Will we allow the government to dictate whom we must hire to be in our institutions? It may be a do or die decision--"do" go along with the government(s), or "die" by declining to obey government dictates and lose our tax exempt status and all federal and (sometimes) state funds--including guaranteed subsidized student loans?
Read moreThe seeds of the rebellious 60s may actually have been sown in World War II, (then Korean & Vietnam), when so many about-to-be dads were "fathered" by the military and saw and did things that were not at all pleasing to God. Imagine the struggle in the minds of these young men to believe in God when horrible atrocities were going on all around them.
Read moreStudents are to be taught that white Christian settlers committed "theocide" against indigenous tribes when they arrived in the New World by murdering Native American gods and replacing them with the Christian God. According to the curriculum, this replacement ushered in a regime defined by "coloniality, dehumanization, and genocide," and the "explicit erasure and replacement of holistic Indigeneity and humanity." But all is not lost, we are told.
Read moreWe hear a lot about Black Americans who are, as they say, "vaccine hesitant," but their rate of refusal is only 33%. Among Catholics, 77% plan to get vaccinated, with only 22% refusing to. A distant second to evangelicals in their refusal rate to get vaccinated are the Nones, those with no religious beliefs at all, with 36%. Who would have expected those who groups to have that level of consensus?
Read moreBut there is a group I may soon have to discourage from asking for my advice or prayers: any same-sex attracted Christians (gay, bi-sexual or just uncertain) who have ambivalent feelings towards their sexuality. There are many of us: people like me who continue to believe traditional Christian teaching that sex is for the marriage of a man and woman but who find ourselves sexually attracted to our own sex. We may soon find our pastors' doors closed against us.
Read moreThe "but" is the problem. It's just not the case that theology is hard-nosed theory, while concrete circumstances demand gentle pastoral implementation. On such a view, the pastoral tail invariably ends up wagging the theological dog, and the theology gets adjusted to the pastoral setting. The outcome, in terms of sexual morality, is invariably the same.
This, it seems to me, is what's happening in the "gay Anglican" debacle.
Read more*"It got to the point where it became really untenable to have this patchwork of practices," Nathan Bult, senior vice president of public and government affairs, told NYT. "Bethany was ready ad christian are ready."
* Bethany facilitate 3,406 foster placements and 1,123 adoptions in 2019, according to NYT.
Bethany's position statement since 2007 has been that "God's design for the family is a covenant and lifelong marriage of one man and one woman."
Read moreBut here's something that's also very interesting, even though Democrats in the house have a smaller majority, the fact is that that party is now so scared of it's left wing. It's almost impossible to believe that the Equality Act won't pass one way or the other, even if there's not a single Republican vote. But in the Senate, the picture is different because the Senate will require a super majority. It will require at least 60 votes.
Read moreMacIntrye called this descent of ethics into shouting in the twenty-first century Western world "emotivism." He described emotivism as the point you reach when "all morals are nothing but expressions of [personal] preference" or "expressions of attitudes or feelings."3
Read moreThe controversy emerged because Max Lucado was in a series of preachers preaching virtual sermons for the nation's national cathedral over the course of the last several weeks. He preached one message, and that message became the object of intense controversy, so much so that the Bishop of the Diocese of Washington and the Dean of the Cathedral, basically had to fall on their swords and apologize for being so insensitive as to ever invite someone as an evangelical like Max Lucado.
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