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COMMENTARYIN his State of the Union address Monday evening, President Bush asked Congress to permanently extend the federal laws permitting religious nonprofit organizations to compete for federal grants.Seven years ago this week, Mr. Bush started his faith-based initiative. He promised to build on these “charitable choice” laws, which were begat by bipartisan compromises between President Bill Clinton and Senator John Ashcroft. “Government cannot be replaced by charities,” Mr. Bush declared, “but it should welcome them as partners, instead of resenting them as rivals.”Read more of this commentary.
COMMENTARYIn 1966 my young family and I moved into a southern Illinois town where I became pastor of one of those ubiquitous First Baptist Churches you see everywhere. It was a time of serious racial tension in America, and that tension was palpable in our new neighborhood.There was only one African-American church in our community, and its pastor and I cultivated a friendship. Read more of this commentary.
NEWS RELEASE Denver, Colo., January 24, 2008 – Promise Keepers (PK), the international ministry to men, will hold its high energy men’s conferences in seven cities in 2008, marking 18 years of life-transforming events in sports arenas across the United States. The theme for the gatherings is “Manhood ’08: Let the Truth Be Told.”Read more of this story.
PULLMAN, Wash. (BP)–Tony Bennett asks a lot of questions.When he attended his first Fellowship of Christian Athletes camp in Colorado as a teenager, it sparked a spiritual curiosity that eventually led to his salvation. Former Nebraska football coaching icon Tom Osborne was the keynote speaker, and Bennett, raised in a Catholic church, took a laundry list of questions back to the small-group follow-up sessions.Read more of this story.
The notorious demon Screwtape, immortalized in The Screwtape Letters, a book by C.S. Lewis, was brought to the stage in Madison in a one-act drama by actor Tom Key. In the original book, C.S. Lewis presented a series of letters between the demon Screwtape, and his young prodigy, Wormwood. In his drama, Key presents a graduation ceremony at Dr. Slubgob’s Tempter Training College for Young Devils. Like the book, the dramatic presentation is based on reverse psychology. Everything that is praised is actually bad behavior that reflects negatively on the moral challenges we all face as we wrestle with our personal…
The President’s Council on Bioethics is under no obligation to seek a consensus on bioethics issues, said a member of the council, speaking in Madison Friday evening. Gilbert Mailaender, the Duesenberg Professor of Christian Ethics at Valparaiso University, does believe that the council is having an impact.
Barack Obama wants to set the record straight. He is not a Muslim, as recent e-mails falsely claim.The Democratic presidential candidate is fighting the e-mails that have been widely circulated. Obama has been continually speaking about the role of faith in politics since his Call to Renewal address in June 2006.In the days before the South Carolina primary, he is driving efforts to speaking with media to emphasize his Christian beliefs. His campaign also sent out a recent mailer portraying the candidate with his head bowed in prayer and says that he will be guided by prayer when he is…
Though he certainly has a special spot among the Packers faithful, Father James Baraniak, the Catholic chaplain for the Green Bay football team, doesn’t pray for victory."I don’t think God’s taking sides," says Baraniak, 41, a Norbertine priest who is also pastor at Old St. Joseph’s Church at St. Norbert College in De Pere. Pastor Joe Urcavich of Green Bay Community Church sees "nothing wrong with praying for victory" but notes that he deals with bigger issues in his work as the team’s Protestant chaplain.Read more this story.
WASHINGTON (BP)–The pro-life movement continues to make progress, but it faces a crucial juncture 35 years into America’s devastating abortion regime.That is the opinion of two public policy leaders in the campaign to end legalized abortion as another anniversary for Roe v. Wade arrived. Jan. 22 was the 35th observance of a pair of Supreme Court opinions, headlined by Roe, that wiped out all state abortion bans and legalized the procedure nationwide, throughout pregnancy, for virtually any reason.Read more of this story.
On what is believed to be the most segregated day of the week, local churches throughout the country broke down barriers to join in commemoration of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.Bill Hybels’ predominantly white Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Ill., and James Meeks’ largely black Salem Baptist Church in Chicago – two of the Chicago area’s biggest evangelical churches – held joint services on Sunday, encouraging the mingling of races through worship.Read more of this story.