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Post by Church News on Jul 1, 2012 7:28:08 GMT -5
Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee president Frank Page will be the speaker during the 2012 Booneville Baptist Association Bible Jubilee which will be held at Horse Creek Baptist Church August 13-15.
Frank Page given Faithful Ambassador Award
Three Southern Baptist leaders were recognized by the Israel Ministry of Tourism with a Faithful Ambassador Award June 18 for their support of Christian tourism. Frank Page, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Executive Committee, was honored at a "Celebrate Israel" breakfast, along with Jack Graham, senior pastor of the Dallas-area Prestonwood Baptist Church; and O.S. Hawkins, president of GuideStone Financial Resources. Page, in prayer, thanked God that Southern Baptists can come alongside Israel as a partner. "Lord, we believe strongly that You have called us to be a people who support the nation of Israel," Page said, "who support Your call for that land to be strong, to be a blessing to the nations." Haim Gutin, Israel commissioner for North and South America, presented the awards on behalf of Israel's Ministry of Tourism, citing significant growth in Christian tourism in Israel in the past few years "beyond our wildest dreams." He announced a ribbon-cutting ceremony later in the morning for an Israel booth in the exhibit hall at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center prior to the June 19-20 Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting. Hawkins, in the keynote address, recalled his first trip to Israel in the 1970s when, after the Six-Day War, he walked out onto the tarmac of the old airport and looked out at the Israeli soldiers circling the plane. "I felt like I had just come home," Hawkins said. "There was something about that particular experience." As to why he has made return trips to Israel, Hawkins said he and his wife Susie travel there for four reasons -- personal, practical, political and prophetic. "I like Israel breakfasts," Hawkins quipped in talking about his personal reasons for visiting Israel. More so, Hawkins said his own spiritual development and devotional life have been expanded by walking the streets of the old city in Jerusalem, sailing on the Sea of Galilee and standing on the Mount of Olives. Taking to heart Psalm 48:12, which says in part, "to walk around Zion ... that you might tell it to the next generation,'" Hawkins said he believes he is stronger in the telling of it because of his firsthand experience. "Some of my profound memories are there," he said. Hawkins said he has witnessed practical reasons to continue taking people to Israel. "It bound me to my people like nothing else; it built leadership in my church like nothing else; it transformed the lives of our people like nothing else," Hawkins said, referencing core relationships he has built with leaders and others in the churches he has pastored. Politically, Hawkins said, he has a strong affinity for the Middle East. "I believe in democracy and we all know that Israel is really the only real democracy in the Middle East and deserves our support," Hawkins said. Prophecy was the final reason Hawkins said he believes in traveling to Israel. "God not only has a purpose for that particular place, but He also has a purpose for that peculiar people we call the Jews ...," Hawkins said. "Long ago Moses predicted the Lord will scatter you among the nations and you will find no resting place. In the ghettos of Warsaw to the pogroms all through Eastern Europe, to Hitler's ovens, they have known no resting place." During a recent trip to the Garden of Gethsemane, Hawkins said, he looked at the ground and saw "diamonds" of dew all over a blade of grass. In that moment, he said an obscure verse he had memorized as a teenager came to mind: an Old Testament promise in Hosea 14:5, "I will be like the dew to my people." Dew, Hawkins said, does not come from the sky or the grounds, but instead is formed under the right conditions by condensation. "Conditions have never been more right to stand by our Israeli friends in support of saving Israel," Hawkins said. "And conditions have never been more right for us to know how to do it. And one of the very best [ways] that we as Christians and pastors can do that is to get people together and take them ... to the land of Israel and walk about Zion, count her towers [and] consider her ramparts that we too can tell it to the next generation." Graham, in delivering the benediction, prayed for the peace of Jerusalem, drawing from Psalm 122. "Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: 'May those who love you be secure,'" he said. Joni B. Hannigan is managing editor of the Florida Baptist Witness, the newspaper of the Florida Baptist State Convention.
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Post by Church News on Jul 19, 2012 20:55:03 GMT -5
Baptist Press Chick-fil-A, in national media storm, swims against cultural tide Michael Foust, associate editor
In a day when companies such as General Mills, Nabisco, JC Penney and Target seemingly compete to appear the most supportive of gay marriage, Chick-fil-A and its biblically-based values stand out -- and the nation and media are noticing.
As a company, Chick-fil-A takes no position on gay marriage, but comments Chick-fil-A President Dan Cathy made to the Biblical Recorder newspaper -- in a story re-posted by Baptist Press -- have launched a media storm. The story, in which Cathy takes a biblical stance on the issue, has been mentioned on networks such as CNN and referenced by the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Associated Press and Huffington Post, just to name a few. It quickly became the most-read story on Baptist Press' website for the year.
The company issued a statement Thursday (July 19) telling its customers that "going forward, our intent is to leave the policy debate over same-sex marriage to the government and political arena" and that its tradition is "to treat every person with honor, dignity and respect -- regardless of their belief, race, creed, sexual orientation or gender." It also noted that it has applied "biblically-based principles" to business management and will continue to do so. There are more than 1,600 Chick-fil-A restaurants.
Cathy's comments were tame from a biblical perspective and would have gone unnoticed had they been made by the pastor at his home congregation, New Hope Baptist Church in Fayetteville, Ga. Yet in the current environment in which celebrities and companies on a weekly basis make statements affirming gay marriage, Cathy's statements stood out.
Asked about the company's support of the traditional family, Cathy said in the Biblical Recorder story, "Well, guilty as charged."
"We are very much supportive of the family -- the biblical definition of the family unit," Cathy said. "We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that."
Chick-fil-A's stores are closed on Sundays and the company, he said, "operate on biblical principles." The media storm grew larger when a June 16 radio program was spotlighted in which Cathy underscored the need for children to have a mom and a dad.
"As it relates to society in general, I think we are inviting God's judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at Him and say, 'We know better than You as to what constitutes a marriage,'" Cathy said on "The Ken Coleman Show." "I pray God's mercy on our generation that has such a prideful, arrogant attitude to think that we would have the audacity to try to redefine what marriage is all about."
The Los Angeles Times story carried a headline, "Chick-fil-A's anti-gay-marriage stance triggers online uproar." The Washington Post included an online poll asking readers, "Will you continue to eat at Chick-fil-A?"
The Human Rights Campaign -- the nation's largest gay activist group -- posted a Chick-fil-A logo on its website with a fake tagline, "We Didn't Invent Discrimination. We Just Support It."
It remains to be seen whether the controversy will harm Chick-fil-A, but the company likely will survive and might even pick up some new customers. That's partially because its base is passionate about its food and, for the most part, apparently appreciates its traditional stance. That Washington Post poll -- although not scientific -- showed that 66 percent of respondents say they'll continue eating at the restaurant. As of Thursday afternoon, more than 35,000 people had commented on Chick-fil-A's Facebook page, the majority of them supportive of the company.
The company also likely will thrive because its base remains in conservative states. Texas has the most Chick-fil-A restaurants at 262. Including Texas, five states have more than 100 restaurants, and they're all in the South. North Carolina, which has 143 Chick-fil-A restaurants, passed a constitutional marriage amendment in May defining marriage as between a man and a woman. By contrast, the entire state of New York has one Chick-fil-A restaurant. Washington state doesn't have any. Neither does Oregon. Or Vermont.
After watching the uproar, Focus on the Family's Glenn T. Stanton, who often debates the issue of gay marriage and takes the traditional side, told Baptist Press, "I'm gonna have to stop by there for spicy chicken sandwiches and a milkshake more often."
"We hear almost monthly of new major companies announcing their support for the gay community, regardless of what most of their customers want," Stanton said. "And here we have the CEO of a clearly on-the-record traditional values company simply saying he supports the traditional family and how tampering with it is contrary to God's will. And the split-second reaction from these activists is to slander him and his company in the press and blogosphere. It just takes one company taking an alternative position to make the gay activists and liberal press hit the ceiling. But that's where we are today."
Stanton said the message by some opponents of Chick-fil-A apparently is, "Speak up for the natural, traditional family and we will come after you."
"If you don't believe this," Stanton said, "just watch how Chick-fil-A will be treated in the coming months. They [Chick-fil-A's critics] are the new close-minded fundamentalists."
Even in responding to the controversy July 19, Chick-fil-A mentioned its traditional roots.
"From the day Truett Cathy started the company, he began applying biblically-based principles to managing his business," the company's statement said. "For example, we believe that closing on Sundays, operating debt-free and devoting a percentage of our profits back to our communities are what make us a stronger company and Chick-fil-A family. Our mission is simple: to serve great food, provide genuine hospitality and have a positive influence on all who come in contact with Chick-fil-A."
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Post by Church News on Jul 24, 2012 20:40:11 GMT -5
Appreciation Day will be August 1 Anti-Christian Bigots attack Chick-fil-A Michael Foust, Baptist Press
Former presidential candidate and Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee says he is "incensed" at the way Chick-fil-A has been treated in recent days, and he is launching a nationwide Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day for Aug. 1, urging people to visit the restaurant that day or to make their support known via social media. The company has been the source of criticism -- and the object of calls for boycotts -- since its president, Dan Cathy, was quoted in a Biblical Recorder article and in a radio interview as standing up for the biblical definition of marriage. Huckabee says Chick-fil-A's supporters need to speak up. He has launched a website where people can "RSVP" that they intend to participate August 1. www.ISupportChickFilA.com"No one is being asked to make signs, speeches, or openly demonstrate," Huckabee wrote on his Facebook page. "The goal is simple: Let's affirm a business that operates on Christian principles and whose executives are willing to take a stand for the Godly values we espouse by simply showing up and eating at Chick-Fil-A on Wednesday, August 1. Too often, those on the left make corporate statements to show support for same sex marriage, abortion, or profanity, but if Christians affirm traditional values, we're considered homophobic, fundamentalists, hate-mongers, and intolerant. "This effort is not being launched by the Chick-Fil-A company and no one from the company or family is involved in proposing or promoting it." Huckabee concluded, "There's no need for anyone to be angry or engage in a verbal battle. Simply affirm appreciation for a company run by Christian principles by showing up on Wednesday, August 1 or by participating online -- tweeting your support or sending a message on Facebook." On Monday (July 23) the Jim Henson Company -- makers of children's shows such as "The Muppets," "Sid the Science Kid," "Dinosaur Train" and "Pajanimals" -- announced it would not partner with Chick-fil-A again in the future. The Jim Henson Company, at various times, has supplied the toys for the restaurant's kids' meals. "The Jim Henson Company has celebrated and embraced diversity and inclusiveness for over fifty years and we have notified Chick-Fil-A that we do not wish to partner with them on any future endeavors," a statement read. "Lisa Henson, our CEO is personally a strong supporter of gay marriage and has directed us to donate the payment we received from Chick-Fil-A to GLAAD [Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation]." Boston Mayor Thomas Menino went as far as saying he would work to block a Chick-fil-A from opening in the city. Although there are 1,600 Chick-fil-A restaurants nationwide, Massachusetts so far has only two. Gay marriage is legal in the state. "Chick-fil-A doesn't belong in Boston," Menino said according to the Boston Herald. "You can't have a business in the city of Boston that discriminates against the population. We're an open city, we're a city that's at the forefront of inclusion. ... And we're not going to have a company, Chick-fil-A or whatever the [expletive] the name is, on our Freedom Trail." The Freedom Trail is a path through the streets of Boston highlighting historic sites from the time of the Revolutionary War. Huckabee said he has "been incensed at the vitriolic assaults" on Chick-fil-A since Cathy made his comments. "The Cathy family, let by Chick Fil-A founder Truett Cathy, are a wonderful Christian family who are committed to operating the company with Biblical principles and whose story is the true American success story. ... The Chick-Fil-A company refuses to open on Sundays so that their employees can go to church if they wish. Despite the pressure from malls, airports, and the business world to open on Sundays, they still don't. They treat customers and employees with respect and dignity." Asked about the company's support of the traditional family, Cathy said in the Biblical Recorder story, "Well, guilty as charged." "We are very much supportive of the family -- the biblical definition of the family unit," Cathy said. "We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that." Chick-fil-A's stores are closed on Sundays and the company, he said, "operate on biblical principles." The media storm grew larger when a June 16 radio program was spotlighted in which Cathy underscored the need for children to have a mom and a dad.
"As it relates to society in general, I think we are inviting God's judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at Him and say, 'We know better than You as to what constitutes a marriage,'" Cathy said on "The Ken Coleman Show." "I pray God's mercy on our generation that has such a prideful, arrogant attitude to think that we would have the audacity to try to redefine what marriage is all about."
The company issued a statement Thursday (July 19) telling its customers that "going forward, our intent is to leave the policy debate over same-sex marriage to the government and political arena" and that its tradition is "to treat every person with honor, dignity and respect -- regardless of their belief, race, creed, sexual orientation or gender." It also noted it has applied "biblically-based principles" to business management and will continue to do so.
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Post by Church News on Jul 26, 2012 21:20:17 GMT -5
Baptist Press Constitution protects Chick-Fil-A from Anti-Christian Bigots by Michael Foust
Attempts by Chicago and Boston politicians to block the opening of Chick-fil-A restaurants because of the company president's views on marriage would be unconstitutional and also set a dangerous precedent for other businesses, say several attorneys. Boston Mayor Thomas Menino and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel each have been quoted as saying they want to prevent Chick-fil-As from opening in their cities, with Menino declaring in a letter to Chick-fil-A President Dan Cathy, "There is no place for discrimination on Boston's Freedom Trail and no place for your company alongside it." The Freedom Trail is a path through the city's streets highlighting historic buildings. Emanuel voiced agreement with a Chicago alderman who also opposes a new Chick-fil-A, saying of the company, "They disrespect our fellow neighbors and residents." Cathy, in two interviews in recent weeks -- including one re-posted on Baptist Press -- has said he believes in the biblical definition of marriage. The company issued a statement saying it treats every customer with "honor, dignity and respect" and that, "going forward," it is going to stay out of the gay marriage debate. David Cortman, an attorney with the legal group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), said a restaurant cannot be blocked from opening because of the restaurant's or the owner's beliefs. "It absolutely is not constitutional," Cortman told Baptist Press. "And I think the irony here is that they are claiming this is an issue of freedom and civil rights, but they're actually the ones who would be violating the civil rights of Chick-fil-A not to allow them to open up their business simply because of their views." But the issue concerns more than just Chick-fil-A, Cortman said, and impacts any business or organization in America whose owners hold views different from that of the government. Boston and Chicago would be practicing viewpoint discrimination -- a violation of the Constitution's Free Speech clause, Cortman said. "It does create both a dangerous and an illegal precedent," Cortman. "The government shouldn't be in the business of threatening or punishing people for their thoughts or ideas -- whether they are individuals or businesses themselves. And, there's certainly a double standard. You did not hear a politician threatening to deny permits to companies like Home Depot or Starbucks or Target over those companies' aggressive promotion of the homosexual agenda." Mat Staver, president of the legal group Liberty Counsel, said he, too, believes the attempts would be unconstitutional. "No city can ban Chick-fil-A because the [company] president has his own view regarding marriage -- a view that is held by much of the American public," Staver told Fox News. "To discriminate against Mr. Cathy because of his biblical view and then to extrapolate that to Chick-fil-A is illegal. It would be unconstitutional and certainly any city trying to do so would not win that battle." Eugene Volokh, a law professor at UCLA, wrote on his blog, "Denying a private business permits because of such speech by its owner is a blatant First Amendment violation." The Chicago alderman who initially spoke up against Chick-fil-A, Joe Moreno, told local media he might simply block a proposed new Chick-fil-A in his ward because of traffic concerns. Moreno, though, previously said he opposed a new Chick-fil-A because it was "intolerant" and because he disagreed with Cathy. Cortman, the ADF attorney, said Moreno won't legally be able to use a legitimate reason -- traffic concerns -- as cover for his previous comments. "His true motivations already have been made public, so I think any attempt to backtrack to create what normally would be a legitimate reason wouldn't work in this situation," Cortman said. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) -- which supports gay marriage -- also said the mayors' attempts would be unconstitutional. The Los Angeles Times and Boston Globe editorial boards -- normally not sources of traditional beliefs -- have defended Chick-fil-A's ability to open restaurants. "Which part of the First Amendment does Menino not understand?" a Globe editorial read July 25. "A business owner’s political or religious beliefs should not be a test for the worthiness of his or her application for a business license." Meanwhile, support for Chick-fil-A continues to grow. Sign-ups for "Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day," launched by Mike Huckabee, surged past 200,000 Thursday (July 26). The event will take place Wednesday, Aug. 1. (More information is available at Billy Graham also spoke up for the company Thursday. "I want to express my support for my good friends Truett Cathy and his son Dan Cathy, and for their strong stand for the Christian faith," Graham said in a statement. "I've known their family for many years and have watched them grow Chick-fil-A into one of the best businesses in America while never compromising their values. Chick-fil-A serves each of its customers with excellence, and treats everyone like a neighbor. It's easy to see why Chick-fil-A has become so popular across America. "Each generation faces different issues and challenges, but our standard must always be measured by God's word. I appreciate the Cathy family's public support for God's definition of marriage." Graham added, "I also appreciate Governor Mike Huckabee's leadership and for encouraging Americans to support Chick-fil-A on August 1. As the son of a dairy farmer who milked many a cow, I plan to 'Eat Mor Chikin' and show my support by visiting Chick-fil-A next Wednesday." Huckabee has said Chick-fil-A deserves support. "Let's affirm a business that operates on Christian principles and whose executives are willing to take a stand for the Godly values we espouse by simply showing up and eating at Chick-Fil-A on Wednesday, August 1," he wrote on Facebook. "Too often, those on the left make corporate statements to show support for same sex marriage, abortion, or profanity, but if Christians affirm traditional values, we're considered homophobic, fundamentalists, hate-mongers, and intolerant. This effort is not being launched by the Chick Fil-A company and no one from the company or family is involved in proposing or promoting it." "There's no need for anyone to be angry or engage in a verbal battle," Huckabee added. "Simply affirm appreciation for a company run by Christian principles by showing up on Wednesday, August 1 or by participating online -- tweeting your support or sending a message on Facebook."
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Post by Church News on Aug 6, 2012 20:53:02 GMT -5
During a Q&A at Kentucky Baptist Convention's conference entitled "Calvinism: Concerned, Confused, or Curious," SBC President Frank Page answers a question from one of the attendees.Other panelists were: (second from left) Hershael York, Kevin Smith, Steve Lemke and David Dockery. Photo by Robin Cornetet Bass, The Western Recorder
Southern Baptist leaders: Calvinism should not divide SBC by Michael Foust associate editor of Baptist Press
A panel of four Southern Baptist leaders Saturday (Aug. 4) talked honestly about the division within the convention over the issue of Calvinism while offering suggestions and maintaining that Southern Baptists should and can unite, despite differences. "Baptists for 400 years have disagreed over this issue, and we're not going to come to some place where we all agree. I think we can come to a place where we all can work together," said Union University President David Dockery, one of the speakers at a conference sponsored by the Kentucky Baptist Convention. The conference, called "Calvinism: Concerned, Confused, or Curious," was held at Crestwood (Ky.) Baptist Church. "In the 18th century, there were particular [Calvinist] and general Baptists, but at the sending of [missionary] William Carey, they joined hands together for the common cause of missions. That's something we can do again," Dockery added. Other speakers were Steve Lemke, director of the Baptist Center for Theology and Ministry at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary; Hershael York, associate dean of the school of theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky.; and Frank Page, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Executive Committee. The conference included two lectures by Dockery on the history of Baptists and Calvinism, a dialogue between York and Lemke, a panel discussion featuring all four speakers and a charge by Page on his vision for a unified convention. "Right now, there is deep division in our convention over this issue," Page said. "It comes every year at the convention [annual meeting]. It is not going to stop until we learn how to treat each other, how to be honest, how to clarify what we really are saying." There are "extremes" on both sides of the issue, Page said. Lemke agreed. "We've got to rein in some of the people on our sides," Lemke said. "Some of these poster boys for Calvinism are hurting the cause of Calvinism horribly -- some of these guys on blogs that have an un-Christlike spirit and are just mean. ... At the same time, there are some people on my side who are mean and they really don't understand Calvinism. ... They misrepresent or caricature Calvinism. I can't rein in people on the Calvinist side. Dr. York has to do that. And he can't rein in the people on my side. I have to do that." Panelists said when a church has an opening for a pastorate, both sides of the issue -- pastoral candidates and pastoral search committees -- must be honest in stating their beliefs and desires. A "small minority" of Calvinists, Page said, fail to be honest and then try to push Calvinism on the church. Lemke said there "clearly" is a resurgence of Calvinism within the convention and among seminary students, "whether they be New Orleans Seminary or Southern Seminary." Students, he said, are coming to seminary "with pre-commitments toward Calvinism, largely because of non-SBC speakers like John Piper and others." "Most Southern Baptist Calvinists of this generation are committed to missions and evangelism," Lemke said, mentioning Alabama pastor David Platt as an example. "... As long as that is the case, that there is a common denominator, then we can work together." Lemke applauded York, who said that many members of the church where he preaches -- Buck Run Baptist Church in Frankfort, Ky. -- did not know he was a Calvinist until they read a story about the conference in the state Baptist newspaper, the Western Recorder. "I don't talk about Calvinism," York said. York said he has not and does not read John Calvin's books. "I don't believe anything because John Calvin said it, [or] because it came out of the Reformation," York said. "I believe what I believe because I believe that I see it in Scripture. There are some wonderful godly brothers and sisters of mine who read the same Scripture that I read but they don't see what I see [about Calvinism]. I'm OK with that. We ought to be able to love each other through that. We ought to be able to focus on the Great Commission together. There's a lost world out there, and they really don't care how many points [of Calvinism] we have. They need to hear the good news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ." Lemke said he would encourage pastoral search committees to ask candidates who are Calvinists: "Are they committed to missions and evangelism," and, "Do they talk more about Calvin than about Jesus?" Dockery said Calvinism was prominent within the Southern Baptist Convention during the first 75 years or so after it was founded in 1845. The history of the convention, he added, is replete with those who affirmed Calvinism and disagreed with it. "There is not just one theological stream from one theological tradition in Baptist life. There are several," Dockery said. " ... Baptists, as a whole, in the 21st century, don't know their heritage. It's not that we don't know who Calvin is. We don't even know who Lottie Moon and Annie Armstrong are." York said he is "committed to not letting this be an issue that divides us." "The Great Commission is the commission that Christ gave to all of us, and we've got to be committed to working together to get the Gospel to the ends of the earth," York said. Lemke said there is "distrust" on both sides, and "that leads to probably exaggerating what the other side is saying and really going beyond where they really are." "I hope we can find ways to work together more constructively," Lemke said. Southern Baptists already have a mechanism that makes it possible to work together -- the Baptist Faith & Message 2000, York said. "There is nothing in the Baptist Faith & Message 2000 that makes me or other Calvinists unable to believe what we believe," York said. The debate over Calvinism, Page said, is a debate "within the family." It is "inerrantists here who are disagreeing with other inerrantists." When Page was president of the convention, he said, he appointed Calvinists and non-Calvinists to the Committee on Committees "because they were men and women that would go out and witness with me." He said he "soon" will be naming a group of advisors "to help me pull together some kind of strategy" to help keep the convention united. Both sides, he said, need to learn to respect one another. "We're talking about and at each other too often," he said. "When you respect someone, you talk to them." Page added, "If we can do missions and evangelism together ... then we can pull this thing together." Video and audio of the conference is available online at: www.kybaptist.org/calvinism David Dockery: Overview of the History of Baptist Theology (Part 1)
David Dockery, president of Union University in Tenn., gives an overview of the history of Southern Baptist theology.
David Dockery: The Current Resurgence of Reformed Theology (Part 2)
David Dockery, president of Union University in Tennessee, gives an overview of the resurgence of Reformed theology in Southern Baptist life.
Calvinism: Dialogue from Differing Theological Perspectives
Hershael York, associate dean of the School of Theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky. and Steve Lemke, director of the Baptist Center for Theology and Ministry, New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, discuss their differing perspectives on Calvinism.
Calvinism Conference: Q and A
During the "Calvinism: Concerned? Confused? Curious?" conference held August 4, 2012 at Crestwood Baptist Church in Oldham County, Ky., audience members had the opportunity to submit questions to the panel. The panel included David Dockery, president, Union University; Steve Lemke, director of the Baptist Center for Theology and Ministry, New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary; Frank Page, president, Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention; and Hershael York, associate dean, School of Theology, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Kevin Smith, pastor of Watson Memorial Baptist Church in Louisville, served as moderator.
Frank Page: A Vision for a Unified SBC
How can Southern Baptists of differing theological perspectives work together? Frank Page, president, Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, addresses the question.
Read our second story on the conference, "Dockery: Calvinism has roots in SBC history," at: www.bpnews.net/BPnews.asp?ID=38430
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Post by Church News on Aug 16, 2012 16:55:17 GMT -5
Dr. Frank Page
Baptist Press Page names advisory team on Calvinism Michael Foust, associate editor
Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee President Frank Page has announced the members of an advisory team who will help him craft a strategic plan to bring together various groups within the convention who hold different opinions on the issue of Calvinism. The 16-member group will conduct its first meeting Aug. 29-30 in Nashville, Tenn. "My goal is to develop a strategy whereby people of various theological persuasions can purposely work together in missions and evangelism," Page told Baptist Press. The list was announced Tuesday (Aug. 15). At some point in the coming weeks and months, he said, "most likely there will be the crafting of a statement regarding the strategy on how we can work together." "I want to be very clear: This is not an attempt to redo the theological consensus that we have in the Baptist Faith and Message 2000," Page said. "It is practical in nature, not doctrinal." Page emphasized that the group is "not an official committee" of the convention. He also said additional names could be added to the group. "It's a group of helpers helping Frank Page come up with some sort of strategy document," he said. David Dockery, president of Union University in Jackson, Tenn., helped Page put together the list. "We wanted people who truly represented the various constituencies involved in this theological discussion," said Page, who in May and then in June publicly said he was working on naming such a group. Following are the members of the advisory team: -- Daniel Akin, president, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Wake Forest, N.C. -- Mark Dever, senior pastor, Capitol Hill Baptist Church, Washington D.C. -- David Dockery, president, Union University, Jackson, Tenn. -- Leo Endel, executive director, Minnesota-Wisconsin Baptist Convention. -- Ken Fentress, senior pastor, Montrose Baptist Church, Rockville, Md. -- Timothy George, dean, Beeson Divinity School, Birmingham, Ala. -- Eric Hankins, senior pastor, First Baptist Church, Oxford, Miss. -- Johnny Hunt, pastor, First Baptist Church, Woodstock, Ga. -- Tammi Ledbetter, homemaker and layperson, Inglewood Baptist Church, Grand Prairie, Texas. -- Steve Lemke, provost, director of the Baptist Center for Theology and Ministry at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. -- Fred Luter, senior pastor, Franklin Avenue Baptist Church, New Orleans; president, Southern Baptist Convention. -- R. Albert Mohler Jr., president, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Ky. -- Paige Patterson, president, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fort Worth, Texas. -- Stephen Rummage, senior pastor, Bell Shoals Baptist Church, Brandon, Fla. -- Daniel Sanchez, professor of missions, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fort Worth, Texas. -- Jimmy Scroggins, senior pastor, First Baptist Church, West Palm Beach, Fla. In early August, Page was part of a panel discussion where he and other panelists said Southern Baptists should and can unite, despite differences on the issue of Calvinism.
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Post by Church News on Sept 1, 2012 7:50:52 GMT -5
At New Orleans Seminary, Hurricane Isaac toppled a termite-damaged tree near the John T. Christian Library. Campus-wide damage from Isaac is less than $300,000 according to an early assessment. However, with flooding in numerous other parts of Louisiana, Southern Baptist Disaster Relief is in place to begin serving meals, helping with clean-up and providing spiritual counsel to Isaac's victims. Photo by Gary D. Myers.
Baptist Press As Isaac leaves, Baptists arrive to cook, clean up, minister by Tobin Perry
Southern Baptist Disaster Relief feeding units are in place more than 24 hours ahead of schedule, with plans to begin no later than Saturday serving 225,000 meals a day in Louisiana and Mississippi. One site where long-term DR efforts will not be needed is New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, which sustained less than $300,000 in damage from Hurricane Isaac, according to initial estimates. Nevertheless, SBDR's readiness to help in feeding, cleanup, chaplaincy and childcare for the victims of Isaac, which struck on the seventh anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, is a true picture of Christian service, said Tom Long, the southeast region coordinator for Louisiana Baptist Disaster Relief. "I think this truly shows what the Great Commission is all about as far as reaching out to our own communities in our area," Long said. "Then the support we have as Southern Baptists from all across our convention, the gathering together of our workers and teams, has been tremendous. No matter what kind of problem may come up, we're able to respond and respond quickly." The response adds to the goodwill Southern Baptists planted during Katrina and other disasters. "We were able to go to the governor of Louisiana and tell him that we were already set up and onsite earlier than what they expected," Long said. "We're ready to go and do the work that is needed to be done. That was a very impressive thing for him to know, that we could gather our forces together and our people and be on site and set up as quickly as we could. That meant a lot. It said a lot about Southern Baptists and the work we're doing." Southern Baptist volunteers from eight state conventions have been mobilized to Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, just two days after Isaac made landfall in the Gulf as a category 1 storm. Flooding has been a major problem. The death toll in the U.S. climbed to four after the bodies of a man and woman were found in Braithwaite, La., and risk-modeling firm AIG estimates the hurricane may cost insurers as much as $2 billion, according to news reports. As many as 34 SBDR feeding and recovery units are expected to be in place and operational by Saturday evening, SBDR officials said. An Oklahoma Baptist feeding unit in Westwego and a Mississippi Baptist unit set up at First Baptist Church of Long Beach, Miss., should be the first ones to distribute food, either Friday evening or Saturday. The Incident Command has been set up at First Baptist Church of Covington, La., with Terry Henderson of Texas Baptist Men serving as incident commander. The North American Mission Board's two 60,000-pound Freightliner rigs loaded with roofing supplies have reached the Gulfport Baptist Association offices in Mississippi. One of the supply loads will remain for use in Mississippi; the other is on its way to Slidell, La. Long notes that the worst flooding was around Lake Pontchartrain and low-lying areas between there and the interstate, where some mud-out work will need to be done. But, he added, the area is "blessed that we didn't have any more damage than we did." Long says a few chainsaw units have been involved in cleanup today [Aug. 31] near New Orleans, but the requests for help have been light. He expects, as teams get into the communities, the number of help requests will increase. Louisiana has other units on standby for use as needed, Long said. Isaac, now downgraded to a tropical depression, is headed north through Arkansas and into the central U.S. Because of the Southern Baptist Convention's long history of disaster relief in Louisiana, SBDR has been invited to participate in relief efforts by the Governor's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparation for Louisiana. From its disaster operations center in Alpharetta, Ga., NAMB coordinates and manages Southern Baptist responses to major disasters through a partnership between NAMB and the SBC's 42 state conventions, most of which have their own state disaster relief programs. SBDR assets include 82,000 trained volunteers, including chaplains, and some 1,550 mobile units for feeding, chainsaw, mud-out, command, communication, childcare, shower, laundry, water purification, repair/rebuild and power generation. SBDR is one of the three largest mobilizers of trained, credentialed disaster relief volunteers in the United States, including the American Red Cross and The Salvation Army. Southern Baptists and others who want to donate to the disaster relief operations can contact their state conventions or contribute to NAMB's disaster relief fund via namb.net/disaster-relief-donationsOther ways to donate are to call 1-866-407-NAMB (6262) or mail checks to NAMB Box 116543 Atlanta, GA 30368-6543 Designate checks for "Disaster Relief."
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Post by Church News on Sept 14, 2012 12:38:28 GMT -5
Hobby Lobby files suit against abortion mandate Michael Foust is associate editor of Baptist Press
Evangelical-owned Hobby Lobby has filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration's contraceptive/abortion mandate, becoming the largest business yet to take action against the rule and underscoring once again that the issue impacts more than just Catholics. With more than 500 stores in 41 states, Hobby Lobby's owners always have made their faith a central part of their business. Their stores play Christian instrumental music and are closed on Sundays. Hobby Lobby contributes to Christian organizations and during Easter and Christmas runs full-page ads with Gospel-centered messages in newspapers. The mandate, issued by the Department of Health and Human Services, requires businesses to purchase insurance plans that cover contraceptives, including "emergency" contraceptives that can cause chemical abortions. The latter drugs often are labeled morning-after pills and come under brand names such as Plan B and ella. They can work before implantation and -- in the case of ella -- after implantation. Hobby Lobby is represented by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which filed the suit Wednesday (Sept. 12). There now are 28 separate suits against the mandate, although most of them involve religious organizations that will be impacted by the rule, according to Becket. Although Hobby Lobby's insurance plans cover contraceptives that are preventative in nature, the company won't cover anything that causes a chemical abortion, says David Green, Hobby Lobby's founder and CEO. "These abortion-causing drugs go against our faith, and our family is now being forced to choose between following the laws of the land that we love or maintaining the religious beliefs that have made our business successful," Green said during a conference call with reporters. "... We simply cannot abandon our religious beliefs to comply with this mandate." The mandate went into effect Aug. 1, but Hobby Lobby won't be impacted until Jan. 1, when the new insurance year for its employees begins. The mainstream media has focused most of its attention on Catholic organizations and has rarely used the word "abortion" in reporting on the controversy, but the reality is much different, said Becket Fund attorney Kyle Duncan. "We hope that this lawsuit, on behalf of such a large and prominent evangelical Christian business, will draw attention to the fact that the government is trying to force people of all different faiths to violate their faith," Duncan said during the conference call. "This is not by any means a Catholic-only issue. Some of the drugs involved in the mandate can cause an early abortion. And many Americans who are not Catholic have a problem with this." The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma, asserts the mandate violates the U.S. Constitution's guarantees of freedom of religion, speech and association. It asks the court to issue an injunction prohibiting enforcement of the mandate. In a separate case in July, a federal court issued a ruling preventing the mandate from being enforced against a Colorado business whose owners are devout Catholics, but the ruling applied only to that business. Hobby Lobby would face millions of dollars in fines if it does not comply. If it chose simply to drop insurance for employees altogether, it would face fines of $26 million per year, Duncan said. If it chose to offer insurance but simply not comply with the mandate, the fines would be even larger: more than $400 million per year, he said. "The government has turned a deaf ear to the rights of business owners," Duncan said. Perhaps countering what critics will say about Hobby Lobby and the lawsuit, Green said the company cares about its employees. "That's why, unlike most major retailers, we are open only 66 hours per week and are closed on Sunday, to allow our employees to spend time with their family," Green said. Also, the company's minimum wage for full-time employees is 80 percent above the national minimum wage, he said. The issue is about religious liberty, Green said. "Hobby Lobby has always been a tool for the Lord's work," he said. "... For me and my family, charity equals ministry, which equals the Gospel of Jesus Christ.... But now our faith is being challenged by the federal government."
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Post by Church News on Sept 29, 2012 8:59:52 GMT -5
Baptist Press Many Christians aren't registered to vote, many more don't vote Erin Roach, assistant editor
Voter registration deadlines are approaching, with a few states setting the limit at October 9, and pro-family groups are emphasizing the need for Christians to participate in the upcoming election. "We cannot win the public debate over the critical issues of faith, family and freedom if like-minded Americans stay home on Election Day." Champion the Vote estimates that out of 60 million Christians in the United States, only 30 million of them vote in any given election or are even registered to vote. To register, click below: www.ivotevalues.org/takeaction"With most elections being decided by smaller and smaller margins, we cannot win the public debate over the critical issues of faith, family and freedom if like-minded Americans stay home on Election Day," the Family Research Council said on ivotevalues.org. Meeting the challenges facing the nation will require a greater level of commitment from believers than has been necessary in generations, FRC said in explaining the importance of its get-out-the-vote effort. FRC also is urging concerned citizens to help others register to vote by connecting with pastors and churches in their area and asking them to host a voter registration event and by contacting unregistered people in their area and encouraging them to be sure they're ready to vote in November. The registration deadline in Kentucky is October 9. Election Day is November 6.
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Post by Church News on Oct 12, 2012 15:09:34 GMT -5
Baptist Press Baptist universities join legal fight against abortion mandate Michael Foust, associate editor
Underscoring once again it's not a Catholic-only issue, two Baptist colleges have filed suit against the Obama administration's abortion/contraceptive mandate, saying they're standing up for what Baptists long have defended -- religious freedom. The Oct. 9 lawsuit by Houston Baptist University and East Texas Baptist University is the 33rd suit against the mandate, which requires employers to provide employee health insurance that covers contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs. The latter drugs often are labeled "morning-after" or "week-after" pills and come under brand names such as Plan B and ella, and can act after fertilization and even after implantation, thereby causing a chemical abortion. Churches are exempt from the mandate, but religious organizations -- such as Christian colleges, hospitals and businesses -- are not. The mandate was issued by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in August 2011 and went into effect in August of this year, although HHS gave nonprofit religious organizations another year -- until August 2013 -- to comply. The new health care law signed by President Obama opened the door for the mandate. The law itself does not require coverage of abortion-inducing drugs, although it did give HHS the authority to determine what is and is not covered under the new law, often dubbed "Obamacare." The Supreme Court upheld the law earlier this year but did not deal with the issue raised by the mandate lawsuits. The list of businesses and organizations suing to overturn the mandate has grown in recent weeks, with arts and crafts company Hobby Lobby and Christian publisher Tyndale House joining the ranks. Another Baptist school, Louisiana College, filed suit in February. Becket Fund for Religious Liberty is representing Houston Baptist and East Texas Baptist in the suit, filed in a federal court in Texas. The schools say the mandate violates their constitutionally guaranteed freedoms of religion and speech. "The Universities' religious beliefs forbid them from participating in, providing access to, paying for, training others to engage in, or otherwise supporting abortion," the suit says. "... The government's Mandate unconstitutionally coerces the Universities to violate their deeply-held religious beliefs under threat of heavy fines and penalties." Forcing the university to "pay a fine" for the "privilege of practicing one's religion or controlling one's own speech is un-American, unprecedented, and flagrantly unconstitutional," the suit states. The universities don't have a problem with covering all contraceptives, only those that can cause chemical abortions, the suit says. The schools "consider the prevention by artificial means of the implantation of a human embryo to be an abortion," and they affirm "traditional Christian teachings on the sanctity of life," the suit states. Samuel Oliver, president of East Texas Baptist University, said Baptists have a history of standing up for religious freedom. "Baptists have always advocated religious liberty, and religious liberty is what is at stake in this situation," Oliver said. "As the famous Baptist preacher George W. Truett once remarked, 'A Baptist would rise at midnight to plead for absolute religious liberty for his Catholic neighbor, and for his Jewish neighbor, and for everybody else.' We are rising today to ensure that religious liberty, the first freedom guaranteed in the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, is protected and preserved." Said Houston Baptist President Robert Sloan, "While we are always reluctant to enter into lawsuits, the government has given us no choice. Either we violate our conscience or give in to the administration's heavy-handed attack upon our religious freedom. We will not comply with this unconstitutional mandate, and we plead with our government to respect the liberties given by God and enunciated in the Bill of Rights." The lawsuit says the law and the government have "provided thousands of exemptions" to businesses but that the government refuses to exempt religious organizations from the mandate. For example, businesses with fewer than 50 employees are exempt from the health care law and therefore exempt from the mandate. Businesses also had the option of "grandfathering" in their previous health care plans and thereby avoid many of the new law's requirements, such as the mandate. "[T]he government refuses to give the same level of accommodation to groups exercising their fundamental First Amendment freedoms," the suit states. "... The Mandate can be interpreted as nothing other than a deliberate attack by the government on the religious beliefs of the Universities and millions of other Americans." The HHS mandate provides an exemption for churches and church-like bodies provided they are nonprofit and meet all four of the following criteria: 1) "The inculcation of religious values is the purpose of the organization"; 2) "The organization primarily employs persons who share the religious tenets of the organization"; 3) "The organization serves primarily persons who share the religious tenets of the organization"; and 4) The organization is a church, an integrated auxiliary of a church, a convention or association of churches, or is an exclusively religious activity of a religious order, under Internal Revenue Code 6033(a)(1) and (a)(3)(A)." Although the universities only employ Christians, they don't fit the definition of a church as set forth by the criteria.
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Post by Church News on Oct 13, 2012 6:51:51 GMT -5
Atlanta archdiocese calls for end to Komen support Baptist Press
Atlanta's Roman Catholic Archdiocese has called on its parishes, missions and schools to halt their support of the world's leading breast cancer organization because of its advocacy for the country's leading abortion provider. In an Oct. 1 memo, the archdiocese said it no longer supports Susan G. Komen for the Cure and told its organizations to do likewise. Contributions to Komen's greater Atlanta affiliate "did not constitute a direct cooperation with evil" until recently, because the money did not go to Planned Parenthood, according to the archdiocese's statement. That changed, however, when news reports and Facebook postings by Komen Atlanta showed it "worked behind the scenes" early this year to urge its national office to restore funding to Planned Parenthood, the archdiocese said. "[T]his public declaration of support for Planned Parenthood is an occasion for scandal," according to the archdiocese, which said it found the Komen affiliate's action "disappointing, discouraging, and we do not see how continued support is possible at this time." Komen Atlanta has never given to Planned Parenthood Southeast, it told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Komen's national office decided to stop grants to affiliates of Planned Parenthood late last year. Komen received intense criticism when the move was reported Jan. 31, and it reversed course Feb. 3. It was during this time period that Komen Atlanta advocated for the national office to resume grants to the abortion giant, according to the archdiocese. Planned Parenthood clinics performed 329,445 abortions in 2010, the most recent year for which statistics are available. That was more than one-fourth of the lethal procedures in the United States for the year. Komen is funding at least 17 Planned Parenthood affiliates this year, according to The Washington Post. The archdiocese represents about one million Catholics in northern Georgia, according to The Journal-Constitution.
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Post by Church News on Oct 22, 2012 15:59:28 GMT -5
Ed Stetzer
FIRST-PERSON: Christianity isn't dying, cultural Christianity is Ed Stetzer, LifeWay Research President
You've heard it suggested the United States is simply Europe on a 50 year delay. Supposedly most churches will be museums before our grandchildren reach adulthood. Though new numbers from Pew Research released this month point to a decline in American Protestants, no serious scholar believes Christianity in America is on a trajectory of extinction. And, as a Ph.D. researcher and practicing evangelical Christian, I say to those who've read recent reports and come to that conclusion, "Not so fast." You see, many in the U.S. who identify as Christian do so only superficially. These cultural Christians use the term but do not practice the faith. Now it seems many of them are giving up the Christian label, and those cultural or nominal Christians are becoming "nones," people with no religious label. Christian nominalism is nothing new. As soon as any belief system is broadly held, people are motivated to adopt it, even with a low level of connection. Yet, much of the change in our religious identification is in nominal Christians no longer using the term and, instead, not identifying with any religion. In other words, the nominals are becoming the nones. I've seen this in my own family. Growing up in an Irish Catholic community outside New York City, the Catholic Church was the church we didn't go to. Today, I am an evangelical Christian, and I attend church like one, but most of my extended family do not attend church, and don't bother to call themselves Catholics any longer. The nominals became the nones. Furthermore, the cultural value of identifying as a Christian is decreasing. When that happens, those whose connection to Christianity was more an identifying mark than a deeply held belief find they don't need that identity anymore. The label does not matter. When considering why someone does or does not label themselves a Christian, we see three broad ways people identify as Christian. On a survey, cultural Christians mark "Christian" rather than another world religion, because they know they are not Hindu, Jewish, etc., or because their family always has. Churchgoing Christians identify as such, because they occasionally attend worship services. On the other hand, conversion Christians claim to have had a faith experience in which they were transformed, resulting in a deeply held belief. The recent growth in nones, I believe, comes primarily from cultural and churchgoing Christians no longer using a religious identification. The obvious question is why the decline at all and what does the future hold? Some may say this sounds exactly like what has happened in Europe. Well, yes and no. Europe's religious decline happened for different reasons than what we are seeing here -- bloody religious wars and a church/state alliance led to mandated religions which led to distaste and rejection of religion. That's not the case in the United States, and I don't think we will go that path. Yet, there is movement in religious identification that should cause us to consider three ramifications. First, Christians continue to lose what some have called a home-field advantage. Christianity is no longer the first choice of many seeking spiritual meaning, and identifying as Christian is not necessary to be an accepted part of society. Second, the squishy middle is collapsing. It makes less sense to be a cultural Christian today. Better to be spiritual than religious, unless your religion matters to you, as it does to devout Roman Catholics, Protestants and many others. Third, Christianity is not collapsing, but it is being clarified. If you cut through the recent hype, and look to studies such as the General Social Survey, you'll find the United States is filled with vibrant Believers. The survey shows the evangelical movement has remained generally steady from 1972 to 2010 (and, contrary to what you might have heard, the data include young adults), that church attendance has declined among mainline Protestants, and that the nones have increased. But Christianity has not collapsed. Other examples of resiliency abound. Each year, Gallup asks Americans whether they consider themselves a born-again or evangelical Christian. Since 1992, the percentage has fluctuated from a low of 36 percent in 1993 to a high of 47 percent in 1998. The 2011 yearly aggregate is 42 percent, very similar to the percentages over the past eight years. So, Christianity has hardly been replaced by the nones. If not extinction, what then does the future look like? I believe if trends continue the future will look more like the present-day Pacific Northwest. There, we find a majority of the population is spiritual but not religious, yet vibrant churches and devout Christians abound. For example, in the Foursquare Church (a mid-size Pentecostal denomination), the Northwest District oversees 150 churches. Fifteen years ago, 66 of those churches did not exist. Those 66 churches alone report 40,000 new believers. Similar examples of such vibrant growth, there and elsewhere, demonstrate the point. So, in an increasingly secular environment we have vibrant congregations. That's the future. It's true that many mainline church buildings in America, like their European counterparts, have converted into shops, concert halls and museums. But I find it telling that churches like Sojourn Community Church in Louisville, Ky., are buying back former cathedrals and filling them anew with vibrant young congregations. Even in the shadow of the decline of cultural and nominal religion, the future of vibrant Christianity in America is all around us. The future of Christianity in America is not extinction but clarification that a devout faith is what will last. Christianity in America isn't dying, cultural Christianity is. I am glad to see it go.
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Post by Church News on Oct 24, 2012 17:16:33 GMT -5
Baptist Press Planned Parenthood spends millions for Obama Tom Strode, Washington bureau chief
Planned Parenthood, the nation's leading abortion provider, has spent $12 million on this year's presidential election through its political action committees. That is more than it has ever spent in an election, and about half of it has gone for television ads in such battleground states as Florida, Ohio and Virginia, according to the Associated Press. Cecile Richards, Planned Parenthood's president, said she has "taken a break from [her] day job" to campaign for President Obama. In a video released by the Obama campaign on October 19, Richards said, "Our daughters' and our granddaughters' future depends on" working to re-elect the president. Richards' announcement came three days after the second presidential debate, when Obama mentioned Planned Parenthood five times, advocating continued federal funding for the controversial organization. In contrast with previous presidential campaigns, Obama has been outspoken in promoting abortion rights and Planned Parenthood. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, meanwhile, has called for the defunding of Planned Parenthood. Richard Land doesn't "blame Planned Parenthood for being actively involved in the Obama campaign," the Southern Baptist pro-life leader said. "If one reads the platforms of the two parties, it's in their self-interest to do everything they can to bring about President Obama's re-election, because the Republican platform called for Planned Parenthood to be defunded and the Democratic platform supported continued funding of Planned Parenthood," Land, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, said. "Unfortunately, there are hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars at stake, so I imagine Planned Parenthood sees a $12 million investment as a wise use of their funds in order to protect the gift of hundreds of millions of dollars they receive every year from the federal government. "Personally, I find it unconscionable that our government is funding Planned Parenthood, and I strongly support their being reduced to zero in the federal budget," Land said. Planned Parenthood and its affiliates, which are under investigation by a congressional subcommittee, received $487.4 million in grants, contracts and reimbursements from all government levels in 2009-10, the most recent year for which statistics are available. Planned Parenthood centers reported performing 329,445 abortions in 2010. During the October 16 debate, Obama again seemed to repeat his mistaken contention that Planned Parenthood provides mammograms. He said millions of American women "rely on [Planned Parenthood] for mammograms." Planned Parenthood does not perform mammograms, however, a fact confirmed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in June. In response to a Freedom of Information Act request from the Alliance Defending Freedom, the FDA said no Planned Parenthood clinic has a license to operate mammogram equipment, according to CNS News. Planned Parenthood refers women to other clinics for mammograms, the organization acknowledged October 17. A subcommittee of the House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee initiated an investigation of Planned Parenthood more than a year ago. It has been looking into reports of potential fraud and failure to report suspected sex abuse and human trafficking.
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Post by Church News on Nov 10, 2012 7:28:53 GMT -5
Attorney General Holder's family owns abortion clinic site Compiled by Tom Strode, Erin Roach and Diana Chandler of Baptist Press
United States Attorney General Eric Holder's wife and sister-in-law own a building used as an abortion clinic by a doctor who was indicted last year on charges of Medicaid fraud, according to an investigative report. Pro-life advocates suggested the connection may help explain Holder's refusal to prosecute abortion providers who violate federal law and his efforts to bring charges against sidewalk counselors outside abortion clinics. Watchdog.org reported on the link between Holder's family and abortion doctor Tyrone Malloy Oct. 31 in Human Events, a conservative weekly newspaper. Holder's wife, Sharon Malone Holder, and her sister, Margie Malone Tuckson, own a building in suburban Atlanta where Malloy once performed abortions, according to Watchdog. Though Tuckson denied they owned the building, Watchdog reviewed documents that show they moved ownership into a family trust in 2009. After being questioned by Watchdog, Tuckson contacted the Fulton County tax assessor's office to change the ownership, according to the report. The new deed, however, lists Malone Holder and Malone Tuckson as the sole trustees, Watchdog reported. A local grand jury indicted Malloy and his clinic's former office manager, Cathy Ann Edwards, in December on charges they had received nearly $390,000 in federal payments for illegally funded abortions and ultrasounds that were never done, according to the report. The pair appealed to the Georgia Supreme Court a judge's decision that they could not challenge the state's Medicaid law. In addition to his 2011 indictment, Malloy received reprimands from the state in the death of a baby in 1999 and in the death of a patient after a botched abortion in 2008, Watchdog reported. Catherine Davis of the National Black Prolife Coalition told Watchdog, "There is a clear conflict of interest when the man charged with pursuing those that abuse the system is also one who is engaged in some way with the business." The efforts by the Justice Department to prosecute pro-lifers who seek to counsel abortion-minded women outside clinics have failed in every case he is aware of, said Troy Newman, president of the activist Operation Rescue organization. "It looks to me like the attorney general and his wife are in business with the abortion industry, which makes a lot of sense and helps explain why [Holder's Justice Department] is prosecuting pro-lifers and losing the cases around the country," Newman said, according to Watchdog. "I don't think it's a surprise to anybody that Holder and the Obama administration are extremely biased against pro-life people and in favor of the pro-abortion crowd," he said. www.bpnews.net/BPnews.asp?ID=39134
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Post by Church News on Nov 10, 2012 15:18:04 GMT -5
Baptist Press Pro-life, pro-family hopes dim in new Congress Tom Strode,Washington bureau chief
A status quo election has left conservative evangelicals and other social conservatives with little optimism they will see pro-life and pro-family advances by the federal government in the next two years. The Democrats' retention of the White House and Senate, as well as the Republicans' continued majority in the House of Representatives, appears to do more than set the stage for likely, continued gridlock until at least the 2014 congressional elections. It also seems to place the burden on the House GOP to stop even further intrusions on the sanctity of human life and other socially conservative positions. "Next year poses significant challenges to progress on many of our greatest concerns," said Barrett Duke, vice president for public policy of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC). "Efforts to protect the unborn and to defend marriage will be much more difficult, but we will look for every opportunity to do so." Carrie Gordon Earll of CitizenLink, an advocacy affiliate of Focus on the Family, said the GOP's House majority "will offer somewhat of a firewall to protect life, marriage and religious freedom." She acknowledged in a CitizenLink news article, however, the Democrats' control of the Senate and Obama's executive orders "will be harder to limit, even by a strong House." Repealing the 2010 health-care reform law -- dubbed "Obamacare" by both supporters and opponents -- appears to be out of the question. Speaker of the House John Boehner, R.-Ohio, hinted repeal seems an unlikely pursuit, telling ABC-TV after the election, "Obamacare is the law of the land." While their hopes appear dashed in Congress, evangelicals, Roman Catholics and other religious freedom advocates are battling the Obama administration's abortion/contraception mandate in the courts. The mandate -- a federal rule in support of the health-care law -- requires all health insurance plans to cover contraceptives, even ones that can cause abortions, and has a religious exemption that covers churches but not most religious organizations. Pro-life members of Congress will continue their efforts to protect amendments in yearly spending bills that prevent funding of abortions, but they will again be unable to overturn anything President Obama does by executive order to underwrite abortion providers and promoters. Tom McClusky, vice president of Family Research Council Action, offered best-case and worst-case scenarios when asked by Baptist Press. "The best case scenario is that the president understands that half the country didn't vote for him, and there was a reason for that and a very valid reason ... that there needs to be more reaching across the aisle," he said. "And at the same time hopefully the Republicans understand that they need to be more bold." Conservatives are now where liberals were after the 2004 election, McClusky said. Republicans should "look more to their core" like Democrats did eight years ago, he told BP. "The worst case scenario is that Republicans don't follow that model and the Republicans start abandoning some of the core principles that are why they still have a majority in the House," McClusky said. "The people elected a divided government, and in a sense that's what the Republicans should give them and tackle the issues that are most important to the American people." Efforts on some issues "should see more movement," the ERLC's Duke said. The "growing consensus" of the need to reform immigration law is one of those, he said. "We will advocate that to be just toward everyone affected, immigration reform must include such aspects as border security, workplace enforcement and paths to legal status with appropriate restitution," Duke said. The ERLC also will be engaged on Iran's threat to become nuclear-armed, intrusions on religious liberty overseas and in this country, and reducing federal debt and the deficit, among other economic challenges, he said. Most importantly, he said, the ERLC plans to "represent the Lord and Southern Baptists in a way that honors and glorifies the Lord, respects the dignity of everyone we work with and advances the great Gospel mission." The current members of Congress will reconvene Nov. 13 for a lame-duck session before the new year. The focus will be on the "fiscal cliff," as it is known. If Congress does not act by Jan. 1, about $7 trillion in tax increases will ensue as the tax cuts implemented under President George W. Bush expire. In addition, sequestration -- automatic cuts to defense and non-defense spending of $55 billion each -- will go into effect.
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Post by Church News on Nov 13, 2012 20:21:17 GMT -5
IMB missionary Roger Hesch wore a metal "halo" for four months to keep cancer-weakened vertebra in his neck from collapsing. During those months, Roger, pictured here with his mother in Minnesota, could not turn his neck and his head never touched a pillow.
Baptist Press Cancer becomes one of God's 'greatest gifts' to IMB missionary Laura Fielding, writer for IMB
DURBAN, South Africa -- Roger Hesch should be dead. After stage 4 bone marrow cancer decimated his body, his recovery encountered several life-threatening setbacks, each of which should have overpowered his ravaged immune system. Doctor after doctor told him the chances of survival were next to nothing. But God had more for Roger to do. Saying 'yes'
Years earlier, after graduating from high school in his hometown of Little Falls, Minn., Roger spent a year in South Africa as part of an international exchange program in Johannesburg that exposed him "to the bigger world," he said. He and his wife Meg met while attending college in Minneapolis and were married in 1980. Early on, the couple made a commitment to say "yes" to God's leading, regardless of what that meant. They said "yes" to Roger attending seminary and pastoring two Southern Baptist churches. "In January 1986, I was speaking on the Great Commission and while I was preaching, God said, 'You can't encourage other people to do what you are not willing to do,'" Roger recalled. It was then the couple said "yes" to serving overseas as missionaries with the International Mission Board. "We said we'll go where other people can't or won't go," Roger said. That led them to live in a dangerous country in sub-Saharan Africa with few missionaries -- Roger was even wrongfully imprisoned for a week. But he and Meg remained obedient, seeing 70 churches multiply to 500 in about six years. It was after a move to North Africa to pastor an international church that Roger and his family -- which now included three children -- would face their biggest challenge. The cancer
Roger was coaching his daughter's school basketball team in 1999 when he began to lose movement -- first in his right arm, then his left. North African doctors couldn't diagnose the problem so they sent him to London. Doctors there diagnosed him with stage 4 cancer, meaning it had spread to other organs and was considered incurable. Another concern was a vertebra pinching his spinal cord. Doctors worried the weakened and brittle bones in Roger's neck may collapse, snapping his spinal cord. Within a week the Hesches were back in Minneapolis for Roger to begin chemotherapy. He also had a metal "halo" screwed into his head to keep his neck upright. "He was in [the halo] for four months," Meg said. "His head could never touch the pillow because it was propped up on bars; he couldn't turn his neck, and he endured it -- just day by day by day -- endured such hardship and such suffering." After four months of chemo the treatment began to kill his body. His only chance of survival was a bone marrow transplant. God speaks
As he lay in the hospital bed following the transplant, Roger told God, "I hurt -- I mean, I really hurt." But God reminded Roger of the pain He had endured. "His response to me was, 'I hung on a cross; you're lying in a hospital bed.... I had nails in my hands. You get ice chips when your mouth is dry; they gave Me sour vinegar.... You have doctors and nurses to care for you; I had Roman soldiers to stick spears in Me.... You've got Me to cry out to and you know I love you; and I cried out, 'My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?' "[God told me] 'You have a chance now to know just a small measure of the pain that I went through for you -- just a small measure of what I suffered,'" Roger said. And for the first time Roger truly understood God's grace. "We always look at cancer and we say, 'Oh, what a terrible thing,'" Roger said. "I think it's one of the greatest gifts God has ever given me, because I learned so much about God through the experience." Roger began to recover after the bone marrow transplant, but not without complications. "It was a long road back, physically," he said. Soon after his release from the hospital, with a weak immune system, Roger contracted a septic infection, which doctors told him kills 50 percent of healthy people. His blood pressure bottomed out and he had to be airlifted to the hospital -- but walked out two days later. "One of the doctors on the team shook his head and said, '[Roger is] the luckiest man I've ever heard of,' and one of the other attending doctors said, 'No, he's not lucky, he's blessed,' [because] the first thing I said to the doctor when I went there was, 'I know you can't cure me.... There are things neither you can control nor I can control, [things] we have to leave in the hands of God.'" As Roger continued to recover, he faced one obstacle after another: graft-vs.-host disease, shingles, the fusing of vertebra in his neck and thickening of the skin on his legs. "[The doctors] saw over and over and over again God's hand in the way that He did things in my body," Roger said. "Just the fact that I sit here without steel rods up and down my spine ... but I can move, I don't have neck pain, I can play basketball.... "God did that. The doctors never explained it, there was no medicine that did that -- God did that, and I give Him thanks for it." Following two years of treatment and recovery -- and despite physical limitations and setbacks -- Roger and his family said "yes" to God once again and headed back overseas in 2001 to Durban, South Africa. A new chapter
In the summer of 2012, the Hesches left South Africa to begin a three-year IMB role in California to counsel those interested in serving as overseas missionaries. As they were preparing for the move, the family received upsetting news yet again -- this time, it was Meg who was diagnosed with cancer. Meg's heart ached as she watched her husband and children struggle with the news. In addition to facing chemotherapy treatments, she also had to deal with a transatlantic move and settling into a different culture. "Through God's great grace and fantastic support of family and friends, I have weathered well the necessary six rounds of chemo, even in the midst of moving and adapting to our new home and ministry," Meg said. "As a Christian battling a potentially life-threatening illness, the truth is that I am absolutely in a win-win situation, though naturally my heartstrings anchor me to my precious family, friends and ministry I love." Meg's illness is a reality with which her husband is all too familiar. But despite changes, moves, sickness and new jobs, Roger said the bottom line is knowing God. "God is faithful and He wants us to know Him, no matter what it takes in our lives ...," he said. "Our life is not about doing stuff for God but knowing God, loving God and living with Him in a relationship." EDITOR'S NOTE: This year's Week of Prayer for International Missions in the Southern Baptist Convention is Dec. 2-9 with the theme of "BE His heart, His hands, His voice" from Matthew 16:24-25. Each year's Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for International Missions supplements Cooperative Program giving to support Southern Baptists' 5,000 international missionaries' initiatives in sharing the Gospel. This year's offering goal is $175 million. To find resources about the offering, go to:
imb.org/offering
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Post by Church News on Nov 21, 2012 6:46:10 GMT -5
Baptist Press Bush appointed judge rules agains religious freedom Michael Foust, associate editor
A federal judge has ruled that Hobby Lobby and Mardel stores must cover abortion-causing drugs for their employees as required by the Obama administration because the companies -- despite having faith as a central element of their operations -- are not religious enough to warrant a court intervention. Represented by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, Hobby Lobby and Mardel had argued that requiring them to pay for the drugs, which come under brand names such as Plan B and ella, would violate the faith of their owners, not to mention the U.S. Constitution's guarantee of freedom of religion. Judge Joe Heaton, nominated by President George W. Bush, disagreed, saying the law was not unconstitutional. Hobby Lobby is an arts and crafts store chain, while Mardel is a Christian bookstore chain. Both are owned by the Green family. The companies are self-insured, and their health care plans take effect Jan. 1. They had requested a temporary injunction. "Churches and other religious organizations or religious corporations have been accorded protection under the free exercise clause," Heaton, of the U.S. District Court in western Oklahoma, wrote. "... However, Hobby Lobby and Mardel are not religious organizations. Plaintiffs have not cited, and the court has not found, any case concluding that secular, for-profit corporations such as Hobby Lobby and Mardel have a constitutional right to the free exercise of religion ..." The ruling Monday (Nov. 19) came three days after another federal judge reached a different conclusion in siding with Bible publisher Tyndale in its suit against what has become known as the abortion/contraceptive mandate. That judge also was nominated by Bush. Including the Tyndale case, three federal judges this year have ruled against the mandate. At least 40 lawsuits have been filed against the mandate. The Supreme Court eventually may get involved. The Becket Fund says it will file an appeal on behalf of Hobby Lobby and Mardel. "Every American, including family business owners like the Greens, should be free to live and do business according to their religious beliefs," said Kyle Duncan, general counsel for the Becket Fund. "The Green family needs relief now and we will seek it immediately from the federal appeals court in Denver." With more than 500 stores in 41 states, Hobby Lobby's owners always have made their faith a central part of their business. Their stores play Christian instrumental music and are closed on Sundays. Hobby Lobby contributes to Christian organizations and runs full-page ads in newspapers during the Easter and Christmas seasons with Gospel-centered messages. "These abortion-causing drugs go against our faith, and our family is now being forced to choose between following the laws of the land that we love or maintaining the religious beliefs that have made our business successful," David Green, Hobby Lobby's founder and CEO, said in September. "... We simply cannot abandon our religious beliefs to comply with this mandate." In his ruling, Heaton said Hobby Lobby and Mardel "do not have constitutional free exercise rights as corporations." He cited a Supreme Court case and said the "plain import is that there must be more than some burden on religious exercise. The burden must be substantial." Green said religious liberty is at stake. "Hobby Lobby has always been a tool for the Lord's work," he said. "... For me and my family, charity equals ministry, which equals the Gospel of Jesus Christ. ... But now our faith is being challenged by the federal government." The mandate was announced by the Department of Health and Human Services in August 2011 as part of the health care law championed by President Obama. Although the Supreme Court upheld the health care law in June of this year, the justices' ruling did not deal with the religious liberty issues surrounding the abortion/contraceptive mandate. That means the nation's highest court could yet strike down what has been for religious groups the most controversial part of the law.
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Post by Church News on Nov 27, 2012 17:51:43 GMT -5
Baptist Press Supreme Court revives Obamacare challenge Diana Chandler, staff writer
Religious objections to the Obama administration's abortion/contraception mandate have gained new life after the U.S. Supreme Court ordered a federal appeals judge to reconsider a Christian university's challenge to the health care law. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals previously dismissed Liberty University's challenge to the law's individual and employer insurance mandates as well as the subsequent mandate by the Department of Health and Human Services that employee health insurance cover contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs. While Liberty appealed to the Supreme Court, the court dismissed the appeal when it issued its groundbreaking decision upholding Obamacare in June. But the High Court Monday (Nov. 26) granted Liberty a new hearing, ordering the 4th Circuit to reconsider Liberty University v. Geithner in response to a new appeal Liberty filed after the June decision. The nonprofit Liberty Counsel, representing the Virginia university, said the newest development revives the religious challenge to Obamacare, possibly returning the issue to the Supreme Court in 2013. "Today's ruling breathes new life into our challenge to Obamacare. Our fight against Obamacare is far from over," said Liberty Counsel founder and chairman Mat Staver, dean of Liberty University's law school. "Congress exceeded its power by forcing every employer to provide federally mandated insurance. But even more shocking is the abortion mandate, which collides with religious freedom and the rights of conscience." At least 35 Christian universities and businesses have filed suits against the health care mandates, including Louisiana College, Houston Baptist University and East Texas Baptist University. The Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission joined the legal fight in October, signing a friend-of-the-court brief in support of a joint challenge by evangelical Wheaton College in suburban Chicago and the Roman Catholic Belmont Abbey College in North Carolina. The ERLC was among 11 evangelical groups signing the brief filed by the Christian Legal Society in support of the Wheaton and Belmont Abbey appeal. Liberty University's challenge, filed in 2010, marked the first private lawsuit against Obamacare. According to Liberty Counsel, the original lawsuit said Congress lacked the authority to pass the health care law and challenged the government's forced funding of abortion as unconstitutional, based on the First Amendment Free Exercise of Religion Clause and the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act. In reconsidering the case, the appeals court could ask both sides for new legal briefs, according to news reports. The Obama administration did not oppose the Supreme Court's ruling but, according to news reports, told the court that none of Liberty's remaining challenges hold legal merit and that its challenge to the employer mandate is blocked by the Anti-Injunction Act. The act was enacted in 1867 to stop federal courts from preventing the federal government from assessing and collecting taxes. Others suing the federal government over Obamacare include Hobby Lobby, Christian publisher Tyndale House, Priests for Life and the EWTN Catholic television and radio network.
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Post by Church News on Nov 28, 2012 20:38:29 GMT -5
Southern Baptist TEXAN Zig Ziglar, renowned layman & speaker, dies Jerry Pierce, managing editor
Zig Ziglar, known worldwide for his folksy and often anecdotal motivational talks on success through serving others, died Wednesday (Nov. 28) at a Plano, Texas, hospital of complications from pneumonia. He was 86. Ziglar's deep, soothing Mississippi drawl and speeches and books often sprinkled with mentions of his Christian faith endeared him to millions. Ziglar was arguably the best-known motivational speaker of his day, having conducted hundreds of corporate seminars and given motivational speeches to hundreds of thousands of people over a 42-year speaking career. An active Southern Baptist layman and a member at Prestonwood Baptist Church in the Dallas suburb of Plano, Ziglar served as first vice president of the Southern Baptist Convention in 1984-85 during Atlanta pastor Charles Stanley's tenure as SBC president. He wrote more than 30 books, including best-sellers "See You at The Top!" and "Confessions of a Happy Christian." Another book, "Confessions of a Grieving Christian," followed the death in 1995 of daughter Suzan Ziglar Witmeyer from pulmonary fibrosis. Ziglar's pastor, Jack Graham, wrote in a message to the Prestonwood congregation on Wednesday, "It is with a heavy heart that I write to let you know that Zig Ziglar went to heaven today. Although we mourn the loss of this incredible servant of God, we rejoice that Zig is celebrating in the presence of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! Zig has left such an indelible mark on this church that we will forever remember his servant heart, his passion for teaching the Word of God, his love of people and, of course, his high-energy, motivational speaking." A message on Ziglar's Facebook page stated, "Zig Ziglar passed from this world today after a short bout with pneumonia. Though his time on earth has ended, he is speaking with Jesus now in his heavenly home. The angels in heaven are rejoicing and his family is celebrating a life well lived." A flash graphic at Ziglar corporate website, Ziglar.com, stated "In Loving Memory of Zig Ziglar 1926-2012," followed by "Speaking with Jesus Now -- Romans 8:28." Ziglar was born in Coffee County, Ala., as Hilary Hinton Ziglar but the nickname "Zig" stuck with him as he grew up in Yazoo City, Miss. Ziglar was a World War II Navy veteran and attended Milsaps College in Jackson, Miss., and the University of South Carolina before beginning a full-time sales career that would catapult him to fame as "America's motivator." Ziglar was preceded in death by his 11 siblings and his daughter Suzan. Survivors include his wife Jean; one son, John Thomas (Tom) Ziglar; two daughters, Cindy Ziglar Oates and Julie Ziglar Norman; seven grandchildren, 12 great-grandchildren and one great-great grandchild.
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Post by Church News on Nov 29, 2012 18:31:58 GMT -5
Baptist Press Supreme Court to decide Friday on gay marriage Michael Foust, associate editor
The nine justices of the U.S. Supreme Court will meet behind closed doors Friday to decide whether to take up several cases that could lead to the legalization of gay marriage in all 50 states. The public won't find out what they decided for several days -- as early as Monday -- but Friday's meeting is significant enough that both sides in the cultural debate are guessing what will happen. If the court takes up the cases, it could end up being the "Roe v. Wade" of gay marriage. At issue are two laws: a federal law known as the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and a California constitutional amendment known as Proposition 8. Technically, only one section of DOMA is before the court -- the section that defines marriage in federal law as being between one man and one woman. But the legal arguments the Obama administration's Justice Department attorneys are using to oppose that section could be used to overturn the entire law, conservative attorneys say. That other section gives states the option of not recognizing gay marriage laws from other states. Courts have been split on DOMA, although the cases before the high court overturned the federal section at issue. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives is defending DOMA in court. California Prop 8 was approved by voters in 2008 and defines marriage as between a man and a woman. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court ruling that struck it down. If the Supreme Court takes the Prop 8 case, it could do a number of things, including upholding Prop 8 or -- in what would be a nightmare for Christian legal groups and evangelicals -- reversing laws in any state that define marriage as between a man and a woman. The court also could choose not to take the Prop 8 case, a decision which would legalize gay marriage in California. In August the attorneys general of 14 states urged the Supreme Court to consider the DOMA case and to uphold the law, saying that the appeals court decision reversing the law "casts doubt on all traditional definitions of marriage" in the states that don't recognize gay marriage. The attorneys general said they were interested in "protecting their power to define marriage in the traditional manner." They further gave a solid defense of traditional marriage. "In short, traditional marriage protects civil society by encouraging couples to remain together to rear the children they conceive," the attorneys general wrote in their brief. "It creates the norm that potentially procreative sexual activity should occur in a long-term, cohabitative relationship. It is the institution that provides the greatest likelihood that both biological parents will nurture and raise the children they beget, which is optimal for children and society at large." It is not known when during the current term the court would hear oral arguments in the cases, although -- if they take the cases -- a decision likely would be handed down in the spring or early summer.
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Post by Church News on Nov 29, 2012 18:37:45 GMT -5
Baptist Press Appeals court rules against abortion mandate Michael Foust, associate editor
For the first time a federal appeals court has issued an order against the Obama administration's abortion/contraceptive mandate. The one-page order Wednesday (Nov. 28) from a three-judge Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals panel prevents the government from forcing a Missouri business -- O'Brien Industrial Holdings, LLC -- to cover contraceptives and abortion-causing drugs in its employee health care plans as the appeals process is completed. The panel's temporary injunction came two months after a lower court tossed out the lawsuit. It marks the fourth time this year that a federal court has issued an order or ruling against the mandate, which applies to businesses and religious organizations. There are about 40 cases nationwide seeking to overturn the mandate, which was implemented by the Department of Health and Human Services after President Obama signed the landmark health care bill into law. The lawsuit by the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) says the mandate would force Frank O'Brien -- the business owner -- to violate his "religious beliefs and company policy." The mandate violates two federal laws as well as the First Amendment guarantee of religious freedom and free speech, the suit states. If the court does not intervene and O'Brien does not follow the mandate, he would face steep fines. O'Brien's company and its subsidiaries employ about 85 people. "O'Brien is a Catholic who has the religious duty to conduct himself and his business in a manner consistent with the Catholic faith," ACLJ stated in an appeal to the Eighth Circuit. "Pursuant to these beliefs, O'Brien has 'established as company policy that [it] cannot pay for and provide coverage for contraceptives, sterilization, abortion or related education and counseling.'" O'Brien's business operates a number of businesses that explore, mine and process refractory and ceramic raw materials, according to ACLJ. "The order sends a message that the religious beliefs of employers must be respected by the government," said ACLJ attorney Francis Manion. "We have argued from the beginning that employers like Frank O'Brien must be able to operate their business in a manner consistent with their moral values, not the values of the government. We look forward to this case moving forward and securing the constitutional rights of our client." The ACLJ suit involves a private business, but many of the 40 suits against the mandate involve religious organizations. Tyndale House Publishers, which publishes Bibles and Christian books, won in federal court in November when a judge issued a temporary injunction preventing it from being forced to follow the mandate.
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Post by Church News on Nov 30, 2012 6:21:58 GMT -5
Southern Baptist TEXAN Ziglar, 'America's motivator,' conveyed hope, joy by Jerry Pierce, managing editor
For the past seven years, Jay Hellwig would accompany Zig Ziglar to business meetings and speaking engagements worldwide -- often sharing platforms with world leaders in business, politics and entertainment. Sometimes, he would sit across from Ziglar at his kitchen table as he finished up his Bible reading or his daily newspaper. Hellwig would be the one to insist that they hurry along at airports as Ziglar engaged strangers wanting their books signed or a nugget of advice from a man widely known as "America's motivator." But as Ziglar's personal assistant, what sticks with Hellwig above all is Ziglar's practice of reserving meal appointments very selectively. Ziglar could have his pick of interesting and entertaining people for breakfast, lunch or dinner. Those sought-after appointments, however, were held for people who didn't have a saving relationship with Jesus Christ, Hellwig said. Ziglar, known worldwide for his folksy and often anecdotal motivational talks on success through serving others, died Wednesday (Nov. 28) in Plano, Texas, of complications from pneumonia at age 86. His pastor, Jack Graham, said Ziglar saw himself foremost as a "minister of encouragement." "He was a dispenser of hope and joy and a whole lot of love," said Graham, of Dallas-area Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, during a news conference hours after Ziglar's death. Ziglar's deep, soothing Mississippi drawl and speeches and books often sprinkled with mentions of his Christian faith endeared him to millions. Ziglar was arguably the best-known motivational speaker of his day, having conducted hundreds of corporate seminars and giving motivational speeches to hundreds of thousands of people over a 42-year speaking career. A longtime Southern Baptist, Ziglar served as first vice president of the Southern Baptist Convention in 1984-85 during Atlanta pastor Charles Stanley's tenure as SBC president. His 30-plus books include best-sellers "See You at The Top!" and "Confessions of a Happy Christian." Another book, "Confessions of a Grieving Christian" (B&H Publishing Group, LifeWay Christian Resources) followed the death of daughter Suzan Ziglar Witmeyer from pulmonary fibrosis in 1995. Ziglar taught an "Encouragers" Bible study class for 18 years on Sunday mornings at Prestonwood until several years ago, Graham said. "His ability to communicate and motivate came from deep within," Graham said. "He had an incredible faith and what motivated the 'motivator' was his personal faith in Christ." Graham said one of his favorite "Zigisms" -- those wise turns-of-phrases Ziglar was known for -- was along the lines of, "'You can get everything you want in life as long as you are willing to help others get what they want in life.'" "So many of the principles and teachings that Zig gave were right out of the Bible and he would tell you that," Graham said, noting that Ziglar rarely missed church despite a demanding travel schedule. The last year, Ziglar's declining health caused him and his wife Jean to watch the services online. Graham said Ziglar's definition of success included a high ethical and moral code and "a greater picture of using what you have, your success, to encourage or bless others" and to honor God. Ziglar often talked about "stinkin' thinkin'," expressing a firm belief that attitude deeply affects all areas of life. "We all need a daily check up from the neck up to avoid stinkin' thinkin' which ultimately leads to hardening of the attitudes," Ziglar is cited as saying in a collection of his quotations provided by his company, Ziglar Inc. Among an array of his observations: "Many marriages would be better if the husband and wife clearly understood that they're on the same side" -- and "Kids go where there is excitement. They stay where there is love." And this quote appears in a memorial entry on Ziglar's Facebook page: "Among the things you can give and still keep are your word, a smile, and a grateful heart." Ziglar's conversion in 1972 by the testimony of "Sister Jessie," an African American woman who visited the Ziglar family over the 4th of July weekend that year, heightened his appreciation for people from all walks of life, Hellwig said, noting the Wall of Appreciation in Ziglar's office commemorating the influence of 27 men and women whom Ziglar considered his major influences. Sister Jessie shares that wall with a diverse group of men and women, Hellwig said. Hellwig said Ziglar's affection for his wife Jean -- whom he often called "the redhead" and frequently referred to in his speeches -- was evident to all who knew the couple. Donald Wildmon, founder of the Mississippi-based American Family Association, who worked with Ziglar in the 1980s to get pornography removed from the shelves of the 7-11 convenience store chain, said that while Ziglar was a "giant in the business community," he was also a "wonderful Christian gentleman who served God in many ways" and "believed in our cause of returning decency and morality to the public square." "An amazing, amazing man whose legacy will live on" through his family and his church, Graham told reporters. The 10th of 12 children, Ziglar was born in Coffee County, Ala., as Hilary Hinton Ziglar but the nickname "Zig" stuck with him as he grew up in Yazoo City, Miss. Ziglar was a World War II Navy veteran and attended Milsaps College in Jackson, Miss., and the University of South Carolina before beginning his career as a salesman and later a public speaker. Ziglar was preceded in death by his 11 siblings and his daughter Suzan. In addition to his wife Jean, he is survived by one son, John Thomas (Tom) Ziglar of Plano; two daughters, Cindy Ziglar Oates, of Southlake, Texas, and Julie Ziglar Norman of Alvord, Texas; seven grandchildren, 12 great-grandchildren and one great-great grandchild. Ziglar's funeral is scheduled for 11 a.m. Saturday (Dec. 1) at Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas.
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Post by Church News on Nov 30, 2012 20:21:12 GMT -5
Baptist Press Charitable deduction cap would be 'devastating' Tom Strode, Washington bureau chief
A proposal to limit charitable deductions would be devastating for churches, religious organizations and other nonprofits if adopted by the federal government, says a Southern Baptist church-state expert. Leaders in both political parties have suggested further restricting charitable deductions for at least some Americans who itemize on their tax returns as a way of helping avert the "fiscal cliff" facing the country Jan. 1. Without congressional action, the tax cuts implemented under President George W. Bush will expire on that date, producing about $7 trillion in tax increases. At the same time, inaction will result in sequestration -- automatic cuts to defense and non-defense spending of $55 billion each. The idea of capping the charitable deduction "is as serious a threat to religious organizations as anything the federal government has done in recent decades," said Richard Land, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC). "This would be catastrophic in its impact, particularly on those large gifts that many religious organizations, colleges, universities and ministries, as well as churches, depend upon for continuing operations," Land told Baptist Press Thursday (Nov. 29). "Everything we know from past experience tells us if they cap deductions it will seriously erode charitable giving." In a Nov. 28 email alert, Land urged Southern Baptists and others to ask their members of Congress to oppose further limits on charitable deductions. Enacting such restrictions would not only reduce giving to churches and charities but would harm services such organizations provide to the needy, said Land and other foes of capping such deductions. "At a time of severe economic dislocation, when the people's demand for the services of charitable institutions is particularly high, it would be extremely counterproductive and illogical to implement tax policies which would result in crippling cuts to the budgets of charitable institutions, rendering them far less able to help the most vulnerable in our society," Land said in a Nov. 29 Baptist Press column. A coalition of nonprofit organizations included the following in a Nov. 14 letter asking President Obama to maintain the current charitable deduction: -- The American public gains about $3 in benefit for each dollar a donor receives in tax relief for a contribution.
-- Americans gave nearly $300 billion to charities in 2011, according to Giving USA, with much of that total deducted from taxes.
-- Taxpayers who had an adjusted gross income of at least $100,000 in 2008 contributed about 58 percent of all charitable donations, the Congressional Budget Office recently reported.
-- One-third of donors surveyed would reduce their giving without the charitable deduction, according to a 2012 study.
-- Nonprofit organizations produce $1.1 trillion a year in jobs and services and provide 13.5 million jobs, about 10 percent of the United States workforce.
The 32-member Charitable Giving Coalition, which sent the letter, includes the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability, Association of Gospel Rescue Missions, The Salvation Army and American Red Cross. In his budgets, Obama has proposed capping the itemized deduction at 28 percent for couples whose incomes are at least $250,000 and individuals who make at least $200,000 a year. High-income earners now can deduct at least 33 percent in charitable gifts. The proposal could reduce charitable donations by as much as $7 billion a year, according to an estimate cited by Independent Sector, which leads a network of about 600 nonprofit and philanthropic organizations. The federal tax system needs an overhaul, but the suggestion to limit charitable deductions further "is a threat aimed like a dagger at the heart of America's charitable nonprofit entities, secular and religious," Land said in his column. "It will weaken most, kill many, and harm all."
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Post by Church News on Dec 6, 2012 18:44:09 GMT -5
Grady Nutt, a Southern Baptist seminary graduate who was part of the cast of "Hee Haw," is being remembered 30 years after his death with a website and commemorative two-CD collection of previously unreleased tracks.
Baptist Press Grady Nutt's comedy returns via Web, CDs Erin Roach, assistant editor
The comedy of Grady Nutt, a Southern Baptist seminary graduate known as the "Prime Minister of Humor" and a regular on television's long-running "Hee Haw" show, is being rejuvenated 30 years after his death via a website and commemorative two-CD collection of previously unreleased tracks. A native of Amarillo, Texas, Nutt began his career in childhood, singing gospel music on the radio with his mother accompanying on the piano, according to gradynutt.com. At age 12, he became an ordained Baptist minister and joked that he could perform legal weddings of his classmates. Nutt graduated from Baylor University in 1957 and was a youth pastor at First Baptist Church in Waco, Texas. In 1960, he moved to Louisville, Ky., where he enrolled at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and also became pastor of Graefenburg Baptist Church in Waddy, Ky. Friendships he made there later became part of his performances, the website says. Upon graduation from Southern in 1964, Nutt became a recruiter for the seminary, speaking on college campuses across the South. His popularity grew and led to several television appearances including as a guest host of "The Mike Douglas Show," which was the nation's top-rated daytime talk show at the time. His big break came in 1979, the website says, when he was added to the cast of Hee Haw and was given a couple of minutes each episode to do a routine. He wrote several bestselling books and released multiple comedy albums and a Southern Gospel record. In 1981, NBC launched "The Grady Nutt Show" starring Nutt as the pastor of a local church in which members would get into a humorous crisis and he would attempt to solve it, the website says. The late Minnie Pearl, a Hee Haw star, said Nutt "used humor to spread his faith to a very wide audience." Tragically, Nutt was killed in a plane crash in 1982 after a speaking engagement in Cullman, Ala. "Over the years, we've heard from people around the world how Grady touched their lives. We couldn't think of a better time to communicate with his fans and release some of Grady's best material," Nutt's son Toby said. The family hopes to share classic Nutt stories as well as television and radio clips on gradynutt.com, Twitter and Facebook, giving fans an opportunity for interaction, according to a news release Dec. 4. The commemorative CDs are available for purchase on the website. "These are some of Dad's greatest bits," son Perry Nutt said. "Listening to these stories takes you back to a time before digital, when all recordings were scratchy but real."
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Post by Church News on Dec 8, 2012 5:32:33 GMT -5
In 1870 30-year-old Lottie, home for the summer from teaching in Danville, Ky., shared her interest in missions with her sister Edmonia, one of Southern Baptists' first single women missionaries to China. Lottie felt called to follow.
Baptist Press Lottie Moon: A life of sacrifice, a lasting legacy Erich Bridges, International Mission Board global correspondent
She died on board a ship 100 years ago Christmas Eve -- sick, exhausted, brokenhearted over leaving her beloved Chinese friends in their time of suffering. It was a bittersweet end to a long and fruitful life. But it wasn't the end of Lottie Moon's story. What is it about this woman that has inspired so many Southern Baptists, for so many years, to give their own lives and treasure to God's mission? Born into privilege on a pre-Civil War plantation in Virginia, rambunctious young Lottie received the best education money could buy. But the difference between the fine words she heard from adults and the realities of life troubled her. A young, unbelieving Lottie told classmates her middle initial, D, stood for "Devil." She pulled pranks, missed chapel and scoffed at religion. She was a brilliant scholar, however, and became one of the most educated women of her era. But knowledge alone couldn't satisfy her soul. She began a search for truth. Lottie's spiritual struggle came to a dramatic climax one night, sealing her commitment to serve God and others. She witnessed the ravages of the Civil War, which destroyed the old society she had known. Matured by the experience, but just as independent as ever, she boldly joined her sister, and they become two of the earliest female missionaries to China. Little did she know what lay ahead. 'I cannot be silent'
Lottie arrived in North China in 1873, just as the last imperial dynasty was beginning to crumble. She struggled to learn the ways of Chinese culture as her sister suffered mental and emotional breakdowns. Despite bitter opposition from many Chinese -- and the bunker mentality of other missionaries -- Lottie was determined to take the message of God's love to the vast countryside. She went to the villages, often on her own. "Here I am working alone in a city of many thousand inhabitants," she wrote in one of her letters home. "It is grievous to think of these human souls going down to death without even one opportunity of hearing the name of Jesus. How many can I reach? The needs of these people press upon my soul, and I cannot be silent." She experienced isolation and loneliness. She had a chance to marry and return home. Her response: "God had first claim on my life, and since the two conflicted, there could be no question about the result." She persisted through war and famine because the Chinese needed to know her Lord. Disease, turmoil and lack of co-workers threatened to undo Lottie's work. But she gave herself completely to God, helping lay the foundation of what would become the modern Chinese church, one of the fastest-growing Christian movements in the world. She once wrote home to the Foreign Mission Board, "Please say to the [new] missionaries they are coming to a life of hardship, responsibility and constant self-denial." Lottie Moon died at age 72 -- ill and in declining health after she had made sacrifices for decades for her beloved Chinese. Who can relate to her today? Many Americans, particularly young people, have all the material things they want -- but it's not enough. In an aimless era, they crave direction and purpose. The more challenging the cause, the better. Her life speaks powerfully to a generation desperate for meaning and heroic role models. Thousands have followed Lottie's example during the century since her death -- going just as boldly, obediently, sacrificially. But not without Southern Baptists' gifts to support them. Giving has its own call to obedience and sacrifice. Lottie said it best 100 years ago: "How many there are ... who imagine that because Jesus paid it all, they need pay nothing, forgetting that the prime object of their salvation was that they should follow in the footsteps of Jesus Christ in bringing back a lost world to God." She followed to the end -- and changed history. Future generations of Southern Baptists can change it again. The Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for International Missions is named in her honor. Gifts to the offering and through Southern Baptists' year-round Cooperative Program help Baptist missionaries around the world share the Gospel. Gifts for the offering are received at Southern Baptist churches across the country or can be made on line at: www.imb.org/offeringDownload related videos at: www.imb.org/lmcovideo
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Post by Church News on Dec 14, 2012 18:11:54 GMT -5
Baptist Press Bible doesn't command wealth redistribution by David Roach
Scripture does not require governments to redistribute wealth to help the poor, presenters in a session at the Evangelical Theological Society's annual meeting said this fall. "Class warfare, wealth redistribution, and socialism can, at best, make people only equally miserable," Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary professor Craig Mitchell wrote in a paper he presented during a session titled "Does God Require the State to Redistribute Wealth?" Mitchell asked, "Is it surprising that free markets, which respect property rights, maximize both producer and consumer welfare, and create wealth (rather than dividing it) are far more compatible with biblical Christianity?" The meeting, attended by more than 2,000 evangelical scholars in Milwaukee, included the election of two Southern Baptists as officers. Thomas Schreiner, a professor of New Testament interpretation at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., was elected president-elect, and Gregg Allison, professor of Christian theology at Southern, was elected secretary. Focusing on the theme "Caring for Creation," plenary session speakers at the Nov. 14-16 meeting included Russell D. Moore, senior vice president for academic administration and dean of the school of theology at Southern, and E. Calvin Beisner, founder of the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation. In addition to Mitchell, the session on wealth redistribution featured Scott Rae, professor of philosophy of religion and ethics at the Talbot School of Theology in La Mirada, Calif.; Art Lindsley, vice president of theological initiatives at the Institute for Faith, Work & Economics in McLean, Va.; and Wayne Grudem, research professor of theological and biblical studies at Phoenix Seminary in Arizona. Mitchell, chair of the ethics department and associate director of the Richard Land Center for Cultural Engagement at Southwestern Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, said those who argue that the Bible requires governments to redistribute wealth often take Old Testament passages out of context. He told Baptist Press that the Land Center's website includes audio, video and printed resources on economics from a Christian perspective. God required Israelites to leave a portion of their crops in the field after harvest for the poor to gather, Mitchell said, and He instituted the Year of Jubilee, when land was returned to its original owner every 50th year. But neither Old Testament requirement means that modern governments should redistribute wealth to the poor, Mitchell said. "The laws concerning the gleaning of fields in the Pentateuch (Leviticus 19:9-10 and also Deuteronomy 24:21) require the poor to work by picking up the leftovers at the edge of the fields," Mitchell wrote. "Those who own the fields do not have their produce taken by the government and then given to the poor. Since the Old Testament extols the virtue of work and deplores the vice of laziness, the contemporary concept of wealth redistribution is alien to the Ancient Israelite conception of justice or righteousness." The Year of Jubilee was intended only for ancient Israel and has no application to modern social policy, Mitchell wrote, adding that New Testament commands on economic justice are directed toward individual believers, not governments. "The sin of covetousness all too often ends in the sin of stealing," Mitchell wrote. "Those who argue for class warfare call this stealing the redistribution of wealth. The most gentle way that this theft occurs is by taxation." Rae, in his paper, said the Bible requires all communities to create an economic "safety net" for the poor but leaves open the question of whether that safety net should be built with government or private funds. Some use of tax dollars to help the poor is legitimate and not a form of theft, Rae wrote. "Providing for those who cannot provide for themselves is certainly not a 'leveling' of wealth per se (though it is a form of redistribution), but providing a means of sustenance for those who cannot provide it for themselves," Rae wrote. "Thus I would not say that all redistribution is necessarily theft, but instead is part of the price paid for being a responsible member of the community, to which we implicitly consent by virtue of our membership in society." Still, proponents of wealth redistribution are wrong to argue that economic inequality is evil in itself, Rae wrote. God hates injustice and oppression but not mere inequality, he noted, adding that the Year of Jubilee -- a favorite topic of redistribution advocates -- did not help the poorest members of Israelite society because they did not have any land to reclaim. "It's not true to say that all inequality is the result of injustice, or that the inequalities that result from participation in the market system are necessarily unjust," Rae wrote. "Certainly when people are exploited so that someone else can make a profit, that's wrong, and we have grave problems with human trafficking and a good deal of sweatshop labor that goes on around the world. But be very careful that you don't fundamentally equate capitalism with exploitation." Lindsley, in his paper, said the Bible does not require governments to redistribute wealth and answered scriptural arguments used by redistribution advocates. The Year of Jubilee did not mean forgiveness of debt, he wrote, and it did not abolish private property. Under the jubilee system, an Israelite who owned land could sell the right to farm it until the Year of Jubilee, with the price based on the value of each year's crop and the number of years remaining until the jubilee, Lindsley said. When the Year of Jubilee arrived, the land reverted back to its original owner. "This understanding of Jubilee as the payoff of a lease is common in Old Testament commentaries," Lindsley wrote, noting that the jubilee does not provide an argument for wealth redistribution. In the New Testament, advocates of wealth redistribution refer to Acts 2-5 to support their position, Lindsley wrote, where early Christians sold their property to meet one another's needs. But such sharing did not eliminate private property and was entirely voluntary, he wrote. "These early believers contributed their goods freely, without coercion, voluntarily," Lindsley wrote. "Elsewhere in Scripture we see that Christians are even instructed to give in just this manner, freely, for 'God loves a cheerful giver' (2 Corinthians 9:7). There is plenty of indication that private property rights were still in effect (remember Barnabas, Ananias, and Sapphira). This is neither communism (abolition of private property) nor socialism (state ownership of the means of production). This was not even socialism as defined as a community-owned or regulated system." Grudem did not present a paper but distributed an outline of the Bible's teaching on wealth redistribution. He warned that "the power of government is great and therefore exceptionally dangerous." Government should provide a "safety net" for meeting basic needs like food, clothing and shelter, Grudem affirmed. "But there does not seem to be any justification in Scripture for governments seeking to attempt to equalize income or property between rich and poor, or to take from all the rich," Grudem noted. "I do not think biblical terms for 'justice' indicate such responsibility." Property in the Bible normally belongs to individuals rather than societies or governments, Grudem wrote. The command not to steal assumes private ownership of property and 1 Samuel 8 warns against a king who would take too much from the people. In the end, God's standard of "justice" requires governments to uphold His moral code, not ensure an even distribution of wealth, Grudem wrote.
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Post by Church News on Dec 20, 2012 17:46:32 GMT -5
Baptist Press Federal court sides with colleges opposing abortion mandate Tom Strode, Washington bureau chief
A federal appeals court has delivered an important victory to religious nonprofit organizations that oppose the Obama administration's abortion/contraception mandate. In the first ruling on the mandate at the appellate level, the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the federal government Dec. 18 to keep its promise to issue a new rule to protect the religious liberty of two colleges and other religious nonprofits. The three-judge panel told the Obama administration to report back every 60 days on its commitment to publish a notice of a proposed rule by March 31 and to issue a final rule before August. The D.C. Circuit Court also said it expected the administration to fulfill its pledge not to enforce the current rule against Wheaton College, an evangelical Christian school in suburban Chicago, and Belmont Abbey College, a Roman Catholic institution in North Carolina, as well as other religious nonprofits. "We take the government at its word and will hold it to it," the panel said in its three-page order. The appeals court issued the order in response to lawsuits by Wheaton and Belmont Abbey against a rule by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that mandates employers provide workers with health insurance covering contraceptives and abortion-causing drugs. The rule is part of the implementation of the 2010 health care reform law, which has been dubbed Obamacare. The abortion/contraception mandate went into effect Aug. 1 of this year, but the Obama administration established a one-year "safe harbor" from that date intended to accommodate the concerns of nonprofit religious entities. Neither the "safe harbor" nor the D.C. Circuit Court's order applies to for-profit companies with owners opposed to the mandate. Religious freedom advocates praised the court's order. Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention called it "a tremendous day for religious freedom and freedom of conscience," adding he was "extremely pleased but not surprised" at the court's action. "It shows clearly that when the federal government oversteps its bounds and denies the First Amendment free exercise and freedom of conscience rights of Americans that those citizens can successfully appeal to the federal court system to be the protector of those divinely endowed and constitutionally guaranteed rights," said Land, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission which signed onto a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of Wheaton and Belmont Abbey. Kyle Duncan, general counsel of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, said the court "has now made it clear that government promises and press conferences are not enough to protect religious freedom. The court is not going to let the government slide by on non-binding promises to fix the problem down the road." The D.C. Circuit Court's order came only four days after Duncan and government lawyers presented oral arguments before the panel of judges. During the arguments, the Obama administration lawyers promised the judges the government would not enforce the current rule against religious nonprofits and would provide a new rule to guard their religious freedom. Wheaton and Belmont Abbey appealed to the D.C. Circuit Court after federal judges dismissed their lawsuits separately, partly because they ruled neither school had standing to sue. The appeals court, however, ruled the schools had standing. The three-judge panel also decided not to return the cases to the federal judges for further action but to hold them until a new rule is issued. In addition to the challenges by the two colleges, 40 other lawsuits have been filed against the HHS for a rule that requires employer coverage of drugs defined by the Food and Drug Administration as contraceptives, even if they can cause abortions. Among such drugs are Plan B and other "morning-after" pills that can prevent implantation of tiny embryos and "ella" which -- in a fashion similar to the abortion drug RU 486 -- can even act after implantation to end the life of the child. While the religious exemption to the rule provided by HHS covers churches, it is insufficient to protect religious hospitals, schools and social service ministries, as well as some churches, critics have pointed out. Four Baptist schools -- Louisiana College, Houston Baptist University, East Texas Baptist University and Criswell College – are among the institutions or businesses that have filed lawsuits against the mandate. Among others suing the federal government are Hobby Lobby, Christian publisher Tyndale House, Colorado Christian University, Geneva College, Priests for Life and the EWTN Catholic television and radio network. The ERLC joined 10 other evangelical organizations in a brief filed by Christian Legal Society in support of the appeals by Wheaton and Belmont Abbey on religious liberty grounds.
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Post by Church News on Dec 21, 2012 16:27:17 GMT -5
Baptist Press SBC's Land: Armed, trained teachers can save lives from would-be murderers Tom Strode, Washington bureau chief
Southern Baptist ethicist Richard Land says he would support arming teachers with guns. In a radio interview Dec. 19, Land also said the "New Testament justification" for owning a firearm is found partly in "loving my neighbor as myself." The president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission offered his comments in an interview with National Public Radio (NPR) in the wake of the Dec. 14 shooting deaths in Newtown, Conn., of 28 people, including 20 children and six faculty/staff members at an elementary school. The interview occurred the same day President Obama announced an initiative led by Vice President Biden that could include gun-control recommendations. Responding to questions on the NPR program "All Things Considered," Land said he has no problem with his grandsons being in classrooms with teachers who are armed and have been properly trained. "Law-abiding citizens who are armed are the best last-ditch defense against the kind of horror that we've just experienced," Land said. "If there had been teachers who had been trained and knew how to use their weapons, they could have saved a great many lives. "Gun-free zones are a fantasy, and they're an invitation to criminals," Land said, adding, "Gun-free zones assume that murderers and criminals are going to obey the law. They're not." NPR's Robert Siegel asked Land about the possible restoration of a federal ban on semi-automatic weapons and high-capacity magazines that existed for 10 years beginning in 1994. Land said he has no problem personally with some type of restriction on such weapons, although he knows many Americans do. "I am not a member of the [National Rifle Association], never have been a member of the NRA. I am a gun owner," Land said. "But the problem that I have with hanging too much of our concern on [an assault-weapon restriction] is that for the decade that it was in effect it had no influence on homicides." Land said he does not want Americans limited to "target pistols and shotguns," noting, "The Second Amendment didn't make that restriction, and neither should we. "We live in an age of worldwide terror. And as we've noticed from some of these domestic tragedies, by the time the police get there, it's often too late." Land told about using a handgun when he was 15 years old to turn away an intruder. A man had broken into the garage of his family's house in Houston, Texas, about 3 a.m. and was trying to break through a door into the kitchen. With his father away, Land's mother awakened him. Land grabbed the gun and warned through the door he would shoot if the intruder had not left by the time he counted to three. The man fled by the count of two. Siegel asked Land how he would justify gun ownership from the New Testament. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Love your neighbor as yourself," Land responded. "If I find that someone is trying to do harm to someone else, I believe that I have a moral and Christian obligation to do whatever I can -- with the least amount of violence necessary but, if necessary, lethal violence -- to stop them from harming others," he explained. "That's loving my neighbor as myself. That's doing unto others as I would have them do unto me." Land called for closing loopholes on background checks "to keep weapons out of the hands of criminals" but to enable law-abiding citizens to buy firearms. At the White House Dec. 19, Obama said Biden would work with Cabinet members and outside organizations to present reform proposals by January. In urging Congress to act on the reforms in the new year, the president implied they might include bans on semi-automatic weapons and large-capacity ammunition as well as more stringent background checks. Obama said he "will use all the powers of this office to help advance efforts aimed at preventing more tragedies" like those in Newtown and elsewhere. "We won't prevent them all, but that can't be an excuse not to try," he said. In other developments since the Newtown killings: • Southern Baptist pastor Ronnie Floyd endorsed some changes regarding guns in a first-person column Dec. 19 in Baptist Press. The senior pastor of Cross Church in northwest Arkansas said, "While gun control may not be the ultimate answer to the threatening epidemic of mass murders in our nation, I personally hope some changes can be made. I am not an authority on this issue, but I am one American who is highly concerned with the path we are on. Surely, something can be done." Floyd also addressed abortion and media violence as factors in a culture that devalues human life. In addition, he called for churches -- as well as private firms and government -- to assist families dealing with mental health issues. • Shannon Royce, president of ChosenFamilies.org, said in a Dec. 17 first-person column for BP she agreed with these sentiments in an online article by a mother of a son with mental illness: "In the wake of another horrific national tragedy, it's easy to talk about guns. ... It's time for a meaningful, nation-wide conversation about mental health. That's the only way our nation can ever truly heal." A Southern Baptist, Royce called for "personal engagement" by the church. "We are called as the body of Christ to engage the fallen and broken world with the grace and power of the Gospel of Christ. That includes those with mental health concerns," she wrote. ChosenFamilies.org is a nonprofit organization for families living with hidden disabilities. • The sale of firearms has escalated since the Newtown school killings, which Adam Lanza, who later committed suicide, carried out with a semi-automatic rifle. Many Walmart stores have sold out of semi-automatic rifles, Bloomberg News Service reported Dec. 19. While Walmart said it would continue to sell guns, Dick's Sporting Goods announced the suspension of sales of "modern sporting rifles" in all its stores. Prices of ammunition magazines for some handguns have risen markedly on EBay, according to Bloomberg. One of the country's largest gun stores -- Hyatt Gun Shop in Charlotte, N.C. -- achieved more than $1 million in sales Dec. 18, the highest one-day figure since the store open more than 50 years ago, the news service reported.
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Post by Church News on Jan 2, 2013 22:23:38 GMT -5
Baptist Press Hobby Lobby refuses to abandon their faith and will be forced to pay Obama care fines Michael Foust, associate editor
Arts and crafts store Hobby Lobby apparently is willing to defy the federal government and face huge fines for not covering abortion-inducing drugs following a string of court losses in December. Hobby Lobby's setbacks in court at the end of the year gained significant media attention, despite the fact that for-profit businesses like the Oklahoma-based business continue to rack up court victories against the mandate. According to a tally by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, nine for-profit businesses -- including three in late December -- have won injunctions in courts protecting them from the mandate. Only three for-profit businesses -- Hobby Lobby among them -- have failed to obtain an injunction. Hobby Lobby is the largest business to file suit against the mandate. Its new health care plan went into effect Jan. 1. "The company will continue to provide health insurance to all qualified employees," said Kyle Duncan, general counsel for the Becket Fund, which is representing Hobby Lobby in court. "To remain true to their faith, it is not their intention, as a company, to pay for abortion-inducing drugs." A Becket spokesman said the law firm was not commenting further on Hobby Lobby's intentions. But if the company did choose not to cover abortion-inducing drugs mandated by the Department of Health and Human Services, it reportedly could face fines of up to $1.3 million a day. Under the mandate, businesses and even some religious organizations are required to carry employee insurance that covers contraceptives, including emergency contraceptives such as Plan B and ella that can kill an embryo after fertilization and even after implantation. Pro-lifers consider that action a chemical abortion. After a federal judge in November ruled Hobby Lobby must cover the drugs, Becket unsuccessfully appealed to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals and to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who oversees emergency appeals from the Tenth Circuit. Sotomayor did say the lawsuit could proceed in the lower court and be appealed back to the high court at the appropriate time. "Hobby Lobby," Duncan said, "will continue their appeal before the Tenth Circuit. The Supreme Court merely decided not to get involved in the case at this time. It left open the possibility of review after their appeal is completed in the Tenth Circuit." The Hobby Lobby suit also includes Mardel, a Christian bookstore chain. The same family -- the Greens -- owns both of them. "These abortion-causing drugs go against our faith, and our family is now being forced to choose between following the laws of the land that we love or maintaining the religious beliefs that have made our business successful," David Green, Hobby Lobby's founder and CEO, said in September. "... We simply cannot abandon our religious beliefs to comply with this mandate." But elsewhere in the federal court system, for-profit businesses are winning. The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals issued a 2-1 decision Dec. 28 handing an Illinois-based business, Korte & Luitjohan Contractors, a victory against the abortion/contraceptive mandate. The injunction currently applies only to the business, which is owned by Catholics. The majority justices said the business owners had "established a reasonable likelihood of success on their claim" that the mandate "imposes a substantial burden on their religious exercise." The burden in court, the justices wrote, "will be on the government" to defend the mandate. Voting in the majority were Reagan nominee Joel M. Flaum and George W. Bush nominee Diane S. Sykes. George H.W. Bush nominee Ilana Rovner dissented. The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) represents the Illinois business. "Our argument is clear: the HHS mandate unlawfully compels employers such as our clients to do the following: abandon their faith to comply with the law, or follow their faith and pay significant annual penalties to the federal government," ACLJ attorney Edward White said in a statement. "This mandate violates the conscience rights of our clients, and we're now looking forward to proceeding with our legal challenge." Elsewhere, a federal judge Dec. 20 issued an injunction protecting a Missouri business, American Pulverizer, which is owned by evangelicals. And in Michigan, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order Dec. 30 preventing the mandate from applying to Domino's Farms, which is owned by Domino's Pizza founder Tom Monaghan, who is Catholic. All total, there have been 43 lawsuits against the mandate. Many of them involve religious organizations such as Christian colleges and universities. The mandate was announced by the Department of Health and Human Services in August 2011 as part of the health care law championed by President Obama. Although the Supreme Court upheld the health care law last June, the justices' ruling did not deal with the religious liberty issues surrounding the abortion/contraceptive mandate. That means the nation's highest court could yet strike down what has been for religious groups and some business owners the most controversial part of the law.
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Post by Church News on Jan 4, 2013 21:41:41 GMT -5
Baptist Press Obama tax increase will seriously erode charitable giving
Churches, religious organizations and other nonprofits -- and their donors -- avoided the worst of the proposed restrictions on charitable deductions in the "fiscal cliff" legislation signed Jan. 2 by President Obama, but they did not escape fully unscathed. The new law does not include a flat percentage cap on charitable giving, but it does reinstitute a limitation on itemized deductions for higher-income Americans. Congress approved, and the president quickly signed, the bill to avoid the expiration of tax cuts for most Americans, as well as automatic reductions of $55 billion each to defense and non-defense spending. The measure includes what is known as the Pease limitation, which affects individuals with incomes of at least $250,000 and married couples filing taxes jointly with incomes of $300,000 or more. The limit reduces charitable and other itemized deductions by three percent of the amount by which adjusted gross income surpasses those thresholds. Religious and nonprofit organizations expressed disappointment the Pease limitation was reinstated but seemed relieved that more severe restrictions were avoided. Leaders in both political parties had suggested further restrictions on charitable deductions. Those proposals "could have cost charities billions of dollars in contributions," said the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA) in a written statement. The law not only reinstated the Pease limitation but made it permanent beginning in 2013 "to the disappointment of many in the charitable sector," ECFA said. The Independent Sector -- a coalition of about 600 charities, foundations and corporate philanthropy programs -- was glad no flat percentage restriction was approved. Its president expressed anxiety, however, about how the Pease limit, in conjunction with the new law's increased taxes on higher-income Americans, would affect giving. "We are concerned," Diana Aviv said, according to The Wall Street Journal. "The big question for us now is, if we are [also] increasing rates on folks ... does the combination create a greater disincentive for people to give?" Both organizations expressed gratitude the new law extends for a year an individual retirement account (IRA) rollover provision that enables seniors at least six months beyond their 70th birthday to donate as much as $100,000 from their IRAs to nonprofits without paying income tax on the contribution. ECFA and Independent Sector acknowledged, however, they expect charitable deductions to be a topic of consideration as Congress debates the debit ceiling. In November, Southern Baptist church-state expert Richard Land warned the more restrictive recommendations to cap charitable deductions seriously threatened religious organizations. "This would be catastrophic in its impact, particularly on those large gifts that many religious organizations, colleges, universities and ministries, as well as churches, depend upon for continuing operations," said Land, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. "Everything we know from past experience tells us if they cap deductions it will seriously erode charitable giving." Enacting such limitations would not only reduce giving to churches and charities but would harm services such organizations provide to the needy, said Land and other foes of capping such deductions. In his budgets, Obama has proposed capping the itemized deduction at 28 percent for couples whose incomes are at least $250,000 and individuals who make at least $200,000 a year. High-income earners now can deduct at least 33 percent in charitable gifts. The Pease limitation is named for its prime congressional promoter, Rep. Donald Pease, D.-Ohio. Pease served in the House of Representatives from 1977 to 1993. Congress enacted the limit in 1990 but rescinded it gradually beginning in 2001. Its repeal was complete in 2010.
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