Scrolling around...August 8, 2013

The Very Hip Rev. Gary Hall
Liberal Episcopal Church elites often seem determined to fulfill caricatures of themselves. The Very Rev. Gary Hall, new dean of Washington’s prominent National Cathedral, does so fulsomely, gregariously, wonderfully in a recent Washington Post profile by Sally Quinn. They met in his favorite French restaurant near the magnificent Gothic edifice, which hosts so many solemn pageants of American civil religion.

Hall has made a splash in town by focusing on gun control and same sex marriage. He hosted a press conference soon after last year’s tragic school shootings in Connecticut. And he’s opened the cathedral for homosexual nuptials. Liberal Episcopalianism strongly emphasizes sexual liberation, and for Hall that liberation includes heterosexuals too.

“We have this cartoon in America where you grow up, get married and stay the same person,” Hall told Quinn. “For the church to say, ‘No sex before marriage,’ is not realistic,” claiming he has wed over 500 couples, only about five of whom were not already cohabiting, statistics exponentially beyond the national average. He wants the church to model “how to live a life of faithfulness and integrity” while evidently embracing the new permissiveness.

It’s all about moving with the times...


A Father Rescues His Child from Abortion

U.S. Failing to Address Terror Against Nigerian Christians, Warns Expert
As bombings against Christian churches in Nigeria continue, a religious-liberty scholar is calling on the U.S. government to recognize the scope of the persecution of Christians and take steps to end the violence.

Paul Marshall, senior fellow at the Washington-based Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom, explained that Nigeria has experienced “increased religious violence and attacks on Christians for about 12 years.”

The religious-liberty expert told Catholic News Agency that the violence has been “worsening a great deal in the last three years, with the rise of Boko Haram, an al Qaeda-affiliated militia that has been targeting Christians, amongst others.”

But despite this rise in violence, he said, the U.S. government has yet to “recognize the religious element of the conflict” and take strong steps against the extremist organization...

Al Qaeda Flag Flies High Above Christian Churches
Days ago, al-Qaeda's Egyptian leader, Ayman Zawahiri, portrayed the overthrow of Muhammad Morsi and the Brotherhood as a "Crusader" campaign led by Coptic Pope Tawadros II who, according to Zawahiri and other terrorists, is trying to create a Coptic state in Egypt.

Since then, not only are Egypt's Christians and churches now being attacked in ways unprecedented in the modern era, but new reports indicate that al-Qaeda's black flag has been raised on some of them, specifically St. George Church in Sohag. Considering that it was al-Qaeda linked terrorists who initiated one of the bloodiest church attacks in recent history, the 2010 Baghdad church attack where nearly 60 Christians were slaughtered (click here for graphic images), that al-Qaeda is singling out Egypt's Christians bodes ill...

The Islamic terrorist organization's incitements against the Copts are just the latest to emanate from Islamists—from the top of the Brotherhood leadership to the bottom of the "Muslim street"—creating something of an "open season" on Egypt's Christians.

Planned Parenthood Investigation Launched
...Disclosure of the investigation comes at a time when Planned Parenthood's use of government funds is drawing closer scrutiny. Only a week before, one of the affiliates of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) agreed to an out-of-court settlement of $4.3 million for alleged Medicaid fraud. Other Medicaid fraud suits are pending against Planned Parenthood, the country's leading abortion provider.

Upon learning of the GAO's decision to investigate, Southern Baptist ethicist Russell D. Moore commended government officials "for asking how public funds are spent by the abortion lobby."

"For years, the abortion-rights movement has told us they are about 'choice' and 'getting the government out of their lives,'" said Moore, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. "And yet, taxpayers have no choice in their hard-earned dollars subsidizing industries many of us consider to be horrific violators of human rights.

"A thorough investigation would be a good first step to examining our national conscience about what we're paying for, and why," he said in a written statement for Baptist Press. "The abortion industry is big business of the most sordid sort. They certainly don't need a taxpayer bailout."...

Turkish gov’t is building a $100M mosque in Maryland
Turkey’s Islamist government is constructing a massive $100 million, 15-acre mosque in Lanham, Md., that is expected to “become the largest and most striking example of Islamic architecture in the Western hemisphere” by October 2014...
In May, Turkey Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan placed a ceremonial stone at the construction site. Now the five-building project known as the Turkish American Culture and Civilization Center is well underway in the town just outside Washington, D.C., with a population of about 10,000....

Sowell: Busybody Politics
It is hard to read a newspaper, or watch a television newscast, without encountering someone who has come up with a new "solution" to society's "problems." Sometimes it seems as if there are more solutions than there are problems. On closer scrutiny, it turns out that many of today's problems are a result of yesterday's solutions.

San Francisco and New York are both plagued with large "homeless" populations today, largely as a result of previous housing "reforms" that made housing more expensive and severely limited how much housing, and of what kind, could be built.

The solution? Spend more of the taxpayers' money making homelessness a viable lifestyle for more people...