World News for September 30, 2009

September 30, 2009

Reading: World News for September 30, 2009
Print This Article


  • The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is continuing to hemorrhage after historic votes last month at its convention in Minneapolis regarding homosexuality, according tovarious news stories around the country. The group now allows same-sex relationships in its clergy. Many people and congregations are anticipated to leave the synod. A pastor in Hutchinson, Minn., said, “The buzzing question now is: Are you leaving the ELCA? And it isn’t just spin to say no, the ELCA has left us.” A large church in Glendale, Ariz., voted unanimously on Sunday to cut ties with the ELCA and will be joining a break-off group known as Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ. The church website noted other reasons for bolting from the ELCA, including the ELCA policy on Israel, which the church says is not supportive of that nation, and the ELCA drift on the Scriptures. The church notes the ELCA website, which says that the writers of the Bible “sometimes provide differing and even contradictory views of God’s word, ways and will.” Another church, St. John’s Lutheran in Roanoke, Va., has just voted by a majority of 70 percent to leave the ELCA. The associate pastor, a native of Zambia, said of the ELCA, “This just shows how far off the deep end we in America have gone,” referring to the ELCA decisions on homosexuality. Meanwhile, a group of about 1,200 people meeting in suburban Indianapolis approved a constitution for a conservative umbrella group called Lutheran CORE and a resolution directing its steering committee to report back in a year on whether to stay within the ELCA, form their own denomination, or join another. CORE has been urging congregations to direct funding away from the ELCA. The Hutchinson, Minn., pastor commented on giving to the ELCA that severing financial ties is not a knee-jerk reaction to the gay clergy vote but rather the culmination of years of disagreement between the ELCA and more conservative congregations.
  • ACORN, a radical left-wing organization that came into view during last year’s presidential campaign due to President Obama’s campaign, was recently disgraced by a series of undercover videos showing illegal activity by the group’s employees, reports lifesitenews.com. Now the group is suing the young pro-life duo who shot the videos. One of the duo caught a Planned Parenthood employee accepting a donation earmarked for the abortion of an African-American child. Both Republicans and conservative Democrat legislators immediately condemned the contents of the videos and called for the defunding of ACORN. The activist group has been dogged in recent years by accusations of wide-scale voter fraud and, more recently, has been accused of covering up nearly $1 million in embezzled funds by the ACORN founder. A former member of the Federal Election Commission says the Internal Revenue Service needs to open a “big” investigation into ACORN after a new Senate analysis shows that the group paid for political campaign services with charitable dollars, according to onenewsnow.com. A legal scholar at the Heritage Foundation says a report by Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) provides further evidence that ACORN is more concerned with liberal political activity than helping the poor. The scholar believes ACORN needs to lose its tax-exempt status.
  • A hand-written Bible exhibition opened last Saturday in Des Moines, Iowa, reported the Des Moines Register. Beginning in 1998, Welsh calligrapher Donald Jackson and a team of artists and scholars produced a handwritten, illustrated Bible using techniques for the Middle Ages. They used hand-cut ink quills (goose for the text, turkey and swan for the heavier illustrations) to decorate thin sheets of calfskin vellum, then layered on powdered vermilion, lapis lazuli, and gold leaf to color the illustrations. After they crossed the last “t” and dotted the last “i” in Revelation at a cost of $4 million, Smithsonian magazine called the book “one of the extraordinary undertakings of our time.”
  • Dozens of pastors, more than 80, are challenging an IRS rule that anti-Christian activists often invoke when they want to silence the message of churches, according to the Alliance Defense Fund. The second annual Pulpit Freedom Sunday took place during the past weekend, in which pastors preached sermons on Biblical perspectives on the positions of electoral candidates or current government officials. The ADF says that these pastors are exercising their constitutional right to free religious expression. “Pastors have a right to speak about biblical truths from the pulpit without fear of punishment. No one should be able to use the government to intimidate pastors into giving up their constitutional rights,” said ADF senior legal counsel Erik Stanley. Censorship for church pastors began when the Johnson Amendment was added to the Federal Tax Code some years ago. The effect of the Amendment was that pastors have been muzzled for fear of investigation by the IRS. “Churches were completely free to preach about candidates from the day that the Constitution was ratified in 1788 until 1954,” noted Stanley.
  • WorldNetDaily reports that the U.S. Congress and president are teaming up to kill marriage protections. Nearly 100 members of Congress, endorsing homosexuality, are trying to eliminate protections for traditional marriage in the U.S. with a Respect for Marriage Act that has been just introduced by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D.-N.Y.) and has 90 cosponsors. The legislation would repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as the union of one man and one woman. Meanwhile, Gallup has reported the lowest support for same-sex unions in years.
  • The South Carolina Supreme Court has ruled in favor of a breakaway Episcopal parish that wanted to keep its church property, according to USA Today. The church had voted to leave the denomination five years ago after the consecration of a homosexual as bishop of New Hampshire. The Episcopal Church maintains that congregations hold their property in trust for the denomination. If the local church decides to leave, the property is supposed to stay with the diocese and the national body.
  • Westboro Baptist Church of Kansas, well known for its opposition to homosexuality to the extent that church members go around the country demonstrating with “God hates fags” signs and the like, won a round in court, according to the Baltimore Sun. The federal court ruled that the church did not violate the privacy of the family of a slain Marine when the church members picketed his 2006 funeral. The church maintains that the deaths of U.S. service members are God’s way of showing that He disapproves of America’s tolerance of homosexuality.
  • Some 59 percent of U.S. voters believe that the current level of political anger is higher now than it was under President George W. Bush, according to Rasmussen Reports.
  • Organizers of an “Islam on Capitol Hill” event last Friday blame opposition by some Christian groups for a much smaller turnout (1,000 to 3,000) than they had anticipated (50,000), said onenewsnow.com. Muslims who did appear heard calls from Christians to repent. A number of Christians called the event, even though small, a threat to Christian values. One leader said the event was “part of a well-defined strategy to Islamize American society and replace the Bible with the Koran, the cross with the Islamic crescent and the church bells with the Athan” (the Muslim call to prayer).
  • A North Dakota Catholic bishop has asked all priests to spend at least one hour outside an abortion facility, according to lifesitenews.com. The bishop joined pro-life advocates for an hour of prayer recently in front of a local abortion facility.
  • According to a Gallup Poll, the following 10 states are the ”least religious,” based on respondents’ answers to whether religion is important to their lives: Vermont (42%), New Hampshire (46%), Maine (48%), Massachusetts (48%), Alaska (51%), Washington (52%), Oregon (53%), Rhode Island (53%), Nevada (54%), and Connecticut (55%).
  • The American Family Association has announced it is beginning a homeschool TV channel (HSC), scheduled to go live in January 2010 on the Sky Angel Christian television service. ”We believe the culture is declining largely because homes and families are falling apart. Families are falling apart because fathers are not fulfilling their God-given roles in the home.” HSC is not designed as classroom teaching but rather supplemental programming for homeschool families, including guidance in how to disciple children. Examples of programming are a series on art history that includes beginning drawing, a series that profiles unique homeschool families across the nation, a series that features moms and dads mentoring their sons and daughters in a trade or profession, a study series on the U.S. Constitution, and a series on Western Civilization from a Biblical perspective.
  • Liberty Counsel has won a victory over the ACLU in a case that involved a woman in Florida who had been charged with contempt of court for having her husband pray at an awards banquet in a school.
  • A New Hampshire court ordered a Christian girl to attend public school for having “sincerely held” religious beliefs. The case involved divorce of the parents. An attorney for the Alliance Defense Fund has asked the court to reconsider the order. The girl had been living with her mother, who has been homeschooling the child since first grade.
  • The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has ruled that Belmont Abbey in North Carolina violated the rights of its female employees because the university’s health passage does not cover birth control or abortion. William Theirfelder, Belmont’s president, said that rather than providing contraceptives, “we would close the college.” “People need to wake up,” stated Michael Barnett, director of American Life League’s leadership development and LiveCampus college outreach program. “Under Obama, the federal government is forcing a religious institution to commit an act that violates its core values. This is religious persecution and a clear signal of what Obamacare would bring.” Students and staff are working to get the EEOC’s ruling overturned.