Scrolling around...December 3, 2012

California Church to Become Site of Islamist Convention
The Muslim Public Affairs Council’s choice of location for its 12th Annual Convention on December 15 is telling: The All Saints Episcopal Church of Pasadena, California. The group, founded by Muslim Brotherhood followers, says this is the “next step in its mission by crossing the interfaith line.” Yet again, the Islamists are taking advantage of naïve Christians with a desire to show off their tolerance.

The All Saints Episcopal Church of Pasadena started an Interfaith Study Group in 2007 with the Pasadena Jewish Temple and the Islamic Center of Southern California (ICSC), from which MPAC originated. The organization was founded as a branch of ICSC in 1986 and then became independent in 1988, though the two remain intertwined. The ICSC is proud of its interfaith successes. For example, the First United Methodist Church of Santa Monica is allowing the ICSC to hold Friday prayers there every week...

The Holy Tweeter: Pope Benedict XVI Joins Twitter
...When the pontiff pushes the send button on his first tweet on Dec. 12, he will be making history along the lines of his predecessors Pope Pius XI, who in 1931 made the first papal radio address, and Pope Pius XII, who in 1964 was the first to conduct a televised mass...

Palace says Duchess of Cambridge expecting a baby

Has anyone seen a story in the U.S. press about the opening of France’s first gay-friendly mosque?

Egyptian Civil Disobedience Could Widen
Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi faced the prospect of widening civil disobedience on Monday as media and the tourism industry pondered measures to join a protest by judges against the Islamist leader...

For Amish, fastest-growing faith group in US, life is changing
As the Amish population in the US grows – forecast to hit 1 million by 2050 – the decline of farmland is forcing the community to spread to new areas and to evolve its agrarian culture...

Albert Mohler: The First Same-Sex Marriage Ceremony in West Point’s Chapel — What it Means
...According to the Pentagon, the ceremony did not indicate the Army’s approval of same-sex marriage — a doubtful point made necessary by fact that the Federal government defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman...

A Nation of Singles
...How did we get to an America where half of the adult population isn’t married and somewhere between 10 percent and 15 percent of the population don’t get married for the first time until they’re approaching retirement? It’s a complicated story involving, among other factors, the rise of almost-universal higher education, the delay of marriage, urbanization, the invention of no-fault divorce, the legitimization of cohabitation, the increasing cost of raising children, and the creation of a government entitlement system to do for the elderly childless what grown children did for their parents through the millennia...

I happened to be in London when the Church of England voted to reject female bishops...
...It is amazing that Rowan Williams, a widely respected scholar of Church history, would urge the church toward such a blatantly conformist course. Under his theory of fitting in, for example, should early Christians have attended the wildly popular gladiator games in order to prove they were not “blind” to the values of their culture? Rather than seeming aloof and intolerant, should they have participated in pagan feasts and consumed meat dedicated to idols? Heck, maybe they should have gone through the motions of emperor worship—such as famously required by Pliny the Younger and approved by Trajan—to avoid martyrdom...

Rupert Shortt and a Church Besieged
...Some 200 million Christians—two-thirds of the entire population of the United States—are now suffering oppression, even to the point of death, on account of their faith. Yet, if you ask the average person about it, they probably wouldn’t know anything about Christianity’s modern martyrdom, much less know where and why it’s occurring.

Rupert Shortt does, having traveled through Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia, and returned to tell a story as harrowing as it is unforgettable. In a dozen chapters, thankfully free of political correctness or partisanship, he covers what has been happening to the Christian communities in these regions, and does so with searing honesty and force...

DOE Investigating School Over Bible and Homosexuality
...A female student in the class was offended after the instructor, 1st Sgt. Lynn Vanzandt, expressed his beliefs about same-sex relationships. The 15-year-old student and her mother, Mia Gonzales, then contacted a local gay advocacy group, GLBT Advocacy and Youth Services, which complained to the school on the student's behalf...

7 of 10 Americans prefer 'Merry Christmas' over 'Happy Holidays'
...By a wide margin, 68 percent to 23 percent, Americans prefer stores with signs that say "Merry Christmas" during the Christmas holidays than the more generic and secular "Happy Holidays," according to a new Rasmussen Reports survey...

Is This Why Americans Have Lost The Drive To "Earn" More
...The punchline: 110 million privately employed workers; 88 million welfare recipients and government workers and rising rapidly...