaczynski, his wife and 94 others.

It quickly became a spot for mourners to light candles, place flowers and pray.

Now, with a new president installed and the country returning to normal, the question of whether the cross should stay or go has set off wider disputes that underscore the deep divisions between traditional and modern Poles, conservatives and liberals, and even rich and poor.

"The cross is a catalyst that has mobilized people who are fed up with the clericalization of Polish public life," said Jacek Kucharczyk, president of the Institute of Public Affairs, a Warsaw think tank.

On one side are deeply nationalistic and religious supporters of the late president who want the cross to stay until a fitting memorial is built to the victims, among whom were top military brass and church leaders. Some of them cling to a conspiracy theory suggesting that Kaczynski's domestic political rivals and Russians conspired to kill him.

On the other is an increasingly self-confident secular society that dismisses the conspiracy theory as lunacy and believes the religious symbol does not belong in front of such an important public building. This group argues that despite the country's Catholic influence, the constitution guarantees a separation of church and state, and that the cross should move to a church.

Continue reading "Battle over cross reveals cultural divide in Poland" »

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The first sign of danger was the crackle of gunfire over their heads. Ten gunmen, their faces covered, rushed toward terrified humanitarian workers and began shouting "Satellite! Satellite!" — a demand to surrender their phones.

Moments later, 10 of them lay dead, including two women hiding in the back seat of a car the attackers hit with a grenade, according to an Afghan official familiar with the account the sole survivor gave police.

It is the first detailed narrative of the slaying of six Americans, two Afghans, one German and a Briton on Aug. 5 in remote northern Afghanistan, the Associated Press reports. They were ambushed and shot Aug. 5 after journeying about 100 miles — much of it on foot and horseback — through the Hindu Kush mountains, giving eye and other medical care to impoverished villagers.

Afghan and U.S. investigators spent at least four hours this week questioning the survivor, a 24-year-old father of three named Safiullah. He was employed as a driver for International Assistance Mission, a nonprofit Christian organization that has worked in Afghanistan since 1966.

Safiullah, who like many Afghans uses only one name, told investigators that the killings occurred around 7:30 a.m. or 8:30 a.m., according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to disclose details of the ongoing investigation.

Continue reading "AP Exclusive: The aid workers' last minutes" »

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Republican Rand Paul has apologized for saying he worried beer would be thrown at a church picnic he attended last weekend in western Kentucky, the Associated Press reports.

The U.S. Senate candidate issued the apology Wednesday through a statement from campaign manager Jesse Benton.

Paul told conservative radio personality Sean Hannity on Tuesday he worried people would throw beer on him at the picnic hosted by St. Jerome Parish in a tiny farming community.

Parishioners complained that Paul's comments created a false perception of the event. Beer isn't served at the picnic, and alcohol sales are illegal in the community.

The picnic is a church fundraiser and attracts Kentucky politicians who want to glad-hand with attendees and deliver stump speeches.

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Muslims trying to build houses of worship in the nation's heartland, far from the heated fight in New York over plans for a mosque near ground zero, are running into opponents even more hostile and aggressive, the Associated Press reports.

Foes of proposed mosques have deployed dogs to intimidate Muslims holding prayer services and spray painted "Not Welcome" on a construction sign, then later ripped it apart.

The 13-story, $100 million Islamic center that could soon rise two blocks from the site of the Sept. 11 attacks would dwarf the proposals elsewhere, yet the smaller projects in local communities are stoking a sharper kind of fear and anger than has showed up in New York.

In the Nashville suburb of Murfreesboro, opponents of a new Islamic center say they believe the mosque will be more than a place of prayer. They are afraid the 15-acre site that was once farmland will be turned into a terrorist training ground for Muslim militants bent on overthrowing the U.S. government.

"They are not a religion. They are a political, militaristic group," said Bob Shelton, a 76-year-old retiree who lives in the area.

Shelton was among several hundred demonstrators recently who wore "Vote for Jesus" T-shirts and carried signs that said: "No Sharia law for USA!," referring to the Islamic code of law. Others took their opposition further, spray painting the sign announcing the "Future site of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro" and tearing it up.

Continue reading "Far from Ground Zero, U.S. mosques face opposition" »

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The debate over a planned Islamic community center and mosque near ground zero became a court fight Wednesday, as a conservative advocacy group sued to try to stop a project that has become a fulcrum for balancing religious freedom and the legacy of the Sept. 11 attacks, the Associated Press reports.

The American Center for Law and Justice, founded by the Rev. Pat Robertson, filed suit Wednesday to challenge a city panel's decision to let developers tear down a building to make way for the mosque two blocks from ground zero.

The city Landmarks Preservation Commission moved too fast in making a decision, underappreciated the building's historic value and "allowed the intended use of the building and political considerations to taint the deliberative process," lawyer Brett Joshpe wrote in papers filed in a Manhattan state court. The Washington, D.C.-based group represents a firefighter who responded to and survived the terrorist attack at the World Trade Center.

City attorneys are confident the landmarks group adhered to legal standards and procedures, Law Department spokeswoman Kate O'Brien Ahlers said. A spokesman for the planned Islamic center, Oz Sultan, declined to comment on the lawsuit but said organizers were continuing to work toward choosing an architect.

The mosque has become a national political flashpoint, pitting several influential Republicans and the nation's most prominent Jewish civil rights group against New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and others. In one of the latest signs of the issue's political reach beyond Manhattan, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick expressed support Wednesday for the proposed mosque.

Continue reading "Opponents sue to stop Ground Zero mosque" »

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Christians staged a free concert Monday promoting "PTL," or praise the lord, near where the cast of MTV's "Jersey Shore" enjoy "GTL," or the gym, tan and laundry lifestyle, the Associated Press reports.

The Toms River, N.J.-based Move the Earth ministry organized the "Jesus Shore" event on the boardwalk in Seaside Heights, N.J., as an alternative to the "fighting and fornicating" that organizers say the reality TV show celebrates.

The Rev. Anthony Storino, pastor of Abundant Grace Church in Toms River, says members are not against the TV program. But he says there's another side to the Jersey shore.

The concert featured Christian bands and a Christian-themed tattoo contest. Vendors also sold Christian books and T-shirts.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 1:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (20)
        

Protesters shouting "Defend the cross!" scuffled with police Tuesday but managed to prevent Polish officials from moving a cross erected outside the presidential palace in memory of the late President Lech Kaczynski, the Associated Press reports.

About 20 demonstrators stood in front of the wooden cross, pleading with priests who were supposed to move it to the nearby St. Anne's Church. They were supported by a cheering crowd of hundreds gathered behind a police barrier across the street.

Security officials dragged away a few of the chanting, praying protesters — including a woman who tried to tie herself to the cross. But officials decided not to immediately press ahead with the plan, which is opposed by some Kaczynski supporters.

"The cross will not be moved to the church today," said Jacek Michalowski, a presidential palace official. "The level of aggression is too high ... the cross should not be used for political games."

It wasn't immediately clear whether officials would make another attempt to move it.

Amid deep national mourning, scouts groups put up the cross five days after the April 10 plane crash in Russia that killed Kaczynski, his wife Maria, and 94 others, including top military leaders.

Some members of the main opposition party — which is led by the late president's twin brother, Jaroslaw Kaczynski — have said the cross should remain put until a permanent monument is built at the site, a call backed by their conservative Roman Catholic supporters.

But President-elect Bronislaw Komorowski and Warsaw city officials want the cross moved to the church and worked out an agreement with church leaders to do so.

Continue reading "Protesters prevent cross from being moved" »

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Darcy Bisset is a member of New Hope Community Church in Pikesville.

I spent the better part of last fall reading through Anne Rice's Christ the Lord books with a group of friends (reluctantly at first -- when our discussion group voted, my pick lost). I found myself captured by the beauty of Rice's writing and impressed by the theological and historical care she took with her subject matter.

And so when I heard the news last week that Rice had announced she was leaving Christianity and was no longer Christian, I felt a twist of emotions. I was sad, because I thought the Christ the Lord books were brilliant and I wanted more from that voice.

I was sympathetic, because I've been in that boat, where some one or some group, purportedly speaking for Christianity, is saying something you think is SO WRONG and you want to wear a big button proclaiming "I am not with them!"

I was also incredulous because, well, did she not know about the Roman Catholic Church's stance on homosexuality and birth control when she joined up?

It kind of reminds me of when people get divorced after a few years of marriage, citing as "irreconcilable differences" a bunch of personality quirks about which they were fully informed when they decided to get married.

I decided that if Anne Rice can make silly over-reaching statements, then so can I. Therefore, on behalf of Christianity and Christians, I refuse to accept her resignation.

Continue reading "Guest Post: Memo to Anne: Resignation declined" »

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Milton Hill wasn't the most visible among worshipers at Ark Church, Baltimore Sun colleague Erica Green writes. He mostly watched from a spot in the back of the room during a mid-week service, or while doing odd jobs in the church during choir practices.

But at the congregation's first Sunday service since his killing last week, Green writes, Hill's absence was felt from the parking lot to the pulpit.

It was the first Sunday that Ark churchgoers noticed that the grass on the East North Avenue property wasn't meticulously manicured, and that the remnants of weekend trash weren't completely cleared by 6 a.m.

The 70-year-old Hill — whose helpful nature and residence next to the church made him its volunteer caretaker and extra set of eyes for more than a decade — wasn't standing in his usual spot on the landing of his apartment stairs, greeting churchgoers as they walked in.

Instead, his face peered out from a flier that ushers handed out with church bulletins, advertising a vigil and to be held today in honor of his life, and condemnation of his senseless killing.

"Members and neighbors are feeling vulnerable," the Rev. J.L. Carter, senior pastor of Ark Church, said in a Sunday sermon. "Members have said, 'Pastor, what do we do now, after it hit so close to our house?' "

Read more about Milton Hill and Ark Church at baltimoresun.com.

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... et bienvenue à nos amis francophones

The would-be robber who walked out of a cell phone shop empty-handed and apologizing after a clerk preached to him has been arrested -- after knocking over a shoe store just three hours later, reports the Sun-Sentinel, The Baltimore Sun's South Florida sister.

Authorities in Florida say investigators charged 37-year-old Israel Camacho in the crime, Sun-Sentinel reporter Sofia Santana writes.

Camacho was already in jail, charged in the hold-up of a Payless shoe store in Oakland Park after failing at a Metro PCS shop in Pompano earlier on July 23.

Nayara Goncalves, 20, who was working in the cell phone store alone that morning, had encouraged the would-be robber to "Go to Jesus." A surveillance videotape of the incident has become an internet sensation.

The devout Christian told him: "God has something better for you." Camacho told Goncalves that he, too, was a Christian, and they learned that they had attended the same church.

Goncalves was disappointed to learn Friday that the suspect in her case was linked to a robbery that happened later the same day.

"It's so sad," she said. "I thought God was giving him a second chance."

Continue reading "Police: Robber just moved on to another store" »

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Surveillance video footage of a young Christian talking a gunman out of robbing her cell phone store last week has become an Internet sensation.

The tape shows a man entering the MetroPCS store in Pompano Beach, Fla., last Friday, approaching the manager, identified in media reports as 20-year-old Nayara Goncalves, showing her a gun and demanding money.

But Goncalves changes the subject.

“Know what?” she asks. “I'm just gonna talk with you about the Jesus I have.”

She identifies herself as a Christian.

“You know you don't need this, Jesus got something way better for you,” she says. “For everyone that's out there. I'm not blaming you, I'm not judging. I don't know what you are going through, but all of us are going through a hard time right now – a very hard time right now.”

The man appears to agree.

Continue reading "Store manager invokes Jesus, dissuades robber" »

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Novelist Anne Rice remains committed to Christ. But she is quitting Christianity.

The “Interview With The Vampire” author, who in recent years has spoken publicly about her faith and written a series of novels tracing the life of Jesus, wrote on her Facebook page Wednesday that she was finished with organized Christianity.

For those who care, and I understand if you don't: Today I quit being a Christian. I'm out. I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being "Christian" or to being part of Christianity. It's simply impossible for me to "belong" to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I've tried. I've failed. I'm an outside. My conscience will allow nothing else.

She followed that post a few minutes later with more details:

As I said below, I quit being a Christian. I'm out. In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen.

On Thursday, Rice posted a series of passages from the New Testament:

Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s enemies will be the members of his household.

Continue reading "Anne Rice quits Christianity -- but not Christ" »

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French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Wednesday ordered authorities to expel gypsy illegal immigrants and dismantle their camps, amid accusations that his government is acting racist in its treatment of the group known as Roma, the Associated Press reports.

Sarkozy called a government meeting Wednesday after Roma clashed with police this month after the shooting death of a gypsy youth fleeing officers in the Loire Valley.

Sarkozy said those responsible for the clashes would be "severely punished" and ordered the government to expel all illegal Roma immigrants, almost all of whom have come from eastern Europe.

He pushed for a change in France's immigration law to make such expulsion easier "for reasons of public order." He said illegal gypsy camps "will be systematically evacuated," calling them sources of trafficking, exploitation of children and prostitution.

French Roma representatives were not invited to Wednesday's presidential meeting, which included the interior, justice and immigration ministers and top police officials.

Community leaders contend the very principle of the meeting — which singled out an ethnic group in a country that is officially blind to ethnic origins — is racist and warn of grave consequences if their side isn't heard. France's government does not count how many of its citizens are of a certain ethnicity; everyone is simply considered French.

"Today ... I am afraid we're preparing to open a blighted page in the history of France, which could sadly lead to acts of reprisal in the days ahead," said lawyer Henri Braun said at a Wednesday news conference by French Roma leaders. "There is a huge problem of racism in France towards this population, there is enormous discrimination."

Continue reading "France expels illegal Roma immigrants" »

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The population of Amish is growing in North America, and their search for affordable, fertile farmland is sending them into new areas to accommodate a population currently estimated at 249,000, the Associated Press reports.

A study released Wednesday by Elizabethtown College's Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies shows settlements in 28 states and Ontario. Amish have even been scouting for land recently in Alaska and Mexico.

The number of Amish has increased nearly 10 percent in the past two years alone, and it's more than doubled since 1992.

Nearly all Amish are descended from a group of about 5,000 in the early 20th century.

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To get to church on a recent Sunday morning, the Yeldell family walked no farther than their own living room to greet fellow worshippers.

The members of this "house church" are part of what experts say is a fundamental shift in the way U.S. Christians think about church, Associated Press reporter Linda Stewart Ball writes. Skip the sermons, costly church buildings and large, faceless crowds, the experts say. House church is about relationships forged in small faith communities.

In general, house churches consist of 12 to 15 people who share what's going on in their lives, often turning to Scriptures for guidance. They rely on the Holy Spirit or spontaneity to lead the direction of their weekly gatherings.

"I think part of the appeal for some in the house church movement is the desire to return to a simpler expression of church," said Ed Stetzer, a seminary professor and president of Lifeway Research, which is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention. "For many, church has become too much (like a) business while they just want to live like the Bible."

Continue reading "House church movement gaining momentum" »

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Republican Sharron Angle says her campaign to unseat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in Nevada is "a calling" from God and that her faith is helping her endure a fiercely competitive race in which Democrats have depicted her as a conservative extremist, the Associated Press reports.

"When you have God in your life ... he directs your path," Angle told the Christian Broadcasting Network in an interview posted on its website Wednesday.

Asked why she entered the race, Angle said "the reason is a calling."

"When God calls you he also equips you and He doesn't just say, 'Well today you're going to run against Harry Reid,'" the tea party favorite said.

In the Bible "Moses has his preparatory time. Paul had his preparatory time. Even Jesus had his preparatory time," the former legislator said, citing her years in public office as her preparation for the race.

"God knew all of this in advance," Angle added. "I don't know what's coming up tomorrow but I do know that He is there. He saw it and that He has provided a way of escape and a way for me to endure."

In a wide-ranging interview, Angle said her media appearances are guided by the need to raise money for her campaign and she defended an overhaul of her campaign website in which many of her earlier positions on Social Security and other issues were rewritten, condensed or deleted.

Angle, a Southern Baptist, has called herself a faith-based politician who prays daily. Among her positions, she opposes abortion in all circumstances, including rape and incest.

Continue reading "Reid challenger cites 'calling' from God" »

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The Rev. Robert H. Schuller, founder of Southern California's Crystal Cathedral megachurch and host of the "Hour of Power" televangelism broadcast, announced Sunday he will retire as lead pastor after 55 years in the pulpit and his daughter will take over.

The 83-year-old Schuller told his congregation that Sheila Schuller Coleman will become sole lead pastor, after sharing that role with her father for the past year, the Associated Press reports.

The elder Schuller will not be leaving the church. He'll assume the newly created position of chairman of the church's consistory, which is its board of directors, The Orange County Register reported. And Coleman told the Los Angeles Times that her father will continue to preach "until the day he dies."

Coleman previously served as principal of a private Christian school run by the cathedral and head of the Orange County church's family ministries division.

She was ordained just a month before she was appointed to head up Crystal Cathedral Ministries.

"I'm very proud that Sheila has earned her doctorate at the University of California, Irvine, and that this university has declared her to (have earned) a distinguished alumnus award," Schuller told his congregation during the 9:30 a.m. service. "Congratulations, I'm very proud of her."

Coleman's appointment comes two years after Schuller's son, the Rev. Robert A. Schuller, split from the church during a family rift that made headlines. The younger Schuller had been groomed to take over for his father.

Continue reading "Crystal Cathedral founder Robert Schuller retiring" »

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Where would Jesus drill?

Religious leaders who consider environmental protection a godly mission are making the Gulf of Mexico oil spill a rallying cry, hoping it inspires people of faith to support cleaner energy while changing their personal lives to consume less and contemplate more, Associated Press environmntal writer John Flesher reports.

"This is one of those rare moments when you can really focus people's attention on what's happening to God's creation," said Walt Grazer, head of the National Religious Partnership for the Environment.

Activists in the movement often described as "green religion" or "eco-theology" are using blogs and news conferences to get the word out. Some are visiting the Gulf, inspecting oil-spattered wetlands and praying with idled fishermen and other victims.

And believers in the stricken coastal regions are looking at the consequences of the oil's reach and asking what good can come out of it.

During worship services on a recent Sunday, pastor Eddie Painter of Barataria Baptist Church in the fishing village of Lafitte told his congregation a silver lining in the tragedy might be renewed government commitment to restoring the region's battered coastal marshlands.

"I actually didn't think I would be as deeply affected as I was by seeing oil in the water, the birds with oil stains, the marsh grass that had turned a shiny brown," said the Rev. Jim Ball of the Evangelical Environmental Network, who recently toured Louisiana's Barataria Bay by boat.

Another delegation was scheduled to arrive in New Orleans on Tuesday for an interfaith prayer service and tour. Among the participants are Jim Wallis of the progressive Christian group Sojourners and Rabbi David N. Saperstein of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism. Both have served on President Barack Obama's Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

Continue reading "Religious environmentalists hope spill wins converts" »

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An emotional debate over crucifixes in classrooms is opening a new crack in European unity, the Associated Press reports.

It all started in a small town in northern Italy, where Finnish-born Soile Lautsi was so shocked by the sight of crosses above the blackboard in her children's public school classroom that she called a lawyer to see if she could get them removed.

Her case went all the way to Europe's highest court — and her victory has set up a major confrontation between traditional Catholic and Orthodox countries and nations in the north that observe a strict separation between church and state. Italy and more than a dozen other countries are fighting the European Court of Human Rights ruling, contending the crucifix is a symbol of the continent's historic and cultural roots.

"This is a great battle for the freedom and identity of our Christian values," said Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini.

The court case underlines how religious symbols are becoming a contentious issue in an increasingly multiethnic Europe.

French legislators begin debate next week on a draft law, vigorously championed by President Nicolas Sakorzy, that would forbid women from wearing face-covering Islamic veils anywhere in public.

Continue reading "Crucifixes in classrooms testing European unity" »

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An ideologically split Supreme Court ruled Monday that a law school can legally deny recognition to a Christian student group that won't let gays join, with one justice saying that the First Amendment does not require a public university to validate or support the group's "discriminatory practices," the Associated Press reports.

The court turned away an appeal from the Christian Legal Society, which sued to get funding and recognition from the University of California's Hastings College of the Law. The CLS requires that voting members sign a statement of faith and regards "unrepentant participation in or advocacy of a sexually immoral lifestyle" as being inconsistent with that faith.

But Hastings, which is in San Francisco, said no recognized campus groups may exclude people due to religious belief or sexual orientation.

The court on a 5-4 judgment upheld the lower court rulings saying the Christian group's First Amendment rights of association, free speech and free exercise were not violated by the college's nondiscrimination policy.

"In requiring CLS — in common with all other student organizations — to choose between welcoming all students and forgoing the benefits of official recognition, we hold, Hastings did not transgress constitutional limitations," said Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who wrote the 5-4 majority opinion for the court's liberals and moderate Anthony Kennedy. "CLS, it bears emphasis, seeks not parity with other organizations, but a preferential exemption from Hastings' policy."

Justice Samuel Alito wrote a strong dissent for the court's conservatives, saying the opinion was "a serious setback for freedom of expression in this country."

Continue reading "Court: School can deny $$$ to group that bars gays" »

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Dan Jackson was elected president of the North American Division of Seventh-day Adventists Monday at the General Conference Session in Atlanta. The 16.3 million-member church is headquartered in Silver Spring.

The 61-year-old Jackson, currently president of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Canada, was appointed by the church’s 246-member nominating committee and confirmed by the General Conference Session delegation, an international body of 2,410 appointed members and the highest governing body in the church.

“God never calls us to do things we are capable of, and this thing is so much bigger than me. But He has called, and I accept this with the greatest humility and with extreme gratitude to Don Schneider,” Jackson said in a statement.

Jackson succeeds Schneider, who has served as president since 2000.

“Elder Jackson is a wonderful Christian whose leadership has demonstrated a commitment to the mission of the Seventh-day Adventist Church," Schneider said.

Continue reading "Seventh-day Adventists elect new president" »

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The following was written by J. Samia Mair, Sister Eileen Eppig, and Ted Chaskelson on behalf of the Muslim-Christian-Jewish Dialogue Group of Baltimore.

In the fall of 2007, Muslims and Christians from the Baltimore area established an interfaith group to learn more about each other’s religion and to promote understanding and peace on a wider scale. Later realizing that the discussion would benefit tremendously with the addition of the Jewish perspective, members of the Jewish community were invited to join.

Our participation in this dialogue has resulted in increasing appreciation of one another and our respective religious traditions; in praying for and otherwise supporting one another, and in raising our awareness of events that we might not have otherwise noticed.

Sadly, it is senseless killings that are the events that come -- more and more -- to the notice of the entire world. All three of our member religions are aware that a responsibility rests on all of them. None can say that such killings are problems for other religions, but not for us. The burden of responsibility rests on Jews, Christians and Muslims, to do what we can to end such killings. For this reason we have submitted a Jewish, Christian and Muslim perspective showing that all three religions call for an end to this violence.

Continue reading "Guest post: Interfaith perspectives on violence" »

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A Baptist minister who toured the country to talk about his conversion from Islam to Christianity is no longer the dean of Liberty University's theological seminary following allegations he fabricated or embellished facts about his past, the Associated Press reports.

The university founded by Rev. Jerry Falwell said that a board of trustees committee concluded Ergun Caner made contradictory statements. Although it didn't find evidence that he was not a Muslim who converted as a teenager, it did discover problems with dates, names and places he says he lived, a statement said.

Caner will remain on the Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary faculty, but won't be dean when his term expires on June 30.

"Caner has cooperated with the board committee and has apologized for the discrepancies and misstatements that led to this review," the school said.

Continue reading "Convert loses deanship at Falwell's university" »

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For every hurricane, earthquake or flood, there is help: food, bottled water, crews of volunteers nailing shingles to brand new roofs.

What even grateful recipients of that aid might not realize, the Associated Press reports, is that much of it comes from an unlikely hodgepodge of religious groups who put aside their doctrinal differences and coordinate their efforts as soon as the wind starts blowing.

Southern Baptists cook meals from Texas to Massachusetts. Seventh-day Adventists dispense aid from makeshift warehouses that can be running within eight hours. Mennonites haul away debris, Buddhists provide financial aid and chaplains with the Billy Graham Rapid Response Team counsel the traumatized and grieving.

This "juice and cookies fellowship," as one organizer calls it, is mostly invisible to the public, but it provides interfaith infrastructure for disaster response around the country that state and federal officials could scarcely live without.

"Think of us as the United Nations of disaster relief," said Diana Rothe-Smith, executive director of National Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster, the main umbrella group for coordinating emergency response from private agencies.

Continue reading "The 'United Nations of disaster relief'" »

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A New Hampshire sex offender is asking the state's highest court to allow him to go to church with a chaperone, the Associated Press reports.

The case of 35-year-old Jonathan Perfetto of Manchester marks the first time the New Hampshire Supreme Court is being asked to rule on whether a probation condition that effectively bars church attendance violates a person's constitutional rights to religious freedom.

Perfetto was convicted in 2002 of possessing child pornography. A condition of his probation is that he have no contact with children. A lower court denied Perfetto's request to attend Jehovah's Witnesses services with a church elder acting as a chaperone.

The New Hampshire Civil Liberties Union and Perfetto maintain the chaperone would eliminate any risk to children. The state says public safety trumps Perfetto's religious rights.

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An anti-abortion protester arrested in 2007 had a First Amendment right to demonstrate on a sidewalk near the entrance the building that houses the Liberty Bell, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.

The decision overturns lower-court rulings that upheld the arrest of Christian evangelical leader Michael Marcavage, the Associated Press reports. Marcavage, who lives in suburban Lansdowne, had been sentenced to a year's probation for refusing a National Park Service order to move to a nearby designated demonstration area.

The appeals court tossed the two charges on free-speech and procedural grounds. The three-judge panel said Marcavage caused no more of a disturbance than other people near the Liberty Bell entrance, including a cancer-survivors group and the drivers of horse-drawn carriages hawking their services.

Marcavage founded a group, Repent America, that opposes abortion, homosexuality and the teaching of evolution.

He has been arrested repeatedly during protests up and down the East Coast. He successfully challenged a 2004 arrest for picketing at a Philadelphia street festival for gays and lesbians, but a Massachusetts court last year upheld a disorderly conduct conviction based on his refusal to stop using a megaphone at Salem's famed Halloween celebration.

Continue reading "Court tosses arrest of Liberty Bell protester" »

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Categories: Abortion, Christianity, Church and State, Evangelicalsm, Law and Courts, Politics
        

Hundreds of sightseers drawn to the remains of a six-story-tall statue of Jesus Christ that was struck by lightning and erupted into flames stopped Tuesday to snap pictures or gaze at the ruined structure, the Associated Press reports.

The "King of Kings" statue, one of southwest Ohio's most familiar landmarks, had stood since 2004 at the evangelical Solid Rock Church along Interstate 75 in Monroe, just north of Cincinnati.

The lightning strike set the statue ablaze around 11:15 p.m. Monday, Monroe police dispatchers said.

The sculpture, about 62 feet tall and 40 feet wide at the base, showed Jesus from the torso up and was nicknamed Touchdown Jesus because of the way the arms were raised, similar to a referee signaling a touchdown. It was made of plastic foam and fiberglass over a steel frame, which is all that remained Tuesday.

Church officials said they didn't know exactly what prompted the nickname commonly used by people in the area. The nickname is the same used for a famous mural of the resurrected Jesus that overlooks the Notre Dame football stadium.

Continue reading "Six-story statue of Jesus struck by lightning" »

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A federal appeals court has decided not to immediately hear the case of a Connecticut school district that wants to hold high school graduations inside a megachurch, the Associated Press reports.

In denying the town of Enfield's request Monday, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals noted that the school board had already decided to hold the 2010 graduations on school grounds even if the appeal succeeded.

The town wanted the court to overturn a temporary injunction issued by U.S. District Court Judge Janet Hall. The judge found that holding the June 23 and 24 graduations at the 3,000-seat First Cathedral Baptist Church would amount to an unconstitutional government endorsement of religion.

Hall is expected to hear the full lawsuit before next year's graduation plans are set.

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A Connecticut school board has voted to appeal a federal court ruling that would keep the town's two high school graduation ceremonies out of a megachurch, the Associated Press reports.

Tuesday night's 5-4 vote by Enfield's Board of Education reverses a board decision last week to let stand the temporary injunction issued by U.S. District Court Judge Janet Hall.

Hall found that holding the June 23 and 24 graduations at First Cathedral Baptist Church in Bloomfield would amount to an unconstitutional government endorsement of religion.

Attorney Vincent McCarthy, who's representing the school district, plans to file with the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

American Civil Liberties Union attorney David McGuire says he's disappointed by the decision but believes the injunction will be upheld.

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Afghans have burned an effigy of Pope Benedict XVI out of anger over claims charities preached Christianity in the Muslim country, the Associated Press reports.

U.S.-based Church World Service and Norwegian Church Aid deny spreading Christianity. The government suspended them last week while investigating allegations in an Afghan television report.

More than 1,000 people marched Tuesday in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif, demanding organizations that proselytized in Afghanistan be banned.

The crowd roared approval as protesters doused the effigy of the pope in kerosene and lit it.

They shouted: "Death to America! Long Live Islam!"

Aid workers say the allegations increase the threat to staff already at risk for insurgent attack.

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"Repentant drug dealers and gang members streamed into Allan Tibbels' home Thursday without knocking. Children who once went hungry dove into food spread on the kitchen table. Community leaders from Baltimore's Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood and elsewhere sat together, swapping stories of inspiration.

"The scene, said Susan Tibbels, reflected nothing less than her husband's lifelong dream."

So begins the wonderful story in Friday's Baltimore Sun story on the life of Allan Tibbels, the Sandtown fixture whom Sun colleagues Jacques Kelly and Erica Green describe as "a pious man who expressed his convictions through hammers and nails and drywall."

Tibbells died early Thursday. The story continues:

For nearly 21 years, Mr. Tibbels was the force behind Sandtown Habitat for Humanity, an organization that built and renovated nearly 300 homes in one of the city's most blighted areas.

"He was an inspiring moral example," said Michael Sarbanes, the former head of the Citizens Planning and Housing Association and a top official in the city school system.

Many of the stories friends shared about Mr. Tibbels started with the curiosity about a white man in a wheelchair moving his family into a impoverished black neighborhood. All ended with a way that he had changed their life.

"Everything was always about Sandtown," said LaVerne Stokes, a co-executive director of the Habitat program and an owner of one of the rebuilt homes. "Even on his deathbed, he was still talking about the community. Our community knows that if anybody loved them, he did."

Read the rest of the story at baltimoresun.com.

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A coalition of religious and conservative leaders is trying to stop a proposed Comedy Central cartoon that puts Jesus Christ in a modern-day context — before it even gets started, the Associated Press reports.

The newly formed Citizens Against Religious Bigotry said Thursday that it believes the "JC" series would be offensive. They accuse Comedy Central of a double standard in mocking Christian figures and beliefs while recently refusing to let "South Park" depict the Prophet Muhammad for fear of offending Muslims.

"You don't have to be a Christian to be offended by this," said Brent Bozell, head of the watchdog Media Research Center.

Comedy Central said last month that "JC" is one of two dozen series it has in development. The concept is to depict Christ as a "regular guy" who moves to New York to "escape his father's enormous shadow."

Network spokesman Tony Fox noted that "JC" is nothing more than an idea now, without even a completed script. In television, only a minority of projects in development ever make it on the air.

Fox said the groups should save their energy for when a decision is made about whether the series will ever be completed.

Continue reading "Conservatives trying to stop Comedy Central series" »

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A Pentecostal bishop who heads a church in Catonsville has been arrested and charged with sexually assaulting one of his parishioners, Baltimore Sun colleague Nick Madigan reports.

Roan Samuel Faulkner Sr., 62, was taken into custody Wednesday and charged with second-degree sex offense, attempted second-degree rape, perverted practice and fourth-degree sex offense.

Faulkner is being held at the Baltimore County Detention Center in lieu of $300,000 bail. He is scheduled for a bail review hearing Thursday.

The incident Roan is accused of occurred at the victim's office on Baltimore National Pike, a statement from the police said. The accuser is a 43-year-old woman who attends Roan's church. Police have expressed concern that there may be other victims "because of Faulkner's position with New Life Pentecostal Ministries," in the 200 block of Melvin Ave.

Police say the victim contacted the department on May 29 to report an assault and told them the incident occurred Feb. 21. The woman, who has attended New Life Pentecostal Ministries for several years, told police she had been having some family difficulties and that Faulkner met with her in her office to "spiritually advise her," the police statement says.

Continue reading "Catonsville bishop charged with sexual assault" »

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Former megachurch pastor Ted Haggard, who fell from grace amid a sex scandal, is starting a new church in Colorado Springs, the Associated Press reports.

Haggard made the announcement Wednesday during a news conference at his home.

Incorporation papers for a new church were filed three weeks ago, he said. Haggard previously indicated that he and his wife incorporated the church for accounting purposes but predicted they would return to some type of ministry one day.

Haggard resigned as senior pastor of the 14,000-member New Life Church after a male prostitute alleged Haggard paid him for sex over three years.

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Farmers sold pigs to help raise money to build the towering cross on southern Illinois' highest point as a year-round testament to faith. The 11-story monument draws thousands of visitors each year, and supporters say it has promoted self-growth and reflection for nearly half a century.

But over the years, the Associated Press reports, the once-glistening structure about 130 miles southeast of St. Louis began to show its age. The 650 or so white porcelain panels that cover the concrete and steel frame rusted or fell off. Some remained attached with only coat hangers and bailing wire.

A group cobbled together $360,000 of the $550,000 needed to restore the Bald Knob Cross of Peace, including a $20,000 grant from the state of Illinois. Now, AP writer Jim Surh reports, a Chicago-area atheist who objects to the grant as a bit of unconstitutional pork has threatened to sue if the group doesn't return the money to the state.

Pitching the project as the renovation of a major tourist attraction "is a nice cover story," Rob Sherman said in a telephone interview Wednesday. But the retired Chicago-area radio talk show host who successfully fought Illinois' "moment of silence" in public schools said he thinks it would be more appropriate to use the money for such public interests as schools and roads. If it isn't returned, he promised "a long and expensive" lawsuit.

That didn't deter the Friends of Bald Knob Cross. The money was used long ago as a down payment on the renovation of the monument near Alto Pass, Ill., said Bill Vandergraph, a minister and Friends board member.

"We're not shaken in any way," Vandergraph said Thursday. "We're trying to stay low-profile, and that's not out of fear. We're absolutely not intimidated."

Continue reading "11-story cross draws tourists, lawsuit threat" »

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A federal judge on Monday ruled that Enfield High School and Enrico Fermi High School will not be able to hold their graduations at First Cathedral, culminating a months-long debate over whether it is unconstitutional to host students' ceremonies at the megachurch, Baltimore Sun sister paper (and this blogger's first employer) The Hartford Courant reports.

The Enfield school system plans to appeal the judge's decision, Courant reporter Jenna Carlesso writes. Her report continues:

U.S. District Court Judge Janet Hall last week heard closing arguments in a legal challenge that five Enfield residents — two high school seniors and three parents — filed to block the town from renting the 3,000-seat Christian church in nearby Bloomfield. The graduations are scheduled for June 23 and 24.

In her ruling Monday, Hall wrote that the school system's decision to hold graduations at First Cathedral violates the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

"By choosing to hold graduations at First Cathedral, Enfield schools sends the message that it is closely linked with First Cathedral and its religious mission, that it favors the religious over the irreligious and that it prefers Christians over those that subscribe to other faiths, or no faith at all," Hall wrote. "In addition to the character of the forum, the history and context of the decision to hold the graduations at First Cathedral also support the conclusion that, in doing so, Enfield Public Schools has endorsed religion."

Continue reading "Judge blocks public school graduation in church" »

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Although this year's homicide totals continue to be on a slower pace a year ago, Earl El-Amin said he and his faith-based brethren have grown tired of the violence, Baltimore Sun colleague Brent Jones reports.

"We're called to be keepers of peace," said El-Amin, of the Muslim's Community Central of Baltimore and a member of Baltimore's Interfaith Coalition. "That is essentially our mission. When you study history, all the great sages that came, they came to establish peace in environments that were out of sync."

El-Amin and about 50 other religious leaders, along with representatives from the city state's attorney office, announced an anti-violence initiative Thursday that will use money collected from religious services to fund activities for children.

Organizers of the program, called "Fifth Sunday: Violence to Virtue," are asking the more than 1,200 churches, mosques and synagogues in Baltimore to take up an offering every fifth weekend and donate the money to a local nonprofit, which in turn would disburse the funds to individuals or organizations that work with kids.

It is the first major program under the newly organized Baltimore Interfaith Coalition, which formed last spring after several religious leaders met with police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III, who called upon the faith-based community to help curb violence.

"We've challenged ourselves to break down barriers among ourselves and work for the greater good of the people in Baltimore," said BIC co-chairman Bishop Douglas I. Miles, pastor of Koinonia Baptist Church in Northeast Baltimore. "This is a means of funding small operations that may not have [nonprofit] status but are doing great things in our community — like people who work with marching bands, people who do mentoring on the weekends — something so they have means of getting funding to help advance their work."

Read the rest of the story at baltimoresun.com.

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A U.S. missionary should spend six months in prison for her failed attempt to remove 33 children from Haiti following the Jan. 12 earthquake, a prosecutor said Thursday on the first day of her trial, the Associated Press reports.

Prosecutor Sonel Jean-Francois told the court that Laura Silsby knew she was breaking the law by trying to take the children without proper documents to an orphanage she was starting in the neighboring Dominican Republic.

"Laura recognized she violated the law," Jean-Francois said as lawyers and a small group of spectators crowded into a a stiflingly hot tent in the parking lot of the quake-damaged courthouse.

He spoke after the Idaho woman testified. Silsby, who was leader of a group of Baptists detained by authorities, was the only person to testify on the first day of the trial. She spent much of the rest of the session reading the Bible.

The 40-year-old businesswoman told the court she thought the children were orphans whose homes were destroyed in the earthquake. An Associated Press investigation later revealed all the children had at least one living parent, who had turned their children over to the group in hopes of securing better lives for them.

Continue reading "Haitian prosecutor: U.S. missionary deserves jail" »

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Having already caused a fuss this spring with the depiction of the prophet Muhammad on "South Park," Comedy Central said Thursday that it has a cartoon series about Jesus Christ in the works, the Associated Press reports.

"JC" is one of 23 potential series the network said it has in development. It depicts Christ as a "regular guy" who moves to New York to "escape his father's enormous shadow."

His father is presented as an apathetic man who would rather play video games than listen to his son talk about his new life, according to Comedy Central's thumbnail sketch of the idea. Reveille, the production company behind "The Office," "Ugly Betty" and "The Biggest Loser," is making "JC."

It wouldn't be the first time Jesus Christ has been on a Comedy Central cartoon; he's a recurring character on the long-running "South Park."

Comedy Central was the target last month of an Internet threat for a "South Park" episode that supposedly showed Islam's prophet in a bear costume.

Whenever "South Park" features Muhammad in an episode, Comedy Central obscures the character with a black box; Muslims consider any physical representation of their prophet to be blasphemous. Following the Internet threat, Comedy Central angered "South Park" producers by editing out a character's speech about intimidation in a subsequent episode.

Continue reading "Comedy Central planning cartoon about Jesus" »

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Pastor Marcus Johnson of New Harvest Ministries stood outside Baltimore's City Hall on Friday and asked a crowd of about 100 to pray aloud and unrestrained.

A federal judge's ruling last month that the law that directs the president to proclaim a National Day of Prayer is unconstitutional did not diminish the enthusiasm of the faithful, who held Bibles, waved American flags and raised their hands to the heavens, Baltimore Sun colleague Mary Gail Hare reports.

"I have been called to pray," Johnson said. "If I am standing in line at the supermarket or the bank, I can pray. Prayer is who I am and what I do. It is my Christian duty. It is not just for Sundays within the walls of a church."

Similar gatherings were scheduled at government buildings around the nation, including those on the grounds of the Virginia state Capitol and on the lawn outside City Hall in Coral Springs, Fla.

In Annapolis, an evening prayer service with the theme "becoming better stewards" was set for Lawyer's Mall.

U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb of Wisconsin ruled last month the day violates the First Amendment's establishment clause, which prohibits Congress from creating a "law respecting an establishment of religion."

She said the government should not use its influence to decide when people should pray. The ruling does not cancel the National Day of Prayer until appeals are exhausted, she wrote.

Read the story at baltimoresun.com.

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A federal judge in Wisconsin ruled last month that the law that directs the president to proclaim a National Day of Prayer in unconstitutional, and for the second year, President Barack Obama has declined to host an event marking the day, as President George W. Bush and others did.

Still, U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb stayed her ruling, pending appeals, including one by the Obama administration. And last week, the president issued a proclamation marking the day:

THE WHITE HOUSE

NATIONAL DAY OF PRAYER, 2010

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

A PROCLAMATION

Throughout our history, whether in times of great joy and thanksgiving, or in times of great challenge and uncertainty, Americans have turned to prayer. In prayer, we have expressed gratitude and humility, sought guidance and forgiveness, and received inspiration and assistance, both in good times and in bad.

On this day, let us give thanks for the many blessings God has bestowed upon our Nation. Let us rejoice for the blessing of freedom both to believe and to live our beliefs, and for the many other freedoms and opportunities that bring us together as one Nation. Let us ask for wisdom, compassion, and discernment of justice as we address the great challenges of our time.

We are blessed to live in a Nation that counts freedom of conscience and free exercise of religion among its most fundamental principles, thereby ensuring that all people of goodwill may hold and practice their beliefs according to the dictates of their consciences. Prayer has been a sustaining way for many Americans of diverse faiths to express their most cherished beliefs, and thus we have long deemed it fitting and proper to publicly recognize the importance of prayer on this day across the Nation.

Let us remember in our thoughts and prayers those suffering from natural disasters in Haiti, Chile, and elsewhere, and the people from those countries and from around the world who have worked tirelessly and selflessly to render aid. Let us pray for the families of the West Virginia miners, and the people of Poland who so recently and unexpectedly lost many of their beloved leaders. Let us pray for the safety and success of those who have left home to serve in our Armed Forces, putting their lives at risk in order to make the world a safer place. As we remember them, let us not forget their families and the substantial sacrifices that they make every day. Let us remember the unsung heroes who struggle to build their communities, raise their families, and help their neighbors, for they are the wellspring of our greatness. Finally, let us remember in our thoughts and prayers those people everywhere who join us in the aspiration for a world that is just, peaceful, free, and respectful of the dignity of every human being.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim May 6, 2010, as a National Day of Prayer. I call upon the citizens of our Nation to pray, or otherwise give thanks, in accordance with their own faiths and consciences, for our many freedoms and blessings, and I invite all people of faith to join me in asking for God’s continued guidance, grace, and protection as we meet the challenges before us.

Today

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this thirtieth day of April, in the year of our Lord two thousand ten, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-fourth.

BARACK OBAMA

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The Rev. Jason Poling is Pastor of New Hope Community Church in Pikesville.

If memory serves, Oriole Park and the Light Rail opened the same year. Every morning that summer of ‘92 I took it from Lutherville to catch the MARC train down to my summer internship in D.C. When work or socializing (OK, usually socializing) put me on the night’s last train back to Baltimore, I often trudged up the hill to the Mount Royal stop only to find myself having to squeeze into a train full of suburbanites going home from that night’s game.

Times have changed.

Yesterday I pulled into the parking lot at the Falls Road stop and was afraid I had the wrong day printed on my ticket. Not an hour before game time, I hopped onto a half-empty train that still had open seats by the time we got to the ballpark. After the game, I pushed my way through a throng of despondent Red Sox fans waiting for the southbound train to take them to their airport hotels, and hopped onto the northbound train just as it was pulling out. Again, half-empty. Which was a relief, since a 10-inning game on a sweltering day makes for ripe-smelling fans you really don’t want standing next to you holding the overhead bar.

But, boy, was it depressing.

That first summer my friends and I would get to the ballpark 2 hours early to score standing-room tickets, and we were glad to have them. Camden Yards was the hottest ticket in town, and even after the novelty of a new ballpark wore off they were still packing them in during the last years of the Ripken era. Now, less than a month into what will likely be the O’s 13th losing season in a row, an overwhelming number of those officially in attendance are disguised convincingly as empty seats.

At a fundraiser this weekend I spoke with a local media personality whose career in Baltimore stretches back decades. He told me he was done. He’d still support the team and get down to the Yard once in a while, but he just couldn’t muster the emotional energy to care about the O’s any more. Not long after Cal Ripken retired I asked a guy who’s well connected at the highest levels of Major League Baseball what he thought of the prospects for turning the team around. He just shook his head and said, “There’s no vision, and as long as that’s true of the club’s leadership the Orioles will be a losing team.”

That was eight years ago.

But this post really isn’t about the Orioles. (This is, after all, the religion blog.) Tufts University recently did a study on clergy who have lost their faith but remain in the pulpit. The miniscule sample size and the strong anti-religion bias of study author Daniel Dennett should give pause to anyone looking to extrapolate too much from what the researchers conclude. Surely there are clergy whose doubts have led them to conclude that they cannot stand by the convictions of their faith tradition even as their mortgage statements have led them to conclude that they can’t afford to just walk away.

Continue reading "Jason Poling: The Oriole Way (church edition)" »

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Categories: Christianity, Culture, Evangelicalsm, Jason Poling, People
        

John L. Rabb, bishop suffragan of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland for 12 years, is planning to step down on Jan. 1.

“I am responding to what God is calling me to in a new season of ministry," Rabb, the second highest ranking Episcopal official in Maryland, told clergy and lay members of the diocese Friday morning at the opening of their 226th convention.

"I will be doing a combination of teaching, continued work in ministry development, preaching in a different venue, my Franciscan studies and writing," Rabb said. "I love the Diocese of Maryland, all of you, each congregation and everything we have done. I have felt loved by this diocese, far more than I would have imagined. So my very good friends, it is with love that I say thank you.”

As bishop suffrgan of Maryland, Rabb oversees the ordination process, clergy deployment, deacon formation and deployment and Christian formation, according to the diocese. He shares visitations and confirmations with Eugene Taylor Sutton, the bishop of Maryland.

Rabb served as bishop-in-charge of the diocese between the retirement of Bishop Robert Ihloff in 2007 and the consecration of Sutton in 2008.

Under the canons and constitutions of the Episcopal Church and the Diocese of Maryland, Rabb is will submit his resignation to the Presiding Bishop and the House of Bishops in the fall of 2010. As of January 1, 2011, Bishop Rabb will have been ordained a priest 34 years.

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The Rev. Jason Poling is pastor of New Hope Community Church in Pikesville.

When the 2005 publication of the Mohammed cartoons in a Dutch newspaper made headlines, I felt torn. As a libertarian, I wouldn’t want to say it should be illegal to publish such cartoons. But as someone who tries to be sensitive to the religious views of others, I would also not want to publish them in order to avoid giving offense. Perhaps it’s cowardice for me to want a world where they can be published but where I don’t publish them.

The same angst returned for me when South Park’s portrayal of Mohammed in their 200th episode was censored by Comedy Central. A pornographic from the Bible, of all things, has resolved the tension for me.

A few years back I preached through the book of Ezekiel. For those unfamiliar with it, it’s one of the longer prophetic books in the Bible; it’s also one of the most outrageous. Not once but twice (in chapters 16 and 23, if you’re interested) God describes the unfaithfulness of his people with language that would make a sailor blush. Naturally, I was pretty fired up to preach these passages.

When I got to chapter 16, I was five minutes into my sermon when a family with young kids slipped into the back of the church and sat down without hearing the warning during our announcements that the sermon would be dealing with some R-rated material. Rapidly downshifting from R to PG, I still managed to get my point across. (But I never saw them again.) When I came to chapter 23, I gave strict instructions to the ushers not to let that happen again. I also made sure that folks were aware that the sermon that day would deal with some mature subject matter, providing warnings in our bulletin, in the announcements, and at the beginning of my sermon.

The sermon was not well received by everyone. One visitor contacted the senior pastor of the church that planted us to express her disapproval, and wrote a long letter excoriating me for…well, preaching the text that I had in front of me. She said she would not be returning to New Hope until we changed our ways. I had the good manners not to ask if that was a promise or a threat.

You won’t find these passages preached in most churches; most aren’t willing to go into that kind of territory, even when the Bible does. At New Hope, we believe that having a high view of Scripture means that we treat all of it as inspired — the red letters, the black letters, and the purple prose, too. And I must say that I feel no responsibility whatsoever for the offense our visitors took that day: They were made aware of what was coming three different ways. They were warned that they were about to be exposed to offensive material, so they really couldn’t complain when it happened as promised. Even if the [WARNING: Gratuitous male nudity ahead] Pompeiian fresco of Priapus was projected on the front wall of the sanctuary. Which it was.

Continue reading "Jason Poling: You bastards!" »

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The Army is considering whether to rescind an invitation to evangelist Franklin Graham to appear at the Pentagon amid complaints about his description of Islam as evil, the Associated Press reports.

Graham, the son of famed evangelist Billy Graham, was to appear at the Pentagon on May 6 — the National Day of Prayer.

He said he will be a guest of the Pentagon and would speak only if he's still invited.

Army Col. Tom Collins said withdrawing the invitation "is on the table," but no decision has been made. He said Army brass will have the ultimate decision on whether to pull the invite.

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation raised the objection to the appearance, citing Graham's past remarks about Islam.

Mikey Weinstein, president of the foundation, said the invitation offended Muslim employees at the Pentagon. He said it would endanger American troops by stirring up Muslim extremists.

Continue reading "Army considering rescinding Graham invitation" »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 7:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (20)
        

A watchdog group objected Tuesday to an evangelist's invitation to speak at the Pentagon next month, saying his past description of Islam as "evil" offended Muslims who work for the Department of Defense and the appearance should be canceled, the Associated Press reports.

Mikey Weinstein, president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, said inviting evangelist Franklin Graham to speak May 6, the National Day of Prayer, "would be like bringing someone in on national prayer day madly denigrating Christianity" or other religious groups.

It would also endanger American troops by stirring up Muslim extremists, Weinstein said.

Graham is the son of famed evangelist Billy Graham and president and CEO of both Samaritan's Purse, a Christian international relief organization in Boone, N.C., and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, in Charlotte, N.C.

He said through a spokesman that he will be a guest of the Pentagon and will speak only if he's still invited. A military spokeswoman said she was locating officials to respond to the criticism.

After the 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, Graham said Islam "is a very evil and wicked religion." In a later op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal, Graham wrote that he did not believe Muslims were evil because of their faith, but "as a minister .... I believe it is my responsibility to speak out against the terrible deeds that are committed as a result of Islamic teaching."

Graham hasn't changed his views on Islam, said his spokesman, Mark DeMoss.

DeMoss quoted Graham as saying, "As the father of a son serving in his fourth combat tour, I'd be glad to know someone was leading a prayer service at the National Day of Prayer, or any other day."

Continue reading "Objection to Graham appearance at Pentagon" »

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The Rev. Jason Poling is pastor of New Hope Community Church in Pikesville.

On Monday morning the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, a case that has the potential to set tremendously important precedents for the exercise of First Amendment rights. Or for the protection of people from discriminatory treatment. It depends how you see it.

In a nutshell, the situation is this: A Christian student group at Hastings, a law school in the University of California system, was denied recognition because it requires that members sign a statement of faith and abstain from "unrepentant participation in or advocacy of a sexually immoral lifestyle." Without recognition, the group was treated like any other non-campus group: No preferential scheduling of meeting spaces, no access to campus-wide email, no access to student organization bulletin boards, no (modest) allocation for expenses.

So, they sued. (Remember, these are law students. Really, what better way to make use of an expensive education than a test case that would ultimately go to the Supreme Court?) The students claimed the school was infringing on their right to free association (and exercise of religion); the school claimed the students could only constitute as a student group if it followed the school's non-discrimination policy, which the organization's by-laws transgressed.

It's a difficult choice: Should a publicly funded institution provide support to an organization that operates against its principles? Should an organization be required to compromise its principles in order to function as a recognized student group? Do we really want to live in a world where the Folk Music Society can’t kick out its treasurer for being photographed in the front row at a Black-Eyed Peas concert?

Continue reading "Jason Poling: Free to believe, you but not me?" »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (15)
Categories: Christianity, Church and State, Guest Posts, Jason Poling, Law and Courts
        

President Barack Obama received an enthusiastic welcome Sunday at the Allen Chapel A.M.E. Church in Southeast Washington, where he attended an Easter service with his wife and their daughters, The Washington Post reports.

"This is a monumental moment for us as a community," Pastor Michael E. Bell Sr. said during the service, the Post reports. He called Obama “the most intelligent, most anointed, most charismatic president this country has ever seen," and then looked at him and said: "God has his hands all over you."

Post reporters Eli Saslow and Hamil Harris described the scene:

The president clapped and stomped his foot to the beat. Michelle Obama, wearing a scooped-back beige dress, danced next to him. When the song finished, a woman from the choir grabbed the microphone and pointed to the Obama family, telling them that Allen's congregation liked to get up and move during the service.

"If you came in here to sit and be still, I'm sorry. Move down the street," said one associate minister, drawing a loud cheer. "Excuse me, first family, but we like to get crazy up in here. You might see shoes flying, hair flying. But we are praising the Lord."

It was the kind of spirited service Obama attended for years as a member of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, and he did his best to blend into the crowd. He read along during the hymns, nodded his head repeatedly during the sermon and spent a few minutes bouncing the pastor's grandchild on his lap.

During one song, Obama nudged his older daughter, Malia, and tried to persuade her to dance. "Come on," he said. Then he swayed his shoulders and clapped his hands with exaggerated enthusiasm until Malia started to laugh.

Read the story at washingtonpost.com.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 1:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (29)
        

The Associated Press has moved an evocative Good Friday dispatch from Jerusalem:

The cobblestone alleyways of Jerusalem's Old City became moving forests of wooden crosses as Christian pilgrims and clergymen commemorated the day of Jesus' crucifixion, Good Friday.

Black-robed nuns filed past metal barriers erected by police as dozens of tourists in matching red baseball hats held up digital cameras. Some pilgrims carried elaborately carved crucifixes, while others had crude crosses made of two planks held together with tape.

Good Friday rituals center on the ancient Church of the Holy Sepulcher, where Christian tradition says Jesus was crucified and buried before his resurrection on Easter Sunday.

While Catholics and Orthodox Christians follow different calendars, this year their Easters coincide and the churches are commemorating Good Friday together.

Watching as hundreds pressed through the narrow Jerusalem street called the Via Dolorosa — the "Way of Suffering," tracing Jesus' final steps — was Katy Fitzpatrick, 24, of Spokane, Washington. She said the event was both "exciting" and "a little overwhelming."

"It's a little intimidating, and the riot gear is a little intimidating too," she said of the heavy presence of green-clad Israeli police deployed to keep the peace.

Continue reading "Christians converge on Jerusalem for Good Friday" »

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Police in Guyana are investigating the death of a 15-year-old girl after neighbors and a local pastor tried to treat her convulsions with an exorcism at a church, the Associated Press reports.

Sangeeta Persaud began to convulse Sunday as she drank tea for breakfast at her grandmother's home in Canal Number Two, a farming village west of the capital, Georgetown, the grandmother told the AP.

Chaitranie Ramotar said she became worried and called the girl's mother, who brought the pastor to the house.

"I experienced the same thing at age 12," Nankumarie Jaikissoon, the teen's mother, told the AP. "That is why I did not rush her to the hospital. My heart did not tell me to rush her to the hospital."

The pastor, Ewart Cummings, said he decided to take the girl to his small, concrete church, where he and several elders spent five hours praying for her as they pressed on her stomach and head. They also made her drink an anointing oil, he told the AP.

At times, the teen would bark and make other strange noises, Cummings said.

"I did nothing wrong," he said. "I just responded as pastor of the church. ... Ungodly people would not understand certain things like driving out spirits."

Continue reading "Police probe death of teen after exorcism" »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 8:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)
        

An anti-abortion zealot who murdered one of the few U.S. doctors who performed late-term abortions was sentenced Thursday to life in prison and won't be eligible for parole for 50 years — the maximum allowed by law — the Associated Press reports.

Scott Roeder, 52, faced a mandatory life prison term for gunning down Dr. George Tiller in the back of Tiller's Wichita church last May.

Sedgwick County District Judge Warren Wilbert could have made the Roeder eligible for parole after 25 or 50 years, but gave him the harsher sentence because he said the evidence showed Roeder stalked Tiller before killing him.

Wilbert also sentenced Roeder to serve an additional year in prison on each of two counts of aggravated assault for threatening two church ushers in the melee. Allowing for possible time off those sentences for good behavior, Roeder won't be eligible for parole for 51 years and eight months.

Roeder testified during his trial that he killed Tiller to save unborn children.

In a rambling statement in court Thursday, Roeder blamed Tiller's death primarily on the state for not outlawing abortion.

"I stopped him so he could not dismember another innocent baby," Roeder said. "Wichita is a far safer place for unborn babies without George Tiller."

Continue reading "Abortion doctor's killer gets life in prison" »

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Nine suspects tied to a Christian militia that was preparing for the Antichrist were charged with conspiring to kill police officers, then attack a funeral using homemade bombs in the hopes of killing more law enforcement personnel, the Associated Press reports.

The Michigan-based group, called Hutaree, planned to use the attack on police as a catalyst for a larger uprising against the government, according to newly unsealed court papers. U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade said agents moved on the group because its members were planning a violent mission sometime in April.

Members of the group, including its leader, David Brian Stone, also known as "Captain Hutaree," were charged following FBI raids over the weekend on locations in Michigan, Ohio and Indiana. Seven people were arraigned in Detroit on Monday, and another one of Stone's sons, Joshua, is being sought.

Stone's ex-wife, Donna Stone, told The Associated Press before the arraignments that her former husband was to blame for pulling her son into the movement. She said David Brian Stone legally adopted her son, David Brian Stone Jr., who is among those indicted.

"It started out as a Christian thing," said Donna Stone, 44. "You go to church. You pray. You take care of your family. I think David started to take it a little too far."

Continue reading "Feds: Christian militia conspired to kill police" »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 3:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

President Barack Obama plans to mark the start of Passover with a private Seder in the executive mansion, the Associated Press reports.

Obama and first lady Michelle Obama invited friends and White House aides to mark the Jewish holiday with a meal on Monday. The Obama aides started the tradition during 2008's primary campaign in Pennsylvania; Obama made a surprise stop to meet with staffers who were sharing an impromptu meal in a hotel basement.

The event continued last year at the White House with a small group of aides and advisers.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 1:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (36)
Categories: Christianity, Faith Practices, Holidays, Interfaith, Judaism, People, Politics
        

In another sign of the rapidly changing relationship between the Catholic Church and the Irish, a judge in Limerick has ruled that the city’s pubs may open on Good Friday.

District Court Judge Tom O’Donnell ruled that the city’s 110 pubs may open next Friday, the day on which Christians remember the crucifixion of Jesus, because the city is set to host a major Irish rugby match expected to draw tens of thousands of visitors, the Associated Press reports.

The ruling comes amid a growing crisis over abuse in the Irish church. Earlier this week, Pope Benedict XVI accepted the resignation of a bishop accused of endangering children by failing to follow the church's own rules on reporting suspected pedophile priests to police.

AP correspondent Shawn Pogatchnik describes the import of the ruling:

Such a judgment would have been unthinkable in the Ireland of old, where the Catholic Church enjoyed unquestioned authority from the public and deference from the government. Commentators were quick to suggest that Thursday's judgment represented a watershed in the shifting relations between church and state in this rapidly secularizing land.

"This could be the beginning of the end of Good Friday, because now legislation will have to be changed," said a jubilant David Hickey, one of the Limerick pub owners who successfully sued the state for the right to do business like any other Friday. "The option should be given to let publicans open if they want to and close if they want to. Today was a huge decision in that direction."

Continue reading "In a first, Irish pubs may open on Good Friday" »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 12:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (38)
        

A quarter of Republicans believe President Barack Obama might be the Antichrist, according to a Harris Poll released Wednesday.

In a survey by the same organization a year ago, Obama edged out Jesus as the figure most often named a hero by Americans. Now 24 percent of Republicans, and 14 percent of Americans overall, believe he might be the adversary of the Christ, Harris Interative reports.

Other findings in the online poll of 2,230 people conducted from March 1 through 8:

Two thirds of Republicans -- 67 percent -- and 40 percent of Americans overall, believe that Obama is a socialist.

A majority of Republicans -- 57 percent -- and 32 percent overall believe that Obama is a Muslim.

45 percent of Republicans, and 25 percent overall, believe that Obama was "not born in the United States and so is not eligible to be president."

38 percent of Republicans, and 20 percent overall, say that Obama is "doing many of the things that Hitler did."

"The very large numbers of people who believe all these things of President Obama help to explain the size and strength of the Tea Party Movement," Harris Interactive says in a release.

The organization is drawing criticism for the manner in which it selected its sample and the way it framed the questions. ABC News polling director Gary Langer has posted a critique on his blog, followed by a lively discussion in the comments section.

Former Rudy Giuliani speechwriter John Avlon, whose polemic Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America inspired the poll, writes at the Daily Beast that the results "clearly [show] that education is a barrier to extremism:"

Respondents without a college education are vastly more likely to believe such claims, while Americans with college degrees or better are less easily duped. It's a reminder of what the 19th-century educator Horace Mann once too-loftily said: "Ignorance breeds monsters to fill up the vacancies of the soul that are unoccupied by the verities of knowledge."

The full results of the poll, which will be released in greater detail tomorrow, are even more frightening: including news that high percentages of Republicans—and Americans overall—believe that President Obama is "racist," "anti-American" "wants the terrorists to win" and "wants to turn over the sovereignty of the United States to a one-world government." The "Hatriot" belief that Obama is a "domestic enemy" as set forth in the Constitution is also widely held—a sign of trouble yet to come. It's the same claim made by Marine Lance Corporal Kody Brittingham in his letter of intent to assassinate the President Obama.

More findings and methodology from Harris Interactive follows, after the jump.

Continue reading "Belief that Obama is the Antichrist now widespread?" »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 11:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (96)
        

Lawmakers in Florida have voted to advance legislation to allow organized prayer at school-sponsored events. Josh Hafenbrack, a statehouse reporter for Baltimore Sun sister paper the Sun-Sentinel, has the story:

Students could lead prayers at school functions such as football games and the senior prom, under a controversial bill advanced by a Florida House committee Wednesday.

Despite objections from Democrats and civil liberties groups who called the effort "patently unconstitutional," the House PreK-12 Education Committee approved the prayer bill (HB11) on a largely party line, 10-3 vote.

Students would be allowed to initiate and lead prayers at assemblies and extracurricular events. The bill bans teachers, administrators and school boards from "discouraging or inhibiting the delivery of an inspirational message," which includes a "prayer or invocation."

Opponents said the prayer-in-school bill would subject students from minority religions, such as Jewish and Muslim students, to majority Christian views.

"When we start breaking down the First Amendment, it is the breaking of our fabric," said Rep. Kevin Rader, D-Delray Beach. Rader, who is Jewish, recalled sitting uncomfortably during team prayers while he was a high school student-athlete. "I remember it like it was yesterday."

Supporters, however, cast the bill as a free-speech issue for students who want to pray at school functions.

"That's the reason we have to have this bill – to protect people's First Amendment rights," said Rep. Greg Evers, R-Baker. "This is not necessarily a prayer bill. It's a rights bill."

Continue reading "Florida lawmakers advance school prayer bill" »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 11:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (24)
        

Rev. Jason Poling is the Pastor of New Hope Community Church in Pikesville.

Over on the Midnight Sun blog the illustrious Owl Meat Gravy has offered a critique of some conventional understandings of St. Patrick. Although I'm a recovering political science major, I don't buy his imperial reading of the Saint -- "St. Patrick's missionary' work was a Roman-supported campaign, an act of political domination by Romano-Britons, probably with all the attendant brutality that comes with conversion at the point of a sword" -- because I think that picture better fits the practices of a later era when derivative hagiographies of Patrick (quite possibly conflating his life with that of another Christian leader, Palladius) were produced.

The institutional memory of Patrick, it seems, highlights his success in making disciples of Jesus especially among the women of Ireland. Patrick's own narrative (preserved in one of two extant works) recounts his kidnapping from Britain, six years of adolescence and young adulthood spent as a slave in Ireland, and a successful escape by boat prompted by a supernatural nudge toward the dock. But it doesn't stop there: Like the apostle Paul, who had a vision of a beckoning Macedonian, Patrick has a vision of an Irishman bearing a letter pleading with Patrick to come to Ireland.

A call to return to the place where he was enslaved, that’s no slouch as a plot turn (ineffective as it was in the third Matrix movie). And Patrick’s influence as an evangelist is rightly celebrated by those who celebrate that sort of thing.

But more significant, I think, and of more lasting importance, was Patrick’s firm stand against the Arian heresy that Jesus was and is not fully God. During Patrick’s time the Church came to agree on some vitally important theological tenets that survive in the great Creeds of the Christian Church and are still held today (at least on paper) by all Christian traditions. Although it is merely attributed to him, having been composed centuries later, the hymn known as “St. Patrick’s Breastplate” reflects the robust Trinitarian orthodoxy for which St. Patrick stood so firmly. Join me in enjoying a pint while you meditate on these words:

St. Patrick’s Breastplate
trans. C. F. Alexander, 1889

I bind unto myself today
the strong Name of the Trinity,
by invocation of the same,
the Three in One, and One in Three.

Continue reading "Jason Poling: Thank God for St. Patrick's Day, Part III" »

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Categories: Christianity, Culture, Holidays, Jason Poling
        

Brent Childers is executive director of Faith In America, a national nonprofit organization founded "to educate Americans about the harm caused when religious teaching is misused to justify prejudice, discrimination and violence against people based solely on their sexual orientation."

If the Texas State Board of Education moves to include mention of Phyllis Schlafly and Jerry Falwell in school textbooks, Faith In America hopes they will document how harmful their anti-gay actions have been to millions of gay and lesbian youth.

The Texas State Board of Education in a 10-5 party line vote approved some controversial alterations to what most students in the state and other areas of the country will be studying as history. After a public comment period, the board will vote on final recommendations in May.

According to an Associated Press story, it would mean not only increased favorable mentions of anti-gay activist Phyllis Schlafly but also more discussion about the anti-gay Moral Majority and Heritage Foundation.

The bigotry, prejudice and violence that has been justified and promoted by these so-called conservative groups has inflicted a horrific toll on the lives of gay and lesbian individuals, especially youth. It's unimaginable that millions of kids across this nation may now be taught that people who espouse and promote religion-based bigotry are to be looked upon as favorable.

History, time and time again, has judged such religion-based bigotry as harmful and unacceptable, whether such bigotry and prejudice was perpetrated toward American Natives, women or African-Americans. Apologies have been issued by the church and others for their role in promoting religion-based bigotry toward a minority group.

I recall how his own past bigotry and prejudice toward gay Americans was fostered and reinforced by Falwell and other anti-gay figures who for years used the religious and political arenas to promote the attitude that it's OK to be prejudiced and hostile toward gay and lesbian individuals.

Continue reading "Guest post: Document harm of anti-gay actions" »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 2:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

The Rev. Jason Poling is pastor of New Hope Community Church in Pikesville.

The Anglican pastor and theologian Robert Farrar Capon notes, "Practically the only place where people now sing when they are cold sober is in church; and, to tell the truth, it sounds like it." Truth is, there aren't many places people sing together in any state of inebriation. Watch a European soccer match and you hear partisans lustily singing songs at each other, but here it seems that it's become too much to expect people to put their hands over their hearts at ball games, let alone sing along with the National Anthem. Sure, fans will sing along with their favorite artists at live concerts, but that doesn't really count.

Stop by an Irish bar on St. Patrick's Day, though, and you're in another world. I don't claim to be any sort of expert on the musical genre; I developed a mild appreciation back in college when two friends featured an "Irish Song of the Week" on a radio show otherwise devoted to political talk. While I was working in St. Paul one evening shortly after graduating, my boss handed me a twenty and told me I had to spend the evening somewhere other than the office; at the Half Time in St. Paul I met a duo that called themselves the Irish Brigade. (I didn't know at that point that pretty much every other band playing at Irish bars goes by that name as well.) Sean and Mike were either true Irishmen from Cork or able to sustain a convincing accent between sets as well as behind the microphone.

One evening I gave them a mix tape I'd put together featuring a mess of obscure singer-songwriters they'd never heard of but I thought they'd like. Apparently they thought I was the one on the tape, because the next time I saw them they asked me to play through a break between sets that weekend. I did so Friday night. I was not invited back on Saturday.

Still, every year as St. Patrick's Day approaches I dig out an old collection of Irish drinking songs entitled "Irish Drinking Songs" and spend a happy few days whistling "All For Me Grog" until my wife tells me to stop.

Continue reading "Jason Poling: Thank God for St. Patrick's Day, Part II" »

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Categories: Christianity, Culture, Guest Posts, Jason Poling
        

The Rev. Jason Poling is the Pastor of New Hope Community Church in Pikesville.

Those of us in the clergy have a strained relationship with the holidays enjoyed by the rest of our neighbors. Christmas for me is the day I recover from staying up late assembling Christmas presents after getting home from the midnight Christmas Eve service. Easter is the day I get up early to throw lamb in the oven so that after preaching I can serve it to several dozen international students, then go home and collapse. Thanks to an ill-considered dalliance with campaign politics in my youth I always associate July 4th with an all-day sweat earned by running up and down parade routes handing out stickers and candy. Even my birthday is usually a disappointment, falling as it does in the middle of December when nobody, including me, has time or mental bandwidth for anything but the demands of the holiday season.

So when my kids asked me last week what my favorite holiday was, I was glad to have St. Patrick’s Day coming up right around the bend. What’s not to like? I do have a wee bit of Irish ancestry on my father’s father’s mother’s side, not that any of us really needs it to celebrate March 17th. Like St. Patrick himself, I’m a good Trinitarian, so I offer my fellow In Good Faith readers these three points of appreciation. I begin with the fare.

The first beer I drank outside of a college dormitory was enjoyed at an Irish pub in Washington, DC after some friends and I had made the trek from New England to mark the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Sitting with a pint in one hand and a cigarette in the other, I felt very grown up as I assaulted my senses with dark, rich smells and flavors. At the time I wasn’t aware that Guinness is actually less alcoholic than the keg swill to which I had grown too quickly accustomed; I just knew that it was a beverage that demanded respect, if not a knife and fork.

Since that day I have had Guinness in innumerable cities, from the sacrilegious joint in San Antonio that served it in a frosted mug to the “English Pub” at Epcot where I was allowed to repair while my wife chaperoned her youth orchestra around Disney World. Invariably I find my fellow Guinness drinkers to be a genial lot, whether they be introverts or extroverts (or progress from one to the other after a few pints). Three months out of college, having fled to St. Paul to avoid the embarrassment of an involuntary separation from my employer in Baltimore, I found solace and fellowship in a few pints and a few games of pool (and indigestion in the White Castle burgers I threw down on the way home).

Continue reading "Jason Poling: Thank God for St. Patrick's Day, Part I" »

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Categories: Christianity, Culture, Guest Posts, Jason Poling
        

The U.S.-based Christian humanitarian group World Vision has suspended operations in Pakistan after six employees were killed Wednesday in a grenade attack in Northwestern Pakistan, according to media reports.

"It was a brutal and senseless attack," Dean Owen, spokesman for the Seattle-based organization, told reporters. "It was completely unexpected, unannounced and unprovoked."

The victims were all Pakistani nationals. The Associated Press reports that suspected armed militants attacked World Vision offices in the small town of Ogi with grenades. World Vision had been helping survivors of the 2005 Kashmir earthquake.

The AP reports that extremists have killed other people working for foreign aid groups in Pakistan and issued statements saying such organizations were working against Islam, greatly hampering efforts to raise living standards in the desperately poor region. As a result, many groups have scaled back their efforts in the northwest or pulled out altogether.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 9:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

In Nigeria, Associated Press writer Jon Gambrell reports on the weekend slaughter of hundreds of Christians in Nigeria, apparently in reprisal for the killing of hundreds of Muslims in January.

His report opens:

The killers showed no mercy: They didn't spare women and children, or even a 4-day-old baby, from their machetes. On Monday, Nigerian women wailed in the streets as a dump truck carried dozens of bodies past burned-out homes toward a mass grave.

Rubber-gloved workers pulled ever-smaller bodies from the dump truck and tossed them into the mass grave. A crowd began singing a hymn with the refrain, "Jesus said I am the way to heaven." As the grave filled, the grieving crowd sang: "Jesus, show me the way."

At least 200 people, most of them Christians, were slaughtered on Sunday, according to residents, aid groups and journalists. The local government gave a figure more than twice that amount, but offered no casualty list or other information to substantiate it.

An Associated Press reporter counted 61 corpses, 32 of them children, being buried in the mass grave in the village of Dogo Nahawa on Monday. Other victims would be buried elsewhere. At a local morgue the bodies of children, including a diaper-clad toddler, were tangled together. One appeared to have been scalped. Others had severed hands and feet.

The horrific violence comes after sectarian killings in this region in January left more than 300 dead, most of them Muslim. Some victims were shoved into sewer pits and communal wells.

Continue reading "Hundreds slaughtered in Nigerian religious violence" »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 7:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (11)
        

One of two U.S. Baptist missionaries still held on kidnapping charges in Haiti was released Monday, but the group's leader remained in custody, the Associated Press reports.

Charisa Coulter was taken from her jail cell to the airport by U.S. Embassy staff more than a month after she and nine other Americans were arrested for trying to take 33 children out of Haiti after the earthquake.

Coulter, wearing a red tank top and sunglasses, declined comment as she quickly got into an SUV that took her to the airport.

Defense attorney Louis Ricardo Chachoute said she was released because there was no evidence to support the charges of kidnapping and criminal association. He predicted Laura Silsby, the leader of the Idaho-based missionary group, would be released soon as well.

"There are no prosecution witnesses to substantiate anything," Chachoute said.

Coulter, of Boise, Idaho, is a diabetic, and had medical difficulties during her confinement. She was treated at least once on Feb. 1 by American doctors after collapsing with what she said was either severe dehydration or the flu.

Silsby, the leader of the Idaho-based missionaries, was in another part of the city — in a closed hearing before the judge who had previously said he expected to release the two Americans.

Read the Associated Press story.

Associated Press photo of Laura Silsby

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Seeking to stem the exodus of Christians from the Holy Land, the Vatican on Monday launched an appeal for support for the ancient community, the Associated Press reports.

Pope Benedict XVI and other Catholic officials have addressed the plight of the region's dwindling Christian community frequently. The pontiff raised the subject during a pilgrimage last year.

The annual appeal announced Monday seeks to raise funds for schools, housing, scholarships and the restoration of Christian sites.

Members of the region's once large and prosperous communities are increasingly leaving conflict-ridden areas, including Iraq and the Palestinian territories, to seek better lives in the West. In Iraq and other countries, Christians have been specifically targeted with violence and other abuse.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 3:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

The U.S. Supreme Court said Monday that it would consider whether the hate-filled anti-gay protests held at a Maryland soldier’s funeral in Westminster were constitutionally protected by the First Amendment, Baltimore Sun colleague Tricia Bishop reports.

The 2006 funeral for Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, who was killed in Iraq, drew members of the enthusiastically hateful Westboro Baptist Church, who picketed outside with signs reading “Fag troops” and “Thank God for dead soldiers.”

The 75-member, mostly interrelated congregation based in Topeka, Kansas, says soldiers are dying because of the nation’s tolerance of homosexuality. In 2007, a federal jury in Baltimore awarded Snyder’s father nearly $11 million in a civil suit against church leaders.

The amount was reduced to $5 million a few months later.

In September, a federal appeals court reversed the award, ruling that the protests were protected speech and that they did not violate the privacy of the Snyder’s family. The high court will review that decision.

Snyder's funeral was one of many picketed by the Westboro Baptist Church; our newsroom fax machine fills with notices of coming demonstrations. The Web address for the group is godhatesfags.com. The site once -- and might still, I can't be bothered to look -- ran an animation of murdered college student Matthew Shepard surrounded by flames with a counter purporting to track the number of days he had spent in Hell.

AP photo

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 3:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (19)
Categories: Christianity, Culture, Law and Courts, People
        

A Baptist pastor in Tennessee says he now regrets that his church distributed a leaflet that describes the Catholic Eucharist as a plot hatched by the devil and the pope to control the world, Fox News reports.

As anti-Catholic material, Chick Publications’ 1988 tract “The Death Cookie” is fairly standard stuff. The comic book depicts a sinister-looking man giving a compliant leader the secret to dominating people: Creating a false religion. The adviser urges the leader – identified as “Papa” – to tell the people that his church is the only means to salvation, to keep them from reading the true scripture, and to direct them to worship a cookie transformed by his “holy helpers” into the flesh of God.

“The creation of the wafer god was the greatest religious con job in world history,” the tract reads. “This religious weapon is one of the most powerful idols ever created by man.”

The Rev. Thomas Flaherty, pastor of Holy Cross Catholic Church in Pigeon Forge, Tenn., called the tract distributed by neighboring Conner Heights Baptist Church “hate material.” He is concerned that it could incite violence in the town of 5,000.

“Basically, what they’re saying is our Eucharist is of the devil, that Catholicism is not of the Christian church,” Flaherty told foxnews.com.

“It’s a very dangerous world we live in,” he said. “But you can’t argue with ignorance, it’s not worth it.”

Pastor Jonathan Hatcher, who leads Conner Heights Baptist Church, tells foxnews.com. he has removed the leaflet from his congregation and will no longer distribute it.

“Looking back, I don’t think it was the right tract to give out,” Hatcher says. “I have some others that wouldn’t have been as offensive. But I will continue to spread the gospel — that’s what I’m called by Christ to do. I’m still going to hand out tracts, but not ‘The Death Cookie.’”

Continue reading "Flap in Tennessee over anti-Catholic tract" »

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Associated Press religion writer Rachel Zoll has a story about the faith elements of the upcoming wedding and marriage of Chelsea Clinton and Marc Mezvinsky.

Clinton has a Christian background; Mezvinsky is Jewish. Zoll writes about the interfaith issues ahead, beginning with the wedding:

The bride and groom have a range of choices, including conversion or a melding their two traditions into one ceremony.

The talk has been strongest in the Jewish community. There has been more rejoicing than lamenting about this interfaith union that brings a former first daughter a step closer to the fold.

Still, they wonder: Has Chelsea been searching for a rabbi along with her gown?

"If they had a Jewish wedding officiated by a rabbi, I think that would be something really positive," said Ed Case, president of InterfaithFamily.com, which supports Jewish outreach to interfaith couples. "It's so important for the Jewish community to have interfaith couples engaging in Jewish life."

Chelsea Clinton grew up attending Methodist church with her mother. Bill Clinton has been close to his pastor in Arkansas, but the Southern Baptist Convention rebuked him years ago over his support for gay relationships and abortion rights.

Last year, Chelsea, a graduate student at Columbia University's School of Public Health, was seen attending Yom Kippur services with Marc at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, the flagship for Conservative Judaism, according to news reports.

Continue reading "A Jewish wedding for Chelsea Clinton?" »

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At looks as if reconiliation might be possible after all between a Muslim couple in Ohio and the teenaged daughter who said she feared for her life after converting to Christianity.

Associated Press reporter Andrew Welsh-Huggins writes that a judge chided the divided family for filing legal motions instead of talking to one another, and then pushed a reconciliation plan back on track Tuesday:

Both the girl, Rifqa Bary, and her parents agreed to follow a counseling plan drawn up by the Franklin County child welfare agency last year to try to resolve the family's conflict.

The plan requires the girl and her parents, Mohamed and Aysha Bary, to work with individual counselors and to try to attend joint counseling.

Tuesday's deal patched up a short-lived January agreement that fell apart when the parents said their daughter was being allowed to contact Christian pastors who allegedly helped her run away to Florida in July. The couple believe that contact was hurting their chance for reconciliation.

The arrangement left open the possibility of such contact, but added a new requirement: The child welfare agency was to gather information on any pending criminal charges against the ministers and pass that on to the family's counselors.

Read the Associated Press story.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 9:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

An atheist group asked students at the University of Texas, San Antonio, to trade in their Bibles for pornography.

KENS-TV in San Antonio reports that the activists set up a table on campus with a sign advertising "Trade in Holy Text 4 Porn" -- a deal they described as "Smut for Smut."

Some students gathered nearby to pray, KENS-TV reports.

After the event, the atheist group posted on their Twitter page, "Too often are we ignored this seems to get people to actually talk to us instead of ignore us."

The atheist group told KENS-TV it would donate its Bibles to local libraries.

http://www.kens5.com/news/local/Smut-for-smut-Bibles-for-porn-offer-draws-protesters-at-UTSA-85857462.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (49)
        

At least 1,000 Christians, many holding olive branches, marched in protest near the restive Iraqi city of Mosul on Sunday to urge the government to act decisively after a series of killings, Reuters reports.

After the killings of at least eight Christians in the last two weeks, Pope Benedict XVI issued an appeal Sunday for the security of religious minorities, according to Reuters.

The news service reports that two of the dead had gone missing, their bodies later found dumped in the street with gunshot wounds. Others were shot dead in the street, near their homes, or at their place of work.

Some 683 Christian families, or 4,098 people, fled Mosul between February 20 and 27 following the attacks, the United Nations reported on Sunday.

"I appeal to the civil authorities to complete every effort to give security again to the population, and in particular, to the most vulnerable religious minorities," the Pope said in his weekly blessing from Vatican City.

Read the Reuters story.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 2:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Less than a year after dethroned Miss California USA Carrie Prejean stirred up controversy with her remarks against gay marriage, a similar war of words is brewing in Beverly Hills, the Associated Press reports.

Beverly Hills Mayor Nancy Krasne said Wednesday she is outraged over a Miss California USA contestant who is claiming to represent the city in the upcoming pageant and who spoke out against same-sex marriage in recent media interviews.

Krasne said in a statement that 23-year-old Lauren Ashley does not live in Beverly Hills or represent the city in any capacity. Krasne said she was shocked to see statements made by a beauty pageant contestant under the name of Beverly Hills, "which has a long history of tolerance and respect."

Ashley recently told Fox News and other media outlets that same-sex marriage goes against God and the Bible.

Keith Lewis, a K2 Productions stage director for the Miss California USA pageant, told the Los Angeles Times that contestants choose the area they represent and Ashley chose to compete as Miss Beverly Hills in November 2010.

Read the Associated Press story.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 1:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)
        

Investigators have seized books on demons and atheism as well as rifles and knives from in a home linked to one of the men charged with setting an east Texas church on fire and suspected in a string of similar blazes, the Associated Press reports.

Jason Robert Bourque, 19, and Daniel George McAllister, 21, were arrested Sunday and charged with a single count of felony arson in the torching of the Dover Baptist Church near Tyler about 90 miles east of Dallas.

Court documents link the suspects to the Feb. 8 Dover Baptist fire and another the same day at the Clear Spring Missionary Baptist Church in nearby Lindale. The churches are among 11 that have burned in Texas this year in suspected arson attacks.

Investigators searching a home Sunday in rural Grand Saline where Bourque's girlfriend and family live discovered paperback books titled "Demon Possession" and "The Atheist's Way," according to an affidavit filed Tuesday by Texas Ranger Sgt. Brent Davis. Also found were four rifles, three knives and a GPS device at the double-wide manufactured home, the affidavit said.

Read the Associated Press story.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 10:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (24)
        

More from Associated Press reporter Andrew Welsh-Huggins on the Rifqa Bary affair:

A teenage runaway who fled Ohio with the alleged help of Christian pastors, claiming she'd be harmed for converting from Islam to Christianity, says a reconciliation with her Muslim parents is no longer possible.

Efforts by Ohio and Florida courts to reunify Rifqa Bary with her family have failed and she continues to fear being hurt by her parents, according to a court filing by Bary's attorneys.

"Bary continues to refuse any contact with her parents and has made clear that she does not foresee a time when she will agree to have any contact with her parents," Bary's attorneys said in the Monday filing in Franklin County Juvenile Court.

Bary, 17, wants Judge Elizabeth Gill to rule that a reunion is impossible and that it's not in Bary's best interest to be returned to her native Sri Lanka. A hearing is scheduled for Tuesday.

Bary's parents, Mohamed and Aysha Bary, pulled out of a deal last month that would have included counseling as part of a reunion effort. The parents alleged that the county child welfare agency, which now has custody of the girl and which developed the reconciliation plan, was still allowing her to talk to the Florida pastor and his wife who sheltered Rifqa there.

Police in Columbus are investigating whether anyone broke the law helping Bary leave home for Florida in July.

Read the Associated Press story.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 6:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)
        

The Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams is "worried deeply" over the dwindling numbers of Christians in the Holy Land, the Associated Press reports.

The spiritual leader of the worldwide Anglican communion, on a four-day trip to the Middle East, addressed the subject Saturday during a sermon for hundreds at the River Jordan, according to the AP. Earlier, he dedicating the cornerstone of an Anglican church to be built at the site where tradition says Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist.

Williams said it was the church's duty to support Christians who face hardship due to regional conflicts, the AP reports. Christians make up about 5 percent of Jordan's 6 million people, and have a minor presence in most other countries in the Mideast.

Ghazi Musharbash, who cares for orphans in Amman, said that a resolution to the Arab-Israeli conflict is crucial for Christians to remain in the Mideast.

"We don't want to have our fellow Christians from the West coming to see only stones and museums," he told the AP.

Read the Associated Press story.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 6:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Christians in India are outraged after a picture showing Jesus Christ holding a beer can and a cigarette was discovered in primary school textbooks, Agence France-Presse reports.

The French news agency reports that the image was used in a handwriting book for children in church-run schools in the Christian-majority Indian state of Meghalaya, where it was used to illustrate the letter "I" for the word "Idol."

"We are deeply shocked and hurt at the objectionable portrayal of Jesus Christ in the school book. We condemn the total lack of respect for religions by the publisher," Shillong diocese Archbishop Dominic Jala told AFP.

Police now are looking for the owner of the New Delhi-based publisher, Skyline Publications, who faces charges of offending religious sentiment, police superintendent A.R. Mawthoh told AFP.

The Roman Catholic Church in India has banned all textbooks by Skyline, while Protestant leaders called for a public apology, AFP reports. The state government also denounced the publication.

Read the Agence France-Presse story.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
        

I'm particularly pleased to post this Associated Press story, written as it was by old friend Andrew Welsh-Huggins, with whom I once traveled to Japan ...

An Ohio minister accused of driving a teenage runaway to a bus station last year has retained a lawyer as police say they're investigating whether anyone broke the law in helping the Christian convert leave home for Florida.

The minister, Brian Williams, is being represented by Michigan attorney Keith Corbett, the lawyer told The Associated Press on Friday.

"We're representing Mr. Williams in the event he's contacted by police authorities ... and asked to provide information," Corbett said.

The Columbus Police Department is investigating "any criminal wrongdoing with anyone involved in getting her from one location to another," Sgt. Rich Weiner said Friday.

The case has become a rallying point for Christian activists who say Rifqa Bary, a 17-year-old who comes from a Muslim family, is a victim of Muslim intolerance and Muslims who say the girl was exploited by outsiders. Scores of demonstrators siding with the girl rallied outside the Franklin County Court House in November.

Read the Associated Press story.

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Apologies, real and imagined, Part III

The Rev. Jason Poling is Pastor of New Hope Community Church in Pikesville.

Now that’s what I call an apology.

No "I deeply regret that the citizens of Baltimore have had to go through this ordeal with me," no sideways allusions to a prayer of confession for “any words or deeds of mine that may have” stigmatized Israel. This was the real thing.

In brief: All of you have every right to be mad at me, because I screwed up. I hurt a lot of people in a lot of ways, and I’m sorry. Nobody else is to blame for this pickle that I’m in. It’s my fault, and I’m sorry. I’m embarrassed, as I ought to be. So I’m taking responsibility for my actions, I’m doing what I need to do to try to fix what I’ve broken, and I’m doing so even though I don’t know if I’ll succeed. I know I need help and I’m getting it, as in right now, so I’m leaving to get more help. I’ll see you when I see you.

Some found Woods’ apology a bit too thorough — "the best words ... money could buy," as David Zurawik put it. Clearly his statement was not scribbled on the back of an envelope on the limo ride over; it reflected what must have been a long and arduous editing process. Woods had a lot to say, and his transitions between topics were often anything but smooth. No doubt there were times when he said (as all of us who’ve done any writing have done), “Well, I gotta have this in there and this is as good a place as any to put it.”

Was Woods’ apology ghost-written? One can only hope that the people with whom he has been working had a hand in coaching Woods on his apology. It was not by surrounding himself with people who had permission to speak into his life that Woods entered into a pattern of betrayal. The “money and fame” that made it easy for him to go after those “temptations” to which he felt “entitled” also made it easy for him to insulate himself from criticism.

But his statement bears every mark of being a painfully and personally wrought stake in the ground that is and will continue to be significant as a declaration of his understanding of the causes and results of his behavior, and his intentions to amend it. Certainly it is the product of the work he has been doing in rehab, and a frank posturing of himself as someone who is still very much in recovery. (And it was admirably frank without being inappropriate for something being broadcast live at 11:00 am.)

Continue reading "Jason Poling: Tiger, Tiger, shame burning bright" »

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Categories: Christianity, Culture, Ethics, Guest Posts, Jason Poling, People
        

A Haitian judge said Wednesday he is freeing eight of 10 U.S. Baptists charged with child kidnapping after parents testified they voluntarily handed their children over to the missionaries, the Associated Press reports.

Judge Bernard Saint-Vil told the AP that the eight were free to leave Wednesday without bail or other conditions.

"The parents of the kids made statements proving that they can be released," he told AP, explaining that the parents had given up their children voluntarily.

The missionaries, most from two Baptist churches in Idaho, are accused of trying to take 33 Haitian children to the Dominican Republic on Jan. 29 without proper documents. It came just as aid officials were urging a halt to short-cut adoptions in the wake of the earthquake.

They say they were on a humanitarian mission to rescue child quake victims by taking them to a hastily prepared orphanage in the Dominican Republic and have denied accusations of trafficking.

Group leader Laura Silsby originally said they were taking only orphaned and abandoned children, but reporters found that several of the children were handed over to the group by their parents, who said the hoped the Baptists would give them a better life.

Saint-Vil said he still wants to question Silsby and her nanny, Charisa Coulter, about their visit to Haiti in December before the earthquake, but he asked for Coulter to be hospitalized because of her diabetes.

Read the Associated Press story.

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Several prominent Anglican British bishops are urging Christians to keep their carbon consumption in check this Lent, the Associated Press reports.

For most Western churches, Wednesday marks the start of the 40-day period of penitence before Easter during which Christians traditionally choose an item or habit from which to abstain.

The Anglican initiative, the AP reports, aims to convince those observing Lent to try a day without an iPod or mobile phone in a bid to reduce the use of electricity — and thus trim the amount of carbon dioxide spewed into the atmosphere.

Bishop of London Rev. Richard Chartres said that the poorest people in developing countries were the hardest hit by man-made climate change.

He said Tuesday that the "Carbon Fast" was "an opportunity to demonstrate the love of God in a practical way."

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

And Lindsay Lohan becomes the latest celebrity to fray Christian sensibilities with a crucifixion pose.

Bill Donohue of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights has demanded that Lohan apologize for her appearance on the cover of the French fashion magazine Purple with arms outstretched and a crown of thorns around her head.

In a statement, Donohue called the pose inappropriate and the timing, on the eve of Lent, offensive. (He also squeezes in a shot at Tiger Woods.)

“Lohan, an ex-Catholic who is spiritually homeless, recently said, ‘I’m all about Karma … what goes around comes around.’ If she believes that, then it behooves her to apologize to Christians before it’s too late.

“Looks like Tiger Woods is not the only celebrity who would benefit by converting to Christianity these days. Forgiveness occupies a central place in Christianity, but the predicate to forgiveness is repentance.”

Taking exception is American Atheists President Ed Buckner, who said Donohue is “no civil libertarian and no fashionista.”

"Actors, film makers and writers have a long history of being attacked by the churches, and this is just another example," Buckner said in a statement. "Ms. Lohan is in good company – many pop stars have been the target of the Catholic League's indignation, including Madonna and Britney Spears. What Donohue seems to forget is that no one is being forced to buy albums or magazines, and that in America, churches do not dictate the content of popular culture.”

Continue reading "Lindsay Lohan's imitation of Christ" »

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Categories: Atheism, Catholicism, Christianity, Culture, International, People
        

Apologies, real and imagined, Part II

The Rev. Jason Poling is the pastor of New Hope Community Church in Pikesville.

On Wednesday we Christians begin the season of Lent. Starting with Ash Wednesday, we enter into a time of reflection, of self-examination, of confession, of penitence.

Or at least some of us do. Some are so put off by religious rigmarole that they will have no part of irrelevant rituals. Others think themselves above this sort of morbid negativism; they could not imagine singing along with Augustus Toplady’s classic hymn “Rock of Ages:”

Nothing in my hand I bring
Simply to the cross I cling
Naked, come to thee for dress
Helpless, look to thee for grace
Foul I to the fountain fly
Wash me, Savior, or I die.

Naked? Helpless? Foul? No, they say, I don’t think I’m that bad off. I’m not the best person, but I’m pretty good, and I don’t think I really need anybody else’s help.

But traditionally the Church has taken quite a different view: We are sinful from birth, we are sinful by our own choices, we are sinful by ingrained habit and that’s no surprise since everyone around us is too. We live in a world where the effects of sin are seen all around us, where the very institutions that sustain us are thoroughly shot through with human frailty at best, Infernal evil at worst.

As the great 20th century theologian Reinhold Niebuhr put it, “Religion is very easily used to obscure rather than to reveal the primitive forces which control so much of human nature. Religion without a constantly replenished force of penitence easily becomes a romance which brutal men use to hide the real sources of their actions from themselves and from others.”

Therefore our church, like many others, will begin Lent with an Ash Wednesday service during which we will be reminded that we are dust, and to dust we will return. We will wear ashes on our foreheads as a reminder of our mortality. Mindful of the fact that our life is but a vapor, we will confess to God and to one another that when it comes to examining our consciences during the six weeks of Lent none of us will run out of material that ought to provoke repentance.

Of course, Christianity is not the only religion to focus the attention of devout on the reality of human depravity (original sin being, in the words of the great Roman Catholic apologist G. K. Chesterton “the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved” by the obvious reality of human experience). Our Jewish neighbors recite during Yom Kippur (day of atonement) services the Al Het, a prayer of confession arranged in acrostic format so as to accomplish the work of admitting sins “from A to Z.”

The Al Het is an impressive piece of liturgical work. In the Book of Common Prayer, we Christians are led to confess “that we have sinned by our own fault, in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone.” Oftentimes we will allow for a period of silent confession after mentioning a few specifics. But in the Al Het the worshipper begs God’s forgiveness for “the sin we have sinned before You under duress or freewill, and for the sin we have sinned before You in hardness of heart” — and then likewise for 22 other pairs of sins.

So I was struck by the news that during Chanukah Jimmy Carter had offered an Al Het. President Carter has been an outspoken critic of Israel, and has been accused of anti-Semitism by many not ordinarily prone to throwing such a term around lightly. Most recently, his book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid drew a furious response from Jewish leaders in Israel and America for likening the government of Israel to the racist government of South Africa under the National Party.

Continue reading "Jason Poling: Jimmy Carter and the Jews" »

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The roof of the fellowship hall of Calvary Chapel International Worship Center in Severn collapsed Wednesday afternoon, most likely from the weight of the snow, Anne Arundel County fire officials said.

There were no injuries, said Battalion Chief Steve Thompson.

Baltimore Sun colleague Andrea F. Siegel reports the details:

“We have a school in there,” said Pastor Shawn Murphy, who said the congregation and school families are blessed that no one was inside. “We did have a couple of classrooms in there, and I’m told that two of our classrooms collapsed also.”

The structure, a large hall of about 60 feet by 100 feet, is a multipurpose area, and is home to the church’s 90-student school, Calvary Chapel Christian Academy, which run from kindergarten through 12th grade, he said. Students eat lunch in the fellowship hall, he said.

Because school is closed due to snow through Friday and closed on Monday for President’s Day, school and church officials have several days to make contingency plans for the school, the Rev. Murphy said.

He called the collapse of the structure built in 1986 “a challenge for our congregation,” and said “The church family will come together. It’s not the hard time that hit you, it’s how you respond to those hard times.”

He was emailing church members to tell them about the roof collapse and offer a comforting message of faith, “The Bible tells us all things work together for the good,” he said.

He did not expect to have more information until after county building inspectors visit the site, which could be as early as Thursday.

The collapse was called in at 1:33 p.m. by someone who lives nearby. The roof is slightly pitched, coming to a peak in the center, Thompson said.

The church’s food ministry and housing counseling programs will continue to operate from a separate building and a trailer on the property respectively, he said.

Calvary Chapel describes itself on its Web site as "a New Testament Church recognizing the 5-fold ministry gifts in operation. We have a vision to build, as Nehemiah did, a church within whose walls Reconciliation, Restoration, and Revival will take place!"

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Parents of some of the children who 10 U.S. missionaries tried to take out of Haiti after its catastrophic earthquake told a judge Tuesday that they freely handed over their kids, the Americans' lawyer told the Associated Press.

The parents' testimony means no law was broken and "we can't talk any more about trafficking of human beings," attorney Aviol Fleurant told reporters.

He said he was confident the judge will dismiss the case.

Nine of the Americans, most from an Idaho church group, have now been interviewed by the judge, who is to decide whether they will stand trial. The judge did not speak with reporters.

Read the Associated Press story.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)
        

An American missionary who was held in North Korea for more than a month was released on Friday, but the 10 Baptists in Haiti don’t appear to be going anywhere soon.

The Baptists in Haiti, who have been charged with child kidnapping after attempting to take 33 children out of the country without proper documentation, returned to jail Friday after failing to persuade a judge to grant them provisional release pending the outcome of their case, the Associated Press reports:

The weary looking Americans were led one by one into the back of a police van after spending half the day at a courthouse in the rubble-strewn capital. A judge scheduled three more days of hearings next week, starting Monday, defense attorney Edwin Coq told reporters.

Haitian officials at the court declined to answer questions from journalists about the case. The missionaries did not respond to questions and Coq said they had been ordered by the judge not to discuss their case.

The lawyer said that at least nine of the Americans — all but the group's leader, Laura Silsby — clearly did not know they lacked the proper papers to remove 33 children from Haiti following the devastating earthquake and they should be immediately released.

"They came to Haiti to help. They came in solidarity," he said. "It is scandalous that they are being detained."

On the other side of the world, meanwhile, Robert Park was freed by North Korea, which had detained him for illegally crossing its border from China on Christmas Day. Again from the AP:

Robert Park, appearing pale and drawn, did not say anything as U.S. consular officials escorted him from the North Korean plane at Beijing's airport.

U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Susan Stevenson said Park would leave later in the day for the United States.

On Friday, North Korea announced it would free Park, saying he had shown "sincere repentance."

Park, 28, slipped across the frozen Tumen River into North Korea carrying letters calling on leader Kim Jong Il to close the country's notoriously brutal prison camps and step down from power — acts that could risk a death sentence in the totalitarian nation.

However, the North Korean government "decided to leniently forgive and release him, taking his admission and sincere repentance of his wrongdoings into consideration," the official Korean Central News Agency said.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

As 10 American Baptists wait to appear before a Haitian prosecutor, Associated Press writer Frank Babjak has traveled to Callebas, the village half an hour from Port-au-Prince from which the children they are accused of trying to take out of the country came.

There, Babjak writes, parents tell him they willingly handed their children over in hopes of giving them a better life. He notes that their account contracticts that of the Baptists' leader.

His dispatch begins:

CALLEBAS, Haiti – Parents in this quake-wracked Haitian village unable to feed or clothe their children handed the youngsters over to a group of American missionaries who promised to give them a better life.

In a testament to the misery of a nation that was the western hemisphere's poorest even before a Jan. 12 earthquake, many Callebas parents say they wouldn't know what to do if they had to take the children back.

"I am living in a tent with a friend," said Laurentius Lelly, a 27-year-old computer technician who gave up his two children, ages 4 and 6. "My main concern is that if the kids come back I'm not going to be able to feed them."

The Americans were to appear Thursday before a prosecutor who will decide whether to file charges or release them, Communications Minister Marie-Laurence Jocelyn Lassegue told the AP.

The stories the parents told The Associated Press on Wednesday in this village a half hour from the capital contradict claims by the Baptist group's leader that the children came from orphanages or were handed over by distant relatives.

The 10 Baptists, most from Idaho, were arrested last week trying to take 33 Haitian children across the border into the Dominican Republic without the required documents, according to Haitian authorities.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 12:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)
        

Five of the 10 American Baptist missionaries accused of illegally trying to take children out of earthquake-shattered Haiti left their jail cells temporarily to plead their case to a judge on Tuesday, the Associated Press reports.

The missionaries were arrested on Friday trying to cross into the Dominican Republic from Haiti with a busload of 33 children they said were orphaned by the January 12 quake. They denied charges they were engaged in child trafficking, insisting they were trying to help vulnerable orphans.

Haitian police have said some of the children have living parents.

The case could be diplomatically sensitive at a time when the United States is spearheading a huge relief effort to help hundreds of thousands of Haitian quake victims, and as U.S. aid groups pour millions of dollars of donations into Haiti.

The five missionaries were questioned behind closed doors at Haiti's judicial police headquarters in Port-au-Prince, where they are being held behind bars.

They were escorted from their cells by uniformed Haitian National Police officers to a separate room where the judge awaited along with a clerk and a translator.

"I heard five of them. Then I will hear the other five tomorrow," Judge Ezaie Pierre-Louis said. "After the hearing tomorrow, I will make a report to the prosecutor, then he will decide what he does next."

Communications Minister Marie-Laurence Lassegue said the missionaries did not have lawyers present.

Read the Associated Press story.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 10:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Haiti's prime minister said Monday it's clear to him that the 10 U.S. Baptists who tried to take 33 children out of his quake-ravaged country without permission "knew what they were doing was wrong," the Associated Press reports.
But Prime Minister Max Bellerive also told the AP his country is open to having the Americans go before courts in the United States because his own nation's judicial system was devastated by the Jan. 12 earthquake.

The aborted Baptist "rescue mission" has become a distraction for a crippled government trying to provide basic life support to millions of earthquake survivors.

But the prime minister said some legal system needs to determine whether the Americans were acting in good faith — as they claim — or are child traffickers in a nation that has struggled to fight exploitation of children.

"It is clear now that they were trying to cross the border without papers. It is clear now that some of the children have live parents," he told the AP.

"And it is clear now that they knew what they were doing was wrong."

Read the Associated Press story.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 4:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (13)
        

Ten U.S. Baptists arrested trying to take 33 children out of earthquake-shattered Haiti say they were just trying to do the right thing, applying Christian principles to save Haitian children, the Associated Press reports.

Prime Minister Max Bellerive told The Associated Press Sunday he was outraged by the group's "illegal trafficking of children" in a country long afflicted by the scourge and by foreign meddling.

But the hard reality on the ground in this desperately poor country — especially after the catastrophic Jan. 12 quake — is that some parents openly attest to their willingness to part with their children if it will mean a better life.

It was a sentiment expressed by all but one of some 20 Haitian parents interviewed at a tent camp Sunday that teemed with children whose toys were hewn from garbage.

"Some parents I know have already given their children to foreigners," said Adonis Helman, 44. "I've been thinking how I will choose which one I may give — probably my youngest."

Haiti's overwhelmed government has halted all adoptions unless they were in motion before the quake amid fears that parentless or lost children are more vulnerable than ever to being seized and sold.

Read the Associated Press story.

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The judge in the trial of a man accused of murdering an abortion doctor dealt the defense a major setback Thursday, ruling that the jury cannot consider a lesser charge of manslaughter, the Associated Press reports.

The ruling came hours after Scott Roeder took the stand in his own defense and admitted killing Dr. George Tiller, saying he acted to save the lives of unborn children.

Roeder's attorneys had hoped to win a lesser conviction of voluntary manslaughter, which requires them to show their client had an unreasonable but honest belief that deadly force was justified. The charge carries a considerably lighter sentence than murder.

Roeder testified that he considered elaborate schemes to stop the doctor, including chopping off his hands, crashing a car into him or sneaking into his home to kill him.

But in the end, Roeder told jurors, the easiest way was to walk into Tiller's church, put a gun to the man's forehead and pull the trigger.

Testifying as the lone defense witness, Roeder calmly explained what he admitted publicly months ago — that he killed Tiller to save unborn children.

"Those children were in immediate danger if someone did not stop George Tiller," Roeder said as the jury watched attentively but without a hint of surprise.

"They were going to continue to die," he said. "The babies were going to continue to die."

Read the Associated Press story.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 12:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Musicians, dancers and dramatists will gather at the Miracle Temple Seventh-day Adventist Church in Baltimore on Saturday to raise funds for the Adventist Development Relief Agency in Haiti. Scheduled to attend is the Rev. Dr. Barry Black, the chaplain of the U.S. Senate and a Baltimore native.

The event, sponsored by the church and the Pray at the Pump Movement, is scheduled for 4 to 6 p.m. Saturday at the church at 120 S. Glen Rock Road in Baltimore. The congregation is home to several Haitians.

Pray at the Pump Movement founder Rocky Twyman, a musician himself, is challenging musicians in the area and throughout the country to organize similar fundraisers in the coming weeks and months.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 10:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
        

The decision of a Michigan manufacturer to remove coded references to New Testament verses from the rifle sights that it sells to U.S Marines and Army for use in Iraq and Afghanistan is winning praise from Muslims and Atheists.

Trijicon, which has a $660 million contract to provide up to 800,000 sights to the Marines, has long inscribed its products with codes such as 2COR4:6, an apparent reference to a passage from the Second Letter of Paul to the Corinthians: "For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ"

Military officials said they were unaware of the inscriptions when they were revealed this week by ABC News.

"This is a serious concern to me and the other commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan," said Gen. David Petraeus, chief of U.S. Central Command. In a statement issued by CENTCOM, Petraeus said "cultural and religious sensitivities are important considerations in the conduct of military operations."

Trijicon announced that it would remove the codes.

American Atheists President Ed Buckner, who had warned that Islamic extremists could take advantage of what he called "a major blunder that seriously risks efforts to reach out to people in Muslim countries threatened by groups like the Taliban and al-Qaeda," praised the decision to remove them.

"By eliminating these 'Christian crusader' references, we are no longer handing al Qaeda and other Islamic religious fanatics a priceless propaganda vehicle," he said.

Added Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council for American-Islamic Relations: “This is a responsible move by Trijicon that will help reduce or eliminate a potential danger to our nation's military."

Kathleen Johnson, military director for American Atheists, wondered why this issue even came up.

Continue reading "Muslims, atheists praise removal of NT verses" »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (10)
        

A Michigan defense contractor will voluntarily stop stamping references to Bible verses on combat rifle sights made for the U.S. military, the Associated Press reports.

In a statement released Thursday, Trijicon of Wixom, Mich., says it is also providing to the armed forces free of charge modification kits to remove the Scripture citations from the telescoping sights already in use. Through multimillion dollar contracts, the Marine Corps and Army have bought more than 300,000 Trijicon sights.

The references to Bible passages raised concerns that the citations break a government rule that bars proselytizing by American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, which are predominantly Muslim countries.

A spokesman for U.S. Central Command initially said the Trijicon sights didn't violate the ban and compared the citations on the sights to the "In God We Trust" inscription printed on U.S. currency.

On Thursday, however, Army Gen. David Petraeus, Central Command's top officer, called the practice "disturbing."

"This is a serious concern to me and the other commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan," Petraeus told an audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

In a statement issued later by the command, Petraeus said that "cultural and religious sensitivities are important considerations in the conduct of military operations."

Read the Associated Press story.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 8:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

The Stone Songs concert series at New Hope Community Church in Pikesville, the congregation pastored by friend and In Good Faith contributor Jason Poling, will be hosting a fundraiser for Haiti Saturday evening.

Headlining the show at the historic Stone Chapel in Garrison Forest is singer/songwriter L.J. Booth, with local Doug Alan Wilcox opening. The address is 18 stone Chapel Lane, just off Reisterstown Road in Pikesville. Doors open for a wine and cheese reception at 7 p.m., with the performance beginning at 8.

Tickets are $20; all proceeds will benefit the work in Haiti of World Relief, the Baltimore-based relief and development agency of the National Association of Evangelicals. Information, tickets and more on the Stone Songs series are available at www.stonesongs.org.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 7:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Americans are more than twice as likely to express prejudice against Muslims than they are against Christians, Jews or Buddhists, according to a report to be released Thursday by the Gallup World Religion Survey. While nearly two-thirds of Americans say they have little or no knowledge of Islam, a majority say they have an unfavorable view of the faith.

Associated Press religion writer Rachel Zoll breaks down the results:

Just over half of Americans said they felt no prejudice against Muslims. However, 43 percent acknowledged at least "a little" prejudice against Muslims, a significantly higher percentage than for the other four faiths in the survey.

About 18 percent of respondents said they had some level of prejudice against Christians, while the figure was 15 percent toward Jews and 14 percent toward Buddhists.

Asked about knowledge of Islam, 63 percent of Americans say they have "very little" or "none at all." A large majority of respondents believe most Muslims want peace. Yet, 53 percent of Americans say their opinion of the faith is "not too favorable" or "not favorable at all." By comparison, 25 percent of Americans say they have unfavorable views of Judaism, while 7 percent say they have "some" or "a great deal" of prejudice toward Jews.

Personally knowing a Muslim is not linked to a lower level of prejudice, although not knowing a Muslim is related to the greatest level of bias. The authors of the report say this finding underscores the need for better education on what Islam teaches.

"What really seems to impact one's perception of a group much more than knowing an individual is having a positive opinion of that group's distinguishing characteristic, which in this case is their faith," said Dalia Mogahed, senior analyst and executive director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies. "That one person being nice enough could simply be explained as that person being an exception."

Respondents who say they attend religious services more than once a week are significantly more likely to have a favorable view of Muslims. Mogahed said people who are more religious generally consider prejudice a moral evil and often have respect for the devout of other faiths.

Researchers also found a link between prejudice against Jews and Muslims. Americans who acknowledged "a great deal" of bias toward Jews were much more likely to feel the same about Muslims. The survey results could not explain why the two prejudices are linked. Mogahed said bias against both groups should be tracked and studied together to understand the dynamic.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders will lead an interfaith vigil next week against violence in the city, the Archdiocese of Baltimore announced.

The vigil, sponsored by the Baltimore Interfaith Coalition, will also include prayers and a collection for Haiti.

“Haiti is in the midst of what we call a natural disaster, but here in Baltimore, violence perpetuates what we could call an unnatural disaster,” Auxiliary Bishop Denis J. Madden, urban vicar of the Archdiocese of Baltimore and co-chair of the coalition, said in a statement. “Violence in Baltimore keeps our city from reaching its potential and limits our ability to focus on the poverty of places like Haiti.”

In a joint letter to area clergy this month, Madden and Bishop Douglas I. Miles of Koinonia Baptist Church, said “We have the opportunity to make a profound statement … that people of faith will not sit idly while violence destroys our neighborhoods.”

The Baltimore Interfaith Coalition, formed after a meeting last spring between local faith leaders and Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III, has announced plans to “mobilize faith communities through joint service projects that promote healing and hope to those who are affected by violence.”

“This is the first time since the Civil Rights Movement that Baltimore has seen an interfaith movement of this scale,” Miles said.

Continue reading "Interfaith vigil against violence, for Haiti" »

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An atheist group is objecting to coded references to New Testament passages that a Michigan manufacturer is inscribing on rifle sights it provides to U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Trijicon has a $660 million contract to provide up to 800,000 sights to the Marines, and other contracts with the Army. ABC News reported Monday that the manufacturer, founded by a Christian, had long marked its products with what ABC News called “secret ‘Jesus’ Bible codes:”

One of the citations on the gun sights, 2COR4:6, is an apparent reference to Second Corinthians 4:6 of the New Testament, which reads: "For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ."

Other references include citations from the books of Revelation, Matthew and John dealing with Jesus as "the light of the world." John 8:12, referred to on the gun sights as JN8:12, reads, "Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life."

Trijicon confirmed to ABCNews.com that it adds the biblical codes to the sights sold to the U.S. military. Tom Munson, director of sales and marketing for Trijicon, which is based in Wixom, Michigan, said the inscriptions "have always been there" and said there was nothing wrong or illegal with adding them. Munson said the issue was being raised by a group that is "not Christian." The company has said the practice began under its founder, Glyn Bindon, a devout Christian from South Africa who was killed in a 2003 plane crash.

American Atheists President Ed Buckner warned that Islamic extremists could take advantage of what he called "a major blunder that seriously risks efforts to reach out to people in Muslim countries threatened by groups like the Taliban and al-Qaeda."

Continue reading "Objections to Marines' Bible-coded rifle sights" »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 10:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (28)
        

Three senior staff members of a Carroll County-based aid organization were pulled alive from the wreckage of their hotel in Haiti after spending more than 50 hours trapped in rubble, Baltimore Sun colleague Scott Calvert reports.

"We're ecstatic. That all of them were found alive in the rubble is just miraculous," Douglas Bright, vice president of IMA World Health in New Windsor, told Calvert. The story continues:

The three are IMA president Richard Santos, vice president of international programs Sarla Chand and IMA Haiti program manager Ann Varghese, who lives in Baltimore. When the earthquake struck Tuesday, the three had just concluded a meeting at the Hotel Montana in the capital Port-au-Prince. The hotel collapsed and IMA had received no word from its staff members.

Bright said he learned close to midnight Thursday that Santos and Chand had been found alive. Subsequent reports brought news that Varghese was safe. In addition, Bright said the people they were meeting with at the hotel, including a former IMA board member, were rescued.

ABC News reported that Santos and another victim rescued from Hotel Montana, Jim Gulley, pulled out the only snacks they had with them during the ordeal -- Orbitz gum and a Tootsie Roll lollipop.

Five Haitian employees of IMA were still missing, however, including a doctor who ran the organization's local office. None of the Haitian staff members attended the meeting; they worked out of a small building in Petionville outside the capital.

Read the rest of the story at baltimoresun.com.

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The Rev. Jason Poling is pastor of New Hope Community Church in Pikesville.

It’s been said that if you give an infinite number of monkeys with typewriters an infinite amount of time they will eventually produce the works of Shakespeare. Then again, this scenario may explain the genesis of the blogosphere.

There’s a basic principle to keeping blogs healthy: Don’t feed the trolls. Every blog has them, the people who delight in vituperative attacks on others (known as “flaming”), obnoxiously long screeds, and monopolizing the virtual conversation. But if you engage the actual content of his remarks, you will find yourself sucked into a black hole of back-and-forth posts involving bad logic, worse grammar and endless frustration. It’s a lot like arguing with a four-year-old: the minute you start, you’ve lost, because in doing so you have effectively declared that a rational adult ought to seriously debate the merits of sleeping under all of the blankets in the closet sorted first by color then by texture.

But there is a remedy: the universal shorthand “Dude, STFU” which translates to “Kindly be quiet.” This treatment, which only works if applied sparingly, essentially declares: “What you are saying makes absolutely no sense. Nothing good will come of discussing it with you. You’re annoying everyone on this blog. So cut it out.” Such an approach steadfastly and resolutely refuses to reason with the unreasonable, to join a battle of wits with the unarmed, to punch the tar baby.

Much the same principle applies to the outlying voices in our media landscape. There may have been some gaps in my seminary education, for I cannot begin to fathom how I might evaluate Pat Robertson’s claim that the entire nation of Haiti in the course of its battle for independence made a pact with the devil. What would be the text of such a pact? Would everyone in the nation need to agree to it? Every adult? A majority, or perhaps a super-majority? Would it need to be signed in blood? The mind boggles.

In much the same way, I have difficulty finding handles with which I might begin to grapple with other ideas promoted by Robertson: that Hurricane Katrina constituted an exercise of God’s wrath against New Orleans for its wickedness, or that 9/11 happened when God withdrew his protection from America when some obscure ACLU lawsuit was filed somewhere that morning and he decided he had simply had enough.

Continue reading "Jason Poling: A message for Pat Robertson" »

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Shaukat Malik is a Muslim-American Certified Public Accountant from Potomac. A native of Pakistan, he arrived in the United States in 1980.

We cannot name one country with Islamic laws that is a functioning democracy or a benchmark for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness except Turkey.

Muslim majority countries such as Pakistan have a history of thousands of years of customs and folklore shared with India that already plays havoc with the largely uneducated population in the rural areas. Unofficial patriarchal village juries made up of illiterate villagers will hand out and execute primitive punishments along the lines of a tooth for a tooth and an eye for an eye. Add to this outdated Islamic laws and punishments for, for example, adultery, blasphemy and women’s rights and you have created a living hell for women and minorities.

Because of the Islamization in Pakistan, carried out behind the veil of training Mujahedeen to fight the Soviet infidel, Pakistan has a large number of Madrassas and religious charities that share and support Saudi Arabia’s brand of Orthodox Islam. This was on display during the Lal-Masjid standoff against the Pakistan army in July 2007. These Madrassas and charities openly support the Taliban and al Qaida. It is interesting to note that a majority of the terrorists in prison have received their training in Pakistan.

The recent unrest in Malaysia over the use of the name “Allah” by Christians when referring to God has more to do with fear over losing members of the congregation to the Christian church than to Muslim sensibilities. Separate Sharia laws for Muslims, who make up 60 percent of the population, could open doors for al Qaida types to make inroads into Malaysia’s Muslim population.

The conflict in interpretation between the bible and the Quran over the holy trinity and the oneness of God as stated in the Quran is exploited by Muslim clerics to foment prejudice against Christians. It is clearly stated in the Quran that there is no compulsion in religion and that there must be complete freedom of religion. Muslims Jews and Christians are all children of Abraham and people of the book. A believing Muslim must submit to the will of God. It is God’s will that decides our religion at birth.

Continue reading "Guest post: Sharia laws have become a weapon" »

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Firebombs were thrown at two more churches in Malaysia early Sunday and another church was splashed with black paint, the latest in a series of assaults on Christian houses of worship following a court decision allowing non-Muslims to use "Allah" to refer to God, the Associated Press reports.

Hundreds of worshippers whose parish church was partly gutted in a firebomb attack last week gathered at a makeshift prayer hall for their Sunday service and called for national unity and an end to violence, AP reporter Eileen Ng writes.

On Sunday, a Molotov cocktail was hurled at the All Saints Church in Taiping town in central Perak state early in the morning before it had opened, said state police chief Zulkifli Abdullah. He told the AP that the building was not damaged but police found burn marks on the wall.

A broken kerosene bottle with an unlit wick was found early Sunday inside the compound of the St. Louis Catholic church, also in Taiping, said the Rev. David Lourdes. He said it appeared to be a failed attack.

In southern Malacca state, the outer wall of the Malacca Baptist Church was splashed with black paint, police said.

Four other churches were hit by gasoline bombs on Friday and Saturday. All except the Metro Tabernacle, whose parishioners moved their services, suffered little damage, and no one was hurt. The other three held normal services Sunday.

The unprecedented attacks have set off a wave of disquiet among Malaysia's minority Christians and strained their ties with the majority Malay Muslims.

The dispute is over a Dec. 31 High Court decision that overturned a government order banning non-Muslims from using the word "Allah" in their prayers and literature. The court was ruling on a petition by Malaysia's Roman Catholic Church, whose main publication, the Herald, uses the word "Allah" in its Malay-language edition. The government has appealed the verdict.

About 9 percent of Malaysia's 28 million people are Christian, most of whom are ethnic Chinese or Indian. Muslims make 60 percent of the population and most of them are ethnic Malays.

On Sunday, men, women and children from the Metro Tabernacle parish assembled in the cavernous, 1,800-seat meeting hall of the Malaysian Chinese Association party for the service. They lifted their hands and sang "We put all our faith in you," and "You are the God of love and peace" during the Sunday service.

"My wife was worried, but we want to be here to support the church," said Michael Chew, 40, who came to the service with two children, aged 1 and 6.

Continue reading "Attacks on churches continue in Malaysia" »

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With an abortion rights supporter in the White House, the March for Life is planning to add Lafayette Park to its itinerary for the 37th annual event this month.

Organizers of the March for Life, which annually draws at least tens of thousands of demonstrators to the National Mall on the anniversary of 1973 Supreme Court ruling on Roe v. Wade, say they have secured a permit for 3,000 marchers for a first-ever flashlight vigil in the park across the street from the White House on the evening before the main event Jan. 22.

“Because the March for Life … is on the Mall at a long distance from the White House, it is necessary to bring the Life Principles to the President of the United States,” reads the agenda for this year’s event.

The main event remains the march itself, during which participants are encouraged to visit their congressmen and senators. The March for Life Fund, meanwhile, will send letters describing the Life Principles to Obama, the chief justice and associate justices of the Supreme Court, and every member of the House and Senate.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 4:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)
        

Efforts by a Rockville man to get President Obama and Rush Limbaugh have caught the attention of the conservative radio personality.

Rocky Twyman, founder of the Pray at the Pump Movement, a band of "prayer warriors" who traveled the country a couple of years ago to beseech God to bring down the cost of gasoline, had called on the vacationing Obama to visit Limbaugh in the Honolulu hospital to which he was admitted after experiencing chest pains.

On his show Thursday, Limbaugh played a clip of Twyman describing his desire for an Obama-Limbaugh meeting, and then expressed relief it didn’t happen.

Now, it's interesting that this guy says he hoped Obama showed up at the hospital to say hello. I've gotta tell you something, folks. I wasn't even gonna mention this. I'm a little queasy about mentioning it now. But I was hoping he wouldn't. I had as much stress over that as I had over trying to figure out what the chest pains were, 'cause I kept expecting the door of the hospital room to open and the Secret Service guy to come in and say, "The president would like to come in and say hi." And you can't turn that down. Kathryn [Rogers, Limbaugh’s fiancée] said, "Don't worry, that's never going to happen." And then a male nurse came in and started joking, unknowing that I was even thinking that, his name is Ray I think and he said, "By the way, a couple Secret Service agents are out there surveying the place, looks like Obama might want to come by for lunch." I said, "Oh no! No, no, no." And he started laughing. He was just kidding. Can you imagine if that had happened?

Can you imagine if that had happened? I might have had a real heart attack. Kathryn said, "Don't worry, that's not going to happen. They're not going to come over here, not going to act like you even exist, they won't do that." But here's Rocky Twyman out there actually suggesting that President Obama and I stop fighting. Not President Obama and the Republicans, not President Obama and Mitch McConnell or President Obama and John Boehner. No. President Obama and Rush Limbaugh.

I had an enjoyable breakfast with Twyman Friday morning. The 61-year-old Seventh-day Adventist expressed disappointment at Obama for missing what he said would have been “a truly great teachable moment” and at Limbaugh for speaking so dismissively of the idea.

Continue reading "Limbaugh relieved Obama didn't visit" »

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Attackers fire-bombed a Malaysian church and tried to set another ablaze Friday amid a growing conflict over the use of the word "Allah" by non-Muslims, the Associated Press reports.

The attacks sharply escalated tensions in the Muslim-majority country ahead of planned protests later Friday against a Kuala Lumpur High Court verdict which struck down a 3-year-old ban on non-Muslims using "Allah" in their literature, according to the AP.

The Dec. 31 court decision incensed many Muslims, who see it as a threat to their religion. Hateful comments and threats against Christians have been posted widely on the Internet, but this is the first time the controversy has turned destructive.

The ruling was on a petition by the Herald, the main publication of Malaysia's Roman Catholic Church, which uses the word Allah in its Malay-language edition.

Only the first floor office in the three-story Metro Tabernacle Church was destroyed in the pre-dawn blaze, said Kevin Ang, a spokesman for the Protestant church. The worship areas on the upper two floors were undamaged and there were no injuries.

He quoted a witness as saying she saw three or four men on a motorcycle break the main glass front of the church and throw a gasoline bomb inside. The church occupies a corner plot in a row of shops in Desa Melawati, a suburb of Kuala Lumpur.

Separately, a Molotov cocktail was thrown into the compound of a Roman Catholic church before dawn Friday but caused no damage or injuries, said the Rev. Lawrence Andrew, the editor of the Herald.

Continue reading "Malaysian church firebombed amid 'Allah' flap" »

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Brit Hume says reactions have been mixed since he stunned his fellow Fox News Sunday panelists when he recommended that Tiger Woods address his current woes by converting to Christianity (and suggesting in the process that Buddhism was inadequate to the task).

While Washington Post television writer Tom Shales recommended Tuesday that the Fox News personality apologize, Hume has declined to back down. He spoke at length on the subject – and more explicitly – Monday on the O’Reilly Factor.

O’Reilly began by asking whether Hume was proselytizing. Hume's response:

I don't think so. I mean, look, Tiger Woods is somebody I've always rooted for as a golfer and as a man. I greatly admired him over the years, and I always have said to people it was the content of his character that made him, beyond his extraordinary golf skills, so admirable.

Now we know that the content of his character was not what we thought it was. He is paying a frightful price for these revelations. I – my sense is that he has basically lost his family, and there's a lot of talk about the endorsements he's lost. But that pales, I suspect, in his mind, with what he's lost otherwise.

And my sense about Tiger is that he needs something that Christianity, especially provides and gives and offers. And that is redemption and forgiveness.

And I was – I was really meaning to say in those comments yesterday more about Christianity than I was about anything else. I mentioned the Buddhism only because his mother is a Buddhist and he has apparently said that he is a Buddhist. I'm not sure how seriously he practices that.

But I think – I think that the – Jesus Christ offers Tiger Woods something that Tiger Woods badly needs.

Hume described the feedback he has received since the segment aired.

Continue reading "Hume doubles down on Tiger comments" »

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The government of Malaysia is fighting a court ruling that allowed non-Muslims to use the word Allah to refer to God, a decision that triggered protests in the Muslim-majority country, the Associated Press reports.

In an appeal filed Monday, the government says “Allah” is an Islamic word and implies that its use by others could be used to convert Muslims to other religions. “Allah,” an Arabic word, predates Islam and is used by Arabic-speaking Christians in places such as Egypt and Syria.

The Malaysian High Court ruled last month that a newspaper published by the Catholic Archdiocese of Kuala Lumpur could use it as a name for God.

Subsequent protests by Muslim groups, although peaceful, have raised fears of friction between the Malay Muslim majority and the large ethnic Chinese and Indian minorities, who mainly practice Christianity, Buddhism, and Hinduism.

Religious minorities and some moderate Muslims welcomed the High Court decision.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 10:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

Did President Barack Obama mislead Christians about his faith during the 2008 presidential campaign?

The question, posed by the Rev. Patrick J. Mahoney of the Christian Defense Coalition, has provoked an interesting exchange. In a release last week, Mahoney said Obama has not gone to church regularly as president, and his family has yet to find a church home in Washington.

"It is important to note that it was President Obama who made his regular church attendance and the importance of a local church community a major part of his campaign,” Mahoney says. “He stated in the national press that he, 'regularly attends church while on the campaign trail.'

"The issue is not whether a President has to attend church on a regular basis to be an effective President. They do not. The issue is one of integrity and honesty. To portray yourself as person of deep Christian faith and very involved in the life of the local church during the campaign and then abandon that position after you are elected reduces faith to a commodity and religion to a political tool.”

Over at Religion Dispatches, the Rev. Candace Chellew-Hodge questions whether the majority of Americans who don’t attend church weekly themselves are likely to care about Obama’s church attendance.

“Being in church doesn't make you any more a Christian than being in a garage makes you a car,” writes Chellew-Hodge, associate pastor of Grace United Church of Christ and founding editor of Whosever: An Online Magazine for GLBT Christians. “Most Americans, I would think, could tell the character of a person's faith by how they live, not where they spend Sunday morning. By that measure, I myself, have some questions about Obama's faith, especially as he backpedals on his promises to the gay and lesbian community, his penchant for bending to Republican pressure, and his commitment to continuing Bush's war in Afghanistan – but his church attendance isn't something I care about.

Continue reading "Did candidate Obama mislead on his Christian faith?" »

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The New York Times on Monday has an interesting story on the role that a visit by three American Evangelicals to Uganda last year played in legislation now before the parliament there to make homosexuality a capital crime.

Scott Lively, Caleb Lee Brundidge and Don Schmierer were presented as “experts on homosexuality” at a conference in March in the African country, where reporter Jeffrey Gettleman says they discussed “how to make gay people straight, how gay men often sodomized teenage boys and how “the gay movement is an evil institution” whose goal is “to defeat the marriage-based society and replace it with a culture of sexual promiscuity.”

Lively, Brundidge and Schmierer all have attempted to distance themselves from legislation the Gettleman writes has made Uganda “a far-flung front line in the American culture wars, with American groups on both sides, the Christian right and gay activists, pouring in support and money as they get involved in the broader debate over homosexuality in Africa.”

“I feel duped,” Schmierer tells Gettleman, and says that he had been invited to speak on “parenting skills” for families with gay children. He acknowledges telling audiences how homosexuals could be converted into heterosexuals, but he said he had no idea some Ugandans were contemplating the death penalty for homosexuality.

“That’s horrible, absolutely horrible,” he says. “Some of the nicest people I have ever met are gay people.”

As Gettleman notes, Lively and Brundidge have made similar comments. But he adds that the Ugandan organizers of the conference admit helping draft the bill, Lively has acknowledged meeting with Ugandan lawmakers to discuss it, and he has blogged that the campaign had been likened to “a nuclear bomb against the gay agenda in Uganda."

“I pray that this, and the predictions [of a ‘significant improvement in the moral climate of the nation’] are true,” he wrote.

Continue reading "Tracing Ugandan anti-gay bill to U.S. evangelicals" »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 11:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (39)
        

Fox News analyst Brit Hume has some advice for Tiger Woods: Convert to Christianity.

One segment of Fox News Sunday involved predictions for 2010. When it came to sports, Hume focused on the golfer who has withdrawn from the sport in the wake of an infidelity scandal:

Tiger Woods will recover as a golfer. Whether he can recover as a person I think is a very open question, and it's a tragic situation with him. I think he's lost his family. It's not clear to me that – whether he'll be able to have a relationship with his children.

But the Tiger Woods that emerges once the news value dies out of this scandal – the extent to which he can recover seems to me depends on his faith. He's said to be a Buddhist. I don't think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith.

So my message to Tiger would be, “Tiger, turn your faith – turn to the Christian faith and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world."

We haven’t seen Woods call himself a Buddhist, but he did tell Reuters in 2008 that his Buddhist mother had taught him to meditate.

“We also have a thing we do every year where we go to the temple together,” he said.

“In the Buddhist religion, you have to work for it yourself, internally, in order to achieve anuthing in life and set up the next life. It is all about what you do and you get out of it what you put into it.”

Continue reading "Hume to Tiger: Find Jesus" »

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The Pray at the Pump Movement, the group that was urging President Barack Obama to visit conservative radio personality Rush Limbaugh in the hospital, is thanking God for Limbaugh’s recovery while also praying that God will make Limbaugh more tolerant of minorities.

Limbaugh, 58, was released from The Queen's Medical Center in Honolulu on Friday, two days after he was admitted with chest pains.

From Pay at the Pump Movement founder Rocky Twyman:

50 minorities will hold a unique 5 hour vigil of thanks to God for sparing Mr. Limbaugh from any heart ailments on this Saturday night, January 2. They will use different locations in Montgomery County from 4-9 p.m. to pray for his continued recovery.

We condemn those who are wishing death on this radio icon that has the largest number of listeners in the country and whom experts say pulls in over 40 million dollars a year.

In our prayers today, we will ask that God touch his heart and make him more tolerant of minority groups that are the subject of many of his vitriolic attacks. In his new conference on New Year’s Day, Limbaugh said that the pain was real. The pain that he inflicts on minority groups is very real and does cause deep divisions in a country that is reeling from a deep recession.

The vigil begins at 4 p.m. at the Rockville Seventh-day Adventist Church located at 727 West Montgomery Avenue.

Members of the Pray at the Pump movement are urging President Obama to at least call Rush Limbaugh who went to the airwaves wishing that Obama would fail as a president. Participants in the traveling vigil will be asked to sign a book entitled Happiness Digest that will be sent to the radio icon this week. The group is urging Obama to take the high road.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 4:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (53)
        

The Pray at the Pump Movement, which gained notice recently when it helped to organize a prayer vigil for Tiger Woods, now is urging President Barack Obama to visit conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh in the hospital.

Limbaugh was resting comfortably on Thursday after suffering chest pains while vacationing in Hawaii, according to a statement on the Web site of his radio program. Obama, Limbaugh’s principal target, is also vacationing in Hawaii.

The Pray at the Pump Movement, which describes Limbaugh as Obama’s “enemy,” is “strongly urging” a visit.

"It is the right and Christian thing to do," said Rockville resident Rocky Twyman, founder of the group that says its prayers and activism lowered gas prices in the country. “These actions would be unpopular in the Democratic Party, but may help to unite the country as we approach a New Year full of endless possibilities of peace."

“”Because the movement to lower gas was national in scope, we have prayer warriors in Hawaii that are ready to offer powerful prayers at a session where both men are present,” the group says in a release. “This small gesture could be the beginning of the start of a Glorious Revolution of Peace.”

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 11:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (63)
        

In no particular order, as selected by the brain trust at In Good Faith world headquarters, and barring any unforeseen developments in the hours that remain. Comments?

Jewish Community Center opens on Saturdays, over objections of Orthodox community

Maryland priest becomes first lesbian Episcopal Bishop

Baltimore Hebrew University closes; reopens at Towson University

Muslims meet in Baltimore, denounce terror

Episcopal nuns join Catholic Church en masse

Catholic Diocese of Wilmington declares Bankruptcy

Death of Rabbi Mark Loeb

Towson Catholic High School closure surprises students, parents

Ecumenical Patriarch, head of Orthodox Christianity, visits Maryland

City Council passes first-in-nation regulations on faith-based crisis pregnancy centers

Atheists target Baltimore, ask: Are you good without God?

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Historic St. Ignatius Church, just up the street from The Baltimore Sun, will hold its annual New Year's Eve interfaith service on Thursday.

Jews, Christians and Muslims will gather for the 17th annual service at 8:30 p.m. at the Catholic church at the corner of Calvert and Madison Streets.

The Right Rev. Eugene Taylor Sutton, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland, will deliver the sermon. Gov. Martin O'Malley and Mayor Sheila Dixon are expected to attend.

A musical program will begin at 8 p.m. A reception will follow the service. Tickets for the free event may be reserved calling 410-727-3848 or sending an email to parish@st-ignatius.net.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 8:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (14)
Categories: Catholicism, Christianity, Events, Interfaith, Islam, Judaism, People, Politics
        

In the months since we started In Good Faith, we've attracted readers and commenters from all over the world. Ties to the Baltimore area will be helpful in spotting some familiar faces in the video above (the list appears at the end).

I wanted to take a moment to say a sincere thank you to all who have stopped by, and particularly to those who have joined in the spirited debate taking shape on these pages. During this holiday season, we wish the very best to everyone of every faith, and no faith at all.

I expect to be posting only lightly over the next few days as I take time off to spend with my family. As my father would say: Talk amongst yourselves.

Best,
Matt

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Former President Jimmy Carter is offering the Jewish community an apology for any of his "words and deeds" that may have upset them, the Associated Press reports.

Carter writes in an open letter to the Jewish community this week that he hopes the new year will bring peace between Israel and its neighbors, according to AP writer Greg Bluestein. He says "we must not permit criticisms for improvement to stigmatize Israel."

He adds: "I offer an Al Het for any words or deeds of mine that may have done so."

Al Het is a prayer said on Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement. It signifies a plea for forgiveness.

Carter has been criticized by some in the Jewish community who contend his 2006 book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid" unfairly compared Israeli treatment of Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza to the legalized racial oppression that once existed in South Africa.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 3:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)
        

Evangelist Oral Roberts was remembered Monday as a charismatic leader who deftly used television to spread the message of Christianity throughout the world, the Associated Press reports.

Thousands packed an arena at Oral Roberts University for the memorial service for the man who founded the evangelical liberal arts school. Roberts died of complications from pneumonia at the age of 91 last week in California.

"You sent us a man who we know and loved and who walked with God and never gave up the common touch," fellow evangelist Pat Robertson said during the ceremony's opening prayer. "I know you broke the mold with Oral."

Roberts rose from poverty and tent revivals to become one of the nation's most recognized and influential preachers. Roberts, along with Billy Graham, helped pioneer TV evangelism and used the power of the new medium -- and the message of God's healing power -- to build a multimillion-dollar ministry.

ORU President Mark Rutlege noted how adept Roberts was at using the medium of television to spread his message.

"There was something when Oral leaned into that TV and said, `Something good is going to happen to you today.' "

Read the Associated Press story.

AP photo

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 4:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

All Sheriff Joe Arpaio wants to do is spread some holiday cheer.

Trouble is, the Arizona lawman keeps getting sued by those pesky inmates over the Christmas carols he has been piping for hours at a time into the Maricopa County jail system during the holiday season.

Arpaio, who styles himself “America’s toughest sheriff,” was crowing over the dismissal of two recent lawsuits, brought by inmates who said the music forces them to participate in a religious celebration. They were the fifth and sixth such suits dismissed in the last two years.

Inmates “should stop acting like the Grinch who stole Christmas and give up wasting the court’s time with such frivolous assertions,” Arpaio told the Associated Press.

(An inapt allusion: Holiday music didn’t provoke the Grinch to litigation; it inspired him to change. He was making off with Christmas when he heard the people of Whoville sing. And what happened then? Well, in Whoville they say that the Grinch’s small heart grew three sizes that day.)

Whether or not he’s America’s toughest sheriff, Arpaio is certainly the most notorious, having gained both an ardent following and a legion of critics by housing prisoners in tents in the Arizona desert, dressing them in pink, cutting meals from three a day to two and creating what he says are the world’s first female and juvenile chain gangs.

He has focused particular attention on arresting and detaining undocumented immigrants. Most recently, he has been accused of using his police powers to try to intimidate political opponents.

The Maricopa County Sheriff's Office says music from all countries and faiths is played.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 2:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Days before Christmas, archaeologists on Monday unveiled what they said were the remains of the first dwelling in Nazareth that can be dated back to the time of Jesus, the Associated Press is reporting. The find could shed new light on what the hamlet was like during the period the New Testament says Jesus lived there as a boy.

he dwelling and older discoveries of nearby tombs in burial caves suggest that Nazareth, in what is now the State of Israel, was an out-of-the-way hamlet of around 50 houses on a patch of about four acres. It was evidently populated by Jews of modest means who kept camouflaged grottos to hide from Roman invaders, archaeologist Yardena Alexandre, excavations director at the Israel Antiquities Authority, told the AP.

Based on clay and chalk shards found at the site, the dwelling appeared to house a "simple Jewish family," Alexandre said, as workers at the site carefully chipped away at mud with small pickaxes to reveal stone walls.

Nazareth holds a cherished place in Christianity. It is believed to be the town where Christian tradition says Jesus grew up and where an angel told Mary she would bear the child of God.

"This may well have been a place that Jesus and his contemporaries were familiar with," Alexandre said. A young Jesus may have played around the house with his cousins and friends, she said. "It's a logical suggestion."

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 10:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

A Massachusetts school district late Tuesday denied a father's claims that his son was suspended for drawing a stick figure of Jesus on a cross, the Associated Press is reporting.

The Taunton School District said in a written statement that the second-grade student was never suspended over the sketch and that a drawing circulated to reporters by the boy's father, Chester Johnson, is not the same one that was discovered by the teacher earlier this month, the AP reports.

The district also denied the father's claims that the boy and his classmates were assigned by a teacher to draw something that reminded them of the holiday season.

Johnson did not return multiple phone messages from The Associated Press on Tuesday night about the school district's statements.

The original post follows:

An 8-year-old Massachusetts boy was sent home from school and ordered to undergo a psychological evaluation after he was asked to make a Christmas drawing and sketched what appeared to be a stick figure of Jesus on a cross, the Associated Press is reporting.

Chester Johnson of Taunton, Mass., said his son made the drawing on Dec. 2 after his second-grade teacher asked children to sketch something that reminded them of the holiday, according to the AP. The assignment came just days after the family had visited the holiday lights display at the National Shrine of Our Lady of La Salette in Attleboro, Mass., where Johnson said his son seemed taken with the religious statues he saw there.

"When he seen the crucifixion of Jesus on the cross, that's what he drew," Johnson told the AP. "He liked that. That drew his eye."

Johnson, who works at the school as a janitor on a per diem basis, said administrators were concerned the boy drew Xs for Jesus' eyes, and particularly worried when his son said he'd drawn himself on the cross after officials pressed him about who he'd drawn.

Johnson said his son might have been worried about getting in trouble if he said he drew Jesus. "If he said it was him, it was more like a cartoon," Johnson said.

Superintendent Julie Hackett said she could not discuss an individual student and did not address the drawing specifically or the teacher's reaction to it, but did say the school has safety protocols in place that were followed.

Hackett did not return multiple calls from The Associated Press on Tuesday.

Read the rest of the Associated Press story.

AP photo

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 7:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (21)
        

Pioneering televangelist Oral Roberts died on Tuesday. He was 91.

"Oral Roberts was the greatest man of God I’ve ever known," his son Richard told KTUL-TV in Tulsa, Okla., where Roberts founded Oral Roberts University in 1963 and the City of Faith Medical and Research Center in 1981. “A modern-day apostle of the healing ministry, an author, educator, evangelist, prophet, and innovator, he was the only man of his generation to build a worldwide ministry, an accredited university, and a medical school."

Having started his career as a faith healer, the Pentecostal and charismatic Christian was known to the broader public for his prophecies and visions, and particularly for an unorthodox fundraising pitch in 1987, when he told a television audience that God would call him home if his audience did not pony up $8 million.

Following is a report from the Associated Press:

Oral Roberts, the evangelist who rose from humble tent revivals to found a multimillion-dollar ministry and a university bearing his name, died Tuesday. He was 91.

Roberts died of complications from pneumonia in Newport Beach, Calif., according to his spokesman, A. Larry Ross. The evangelist was hospitalized after a fall on Saturday. He had survived two heart attacks in the 1990s and a broken hip in 2006.

Roberts was a pioneer on two fronts — he helped bring spirit-filled charismatic Christianity into the mainstream and took his trademark revivals to television, a new frontier for religion.

Continue reading "Oral Roberts dead" »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 3:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

With the Senate working on the healthcare overhaul, Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin enlisted a group of liberal faith leaders Tuesday to discuss what he called the “moral imperative” of providing coverage to every American.

“We are fortunate to live in the wealthiest nation in the world that has been a beacon of hope and human rights for millions,” the Maryland Democrat said. “Our objective in health care reform is to bring down escalating costs; provide affordable, quality health care for every American; and to do so in a fiscally responsible way. But America is the only industrialized nation in the world that does not provide health care to its citizens. The leader of the free world should provide universal health coverage to every American. This is a moral imperative and that’s what this bill does.”

“Our traditions demand better,” said Rabbi Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center for Reform Judaism. “Our nation seeks better. God's children deserve better. This Congress can do better. Dr. King’s call of the fierce urgency of now should animate the decisions each senator will make in ensuring universal health coverage. We pray and advocate that they will do better – for all Americans and for our nation’s future.”

“Authentic health care reform has been delayed by insurance companies seeking to protect vast profits and grotesquely inflated executive salaries,” said James Winkler, General Secretary of United Methodist Church. “Health care is a human right. It cannot and should not be denied in favor of profit. Now is the moment of decision. Now is the time for moral courage in the face of money and power.”

“We call on our representatives solve the immoral situation in our country where people go without health insurance,” said Sister Simone Campbell, Executive Director of NETWORK, A National Catholic Social Justice Lobby. “This is a faith and civic challenge: we need accessible, quality, affordable healthcare for all.”

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 1:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Conservatives in Asheville, N.C., are looking to use a mostly forgotten clause in the state’s constitution that blocks those who “deny the being of Almighty God” from public office to oust an atheist from the city council.

Alysia Patterson of the Associated Press has turned a fine story:

Asheville City Councilman Cecil Bothwell believes in ending the death penalty, conserving water and reforming government — but he doesn't believe in God. His political opponents say that's a sin that makes him unworthy of serving in office, and they've got the North Carolina Constitution on their side.

Bothwell's detractors are threatening to take the city to court for swearing him in, even though the state's antiquated requirement that officeholders believe in God is unenforceable because it violates the U.S. Consititution.

"The question of whether or not God exists is not particularly interesting to me and it's certainly not relevant to public office," the recently elected 59-year-old said.

Bothwell ran this fall on a platform that also included limiting the height of downtown buildings and saving trees in the city's core, views that appealed to voters in the liberal-leaning community at the foot of the Appalachian Mountains. When Bothwell was sworn into office on Monday, he used an alternative oath that doesn't require officials to swear on a Bible or reference "Almighty God."

That has riled conservative activists, who cite a little-noticed quirk in North Carolina's Constitution that disqualifies officeholders "who shall deny the being of Almighty God." The provision was included when the document was drafted in 1868 and wasn't revised when North Carolina amended its constitution in 1971. One foe, H.K. Edgerton, is threatening to file a lawsuit in state court against the city to challenge Bothwell's appointment.

"My father was a Baptist minister. I'm a Christian man. I have problems with people who don't believe in God," said Edgerton, a former local NAACP president and founder of Southern Heritage 411, an organization that promotes the interests of black southerners.

As Patterson notes, the North Carolina provision is unenforceable, owing to the supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution. In 1961, the U.S. Supreme Court reaffirmed that federal law prohibits states from requiring any kind of religious test to serve in office when it ruled in favor of a Maryland atheist seeking appointment as a notary public.

Seven states, Maryland among them, still have provisions barring atheist officeholders.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)
        

A coalition of conservative Christian leaders is lobbying the House of Representatives to pass “tough sanctions” to keep Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.

"Now that supermajorities in the House and Senate have made their support for sanctions known, and now that the Iranian regime has made its increasing defiance clear to the world, the time for Congress to act has arrived," Richard Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, said in a statement.

The letter urges the House to pass sanctions on foreign companies that export refined petroleum products, including gasoline, to Iran; help maintain Iran’s domestic refining capacity; provide ships or shipping services to transport such products; underwrite those shipments to Iran; or finance or broker those shipments, and to consider “other, targeted sanctions as may be required to demonstrate our seriousness to the Iranian regime.”

“As the clock runs out, we must remember that Iran remains the world’s leading state sponsor of terror, is funding Hezbollah and Hamas in Lebanon and Gaza, has sought to destabilize democratic and Western-leaning regimes throughout the Middle East, is currently arresting and detaining political opponents, actively persecutes its Christian citizens, has shot protestors in cold blood in the streets, and its president has denied the Holocaust and vowed to wipe Israel off the face of the earth,” the letter concludes. “We speak out today on behalf of millions of Christians who believe that the interests of peace and security would best be served by our elected representatives sending a powerful signal that this tyrannical Iranian regime shall never threaten the world with nuclear weapons.”

Signers include Chuck Colson of Prison Fellowship Ministries and BreakPoint, Pat Robertson of Christian Broadcasting Network, Richard Land of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, Bill Donohue of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, Wendy Wright of Concerned Women for America, Gary Bauer of American Values, Tom Minnery of Focus on the Family, John Hagee of the Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, and Jordan Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice.

The letter follows, after the jump.

Continue reading "Conservative Christians urge sanctions on Iran" »

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Baltimore's Mircale Temple Seventh-day Adventist Church and the Pray at the Pump Movement, which organized "vigils of hope" last summer, now are turning their attention to Tiger Woods.

And President Barack Obama, whom they identify as "also vulnerable to womanizing."

And also NFL quarterback Michael Vick; Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina, former Gov. Eliott Spitzer of New York; District of Columbia Councilman and former Mayor Marion Barry; movie star Mel Gibson and former Sen. Larry Craig of Idaho.

The church and the movement have scheduled an "URGENT CHRISTMAS PRAYER VIGIL" for Woods and the rest from 7:30 to 9 p.m. Wednesday at the Temple Seventh-day Adventist Church, at 100 South Rock Glen Road. The press release follows.

BALTIMORE HOLDS URGENT CHRISTMAS PRAYER VIGIL FOR TIGER WOODS

Baltimorians call for the world and especially the media to turn to the Bible and follow its principles of love as they deal with Tiger Woods sex scandal

Public and especially concerned Godly golfers are urged to stop by and pray for Tiger

Continue reading "Baltimore church to pray for Woods, Obama" »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 10:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (15)
        

President Barack Obama won praise from a surprising admirer with his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peeace Prize: Sarah Palin.

The 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee tells USA Today that Obama's defense of war to combat "evil" -- for the use of which his predecessor took criticism -- could have been taken from her own memoir.

"Wow, that really sounded familiar," Palin tells USA Today's Kathy Kiely. "I talked, too, in my book about the fallen nature of man and why war is necessary at times."

The 2009 Nobel peace laureate devoted much of his speech Thursday speaking about war -- which he said was sometimes appropriate:

We will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations -- acting individually or in concert -- will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified. I make this statement mindful of what Martin Luther King Jr. said in this same ceremony years ago: "Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones." As someone who stands here as a direct consequence of Dr. King's life work, I am living testimony to the moral force of non-violence. I know there's nothing weak -- nothing passive -- nothing naïve -- in the creed and lives of Gandhi and King.

But as a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot be guided by their examples alone. I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies. Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda's leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force may sometimes be necessary is not a call to cynicism -- it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.

Continue reading "Palin praises Obama comments on war, evil" »

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The Rev. Jason Poling is the Pastor of New Hope Community Church in Pikesville.

I wouldn’t describe myself as a Disney fan, in much the same way that I wouldn’t describe Bob Ehrlich as a Martin O’Malley fan. But I was deeply impressed by The Princess and the Frog.

It wasn’t the animation, though having been exposed to far too many of Disney’s “dreck-to-video” offerings it was a pleasure to see an animated film produced with such care. Nor was it the story, with its predictable Disney-esque plotlines. It wasn’t even the brilliant minor comic figures, though they were outstanding: one of the virtues of animation is that characters may be literally overdrawn, achieving comic effect that would be tiresome in a formulaic live-action movie. (So that I don’t spoil anything for folks who haven’t seen the movie, let’s just say that the show was stolen by a firefly named Ray who could have been the love child of Sir Mix-A-Lot, Thomas Edison and the Cavity Creeps.)

No, I was most impressed by the quality of the film that will no doubt emerge as the most controversial: the spiritual. And I don’t mean spiritual in the “believe in yourself” sense that pervades so much of the Disney cosmology; this film features real-live demonic activity and otherworldly malevolence that deserves a G rating as much as the original (un-Victorianized) Grimm tales do.

The villain in The Princess and the Frog is, like every Disney villain, rotten to the core: egotistical, manipulative, deceitful and power-hungry. Yet while Dr. Facilier exhibits enough nastiness to frighten Disney’s core audience, what strikes real terror into the hearts of men is his shadow side …literally. We see on the screen not merely Dr. Facilier but what my Jewish friends would call his yetzer hara, the evil essence of his soul, portrayed as a shadow that manifests the true intentions behind his sneering grin.

Photo courtesy of Disney

Continue reading "Jason Poling: The princess, the frog and the demonic" »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (24)
Categories: Christianity, Culture, Evangelicalsm, Guest Posts, Jason Poling
        

Nearly half of all Americans say they have had a religious or mystical experience, according to a new survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, and significant minorities say they have seen a ghost or communed with the dead.

The percentages of Christians reporting such experiences, or holding such New Age or Eastern beliefs as earthly reincarnation, astrology and the presence of spiritual energy in objects such as trees, mountains or crystals is only slightly lower than those of the public in general.

Such mixing and matching of beliefs is characteristic among Americans, according to Pew.

"The religious beliefs and practices of Americans do not fit neatly into conventional categories," the forum reports. "Many say they attend worship services of more than one faith or denomination – even when they are not traveling or going to special events like weddings and funerals."

Twenty-nine percent of Americans say they have been in touch with the dead, 18 percent report having seen or been in the presence of a ghost and 15 percent say they have consulted a psychic or fortune teller, according to the survey of 4,013 adults conducted in August in English and Spanish. The percentages of Christians reporting such experiences were the same or only slightly lower than those among Americans in general.

Read the full report at pewforum.org.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (15)
Categories: Christianity, Culture, New Age
        

Maher Kharma is president of the Islamic Society of Annapolis.

Living in America, people came to realize one great thing that entices them to favor life in America over other places: the prevalence of the law of the land. When many countries around the world suffer corruption, bribery, inefficiency, the citizens of union see the super power of the law to be a protective gatekeeper of their rights, and a source of guidance that they can use when they go around taking care of their earthly business.

The dialogue that has erupted following the rise of the billboards carrying the statement “Are you good without God? Millions are,” has led many to think about the role that religion plays in our lives, and even to think if faith has a role in it. In looking back at the three Abrahamic religions, many commonalities arise: the claim of the followers that those religions are divine, moral-based systems, and a vehicle that followers are to use in order to secure peace of mind after death.

In recalling a recent discussion with a friend, he spoke about the days when people had to travel across the country without using maps or GPS systems. Thousands of miles of roads lay ahead of a traveler, from which one has to choose the one correct direction. Now, thanks to available technology, traveling has become much more convenient as it is no more a hit-or-miss kind of an experience. In the same manner, religions are intended to provide a road map for life. While humans do not land on earth with a manual, the manufacturer of humans provided the holy books to assure success and continuity of humankind in best possible format.

In attempting to encompass what religions provide humanity, it appears that much of known faith-based scriptures are intended to act as a platform for clarifying the rights of people on one another, obligations and responsibilities towards others, towards their wealth, life, intellect, as well as towards the most sacred resource humanity has, environment.

Continue reading "Guest post: God or no God" »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
        

The widely circulated e-mail claiming that the Obama White House was putting up a "holiday tree," bereft of religiously themed ornaments, in place of the traditional Christmas tree has been roundly debunked (see factcheck.org and snopes.com, the latter of which includes video of First Lady Michelle Obama taking delivery of a clearly labeled "White House Christmas Tree 2009").

But a New York Times profile of Desirée Rogers, the currently embattled White House social secretary, suggests there was at least some discussion about backing away from Christmas tradition this year -- not as it involved the tree, but a Nativity scene.

When former social secretaries gave a luncheon to welcome Ms. Rogers earlier this year, one participant said, she surprised them by suggesting the Obamas were planning a “non-religious Christmas” — hardly a surprising idea for an administration making a special effort to reach out to other faiths.

The lunch conversation inevitably turned to whether the White House would display its crèche, customarily placed in a prominent spot in the East Room. Ms. Rogers, this participant said, replied that the Obamas did not intend to put the manger scene on display — a remark that drew an audible gasp from the tight-knit social secretary sisterhood. (A White House official confirmed that there had been internal discussions about making Christmas more inclusive and whether to display the crèche.)

Yet in the end, tradition won out; the executive mansion is now decorated for the Christmas holiday, and the crèche is in its usual East Room spot.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 3:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (128)
Categories: Christianity, Church and State, Holidays, People, Politics
        

Ed Buckner is president of American Atheists, Inc.

Claims abound that both Thanksgiving and Christmas are Christian in origin, but in fact both are grounded in non-Christian ideas and rituals that the churches have co-opted for their own purposes.

CHRISTMAS. Christianity is not the first, nor even the tenth religion to co-opt the Winter Solstice as their own holiday. For example, the Pagan festival of Yule (as in 'Yuletide') was a celebrated winter event centuries before Jesus' alleged birth. Indeed, nearly every tradition currently associated with Christmas has non-Christian roots. As an educational organization, American Atheists urges all Christians to ask their ministers why December 25 was chosen to celebrate Jesus' birth (enjoy the hemming and hawing).

WINTER SOLSTICE, The celestial event that started it all has been measured and celebrated since man first looked up. The solstice affects all life on earth, and the human traditions surrounding it are rich and plentiful. While Christmas is a Christian holiday, the Solstice is the real 'reason for the season', and it belongs to everyone.

A small, well-funded, and vocal minority of Christians are unhappy with the fact that their holiday has not totally eclipsed all others. They want all other celebrations squashed out, in an effort to make the season uniquely Christian, and organize protests and boycotts against any company which promotes an all-encompassing tolerant attitude ("Happy Holidays" vs "Merry Christmas"). American Atheists acknowledges that such views are only shared by an ignorant and bigoted minority of Christians, but at the same time we look to the more tolerant Christians to quell this attitude. As it is with Islam, the health and growth of Christianity depends on those within the church.

Atheists and others who demand strict separation of church and state seek only to prevent government agents from deciding, for anyone, whether or how to celebrate the season. The multitude of seasonal celebrations underscores the importance of the government's neutrality.

Atheists enjoy parties, celebrations, presents, and life. To those who celebrate America's diversity, we extend our heartfelt wishes for a wonderful season. To those who selfishly try to claim the whole season as their own, we wish a lousy one.

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