World News for April 29, 2009

April 29, 2009

Reading: World News for April 29, 2009
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  • Carrie Prejean, who was Miss California in the Miss USA Pageant, has won the admiration of Christians all over the country, as well as the wrath of homosexual groups, after her honest answer aboutwhether she supports marriage by homosexuals, reported Christianity Today and other sources. She said that she believes that marriage should be between a man and a woman. She and others believe her stand cost her the Miss USA crown, as she was named first runner-up to Miss North Carolina. Carrie will remain Miss California until November. Carrie’s comments came during the pageant’s final round. Gay celebrity blogger Perez Hilton cursed the beauty queen on his blog, and he, too, suggested her response cost her the Miss USA crown. Hilton said on his blog that he would have run onstage and ripped the tiara off Prejean’s head had she won the title. Her state sponsors urged her to apologize, but she rejected the advice. Carrie said she was raised in a way that you can never compromise your beliefs and your opinions for anything. Keith Lewis, executive director of California’s Miss USA operations, said in a statement released to Hilton that “religious beliefs have no place in politics in the Miss CA family.” However, her church, The Rock Church of San Diego, gave Carrie a hero’s welcome after the pageant. The church is outspoken against homosexuality, whose pastor, Miles McPherson and once player for the San Diego Chargers, commented, “We are being punked by the culture, the Christian Church is being punked.” Carrie is being helped in using her newfound fame to persuade other evangelical Christians to share their views, even if they are unpopular. “I learned that God has a bigger crown than any man can give you,” said Carrie.
  • The Presbyterian Church USA once again announced the defeat of efforts to allow sexually active homosexuals to serve as clergy in the denomination, according to votes received from 155 of the 173 presbyteries around the country. The attempt to accommodate gays in clergy has been made four times in 12 years.
  • News sources from Iowa report that ”gay marriages” are beginning to take place in the state after the legalization of same-sex nuptials. Some county recorders were rumored to be prepared to refuse to issue the licenses to same-sex couples over conflicts with their personal beliefs. State agencies sent out information to recorders statewide last week saying they could be removed from their positions if they didn’t comply. The one recourse opponents of “same-sex marriage” have is to get a constitutional amendment, but it cannot happen before 2012. The dilemma in Iowa began in 2005 when a New York–based gay rights organization sued on behalf of six gay and lesbian Iowa couples over the law against the practice.
  • A year ago public high school teacher John Freshwater of Mount Vernon, Ohio, was suspended without pay after a conflict arose over a Bible he kept on his desk. OneNewsNow reports Freshwater is suing the school over his suspension. The day after Freshwater removed his Bible, students protested by bringing their Bibles to school. After that show of support, Freshwater says many false allegations were made against him. But those have been disproven in court, including an allegation that he branded a student with a cross. Now a teacher was recently told to remove her Bible, then after filing a grievance she was allowed to display the Bible for the present. Freshwater says this latest incident proves that someone is singling him out, perhaps because he was once involved with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and ran into some problems with the administration back then. Thus far the court case has cost the school district more than $200,000 in legal fees.
  • The liberal group Americans United for Separation of Church and State has filed a lawsuit in an attempt to stop a Wisconsin school district from holding graduations in a church, Elmbrook Church of Milwaukee. Two high school graduations took place last June. The complaint holds that graduations in churches violate students’ and parents’ constitutional rights by “creating an atmosphere that makes non-Christians uncomfortable.” School officials argue that the megachurch is larger and more comfortable than alternative locations.
  • If children’s advocates succeed, the government would require broadcast and cable networks and stations to rate advertisements and parents would be able to block questionable advertising material, reported John Eggerton in Broadcasting & Cable. Those such as Adonis Hoffman, senior VP and counsel for the American Association of Advertising Agencies, counter by saying that advertising “remains the singular financial basis for free, over-the-air broadcast television.”
  • Worthy News reports that Christians are being killed in a number of places at present, including the Philippines, where two men are dead and another missing after 40 Muslim militants raided the predominately Christian village of Sitio Arco in the southern part of the country. Voice of the Martyrs provided the information and urged supporters to pray for the grieving family and friends. In Pakistan, a Taliban group executed two residents in a Christian neighborhood while one child died during a crackdown on believers. Christians, in the minority, feared more attacks, reported International Christian Concern. Mark A. Gabriel, well-known American scholar who converted from Islam to Christianity, interrupted his tour in the Netherlands because of death threats. Gabriel, not his real name, grew up as a Muslim in Egypt. After he became a Christian, he fled to the U.S., where he received asylum. The news came amid mounting concerns of growing influence of Muslim extremism in Europe. Due to international pressure, Libya has released four Christians who were detained for converting from Islam. They had been imprisoned for nearly three months.
  • Pew Forum reports that 47 percent of Caucasian evangelicals believe that non-Christian religions can lead to eternal life, 49 percent of African American Protestants believe so, as do 82 percent of Caucasian mainliners and 84 percent of Caucasian Catholics.
  • Barna reports that only 11 percent of churchgoers have ventured on a short-term missions trip of a week or two, and a majority of them went more than five years ago. Evangelical Christians were the most active, with 23 percent having gone. Young adults of ages 18–25 were most likely to have traveled. But 75 percent of all who have gone called the experience life-changing.
  • The American Family Association has announced that it is building a state-of-the-art high definition video production studio in order to utilize a new Internet communications technology. The new technology will allow homes to receive news and entertainment from AFA on their televisions using a broadband Internet connection available through cable or satellite. AFA Chairman Don Wildmon said that, in effect, the AFA will be a TV network with a Christian and conservative perspective. The ministry is also developing the nation’s first broadcast channel devoted to homeschooling.
  • Another project of the AFA is OneMillionMoms.com, a movement to stop the exploitation of children, especially by the entertainment media.
  • The recession is helping modest clothing, according to a usatoday.com report. Consumers want modest clothing, said the report, but retailers in better times tended to ignore the voices. Now the clothiers can’t afford to, citing BIGresearch, which polled 5,000 consumers and found that 64 percent of those 18 and older “strongly agreeing” with the statement, “Fashions for young people have gotten too provocative.”
  • A Colorado lawmaker recently took a stand on homosexuality, calling it an abomination and a sin that the government should not condone, reported WorldNetDaily. Senator Scott Renfroe (R.) said of SB 88, a bill granting insurance benefits to homosexual partners of state employees, “I oppose this bill because of what my personal beliefs are. I think that what our country was founded upon was those beliefs also.” Renfroe read verses from Leviticus and Romans to lawmakers and also stated, “We [the government] are suppressing the truth. The truth is what the family was created for in the beginning—that is a husband, a wife and children. That is why we are here, and this [bill] goes against that.” The bill did pass, however.
  • A California lawyer is filing a lawsuit after getting hate phone calls and e-mails simply for giving $10,000 to California’s Proposition 8 last year, said a story in AFA Journal. And Fred Karger, who in July launched the anti–Prop 8 group Californians Against Hate, acknowledged that intimidation is part of the gay political strategy.
  • Three Planned Parenthood abortion centers have been caught on camera covering up potential cases of statutory rape, reported lifenews.com.
  • LifeSiteNews tells that preparations for a conference on psychotherapy in Germany are reportedly being disrupted by an “action alliance of queer, feminist, and anti-fascist and anti-sexist” groups that want two Christian therapists removed from the roster of speakers. In response, a group of at least 600 prominent German professionals from a wide variety of backgrounds has issued a public statement and petition to protest the “totalitarian aspirations of the gay and lesbian associations.” The organizations are, according to the professionals, “trying to suppress freedom of expression and academic inquiry.” Dr. Christi Rugh Vonholdt of the German Institute for Youth and Society is asserting that the issue of the acceptance of homosexuality as normal “has long ceased to be that of tolerance, but of the dissolution of marriage bonds and family ties.”
  • President Obama is trying to eliminate one vestige of any morality in public schools by curtailing abstinence education for teens. President George W. Bush was a strong promoter of abstinence education, the waiting until marriage to have sex. Obama wants to bring in “other forms of contraception,” and eyes the cutting off of funds for abstinence programs. Abstinence-only advocates contend that just as adults drill teens not to drink and drive, educators should teach teens to avoid risk by maintaining celibacy until marriage.
  • Northland Baptist Bible College, Dunbar, Wis., has become Northland International University, announced President Matt Olson and Chancellor Les Ollila. The institution now will have—besides the Bible college—Northland Graduate School, Northland Online, and Northland Center for Global Opportunities. Northland Ministries will keep Northland Camp and Conference Center and Pioneer Christian School as separate ministries.