Anglican Unscripted Episode 77

July 30, 2013

Anglican Unscripted is the only video newscast in the Anglican Church. Every Week Kevin, George, Allan and Peter bring you news and prospective from around the globe.

THE LAST SHALL BE FIRST 00:00
THE POPE IN AMERICA 04:13
JUSTICE FOR JUSTIN 10:34
RECIFE 15:59
SOUTH CAROLINA 21:59
FORWARD IN FAITH 25:38

Scrolling around...July 30, 2013

Planned Parenthood Put Women at Risk With After Hours Abortions, No Staff Present

Ramadan observance in Nigeria: Muslims murder 28 with bombs targeting bars in a Christian neighborhood 
...At least 28 are people have been killed in a series of explosions that targeted bars in the northern Nigerian city of Kano, a hospital source tells the BBC.

Witnesses said the blasts shook a Christian neighbourhood that has previously been attacked by militants from the Islamist group Boko Haram.

The army said 12 people had been killed when explosions placed in packages were dropped in the area on Monday evening...

Desmond Tutu: “I would refuse to go to a homophobic heaven.”  Retired Archbishop Desmond Tutu has set himself at war with any deity guilty of what he considers homophobia. The famed opponent of South African apartheid voiced his strident opinion to Agence France-Presse (AFP) during the United Nations’ launch of its gay rights campaign in South Africa. He told AFP, “I would not worship a God who is homophobic and that is how deeply I feel about this…I would refuse to go to a homophobic heaven. No, I would say sorry, I mean I would much rather go to the other place.” “I am as passionate about this campaign as I ever was about apartheid…For me, it is at the same level,” he declared...

Christian Students in Eritrea Punished for their Faith
Eritrean authorities are punishing 39 high school students for their Christian faith, excluding them from a graduation ceremony and subjecting them to beatings and hard labor, according to Christian support organization Open Doors.

After completing a four-month military training required in Eritrea, the students, including 11 girls, have been arrested for their “Christian beliefs and for their commitment to Christ,” sources told Open Doors....

House Refuses to Fund ‘Atheist Chaplains’ at Defense Department  House members voted Tuesday to bar the use of federal funds to hire “atheist chaplains” at the Department of Defense after Rep. John Fleming (R-La.) reminded his colleagues that the concept didn’t make any sense.

 “It’s just total nonsense, the idea of having a chaplain who is an atheist,” Fleming told fellow House members. “When it comes to the idea of an atheist chaplain, which is an oxymoron – it’s self-contradictory – what you’re really doing is now saying that we’re going to replace the true chaplains with non-chaplain chaplains.”...

Church Buildings and Same-Sex “Wedding” Ceremonies
One of the first questions we are usually asked by pastors whose states have redefined marriage and adopted same-sex “marriage” is whether they will be required to allow use of their church buildings for same-sex “wedding” ceremonies.  This is not an unreasonable question considering that at least one city has considered forcing churches to allow use of their buildings for same-sex “weddings.”  But the very simple answer to that question is an unequivocal “no.”  Churches do not have to allow use of their facilities in ways that are inconsistent with their biblical beliefs...

Ex-Planned Parenthood Employees to Expose “Meat Market Assembly-Line” Abortions
...The women will explain how Planned Parenthood of Delaware deceived the public by pretending they were in good standing with the Planned Parenthood Federation (PPFA), though PPFA knew about many of the clinics failures and how the abortion giant failed to inform as many as 200 women of their positive tests for Gonorrhea and Chlamydia and failed to notify 87 women of the results of their colposcopies...

FBI rescues more than 100 children, arrests 150 pimps in sex-trafficking raid
...He added that the most vulnerable victims forced into sex trafficking range in age from 13 to 16. Most of the children come from either foster care homes or are considered runaways.

"This operation targeted venues where girls and adults are operated for commercial sex," Hosko said, including places like street tracks, truck stops, casinos and hotels.

"The victims cut across racial lines," he said, and span all socioeconomic levels and demographics...

Muslims Loot Italian Church, Defecate on Altar
...First they gained entry to the rectory of Libiola and stole the money collected by the children of Grest, and then, still not happy, they entered the nearby church, which, since last year’s earthquake, is a simple tensile structure made of plastic and defecated and urinated next to the altar.

This was a contemptuous act of vandalism and sacrilege. The culprits were identified, because a woman saw them coming out of the tent. They were four boys of Moroccan origin, one resident in Serravalle, the others from Ostiglia and surroundings.

The incident happened on Thursday afternoon, but the parish priest, Father Eugenio Ferrari, has only yesterday made an official complaint to the police. That day the parish house of Libiola, inhabited by two nuns, was empty and locked because the sisters, along with the parish priest, had gone on a trip with the children of the Grest on a day trip to a mountain resort...
Chile cathedral vandalized in pro-abortion rally

Don’t Tell the Press: Pope Francis Is Using Them

July 30, 2013

Elizabeth Scalia

 

Excerpt:

On the return to Rome, the Holy Father—perhaps feeling energized by a spectacularly successful event that saw an estimated three million souls gather for Mass at Copacabana Beach—surprised the media with an eighty-minute Q-and-A that resulted in screaming headlines and more than a few clenched jaws in the pews.

 

What did Francis say? Well, at this writing, the official Vatican transcript is not available, but according to reports, the Pope endorsed the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

A gay person who is seeking God, who is of good will—well, who am I to judge him? The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains this very well. It says one must not marginalize these persons, they must be integrated into society. The problem isn’t this [homosexual] orientation—we must be like brothers and sisters. The problem is something else, the problem is lobbying either for this orientation or a political lobby or a Masonic lobby.

While it is true that, as newsman and Vaticanista John Thavis quickly noted, Francis’ remarks were not meant to be “specifically about gay priests,” secular headlines implied otherwise. His words, however, came in answer to a question about the so-called “gay lobby” within the Vatican and specifically concerning one of Francis’ own appointees, whose past had been raised by some as a cause for concern. the rest

GetReligion: Media obsession dangers: Pope and gay priests edition

Ermagerd, everybody! The Pope has renounced all church teaching on everything! Stop the presses! Start them again! Freak out!

That’s my impression of Twitter, online and broadcast and cable news today...

Pope tackles tough questions in remarkable interview

We are not only to sing the doxology...

 We are not only to sing the doxology,

but to be the doxology.

...Francis A. Schaeffer image

Anglican Nominalism As ‘Anglican Comprehensiveness’

By Rod Dreher
July 28, 2013

Excerpt:
Look, I’m not interested in having another boring argument about gay-straight stuff. We all know where each other stands on that. What I’m interested in is the question of “Anglican comprehensiveness” and small-o orthodoxy.

When I read the transgender Episcopal priest praising “Anglican comprehensiveness” because (in part) it allows for transgender priests, I think that whatever this is, it’s not Christian, except in name. I think Frederica was exactly right when she wrote those words back in the 1990s: “not a common faith, but common words about the faith — mere flimsy words.” Trust me when I say that I don’t mean this combatively, but I genuinely don’t understand how a church with such radically (= at the roots) contradictory ideas about God, sexuality, and the human person can hold together. I’m not trying to insult Anglicans, so please, readers, don’t take this either as an insult or as an invitation to do that. It’s just that reading a transgender priest praise “Anglican comprehensiveness” as license to “embody ambiguity” — well, it puts the theological chasm in sharp perspective.

I have dear friends who are faithful Anglican Christians, and who are surely better Christians than I am. I am not questioning the integrity of the faith of individual Anglicans. What I’m trying to express is my utter bafflement at how this works at the corporate level. It’s particularly on my mind this afternoon because for Orthodox Christians worshiping in the Slavic tradition, today was the Sunday of the Fathers Of The First Six Ecumenical Councils. We heard a great sermon this morning about why the concept of orthodoxy (right belief) is so important, and how very much depends on it. It’s not so much that I reject a church that can welcome transgender clergy (though I do), but that I do not understand how that can remotely be squared with Scripture and tradition — with, in a word, fundamental Christian orthodoxy. And more to the point of this post, I don’t understand how Anglicans who do profess fundamental creedal Christian orthodoxy remain in communion with the Episcopal Church. I mean, I know they do, because my friends are good and faithful people, and they do. Still, reading that interview just now was jarring, really jarring, and brought all this to mind. There really is no sexual innovation that the Episcopal Church will not embrace. The only orthodoxy, it appears to this outsider, is banning Christian orthodoxy on sexual matters... the rest

Scrolling around...July 29, 2013

An online college revolution is coming
If you care about college costs and educational quality, you should care about MOOCs, or “massive open online courses,” which deliver college courses digitally and just might revolutionize higher education. With MOOCs, a lecture course that draws a couple hundred students on campus can be converted to something that draws tens of thousands from around the globe. A seminar for 40 on campus can be reorganized to teach 800 when each on-campus student is deputized to be a virtual seminar leader for 20.

Whether for good or ill, MOOCs augur a disruption of the relationships among students, colleges and trade schools, and the credentials those schools offer — a relationship that has stabilized higher education for at least a century. Yet if done right — a big if, as recent events at San Jose State and Colorado State universities have shown — they may help address the quality and cost of higher education...

Sebelius recruits women to blog about health law
President Barack Obama's administration is courting female bloggers to play a role in a massive campaign aimed at informing the public about the benefits of the new health care law.

Over breakfast at a blogging conference Thursday in Chicago, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius asked a banquet hall full of bloggers - most of them women - to help spread the word about new health insurance opportunities that begin this fall under the Affordable Care Act...

MERS virus may be deadlier than SARS, study finds
The new respiratory virus that emerged in the Middle East last year appears to make people sicker faster than SARS, but doesn't seem to spread as easily, according to the latest detailed look at about four dozen cases in Saudi Arabia...


To See Ourselves as Others See Us
What do your non-Christian friends and family think of your faith? How do they see you? Does that response differ at all from how they felt just five or ten years ago?

It's hard to dispute that American culture is growing more hostile to Christianity. One proper response is to recognize that it's normal: Jesus told us that in this world we would have trouble (Jn. 16:33). And countless brothers and sisters around the world and throughout history have experienced not just a cultural tide turning against them, but even floods of opposition and persecution.

Yet what is normal for most Christians certainly doesn't feel normal to us. Given how the ground is shifting underfoot, I'd suggest that Robert Louis Wilken's book The Christians as the Romans Saw Them can shed a little light on our situation.

As we hear increasingly heated censures of the sharper edges of our beliefs and practice, it's worth listening to what some astute pagan observers thought about Christianity in its early days. How do ancient critiques stack up to today's challenges to the faith?..

The Surprising Countries Most Missionaries Are Sent From and Go To   A new study reveals how the missions field continues to become increasingly global—in some surprising ways. One example: South Korea has lost its No. 2 sending spot to four unlikely contenders.

The Center for the Study of Global Christian (CSGC) at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary calculates that Christians sent out approximately 400,000 international missionaries in 2010. And nearly half of the world's top missionary-sending countries are now located in the global South.

The CSGC reports that "of the ten countries sending the most missionaries in 2010, three were in the global South: Brazil, South Korea, and India." Other notable missionary senders included South Africa, the Philippines, Mexico, China, Colombia, and Nigeria...

No Squishy Love
In his 1934 book, The Kingdom of God in America, H. Richard Niebuhr depicted the creed of liberal Protestant theology, which was called “modernism” in those days, in these famous words: "A God without wrath brought man without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross." Niebuhr was no fundamentalist, but he knew what he was talking about. So did Dietrich Bonhoeffer when he named the kind of mainline religion he encountered in 1930s America: Protestantismus ohne Reformation, “Protestantism without the Reformation.”

Sin, judgment, cross, even Christ have become problematic terms in much contemporary theological discourse, but nothing so irritates and confounds as the idea of divine wrath. Recently, the wrath of God became a point of controversy in the decision of the Presbyterian Committee on Congregational Song to exclude from its new hymnal the much-loved song "In Christ Alone" by Keith Getty and Stuart Townend. The Committee wanted to include this song because it is being sung in many churches, Presbyterian and otherwise, but they could not abide this line from the third stanza: "Till on that cross as Jesus died/the wrath of God was satisfied." For this they wanted to substitute: "…as Jesus died/the love of God was magnified." The authors of the hymn insisted on the original wording, and the Committee voted nine to six that "In Christ Alone" would not be among the eight hundred or so items in their new hymnal...

North Carolina Governor Signs Pro-Life Bill Stopping Abortions   Late Thursday night, the North Carolina state Senate passed a pro-life omnibus bill that would stop abortions by helping pregnant women and stopping taxpayer financed abortions.

Today, Governor Pat McCrory has signed the bill into law...

...“Thousands of unborn children’s lives will be protected from abortion,” stated Barbara Holt, President of North Carolina Right to Life, “by preventing the expansion of tax payer funded abortion through the federal exchange. By passing this legislation, our state has also demonstrated that it will not tolerate unborn babies being aborted just because they are the wrong sex or doctors being miles away from the patient when they administer drugs that kill the unborn baby and can harm the child’s mother.”...

Chile: Activists Vandalize Church During Mass After Girl Rejects Abortion  Upset that an 11-year-old girl who became pregnant after she was raped decided to reject having an abortion, abortion activists in Chile vandalized a prominent Catholic church in the country — during Mass...

5 Women Missionaries Beaten Publicly in India for Sharing Gospel

Five women have been beaten by a man in the Andhra Pradesh region of India while sharing about the love of Jesus in a public marketplace. Amazingly spared, they retreated to safety, thanking God for the honor of suffering for His sake.

 

The women, all leaders in the Gospel for Asia (GFA)-sponsored Women’s Fellowship ministry, had been sharing with store owners and shoppers when one man demanded to know what they were doing. The assault began with a powerful slap to the face of one woman and continued to the others, one of whom was isolated and surrounded by five men.

 

“Jesus promised persecuting and hardships,” says Daniel Punnose, vice president of GFA (gfa.org). “These young ladies see it worth facing the beatings in order to share the love of Christ.”

Miracle: Woman Talks about Surviving Watery Crash

A Maryland woman is speaking out about her miraculous survival after an 18 wheeler smashed into a her car and plunged it into the Chesapeake Bay.

 

It was a devastating car crash and a terrifying plunge.The oversized truck slammed into the back of Morgan Lake's 2007 Chrysler Sebring and pushed it over the Chesapeake Bridge into the water 40 feet below.

 

Amazingly she's the one telling the story. She said God gave her the strength to stay alive...

In the Beginning Was the Word; Now the Word Is on an App   More than 500 years after Gutenberg, the Bible is having its i-moment.

For millions of readers around the world, a wildly successful free Bible app, YouVersion, is changing how, where and when they read the Bible.
      

Built by LifeChurch.tv, one of the nation’s largest and most technologically advanced evangelical churches, YouVersion is part of what the church calls its “digital missions.” They include a platform for online church services and prepackaged worship videos that the church distributes free. A digital tithing system and an interactive children’s Bible are in the works.

      

It’s all part of the church’s aspiration to be a kind of I.T. department for churches everywhere. YouVersion, with over 600 Bible translations in more than 400 languages, is by far the church’s biggest success. The app is nondenominational, including versions embraced by Catholics, Russian Orthodox and Messianic Jews. This month, the app reached 100 million downloads, placing it in the company of technology start-ups like Instagram and Dropbox...

Why Millennials Are Leaving the Church

By Rachel Held Evans
July 27, 2013

Excerpt:
...Time and again, the assumption among Christian leaders, and evangelical leaders in particular, is that the key to drawing twenty-somethings back to church is simply to make a few style updates – edgier music, more casual services, a coffee shop in the fellowship hall, a pastor who wears skinny jeans, an updated Web site that includes online giving.

But here’s the thing: Having been advertised to our whole lives, we millennials have highly sensitive BS meters, and we’re not easily impressed with consumerism or performances.

In fact, I would argue that church-as-performance is just one more thing driving us away from the church, and evangelicalism in particular.

Many of us, myself included, are finding ourselves increasingly drawn to high church traditions – Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, the Episcopal Church, etc. – precisely because the ancient forms of liturgy seem so unpretentious, so unconcerned with being “cool,” and we find that refreshingly authentic.

What millennials really want from the church is not a change in style but a change in substance.

We want an end to the culture wars. We want a truce between science and faith. We want to be known for what we stand for, not what we are against...  the rest

Prayer is something deeper than words...

Prayer is something deeper than words. It is present in the soul before it has been formulated into words. And it abides in the soul after the last words of prayer have passed over our lips. 

Prayer is an attitude of our hearts, an attitude of mind. Prayer is a definite attitude of our hearts toward God, an attitude which He in heaven immediately recognizes as prayer, as an appeal to His heart. Whether it takes the form of words or not, does not mean anything to God, only to ourselves. ...O. Hallesby image

Scrolling around...July 26, 2013

 The Earth From a Great Height

...the earth from almost a billion miles away!

How America's Top Tech Companies Created the Surveillance State  They’ve been helping the government spy on people for a very long time. The cozy relationships go back decades.

 IRS Targeting Witnesses Speak Out
...Timothy Savaglio, board member of the Liberty Township TEA Party, said dealing with the IRS’s demands following his request for his organization to be recognized as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit became a “full-time job.”

“I served 23 years in the United States Air Force voluntarily giving up personal freedoms only to find my government placed barriers and obstruction when I exercised those liberties as an ordinary citizen,” Savaglio said.

He applied for the tax exempt status in May 2010, and his request still hasn’t been approved or denied by the IRS...

National Treasury Employees Union Urges Members to Oppose Obamacare … For Themselves
The National Treasury Employees Union is urging its members to oppose legislation that would force federal employees off their government healthcare plans and onto the state and national healthcare exchanges established under Obamacare.

Members of Congress and their staffers are already required to participate in the exchanges, which will go into effect next October 1st under the Affordable Care Act.

However, a bill (HR 1780) introduced in April by Rep. David Camp (R–Mich.) would extend that requirement to all federal employees, an idea that does not sit well with the union....

Psychiatric Journal Published Study Linking Abortion with Depression, PTSD, and Drug Abuse   ...The study compared the women's psychological well being with childbirth outcomes such as delivering the baby, miscarriage, or abortion. The conclusion of the authors is that “fetal loss seems to expose women to a higher risk for mental disorders than childbirth; some studies show that abortion can be considered a more relevant risk factor than miscarriage”...

First Things: Surveillance Technologies and Bible Prophecy

DOJ Says Transgender Discrimination Is Sex Discrimination
...Whatever one thinks of this as a matter of policy, it is quite dubious as a matter of law. The relevant statutes here, as the Justice Department’s press release acknowledges, “prohibit discrimination against students based on sex.” The Justice Department’s position is that “sex” includes not only sex but also “a student’s gender identity, transgender status, and nonconformity with gender stereotypes.”...

Poll: Since Obama took office, View of U.S. race relations has plummeted   The most recent poll showed a sharp drop from the beginning of Obama's first term. At that time, 79 percent of whites and 63 percent of blacks then held a favorable view of American race relations.

Negative views on race relations have increased substantially. Forty-five percent of whites and 58 percent African-Americans now believe race relations are very or fairly bad. As soon as 2009, only 20 percent of whites and 30 percent of blacks held an unfavorable view....

Pakistan: Charity finds an average of 24 alive or dead babies every month on roadside trash heaps
...“The bodies are badly bitten by the dogs, cats, crows and eagles giving a horrible look to the innocent babies. We want to tell the people that regardless to their legitimacy or illegitimacy it is a murder of a human and thus the whole humanity,” Naseem said.

Most of the bodies or alive babies found are girls...

Franklin Graham: Why is Obama Silent as Iran Tortures American Pastor?  One of the nation's most prominent evangelical leaders wants to know why President Obama has remained silent as Iran tortures an American pastor held captive in one of the Islamic republic's most notorious prisons.

Franklin Graham, the president of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Samaritan's Purse, told Fox News the imprisonment and torture of Pastor Saeed Abedini is a blatant example of "religious intolerance."

"Many in the international community are expressing outrage over this blatant example of religious intolerance," Graham said. "I ask that our government do the same and demand that Pastor Saeed Abedini be released and allowed to return home to his wife and family in the United States."...

Book Review - “Cold Case Christianity”

by Timothy Fountain at Stand Firm
July 25, 2013

My parishioners are responding to (and hungry for) good apologetics.  Some of them are searching for good resources to share.  One couple gave me a copy of J. Warner Wallace’s Cold Case Christianity, and I highly recommend it to you, oh worthy Stand Firm reader.

Wallace is a retired detective turned pastor and apologist, a former atheist who came to faith in Christ.  He describes the method that led him to believe in the Good News of the Bible and become a witness to it... the rest

[I found the book at Amazon (here) and started reading the excerpt they had and was immediately drawn in. I don't know if this is a special for today, but the Kindle edition is 3.74 and I downloaded it. -PD]

ENS: ‘Listening to the spirit,’ task force is reimagining church

By Mary Frances Schjonberg
July 25, 2013

Excerpt:
A major task for the group in the beginning was to decide how to interpret the mandate it has in Resolution C095.

The members discussed what it might mean to “reimagine” the Episcopal Church and reform its structures, governance and administration. And, they considered the issue of where the Christian church is now – and where it is not, according to George and Loya.

It is “no longer culturally normative to be a Christian and a lot of our structures of governance and administration and finance were built and put into place to serve a church where it was culturally normative to be a Christian,” Loya said.

The Christian church now faces the imperative to “take the church to the world rather than wait for the world to come to us,” he said.

And it must ask itself what kinds of governance and administrative structures, what ways of making decisions and what ways of being organized in community will best serve that effort, Loya suggested.
Inevitably, any talk about cultural changes and their impact on the church — and any talk about the implication of those for the church’s structure — turns to money, and the lack thereof. However, the co-conveners said, the task force senses that that is the wrong focus.

“Is our primary task to figure out how to enable the current Episcopal Church church-wide organization model to operate at a lower income level?” George asked. “I think our answer would be ‘no, that is not our primary role at all.’ Our primary role is to envision [how] as the church is emerging and evolving in new ways – and that’s happening everywhere – how do we really ensure that the church-wide organization structures and governance enliven that evolution rather than pull the church back to a different era when local church dynamics were quite different.”

The task force senses that it does not need to invent a “new missional response” to this changing context, George said. That response is already emerging across the church and “it will continue to emerge and evolve and change over time.”

“We need to ensure that the church-wide structures and governance are supportive and flexible and adaptive as the church is adapting and changing,” she said.

Her summary of TEC’s role, they said, is how the members have come to understand C095’s mandate. the rest

Lacey Rose: Do You Believe In Miracles?

June 5, 2013 

Scrolling around...July 24, 2013

The leadership of the Texas metropolis of San Antonio is working on ordinance changes aimed at punishing those who speak out against homosexuality
...Moreover, according to a draft of the revised policy, no one who has spoken out against homosexuality or the transgender lifestyle can run for city council or be appointed to a board. Flowers says the Arizona-based legal firm Alliance Defending Freedom has taken a look at the ordinance....

King David’s Palace May Have Been Discovered
Just 18 miles southwest of Jerusalem in Khirbet Qeiyafa, archeologists from Hebrew University and Israel Antiquities Authorities believe that they have found King David’s palace, the Associated Press reports...

What Helps Poor Kids Move Upwards? Religion and Marriage
The New York Times is reporting on this incredibly detailed study looking at variations in what proportion of kids raised in the bottom fifth income-wise rise to the top fifth as adults...

The study also noted:  “Finally, some of the strongest predictors of upward mobility are correlates of social capital and family structure. For instance, high upward mobility areas tended to have higher fractions of religious individuals and fewer children raised by single parents.”

Low Fertility Rates – Just a Phase?
...Thirty years ago only a small fraction of the world’s population lived in the few countries with fertility rates substantially below the “replacement level” – the rate at which the fertility of a hypothetical cohort of women would exactly replace itself in the next generation – normally set at 2.1 children per woman for populations with low mortality conditions. Fast forward to 2013, with roughly 60 percent of the world’s population living in countries with such below-replacement fertility rates.

The consequences of these changes are striking. One is that international migration, which over the same 30 years has been increasing rapidly, now has become the primary driver of rapid changes in the demography of dozens of countries around the world. If we were to assume that current low fertility rates and high immigration rates will continue into the future – neither of which may be a good assumption over the long term – migration would become even more significant a determinant not only of overall national growth but of the ethnic and racial composition of most industrial states, including those of much of Europe and North America...

Egypt: Security forces abandon Coptic Christians during deadly attack in Luxor
...In an attack lasting 18 hours on 5 July, four Coptic Christian men were killed and four others were seriously injured. An angry mob armed with metal bars, knives, tree branches and hammers attacked Christian homes and businesses in Nagah Hassan, 18 km west of Luxor, after the dead body of a Muslim man was discovered near the homes of Christian families. Despite local residents’ and religious leaders’ repeated calls for help, security forces on the scene made only half-hearted attempts to end the violence and sufficient reinforcements failed to arrive.

“It is outrageous that this attack was left to escalate unhindered in this way. Amnesty International has documented a series of cases in the past where Egypt’s security forces used unnecessary force or live fire during demonstrations, yet in this case they held back even though people’s lives were threatened,” said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, Deputy Director of Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Programme...

Pakistan: Christian couple charged with blasphemy in Gojra

Obama Judicial Pick Cornelia Pillard: Abortion Needed to “Free Women From Maternity”
[Women are "presumptive " breeders]
...A Georgetown law professor, Pillard is the President’s latest nominee to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals — and only the second one since President George W. Bush to wait less than two months for a hearing.

Why the rush? Ed Whalen of NRO’s Bench Memos suspects that Pillard (who’s been described to him as “less moderate” than the most activist liberal in appellate court history) wouldn’t survive intense scrutiny. The hurry, Whalen warns, “seems designed to prevent a careful review of their records. Obama himself has taken forever to make nominations to the D.C. Circuit, and that court remains underworked, so it is difficult to see the justification for the sudden rush.”

Unfortunately for Americans, the Senate won’t have to dig too deep to uncover some of Pillard’s shockers. Among some of her greatest hits, the former Deputy Assistant Attorney General argues that abortion is necessary to help “free women from historically routine conscription into maternity.” As if her militant feminism wasn’t apparent enough, she takes the opportunity in some of her writings to slam anyone who opposes the abortion-contraception mandate as “reinforce[ing] broader patterns of discrimination against women as a class of presumptive breeders.”...

Top IRS execs rack up big travel bills
Two high-ranking IRS employees were on the road so often in the past two years that they may have traveled more days than they worked, according to a report by Treasury inspectors released Tuesday.

And at least 15 executives traveled to another office — typically Washington — for more than half of their work days, raising questions about whether they should have been assigned to IRS headquarters in the first place, said the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration.

The inspectors are looking into whether the tax agency may have itself evaded taxes by failing to disclose the benefit of the travel on withholding statements for those employees. Under IRS regulations, travel expenses are taxable if the employee works at a location for more than a year...

Borrowers in Obama housing program re-defaulting
Borrowers who received help through the government's main foreclosure prevention program are re-defaulting on their mortgages at alarming rates, a federal watchdog said in a report released Wednesday.

Nearly 1.2 million mortgage modifications have been completed since the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) was first launched four years ago. Yet more than 306,000 borrowers have re-defaulted on their loans and more than 88,000 are at risk of following suit, the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP) found in its quarterly report to Congress...

Scrolling around...July 23, 2013

Bill O'Reilly's Talking Points
Mon. Jul 22, 2013
This was one of O'Reilly's best

Woman Bearing ‘Racist And Proud’ Sign Is Not A George Zimmerman Supporter
You’ve probably seen pictures of this woman carrying a sign at a pro-George Zimmerman rally that says “We’re Racist and Proud.” Many news outlets reported that she is a Zimmerman supporter, I guess proudly displaying her racism for all the world to see. Too bad none of the reporters bothered to ask her a question. Here she is, in her own words, saying she is not a Zimmerman reporter and was carrying the sign to make a point about the Zimmerman supporters she believes are racist...

The IRS Intervened in Tea Party Elections
...Did the IRS intervene in Federal election campaigns for Congress? According to the Washington Times, U.S. Treasury investigative special agent Dennis Martel has uncovered a new example of political abuse.

On March 9, 2010, Christine O'Donnell's personal income tax records were illegally accessed by a Delaware public official. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) reports that a previously-undisclosed "back door" to the IRS computer system was used to invade the privacy of Christine O'Donnell's tax records.

Who knew? It turns out that state government criminal investigators can directly -- though illegally -- access IRS records through a "back door." Along with O'Donnell, at least four other political candidates and four conservative donors have been identified so far as victims of this abuse...

IRS Scandal: One Step Removed From the White House
...When Hull was asked if he meant the IRS chief counsel, he answered in the affirmative. “The IRS Chief Counsel,” he replied.

That bombshell testimony fired up Jay Sekulow, Chief Counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice. They represent more than 40 Tea Party plaintiffs suing the IRS.

“This is one of the most extremely disturbing revelations yet,” he said. “It is now clear that the IRS Chief Counsel, appointed by President Obama in 2009, was involved in examining and reviewing applications from Tea Party groups – many that were basically shut out of the 2010 election process because of delays in handling of their applications. This development raises significant questions about what the White House knew and when.”...

Prayers, congratulations and bellringing for royal baby
The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Reverend Justin Welby, and other church leaders have joined the world in sending their messages of congratulations to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge on the birth of their baby boy yesterday...

Mary Ann Glendon and the Structure of Religious Freedom
For its protection and flourishing, religious freedom needs not only limited government but also a social order that gives plenty of room to civic institutions and associations...

Scrolling around...July 22, 2013

Royal Baby Born: Kate Middleton Gives Birth To Boy

Georgetown Insurance to Cover Contraception
...Though students will be able to pay for contraception using Georgetown health insurance off campus, the Student Health Center will not begin prescribing medication used for contraception, as mandated by the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Services...

UK: Sikh temples have been advised to halt all civil marriage ceremonies on their premises to protect them from possible legal challenges for refusing to conduct same-sex weddings.

It is the first example of a religious group altering its marriage practices to avoid potential litigation based on equalities or human rights law.

Other groups, including the Church of England, the Roman Catholic Church and the orthodox Jewish organisation United Synagogue, also resisted the legislation, but they have not indicated that they will go as far as to surrender their marriage licences...

George Zimmerman Emerged From Hiding for Truck Crash Rescue
George Zimmerman, who has been in hiding since he was acquitted of murder in the death of Trayvon Martin, emerged to help rescue a family who was trapped in an overturned vehicle, police said today.

Zimmerman was one of two men who came to the aid of a family of four -- two parents and two children -- trapped inside a blue Ford Explorer SUV that had rolled over after traveling off the highway in Sanford, Fla. at approximately 5:45 p.m. Thursday, the Seminole County Sheriff's Office said in a statement...

Government Motors Is Alive And Detroit Is Dead
The fundamental transformation of Detroit is complete, as socialism's theme park succumbs to government run amok, a reminder that government isn't the solution to our problems but their cause.

The wisdom of President Reagan's words have been lost under an administration that believes government is the entity from which all blessings flow. So has Margaret Thatcher's observation that the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money...

Journalist calls out his newspaper's coverage of IRS scandals
We live in a time of extraordinary media corruption when testimony late last week tying a presidential political appointee to the IRS' suppression of the president's political opposition was widely ignored, except for Fox News and the conservative talk radio and internet ghetto. But at least one brave journalist in the MSM is speaking up about the disgraceful suppression of an important story of political corruption of the highest order...

Embattled IRS chief counsel met with Obama 2 days before agency changed targeting criteria
The Obama appointee implicated in congressional testimony in the IRS targeting scandal met with President Obama in the White House two days before offering his colleagues a new set of advice on how to scrutinize tea party and conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.

IRS chief counsel William Wilkins, who was named in House Oversight testimony by retiring IRS agent Carter Hull as one of his supervisors in the improper targeting of conservative groups, met with Obama in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on April 23, 2012. Wilkins’ boss, then-IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman, visited the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on April 24, 2012, according to White House visitor logs.

On April 25, 2012, Wilkins’ office sent the exempt organizations determinations unit “additional comments on the draft guidance” for approving or denying tea party tax-exempt applications, according to the IRS inspector general’s report...


In May 2013, John Rosemond—America's longest running newspaper columnist—received an astonishing order from the Kentucky attorney general: Stop publishing your advice column in the Bluegrass State or face fines and jail. The attorney general and Kentucky's psychologist licensing board believe that John's column, which is syndicated in more than 200 papers nationwide, constitutes the "unlicensed practice of psychology" in Kentucky when it appears in a Kentucky newspaper. Kentucky's crackdown is part of a national surge in the abuse of occupational licensing laws to censor advice.

On July 17, 2013, John joined the Institute for Justice to fight back in federal court. His First Amendment lawsuit defends freedom of speech and freedom of the press from government officials who believe that it can be a crime in America to express an opinion in the newspaper. John's challenge addresses one of the most important unsettled questions in First Amendment law: Can the government use occupational licensing laws to trump free speech?

Anglican Mainstream Response to legalisation of same-sex marriage

July 22nd, 2013

With other marriage advocates, we at Anglican Mainstream are distressed but not entirely surprised by the passage of last week’s legislation. We have been tracking the impact of Same-Sex Marriage (SSM) in other countries (such as Canada, which has had SSM since 2005) and note its damaging effect on family structure and society.

Of course the entire social fabric will not collapse overnight. Social mores do not function like that. And there are vital and important issues to address in terms of poverty and injustice, both in our country and around the world... the rest

Some RNS cheerleading for gay marriage

by George Conger
July 20, 2013

A poor outing from Religion News Service this week in its article about the passage of the British government’s Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill. While it is a wire service story and cannot be held to the same standards of depth of reporting as a story prepared in house by a newspaper, it nonetheless should strive for accuracy and provide context — and refrain from cheer leading in support of one side of the story.

The version that appeared in the Washington Post under the title “Queen approves same-sex marriage bill in England, Wales” appears to be in trouble from the start. The Queen in the person of Elizabeth did not approve the bill — the Crown or the Sovereign did. This is a small thing, but it signals the direction of the story. It begins... the rest

Court to hear appeal on Christ Church Anglican's proposed new home
...The Rev. Marc Robertson and his flock intend to build a new sanctuary on the corner of Drayton and 37th streets. Neighbors and other Thomas Square residents opposed to the church’s plans are arguing the mid-city rezoning ordinance prohibits the facility being built as proposed.

Six East 36th Street residents, the back of whose homes sit across the lane from Christ Church Anglican’s proposed site, have appealed a Zoning Board of Appeals decision on three granted variances.

Chatham County Superior Court Judge Michael Karpf will hear motions on the appeal at 2 p.m. Monday. The appeal was initially filed on May 28...

Unless we know the difference between flowers and weeds...

Unless we know the difference between flowers and weeds, we are not fit to take care of a garden. It is not enough to have truth planted in our minds. We must learn and labor to keep the ground clear of thorns and briars, follies and perversities, which have a wicked propensity to choke the word of life. 
...Clyde Francis Lytle image

Recife loses court battle over church property to the IEAB

Diocese to appeal ruling

 July 20, 2013
By George Conger    

The Bishop of Recife, the Rt. Rev. Miguel Uchôa has convened an extraordinary meeting of the diocesan synod for 20 July 2013 to discuss a civil court ruling handed down this week that awarded the diocese’s property to a faction aligned with the Anglican Episcopal Church of Brazil (IEAB).

“I have called an extraordinary synod for this Saturday to have a united voice from the Diocese with the presence of our lawyers ,” Bishop Uchôa told Anglican Ink.

In 2005 the Bishop of Recife, the Rt. Rev. Robinson Cavalcanti was deposed for incivility by his fellow bishops following several years of doctrinal disputes between the Evangelical bishop and the liberal majority in the Province. After he was removed from office, the province then defrocked 32 Recife clergy without trial for backing their bishop. Approximately 90 percent of the lay members of the diocese followed Bishop Cavalcanti and are presently under the metropolitan oversight of the primates Anglican Church of North America and the Province of the Southern Cone. the rest

Scrolling around...July 20, 2013

Chicago Blues: Tenured Teachers Laid Off
Having closed 11 percent of the city’s public schools in May, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) has now been forced to fire 2,000 employees, including 1,000 teachers—half of whom were tenured...

Detroit Bankruptcy Likely to Spark a Pension Brawl

Episcopal Church Task Force Releases Report on Restructuring Plans
A task force created by The Episcopal Church to investigate changes within the denomination's ecclesiastical structure has met and released a new report.

"Structural, administrative, and governance change is only one component of the renewal to which the church is being called. Our deepest hope and prayer for our work is that it will be part of, and will continue to catalyze, the renewal that is taking place in many places around the church," reads part of the report from the Task Force for Re-Imagining the Episcopal Church (TREC). met last week at the Institute of Technology in Linthicum, Maryland.

"In order for structural, administrative, and governance reforms to be compelling and to effect meaningful change, they must be grounded in a coherent vision for what those structures are supposed to do in the life of the church," TREC stated in a news release provided by the Episcopal Church Office of Public Affairs on Tuesday...

Dozens of Christians Killed in Plateau State, Nigeria
Gunmen killed six Christians in an early morning attack yesterday on Dinu village in southern Plateau state, a month after Muslim Fulani herdsmen shot a Christian to death in a nearby village, Christian leaders said.

The identities of the gunmen and the victims were not immediately known, though the Rev. Johnson Kikem, chairman of a nearby Regional Church Council of the Church of Christ in Nations (COCIN), reported that church members who fled the village in Wase Local Government Area said the assailants were Muslims.

“Some of our church members there who escaped from the village and ran to us here in Langtang brought the news of the attack,” Kikem said. “We have been told that six of our members have been killed.”...

Christian Girls Being Snatched by Islamist Traffickers
...Last year, a Helsinki Commission hearing revealed the number of disappearances and abduction of Christian girls is increasing. Human trafficking expert Michel Clark told of more than 800 cases.

Still, many Islamic leaders and government officials debunk claims that Christian girls are being trafficked. They insist the conversions and marriages are not forced; they are simply the result of amorous love between young people of different faiths...

Judge grants injunction in Hobby Lobby case
Hobby Lobby Inc. was given a temporary exemption Friday from a requirement in the new federal health care law to offer insurance coverage for the morning-after pill and similar emergency birth control methods or face steep fines.

U.S. District Judge Joe Heaton issued the preliminary injunction for the Oklahoma City-based arts and crafts chain and stayed the case until Oct. 1 to give the federal government time to consider filing an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court...

Explosion hits Beijing International Airport
An explosion occurred Saturday evening in Terminal 3 of the Beijing International Airport, police said.

A wheel-chaired Chinese man set off a home-made explosive device outside the arrivals exit of the Terminal 3 at around 6:24 p.m.. The man was injured and is currently under treatment...

Helen Thomas dies at 92, reported on every president since Kennedy
...As the senior news service correspondent at the White House, Thomas ended dozens of presidential news conferences with the familiar phrase "Thank you, Mr. President."

She was known for her straight-to-the-point questioning of presidents and press secretaries in a manner that some considered dogged. Others, including many fellow reporters, considered her style in her later years to be too combative and agenda-driven...


BILL WHITTLE: The Lynching

Father, I want to know Thee...

Father, I want to know Thee, but my coward heart fears to give up its toys. I cannot part with them without inward bleeding, and I do not try to hide from Thee the terror of the parting. I come trembling, but I do come. Please root from my heart all those things which I have cherished so long and which have become a very part of my living self, so that Thou mayest enter and dwell there without a rival. Then shalt Thou make the place of Thy feet glorious. Then shall my heart have no need of the sun to shine in it, for Thyself wilt be the light of it, and there shall be no night there. In Jesus Name, Amen. ...AW Tozer image

Same-Sex Marriage Is Still Wrong; And It’s Getting Wronger Every Day

by Rev. Dr. Ephraim Radner
Wednesday, July 17th, 2013

The unexpectedly rapid civil acceptance of same-sex marriage in the West may lead one to imagine that the issue is somehow already settled. Whatever doubts one may have had, they have been swept away by the overwhelming flood of changed public opinion. Fait accompli. Traditional Christians must simply step aside now.

Such a judgment would be a mistake. Indeed, far from the matter being settled, at least form a Christian perspective it has hardly been engaged, despite claims to the contrary by proponents of same-sex marriage. What we have had instead is a bait-and-switch set of tactics, first seeking civil and religious recognition and affirmation somehow of same-sex attractions, then pressing for ordinations, then blessings of unions. What comes next? The question of a “slippery slope” is hardly a fallacy here, for in this case we have a historical track-record of legal advocacy and movement that stands as quite rational “evidence” for the slope’s existence.

All the while, most discussions claimed that “marriage” was never nor could be ever the issue at stake. But here we are: changes to “marriage canons” and Prayer Books are now in the works. At this stage the advocates of change are merciful enough to suggest “conscience clauses” for those who disagree. the rest

Forceful assertion unaccompanied by convincing argument has proved to be the modus operandi for the advocates of change. For one thing, the Bible offers several rather pointed prohibitions to homosexual acts. This has, with reluctance, been an immovable challenge to advocates. True, these prohibitions are not numerous, but they occur in both the Old and New Testaments. In addition, the Bible is suffused with a vast, rich, and interconnected fabric of heterosexual marriage imagery, and explicit discussion, much of it deeply charged theologically.

Scrolling around...July 19, 2013

Roman Catholics in decline in Brazil, Protestants on the rise
A new report from the Pew Research Center has revealed Brazil's changing religious landscape.

America's Most Saintly City Is New York?
New York City is far from America's so-called "Bible Belt," but a new list argues the Big Apple is still the nation's "most saintly" city.

According to real estate blog Movoto, NYC handily beats out Colorado Springs (among other cities in Colorado, California, and Arizona) to claim the title.

 

Movoto's list stands in stark contrast to Barna Group's list of "most Bible-minded" cities and Gallup's list of "most religious" cities, which CT reported earlier this year....

Church in the Metropolis
It seems that denominationalism has had its day. A 2009 Barna survey found that denominational commitments have gone squishy in mainline Protestant churches, and Evangelicals don’t fare much better than the rest. After a similar survey, Ron Sellers of what was then Ellison Research said that Protestants are as “loyal to their denominations as they are to their toothpaste.”

Denominationalism may recover, but its diseases look terminal. This toothpaste isn’t ready to return to the tube.

Like most everything, this development has its pluses and minuses. Denominations were born of a catholic spirit. They enabled believers to maintain their distinctive beliefs without de-churching the rest of the Christian world. It would be tragic if the decline of denominations left the church less catholic. Plus, without thick denominational loyalties, Christians abandon their churches at the first shimmy of trouble. Once upon a time, Anglicans stuck it out because even an incompetent pastor and an ugly carpet were preferable to joining the Lutherans. Today Lutheranism is a live option. And the Barna survey found that low denominational loyalty often expressed a weak adherence to Christianity itself. Slightly less than half of the respondents were “absolutely” committed to Christianity, and most might be enticed to explore other religions...

First New England, Then the Nation: The Spread of Physician-Assisted Suicide
On May 20, Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin signed “The Patient Choice and Control at the End of Life Act,” legalizing physician-assisted suicide (PAS) throughout the state. This event matters not only because this law governs life and death, but also because Vermont is the first state to sanction PAS through the legislative process, via the votes of elected representatives. The law also represents the spread of PAS from the West Coast to the opposite side of the United States.

While neither of these characteristics may alarm right-to-life and disability rights advocates (who perhaps are concerned solely for the people of Vermont), policy scholars know that both of these attributes greatly enhance PAS proponents’ ability to spread the scourge of voluntary euthanasia throughout New England and eventually nationwide...

Noonan: A Bombshell in the IRS Scandal
...The IRS scandal was connected this week not just to the Washington office—that had been established—but to the office of the chief counsel.

That is a bombshell—such a big one that it managed to emerge in spite of an unfocused, frequently off-point congressional hearing in which some members seemed to have accidentally woken up in the middle of a committee room, some seemed unaware of the implications of what their investigators had uncovered, one pretended that the investigation should end if IRS workers couldn't say the president had personally called and told them to harass his foes, and one seemed to be holding a filibuster on Pakistan...

So You Want To Sin, Do You?
 I get that. I’ve been there. I've been there today. And yesterday. And the day before. Can I beg just four or five minutes of your time? Then you can go and sin all you want. But first I want you to read just a few words and take a moment to consider them.

Consider, Christian, that Christ came from his Father’s side, where he had existed eternally, to this world of sorrow and death; that God himself was manifested in the flesh, the Creator made a creature; that he who was clothed with glory would now be clothed with mortal flesh; he who filled heaven and earth with his glory would be cradled in a manger; that the almighty God would flee from weak man—the God of Israel escaping into Egypt; that the God of the law would become subject to the law, the God of the circumcision circumcised, the God who made the heavens and earth laboring with Joseph as a small-town carpenter... image

Eric Metaxas and Tim Keller helped lead Kirsten Powers to Christianity
New York City is not known as the mecca of Christianity, but nationally-known journalist Kirsten Powers who was not a believer discovered that God can use the influence of only two or three people among millions to change a person's life, according to comments she made in an interview with Focus On The Family today, Thursday, July 17.  
 [I actually found this from April 19, 2013 broadcast Focus On the Family here]

"The people I know around here (New York) don't do daily Bible readings. This isn't like the South," she said.

With bestselling Christian author Eric Metaxas and respected pastor Tim Keller in the neighborhood there is always a chance a person in a secular environment can become a believer. In Kirsten's case, it was a chance invitation from a friend of Eric Metaxas to her to attend a service at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, New York, that caused her to see the world in a whole different light.

Well-know pastor Tim Keller's powerful sermons over a two-year period persuaded Kirsten that history and logic were powerful evidence that Jesus Christ is who He said He is. The daughter of atheist parents, she didn't have a strong theological background and didn't know what to do with her newfound faith...

'The Bible' Miniseries Earns Emmy Nomination; Roma Downey Calls It a 'Blessing'
"The Bible" miniseries has been nominated for an Emmy Award in the "Outstanding Miniseries or Movie" category, it was announced Thursday morning.

History Channel's biblical miniseries will be competing with five other programs for the category's top spot, including FX Network's "American Horror Story: Asylum," HBO's "Behind the Candelabra," HBO's "Phil Spector," USA's "Political Animals" and Sundance Channel's "Top of the Lake."

The show, which was produced by husband and wife team Mark Burnett and Roma Downey, has also been nominated for "Outstanding Sound Editing for a Miniseries, Movie or a Special" and "Outstanding Sound Mixing for a Miniseries or a Movie" for its premiere episode, "Beginnings."...

Top 17 Most Outrageous Pro-“Choice” Signs During Texas’ Abortion Debate

Jesus! where’er thy people meet...

Jesus! where’er thy people meet,

There they behold thy mercy-seat;

Where’er they seek thee, thou art found,

And every place is hallow’d ground.

Dear Shepherd of thy chosen few!

Thy former mercies here renew;

Here to our waiting hearts proclaim

The sweetness of thy saving name.

...William Cowper image

I have no words...

This may make your eyes and ears bleed. No. Really.

Anglican Unscripted Episode 76 (2nd Anniversary)

Jul 16, 2013

BELOW is the Show Time Index

This Week's Anglican Unscripted talks about itself? Well, it is the second anniversary of AU and George and Kevin are still bewildered by the shows success. Your Hosts also talk about the Summer of Egypt and the plight of Christian Brothers and Sisters in the Middle East. There has also been a shakeup at Lambeth Palace (per Kevin and George's request? ) and this week's AU talks about PR and bad PR.

Allan Haley discusses the Legal wranglings of the Opera and Peter talks about the problem with Sex, Decisions, and Timing in the Church of England.

Kevin and George close out the program talking about the Trayvon Martin and the George Zimmerman court decision. And, your hosts are still fundraising for a trip to GAFCON!

00:00 AU 2nd Anniversary
10:49 Egypts Sizzling Summer
16:37 Lambeth Press Relations
21:08 A Night at the Opera
29:00 Same Sex Sex
41:26 Gafcon in the News
48:29 Trayvon
52:15 George Health Update / Gafcon News

The Rise of the “Nones” (and How Anglicans Can Respond)

by Barton Gingerich
July 16, 2013

American churches are losing their young people. This trend was evidenced most recently in a 2012 Pew Forum study titled “‘Nones’ on the Rise: One-in-Five Adults Have No Religious Affiliation.” The summary of the 80-page report posits, “The number of Americans who do not identify with any religion continues to grow at a rapid pace. One-fifth of the U.S. public—and a third of adults under 30—are religiously unaffiliated today, the highest percentages ever in Pew Research Center polling.”

Researchers use the label of “nones,” or “religiously unaffiliated,” to clarify that these young people are not falling into hardened agnosticism or atheism. Instead, they often describe themselves as “spiritual, but not religious,” perhaps echoing the common mantra that “Christianity isn’t a religion, it’s a relationship.” As Ross Douthat argues in his latest book Bad Religion, America suffers not from a lack of spirituality but rather an influx of self-determined, self- actualizing heresies. Mainline Protestantism, once a bastion of orthodoxy and counterweight to spiritual outliers on the American religious landscape, has compromised on its Christian convictions and has suffered an exodus in membership. Post-Vatican II Roman Catholicism likewise hemorrhages baptized members, even though the statistics are buoyed by the influx of Latin American immigrants. This is not simply a crisis in denominational loyalty. Non- denominational evangelicalism, once the refuge for dissident revivalist Protestant voices, is also starting to suffer membership loss. Youth raised in the mega- church culture seem almost as likely to leave the faith as any other kind of Christian. Even America’s largest religious group, the Southern Baptist Convention, is starting to see its membership numbers plateau.

The Pew Forum cites four hypotheses for the rise of the nones: political backlash (especially against the “Religious Right”), delayed marriage, broad social disengagement (or the “bowling alone problem”), and secularization. The National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR) has engaged this question with more depth and promises fruitful answers to concerned church leaders. The NSYR, encapsulated in Christian Smith’s 2005 tome Soul Searching and Kenda Creasy Dean’s 2010 book Almost Christian, offers helpful insights to the problematic world of youth ministry. the rest image image