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" »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 1:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (19)
        

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

The good citizens of San Francisco have managed to tear themselves away from a crippling state budget crisis long enough to place a ballot measure outlawing circumcision. Being represented by Nancy Pelosi would unbalance me, too, so I don't want to be too judgmental.

Nah, I do.

What is at stake here is nothing less than the choice between the French and American visions of the social good. Liberté or liberty, sometimes the choice is clear. In San Francisco it couldn't be any clearer.

Our revolutions took place within a stone's throw of one another, chronologically. But while the French sought to institute a creedal secularism, we set out a constitutional vision of church protected from state, and vice versa. Our experiment was a lot less bloody, and a lot more successful.

Fast forward to today and in France Muslim girls are prohibited from covering their heads in school. This approach reflects an understanding of secularism as a militant opposition to religion, a strict requirement of conformity to prescribed standards however much said conformity might violate the consciences of citizens.

When our founding fathers pointed us toward a novus ordo seclorum, they had in mind a worldliness that allowed a variety of religious movements to express themselves in virtually any way that wouldn't impinge upon others. So while we don't allow the recreational use of peyote our society allows it as an expression of Native American religious observance. We'll make you take off the veil for your driver's license picture, but we'll let you wear it in class. And we'll allow you to raise your children according to the dictates of your religion, unless doing so presents an imminent threat to the child's physical health.

How is this definition adjudicated? With care, and with great respect -- at least in this country -- for the deeply held religious convictions of the people involved. If there's no overwhelming medical reason to oppose a practice, we're going to defer to the scruples of our fellow citizens. We do so in part because we would want them to do the same to us; we do so in part because most of us have a hard enough time making difficult decisions for ourselves, let alone for others. But mostly we do so because to be American is to be free to exercise, or not, our religious beliefs, and to have that free exercise protected against the prejudices of our neighbors.

Continue reading "Poling: Plus ça change ..." »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 7:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (19)
        

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 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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UPDATE: NPR President and CEO Vivian (no relation) Schiller has resigned. And I’ve renewed my WYPR membership.

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

James O’Keefe has struck again. The guerrilla filmmaker, famous for posing as a pimp seeking tax advice from the Baltimore chapter of ACORN, managed to catch NPR’s top fundraiser Ron Schiller on tape expressing his contempt for vast swaths of America. NPR is no doubt relieved that Schiller had already left NPR for the Aspen Institute when the story broke.

NPR claims to be “appalled” by Schiller’s comments, describing them as “contrary to what NPR stands for.” As a longtime NPR listener and sometime (I was about to renew when Juan Williams got fired) member of my local station, I think this statement is patently absurd. There’s a reason you don’t see a lot of NPR tote bags at Tea Party rallies, just like there’s a reason you don’t see a lot of Fox News bumper stickers on Priuses. I do believe that NPR strives to be accurate and evenhanded, and that for the most part it succeeds. But it is also the case that its business model depends on the voluntary financial support of a demographic that by and large sympathizes with the sentiments Schiller expressed on tape.

What caught my attention about the story was Schiller’s description of the Tea Party as “fanatically involved in people’s personal lives and very fundamentalist Christian – I wouldn’t even call it Christian, it’s this weird evangelical kind of move.” If Schiller had listened to his own network’s coverage of the Tea Party, he’d have learned that the significant differences between its core libertarian impulses and the social conservatism of traditional Republican constituencies presented a tension that was more managed than resolved during the last election cycle. That such disparate factions are seen as similar by a person in such a senior position in such an influential media organ is troubling to me, but what is more troubling is the suggestion that evangelicalism is Christian fundamentalism gone wild.

If anything it’s the opposite, and perhaps Schiller just had his labels mixed up. For those of you just tuning in, evangelicalism as we know it today started in the aftermath of World War II when fundamentalists decided they wanted to follow Jesus without being a jerk about it. They held onto their high view of Scripture, their orthodox Christian theology, their belief that Jesus is good news worth telling and their commitment to follow him in every aspect of their lives. But they left behind the anti-intellectualism, the closed-mindedness, the insularity, the paranoia, the parochialism and the overall backwardness that they believed would consign fundamentalist Christianity to the ash heap of religious history. It used to be you could tell the difference between a fundamentalist and an evangelical by asking what he thought of Billy Graham: The evangelical loved that he was bringing people to Jesus, and the fundamentalist thought he’d gone apostate because he’d welcome the local Methodist (or Catholic!) bishop on stage with him.

Continue reading "Poling: On weirdness and evangelicalism" »

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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:

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.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

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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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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A Georgia teen who officials said continued to evangelize outside a library after officials warned him to stop has been banned from the Chattahoochee Valley Regional Library System for six months, the Associated Press reports.

Kirsten Edwards, acting manager of the North Columbus Public Library, said in a letter that 16-year-old Caleb Hanson repeatedly asked patrons about their religious faith and offered biblical advice.

The teen said library employees had warned him to stop. "Then they took me into an office and told me not to do it," he said.

He said he then began talking to people outside the library, and patrons continued to complain.

Claudya Muller, director of the library system, said the ban had nothing to do with what the teen was saying. "As people came in, he would approach them. He prevented people from simply using the library."

Continue reading "Ga. teen barred from library proselytizing" »

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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.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 1:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)
        

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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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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Leaders of a group that encourages evangelical Christians to care for the environment say the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico raises moral challenges for the country, the Associated Press reports.

The Revs. Jim Ball and Mitchell Hescox, leaders of the Evangelical Environmental Network, are visiting southern Louisiana to pray with people who have lost jobs because of the spill.

Joining them is the Rev. Galen Carey of the National Association of Evangelicals.

Ball says they took a boat ride off the coast Thursday and were saddened by sights of oil-spattered marshes where birds were nesting.

He says the oil spill is a stain on the nation's stewardship of God's creation, and should inspire people of faith to embrace cleaner energy sources. Ball says how the nation responds to the disaster is a matter of values.

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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
        

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.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)
        

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.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)
        

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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Evangelist Franklin Graham prayed on a sidewalk outside the Pentagon Thursday after his invitation to a prayer service inside was withdrawn because of comments that insulted Muslims, the Associated Press reports.

"It looks like Islam has gotten a pass," he told reporters. "They are able to have their services, but just because I disagree ... I'm excluded."

In 2001, Graham, the son of famed evangelist Billy Graham, described Islam as evil. More recently, he said he finds Islam offensive and wants Muslims to know that Jesus Christ died for their sins. The Pentagon's chaplain office called those comments inappropriate and, at the request of the Army, withdrew Graham's invitation to attend a multi-denominational "National Day of Prayer" service that was held in the Defense Department auditorium.

He came anyway, arriving in the Pentagon parking lot just before 8 a.m. EDT — his party of a half dozen people forming a circle on the sidewalk and praying.

They stood there for about five minutes, heads bowed, as people arriving for work passed by — a man with a briefcase, one on a bike, a woman carrying breakfast pastry in a bag and another man carrying a skateboard.

Then the group walked to the Pentagon's Sept. 11 memorial roughly a couple of hundred feet away, where media had gathered because it's one of the few places were cameras are allowed on the Pentagon property. There, Graham held a news conference that lasted nearly twice as long as the prayer.

Asked why he had come, Graham said it was to pray for the men and women serving at the warfront, including his son, who he said had already been wounded in Iraq and now serves in Afghanistan.

He said he doesn't believe "all religions are equal" and that there is only "one way to God" — and that is through Jesus.

Continue reading "Disinvited Graham prays outside Pentagon" »

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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
        

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" »

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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 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.

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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)
        

Evangelical pastor Rick Warren's plea for donations to fill a $900,000 deficit at his Southern California megachurch brought in $2.4 million, the Associated Press is reporting.

Warren said the amount raised after the appeal was posted online Wednesday included only money parishioners brought in person to Saddleback Church by New Year's Eve. More was arriving by hand and by mail, he said.

"This is pretty amazing," said Warren, who made the announcement by bringing out 24 volunteers each holding a sign for $100,000. "I don't think any church has gotten a cash offering like that off a letter."

The pastor said he planned to talk about what he called his church's "radical generosity" in the rest of the weekend's sermons. He said the total came from members, and the donations were all under $100.

"We're starting the new decade with a surplus," he said. "It came from thousands of ordinary people. This was not one big fat cat."

Read the Associated Press story.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 12:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
        

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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With 89 percent of the population religious and 62 percent highly so, the United States is the most religious nation in the industrialized world, according to an international survey released this week.

Religiosity remains high among all adult age groups, according to the Bertelsmann Foundation's Religion Monitor, and large majorities of Catholics and Protestants say that their religious beliefs affect their political views.

In comparison, faith plays a far less significant role in developed European countries such as Britain, France and Germany.

The Religion Monitor asked 21,000 people in 21 countries nearly 100 questions about their interest in religious topics, belief in God or the divine, public and private religious practices, religious experiences and the relevance of religion to their everyday lives. The answers were used to classify individuals as highly religious, religious or non-religious.

(Internet users may complete the questionnaire at religionmonitor.com to identify their own "religiosity profile" and see how they compare with others from their country.)

Dr. Martin Rieger, director of the Religion Monitor, said the results contradict the view that the world is becoming increasingly secular.

“The United States demonstrates that the role of religion does not necessarily decline even when countries have achieved considerable economic, social and cultural progress,” he said in a statement.

Reiger attributed the gap between American and European religiosity to historical differences: “The Enlightenment in young, free America included a vigorous religious vision. In Europe, which was shaped by clerical feudalism, the Enlightenment came only after a struggle against the institutional church.”

The survey found that 85 percent of Americans believe in God and life after death, 80 percent pray regularly, and 75 percent attend religious services or visit a place of worship, with half going at least once a week.

In contrast, 48 percent of Britons, 46 percent of Frenchmen and 28 percent of Germans and Austrians are non-religious. Among European nations, only strongly Catholic Poland and Italy are as religious as the United States. Globally, American religiosity ranks between that of Europe’s industrialized countries and that of developing countries such as Brazil, Guatemala and Nigeria.

Continue reading "U.S. is most religious in industrialized world" »

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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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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" »

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Categories: Christianity, Culture, Evangelicalsm, Guest Posts, Jason Poling
        

With lawmakers in Uganda poised to make homosexuality a crime punishable by death, a group of American Catholic, Protestant and Evangelical leaders is speaking out.

From a release by the groups the Catholics in Alliance and Faith in Public Life:

“Given U.S. Christian groups’ extensive history of involvement in Uganda, these numerous Catholic, Evangelical and Mainline Protestant leaders – including several members of the President’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships – felt especially compelled to speak out against the ‘Anti-Homosexuality Act of 2009’ as counter to Christian values and call on all American Christian leaders to join them.”

“This bill is an affront to human dignity and offensive to Christians around the world who take seriously Christ’s command to love our neighbors as ourselves,” said Thomas P. Melady, a former U.S. ambassador to Uganda and the Vatican and one of the signers of the statement. “I’m proud to stand with other people of faith who believe our values compel us to speak out against this profound injustice.”

According to the Associated Press, Ugandan lawmakers proposed the measure after a visit by leaders of U.S. conservative Christian ministries that promote therapy for gays to become heterosexual. But at least one of those leaders has denounced the bill, as have some other conservative and liberal Christians in the United States.

"I agree with the general goal but this law is far too harsh," Scott Lively, a California preacher and author of "The Pink Swastika" and other books that advise parents how to "recruit-proof" their children from gays, told the AP.

Lively did not sign the statement, which appears after the jump.

Continue reading "Christians condemn Ugandan anti-gay law" »

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We posted on Tuesday about the launch of the Baltimore Coalition of Reason, a group of atheists, agnostics and others that is introducing itself to the area this week with a billboard campaign aimed at reaching out to nonbelievers while telling the religious among us that it's possible to be good without God.

Now there's a full story in Thursday's paper, an interesting part of which is the reaction among local religious leaders. We reached out to several in the course of reporting, and heard back from two.

"Of course we know that someone can be good without believing in God," said the Right Rev. Eugene Taylor Sutton, the Episcopal bishop of Maryland. "We don't believe in God in order to be good. We believe in God in order to connect with the holy within us, which helps us to love everyone in the world, even those who don't believe in God, even those who don't see the point of religion, even those who would harm us. As is it says in our Scriptures, 'God is love.' "

The Rev. Danny O'Brien, senior pastor of Grace Fellowship Church in Timonium, said the local campaign "underscores the notion that we have all been created with a yearning to be part of something bigger, something noble.

"As a follower of Christ, I would love for everyone to not only experience this yearning but to also know the creator who imbued us with it," O'Brien said. "But, being part of a free, pluralistic society is living in community with people who have different faith commitments or no faith commitment at all and to work together to find common ground in working toward the common good."

Read the story at baltimoresun.com.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 7:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (24)
        

Ted Haggard is preaching again – and some of his old friends are not happy about it.

The former head of the National Association of Evangelicals and founder of the influential New Life Church, whose ministry fell apart amid allegations brought by a male prostitute of gay sex and drug use, has been holding prayer meetings in a family barn.

As Wendy Norris writes in a critical piece over at Religion Dispatches, several former peers have voiced their displeasure:

H.B. London, the dour head of pastoral ministries at Focus on the Family, denounced the prayer services in the press, in a widely-circulated email, and on his blog. London reportedly told the Religious News Service of Haggard’s plans to hold prayer services, “When you think of the ethics of that, it, to me, just defies explanation.” Not to be left out of the media feeding frenzy, other high-profile pastors in the conservative evangelical Christian community quickly piled on.

C. Peter Wagner, who co-founded the World Prayer Center with Haggard and is well known for the exorcism-obsessed New Apostolic Reformation movement, told the Colorado Springs Gazette that Haggard is deceiving himself and that he’s not fit to preach. “He must have someone confirm him in the body of Christ” before he can preach again, Wagner said.

Former Foursquare pastor Jack Hayford, another NAR bigwig and member of Haggard’s now-disbanded restoration team, and Gary Black of Rock the Nation youth ministry echoed the tightly-scripted public excoriations about the incomplete apostolic protocol. Said Black, “I would be shocked to think he’s ready to lead a church.”

“I don’t believe I will ever be forgiven by the modern day Pharisees,” Haggard tells Norris. “Redemption can never come to the sinner. I’m going on with my faith walk and they despise me because of it.”

Read the story at religiondispatches.org.

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A multi-year study hosted by the University of Maryland and including several area groups concludes that faith-based organizations can better weather an economic downturn by building stronger ties with the ministries the congregations that support them.

From a release issued on Thursday:

Particularly during an economic downturn, faith-based organizations tied only to one or two congregations, especially if those were not thriving congregations, had the most trouble raising resources and some shut down. While single-congregation support of a program might be considered more authentic, faith-based organizations supported by a wider umbrella or an interfaith base fared better.

“We compared everything from small food pantries directly connected to a congregation to national hospital systems and their local affiliated hospitals,” said Maryland Associate Professor Jo Anne Schneider, who led the project. “Congregation-focused models work well for mainline Protestants, Quakers and African American churches, but only if several congregations provide support or the sponsoring congregation is sufficiently active with enough resources to support the nonprofit. Jewish and Catholic systems rely on their communities as a whole with the Jewish Federation, Archdiocese, or Order providing centralized support. Some thriving evangelical organizations rely on networks with no formal connections to congregations.”

Other key findings of the report, entitled “Faith and Organization Project: Maintaining Vital Between Faith Communities and their Organizations:”

* A new breed of evangelical organizations has emerged with a different understanding about how to develop an organization to do a specific mission that is firmly based in a particular set of beliefs but that focuses on personal relationships to provide services rather than sharing their faith as a means to improve the lives of those served.

Continue reading "UMD study stresses ties for faith-based ministries" »

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The National Association of Evangelicals is urging Congress to approve reforms to immigration laws, the Associated Press is reporting.

The NAE, seen as representing younger and more politically moderate faith leaders, ignited a controversy within the Evangelical community a couple of years back when its chief lobbyist said it would endorse a statement calling for action on climate change.

Now the group, which represents 40 Christian denominations, passed a resolution Thursday recommending changes to the law that would help undocumented immigrants eventually gain legal status.

The resolution was passed unanimously by the group's board of directors, which called on lawmakers to place a high priority on reuniting families. Association president Leith Anderson said the process for legal immigration to the U.S. is antiquated, bureaucratic and needs to change.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (13)
        

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

For all the agonizing people do over theoretical ethical quandaries, few of us are likely often to find ourselves in genuine ethical dilemmas. Sure, we find ourselves in dilemmas, but our choice is usually between doing the right (but difficult, painful and/or costly) thing and taking a seemingly easier way out. Many of the dilemmas we encounter are self-inflicted: a husband looks at pornography and then must decide between confessing it to his wife (thus making her feel violated) or not (thus hiding something from her). We’re in a bad spot, but we put ourselves there, and we have ourselves to blame for having to lie in the bed we made.

The truly wrenching dilemmas, though, are the ones that are brought upon us by others. You see the neighbor kid smoking dope: Do you tell her parents? A coworker speaks abusively to you in a meeting: Do you object? A preacher delivers a sermon you know was cribbed from somebody else’s: Do you blow the whistle? In every case there are uncomfortable practical implications to either choice, and you’re aware that whatever path you choose will have negative consequences for you personally, but you have to choose. Even if you want very much to do the right thing, even if you work hard to keep your own interests from coloring your decision, it’s not easy. Beyond the harm inflicted by the bad behavior itself is the moral burden placed on those in a position to respond to it.

And sometimes you don’t have much time to make a choice. The adrenaline is flowing, the atmosphere is charged, the play is to you and you’ve got to make the call. This seems to have been the case for John Pontolillo, the Johns Hopkins student who encountered Donald Rice in his yard in the wee hours of Tuesday morning.

That Mr. Rice was guilty at the very least of trespassing is beyond question; that he was preparing to commit more serious crimes is beyond doubt. “Even burglars,” the Sun editorialized today, “don’t deserve to be killed with a razor-sharp sword.” No, of course not; burglary is not a crime that merits the death penalty in civilized societies. (And in the uncivilized ones I’d still prefer a sharp sword to a dull one, but that’s neither here nor there.)

Continue reading "Jason Poling: Facing a dilemma, sword in hand" »

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Categories: Culture, Ethics, Evangelicalsm, Guest Posts, Jason Poling, People, Politics
        

Amid scenes of rancor between politicians and voters at public forums on health care reform in Maryland and nationwide, one local Evangelical congregation is planning a town hall meeting of its own.

Organizers say the session Thursday at Grace Fellowship Church in Timonium will focus on the question of "how to navigate the health-care proposals as a Christ-follower." From the church Web site:

With all the "noise" out there about health care, it's hard to know how to respond.

We'll talk about the issue from a different perspective: How to navigate the health-care proposals as a Christ-follower.

This is not a politically driven agenda, and instead will be a conversation navigated by Danny O'Brien. Danny has years of experience in the health care industry.

Bring your concerns and thoughts, and we'll all talk about this issue in a constructive manner. See you there!

The session is scheduled for 7 p.m. Thursday at the church at 9505 Deereco Road. More information, from an e-mail promoting the event, after the jump:

Continue reading "Town hall on health care at Grace Fellowship" »

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There are many things Evangelical Christians are good at, such as bake sales and talking to me on planes. They're less adept at other things, such as comedy and fighting lions. … So when Kevin Roose, author of the excellent new book The Unlikely Disciple, told me that Rick Warren's giant Saddleback Church has its own improv group, for the first time in my life, I felt my calling. I may not be the Woody Allen or Jon Stewart of the secular world, but in the land of the unfunny Christian, the one-joked Jew is king.

After performing with the five-member troupe (Here is what goes through your mind during 90 minutes of Christian improv: "No, no, can't say that, nope, maybe if ... no."), Stein asks Saddleback's director of creative arts the point of hosting a comedy show, or the church’s jazz and Shakespeare festivals.

"If you look back in history, most of the arts were done for the church,” Tony Guerrero tells Stein. “All the music of Bach and Mozart was written for the church. We'd like it to be a hub for the arts again."

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (14)
        

There was a coffeehouse vibe in the basement of a Bolton Hill brownstone where 20 or so men and women gathered on a recent evening.

Mostly in their 20s and 30s, they had hugged hello as they filed into the brightly painted former architecture studio. They had poured the free-trade French roast and unpacked the cupcakes. They had broken into small groups for an icebreaker - name the three people you would take to a desert island - and laughed when it turned out that several had come up with MacGyver, the resourceful secret agent from the 1980s television show.

Finally, it was time for Joel Kurz to get to the point.

"We're asking you to join us in planting a church," the 28-year-old pastor of the Garden Community said. "We're asking you to reconcile Baltimore to God's kingdom."

One of more than a dozen such startups in the area, the Garden Community is at the vanguard of a push by the Southern Baptist Convention into Baltimore, targeted as a "strategic focus city" by its North American Mission Board. Eleven churches have begun to hold worship services here in the last two years, two others are set to open in September, and organizers see as many as half a dozen more forming by the end of the year.

The new congregations are as varied as the neighborhoods in which they've settled. New Hope Community Church, which meets in a Curtis Bay recreation center flanked by bars on all four corners, serves breakfast before Sunday services and sends worshipers home with sandwiches afterward. The Light Church in Mount Vernon boasts a coffeehouse and art gallery. The Gallery Church in Charles Village holds a Saturday discussion group in an Irish bar.

The effort comes as the nation's largest Protestant body struggles to reverse a historic decline in membership. If current trends hold, President Johnny Hunt warned members at the annual convention last month, its numbers could fall from the current 16.2 million to 8.7 million by 2050.

Read the rest of the story at baltimoresun.com.

Continue reading "Baptists making effort in Baltimore" »

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In an appearanced criticized by some of his fellow conservative Christians, megachurch Pastor Rick Warren told several thousand American Muslims over the weekend that "the two largest faiths on the planet" must work together to combat stereotypes and solve global problems, the Associated Press is reporting.

"Some problems are so big you have to team tackle them," Warren, author of The Purpose-Driven Life, told the annual convention of the Islamic Society of North America. He said Muslims and Christians should be partners in working to end what he calls "the five global giants" of war, poverty, corruption, disease and illiteracy.

The Christian Post quoted Warren, the founder of Saddelback Church in Orange County, Calif., as saying he was "not interested in interfaith dialogue.

Continue reading "Warren to Muslims: Let's work together" »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 11:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (10)
Categories: Christianity, Evangelicalsm, Interfaith, Islam
        

Ginger Kolbaba has a message for Jon and Kate Gosselin: “Please don’t do what you’re doing.”

“For too long I’ve watched Christian couples live self-centered lives, pursuing their own desires, talking about following Christ and the principles of our faith, but not actually living them out,” writes Kolbaba, who edits Today’s Christian Woman and Marriage Partnership.

“When life gets difficult — as it does for every couple — they throw in the towel, acting helpless, showing to the world that when the apostle Paul said, ‘We are more than conquerors through Christ,’ he didn’t actually mean it.

“For too long I’ve watched Christians show to those outside our faith that Christianity, in fact, doesn’t strengthen us or make us any different from people who don’t follow Jesus. Instead I hear couples say, ‘The kids will be better off to have calm. It’s not good for them to see us arguing. Everything will be just fine. We’re doing this for the kids. It’s all for the good of the kids.’

“It’s rubbish. Kate (and Jon), who’s in control of the peace and calm of the kids? You are. You have the responsibility to bring calm into your family. But the good news is that God brings the grace and power to help you do that, through his Word, through prayer, through the community of believers, and through good old-fashioned determination.”

The Gosselins, the Christian family at the center of the TLC show Jon and Kate Plus Eight, announced plans this week to divorce after 10 years of marriage. Kolbaba is one of several Evangelicals taking a personal interest in their marriage.

Continue reading "Evangelical concern for Jon and Kate" »

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Largely drowned out by the tabloid coverage of the Gosselin family, an interesting and thoughtful discussion is going on among Christians about the spiritual challenges facing the stars of the TLC reality show Jon and Kate Plus Eight. For those who haven’t followed the series, it focuses on the lives of a Pennsylvania family raising a set of twins and a set of sextuplets – lives that have grown more complex in recent months amid rumors of marital infidelity by both of the parents.

Members of an Assemblies of God church, the Gosselins have been embraced by Evangelicals, who have celebrated, for example, their decision to carry all of their sextuplets to term.

Lynn Roush, a blogger at Christianity Today, and Diana Butler Bass, a contributor to beliefnet, assessed the apparent state of the Gosselins’ marriage as depicted in the fifth-season premiere of the show last week and came to different conclusions.

Roush, a counselor at Evangelical Presbyterian church in Columbia, Mo., sees the answer in “the intervening grace of God’s Word and his redemptive work in our lives,” which she describes as usually found only “in relationships with other believers who have access to our hearts to help us see where God’s truth interacts with our daily lives.”

“I’m only guessing here, but it seems that Jon and Kate’s marriage is a reflection of where each is spiritually,” Roush writes. “Perhaps they have dropped church out of their busy schedules, and with that, a group of other Christians who knows them, is aware of their struggles, and helps to keep them accountable?”

But Butler Bass, an author and teacher writing for beliefnet’s Progressive Revival blog, sees the church as part of the problem.

“Evangelical gender expectations seem to be the root of their troubles: they reversed the parental roles,” she writes. “After a couple of seasons, Jon decided to stay at home and Kate went on the road to promote the show and their books. The choice made Jon increasingly sullen and Kate happier and began to wear at their relationship."

Continue reading "Jon and Kate plus the Evangelicals" »

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We noted last week that if she is confirmed by the Senate, Judge Sonia Sotomayor will become the sixth Catholic on the Supreme Court. Martin E. Marty, the great historian of religion at the University of Chicago, has seized the opportunity presented by her nomination to search for evidence of a lingering anti-Catholic bias among mainline Protestants and Evangelicals – and come away mostly empty-handed.

“Mainline Protestants turned ‘ecumenical’ two-score years ago, as they and most Catholics became buddies,” Marty writes in Sightings, the regular e-mail dispatch produced by the Martin Marty Center for the Advanced Study of Religion at the University of Chicago. “Evangelical Protestants, who decades ago called the Pope the Antichrist foretold in the Book of Revelation, now link with his successors on selected social issues which are in contention.”

He does allow as how he’s seen some anti-Catholic invective in the comments sections that follow blog posts about Sotomayor’s nomination – but he is unimpressed.

“What strikes me is how unrepresentative the self-named angry Christians in the string of commentators are, if measured against the wider church bodies and leadership,” he writes. “Some simple, raw, old-fashioned anti-Catholicism is present, but it has to share space with Catholics who argue how Catholic someone has to be to be Catholic, and all the rest.

“At the end, such blogs give us a license to yawn when the Catholic defense people rise to complain and rage about anti-Catholicism. We have instead important things to discuss. One hopes they can be argued amid the noisy and predictable debate this season.”

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Did the Evangelical vote put Kris Allen over the top in the American Idol finale? That’s one of the theories that has emerged in the hours after the surprise ending Wednesday to the pop music competition.

The discussion is premised on the widely held expectation that Adam Lambert, adventurous in both performance and appearance, would win the final vote.

Certainly the falsetto-prone glam rocker left a deeper impression than the humble church singer from Arkansas. Even Allen, a worship leader at New Life Church in Conway, Ark., appeared taken aback by the result; when host Ryan Seacrest called his name, his first words were “Adam deserves this.”

But a legion of Christian voters is saying the right man won. Chief among them: Allen’s pastor at New Life, who has been boasting of a faith-based campaign for Allen.

“Churches go crazy with support!” the Rev. Rick Bezet told Fox News. “Thousands of churches twittering and facebooking! It’s been a blast.”

Fox News and other speculate that Allen got a boost from supporters of Danny Gokey, who was eliminated in the week before the final. Another evangelical Christian, Gokey was worship leader at Faith Builders International Ministries in Milwaukee and Beloit, Wisc., prior to qualifying for American Idol.

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Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 6:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)