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For all the controversy that George W. Bush’s Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives generated over the proper line between church and state, President Obama’s faith-based office has given religious figures a bigger role in influencing White House decisions. Before Obama’s May address to the Muslim world from Cairo, for example, the office organized a conference call with American religious leaders to help shape the speech. Earlier this month, Obama’s office (now called the Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships) launched a national tour of town hall meetings on fatherhood that will collect ideas for shaping family policy. Read more of…
As in previous years, members of the Salvation Army are being called to devote the month of September to pray for peace and for the victims of sex trade trafficking.“Conflicts between nations and conflicts within nations still claim lives on a daily basis, destroying stability, disrupting education and creating poverty,” SA General Shaw Clifton stated in this year’s call to prayer.Read more of this story. Related story: Ministry launches preventative program against the sex trade in Asia
A controversial decision about homosexual clergy by the country’s largest Lutheran denomination had some of the church’s conservatives knocking on the door of the Kirkwood-based Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod last week.Missouri Synod officials fielded dozens of calls and e-mails from pastors and lay members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America after its biennial meeting in Minneapolis, when delegates voted 559-451 to allow gay clergy in committed relationships to serve as pastors. Read more about this story.
COMMENTARYSurvivors of some horrible plague or battle often find themselves wracked with guilt: Why did I live while so many died? Though I had no battle scars, I used to feel a similar sense of guilt. I married the only woman I’ve ever loved. We have three terrific children. I have a secure job that I love and that pays well. Sometimes I would ask God: Why have you been so kind to me? Why have I gotten such an easy life?I don’t ask those questions anymore. Read more of this story. VIDEO SIDEBAR:Professor William Stuntz is a faculty adviser…
Jim Zeirke kneels on the narrow strip of asphalt between two rows of hulking race cars. He thrusts his arm into the open window of car No. 3 and grabs driver Jeff Holtz’s gloved hand.Barely audible over the revving engines, Zeirke invokes a power he believes is mightier than any 500-horsepower hunk of steel and fiberglass.Read more of this story.
Money can’t buy love; it can’t buy true friendship. In fact, all the best things in life, at MasterCard says, are priceless. It turns out however, all this conventional wisdom is wrong. New research, as reported in the Boston Globe, actually does buy happiness, if its correctly spent. “For deep-seated psychological reasons, when it comes to spending money, we tend to value goods over experiences, ourselves over others, things over people. When it comes to happiness, none of these decisions are right.” Read more about "How Money Makes Us Happy" blog.christianitytoday.com >>
Here’s a story from CBN News about Ted Kennedy. Watch Ted Kennedy Talk About His Catholic Faith (blogs.cbn.com) No matter what you think of Ted Kennedy or the Kennedy clan or their liberal philosophy, one thing you can’t argue about is the fact that Ted Kennedy was one of the most influential Senators of all times. Let’s face it. Ted Kennedy has a long list of legislative victories. Read the list here (PDF). "In short, I hope for an America where neither "fundamentalist" nor "humanist" will be a dirty word, but a fair description of the different ways in which…
For several years, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series topped the American Library Association’s lists of the most-challenged books (reasons cited in 2001: “anti-family, occult/Satanism, religious viewpoint, and violence”). Evangelical Protestants were skeptical: would the positive depiction of wizardry mislead children? And some Catholics were worried too, ranging from Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI), who warned that “subtle seductions” in the text could “corrupt the Christian faith,” to the Rev. Ronald A. Barker, a Wakefield priest who yanked the books from his parish school library.But over the last several years, religion writers and thinkers have warmed to Harry.Read more…
(UNDATED) Even though he was always taught that religion and politics shouldn’t be discussed in polite company, Dan Merchant decided someone needed to start the conversation. In his documentary-style film, “Lord, Save Us from Your Followers,” which hits theaters nationwide on Sept. 25, Merchant marches around the country asking everyone he meets why what he calls the “Gospel of Love” is dividing the nation. Read more of this story.
COMMENTARYAt first glance the Lollapalooza music festival in Chicago’s downtown Grant Park is a perfect expression of the American penchant for personal preference. Walking through the festival entrance on a recent overcast Friday, my friend Bob and I were instantly faced with serious decisions. Festival goers studied their detailed, minute-by-minute agendas of which of the 130 bands they planned to see on the eight different stages. The Decemberists or Thievery Corporation at 6:00pm? The Killers or Jane’s Addiction at 8:00pm?Agonizing decisions, and because I’m a pastor they reminded me of the choices people must make when looking for a church.…