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| | | Palestinian stories open PC(USA) training event
By Leslie Scanlon, Presbyterian Outlook | | | Every Palestinian has a story. That’s what a Palestinian pastor from East Jerusalem said during an early session of a national Presbyterian training event that began Feb. 10 on peace in the Middle East.
But the telling of those stories – painful and personal ones, for example, of the difficulty of teaching one’s children love for all people when those children are routinely humiliated by Israeli soldiers at checkpoints – opens the door to layer upon layer of complications.
Can the Palestinian stories be told without telling those of Israeli Jews? What about Muslims from the region? And how can Presbyterians have fruitful conversations with American Jews if the story the Palestinian Christians tell is so powerful and so negative? | | | Presbyterian leader sees youth as key focus
By Ina Hughs, Knoxville [TN] News Sentinel | | | [Moderator Rick Ufford-Chase] is concerned that youth are being frustrated because of the divisions over social issues in mainline denominations.
"The Presbyterian church lost 45,000 members last year," he said. My own assessment is that it's not a matter of liberal against conservative. It's that most people are weary of the fighting, and we give them a sense that there is no meaningful engagement going on within the church. If we show there is meaningful engagement, young people especially are going to be right onboard with that." | | | | Statement on equal access to marriage adopted by Maryland clergy – TAMFS calls it a "Historic Prophetic Document" | | | Twenty-seven of the seventy-three Christian clergy from across the state of Maryland who have endorsed the “Statement
on Equal Access to Marriage” – about which we reported earlier this week – are Ministers of the Word and Sacrament in the Presbyterian Church (USA). Here is the statement with the list of signers. | | | | Presbyterian Panel on Energy Issues (summary) (pdf file) | | | Only 2% of pastors indicate that their congregation is an Energy Star Congregation.
Four in ten laity and majorities of ministers strongly agree/agree that “it’s unjust that Americans consume a much higher percentage of world energy than our share of world population.” Similar numbers strongly agree/agree that “poorer communities receive a disproportionate share of the burdens of energy production and consumption, such as pollution.”
Half or more, ranging from 74% of elders to 50% of specialized clergy, believe nuclear energy should play a very important or somewhat important role in “meeting future U.S. energy needs.”
Around six in ten members, elders, and pastors strongly agree or agree that “in God’s eyes, human beings are superior to other species.” Specialized clergy are more evenly split. | | | | Posted: MLPNews, Issue 2 February 8, 2005 | | | Content:
• Take Action: Sign up to host More Light Sunday
• Kickoff Party for New More Light Chapter
• Call for Nominations Extended to Feb. 16, 2005
• MLP Co-moderator, Erin Swenson receives 2005 Lazarus Award
• National MLP Leadership Conference; May 20-22 in Kansas City
• Shower of Stoles in the news
• Victory 2006 Update: New MLP Partner Groups Established | | | | Presbyterians in their local news | |
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| First Presbyterian Church, Quincy Illinois
Bookkeeper arrested for stealing
The Quincly Police Department arrested Nancy H. Brown, 36, after investigation of the theft of approximately $110,000 | | |
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News of and for all churches,
in the USA and around the world,
and their interaction with their cultures.
Included: opinions, resources
Voices from the entire spectrum
| | | A simple greeting breaks 20 years of silence
A car accident had left Sarah, 18, physically and verbally unresponsive
By Laura Bauer, The Kansas City Star | | | 
Sarah Scantlin |
They didn't want to push Sarah Scantlin too far, too fast.
She hadn't uttered a word in 20 years, not since she was struck by a car when she was a college freshman and left physically and verbally unresponsive. The staff at Golden Plains Health Care Center in Hutchinson, Kan., did not want to overwhelm her.
They just wanted to build on her breakthrough, a surprising “OK” that burst from her lips during a group session in early January.
Dad Jim Scantlin remembers the doctor standing before him and his wife Betsy not long after the Sept. 22, 1984, crash and telling them that “it's miraculous; it appears she will physically survive.” But the doctor went on to explain that Sarah would remain forever how she was that day in her hospital bed.
She wouldn't walk. She likely would never move on her own. She wouldn't talk.
“Basically he was saying the person she was, was gone forever, and you'll have to live with it,” he recalled.
Related: Dr. Dobson says Terri Schiavo deserves same chance | | | Swedish 'hate speech' pastor wins appeal
Sermon condemning homosexuals ruled not covered by law
By Keith B. Richburg, Washington Post | | | A Swedish appeals court on Friday overturned the conviction of a Pentecostal pastor found guilty of violating the country's strict hate-speech law with a sermon that labeled homosexuality "a deep cancerous tumor in the entire society" and equated it with pedophilia.
The appeals court ruled that Sweden's law, which was enacted after World War II to protect Jews and other minorities from neo-Nazi propaganda and was only recently extended to gays, was never intended to stifle open discussion of homosexuality or restrict a pastor's right to preach.
The defendant, the Rev. Ake Green, had a right to preach "the Bible's categorical condemnation of homosexual relations as a sin," the court said, even if that position was "alien to most citizens" and if Green's views could be "strongly questioned." | | | Episcopal Church giving down 12 percent
By Bobby Ross, Jr., AP | | | A new report says giving by local dioceses to the national Episcopal Church dropped roughly $4 million last year – about a 12 percent decline in the first full year after the denomination confirmed its only openly gay bishop.
When final tallies are complete, church officials expect $27.5 million in donations from local dioceses for 2004, down from $31.2 million in 2003, according to a report given to a key church governing body Friday.
"There's a decline ... but what I'd emphasize is that some of that may be an economic reaction or reality," denomination treasurer Kurt Barnes said. "People's incomes in 2003 and 2004 were recovering or were hurt by the market decline of 2001 and 2002."
But Canon David Anderson, president of the American Anglican Council, a conservative group of Episcopalians responded that "the economy is not down, it's up... Maybe he could have argued that two years ago." | | | Seminary votes to oust leader over daughter's gay wedding
By Anthony Ramirez, New York Times | | | The board of the New Brunswick Theological Seminary has voted not to extend the contract of the Rev. Dr. Norman J. Kansfield, the school's president. The board acted in part because Dr. Kansfield officiated at the same-sex marriage of his daughter, a seminary official said.
In a separate action, a spokesman for the national headquarters of the denomination, the Reformed Church of America, said the church would investigate complaints it had received about Dr. Kansfield. | | | A delicate, daring bid to deepen interfaith harmony
Jews, Christians, Muslims join in L.A. group's pilgrimage to the Holy Land.
By Teresa Watanabe, Los Angeles Times | | | On Thursday, after months of delicate preparation, 46 Muslims, Christians and Jews left Los Angeles for an 11-day visit to Israel and Jordan in what they say is one of the first pilgrimages from Southern California to the Holy Land that includes all three Abrahamic faiths.
"We're going to live together and visit each other's holy places. This probably can't happen anywhere else besides America." | | | '80s marriages tend to outlast those in '70s
By Cheryl Wetzstein, Washington Times | | | Couples who married for the first time in the last half of the 1980s were more likely to reach their 10th wedding anniversary than couples who married a decade earlier, new U.S. Census Bureau data shows.
Of couples who married for the first time in 1975 to 1979 – years when no-fault divorce laws were sweeping the country – roughly 68 percent of women and 72 percent of men were still in that marriage 10 years later, according to the marriage report released Thursday.
However, of couples who married for the first time a decade later, between 1985 to 1989, closer to 75 percent made it to their 10th anniversary.
The data do not show "large increases in marital longevity," cautioned bureau analyst Rose Kreider.
But they do suggest that the trend toward shorter marriages – marriages cut short by divorce or death – may have ended for couples who married in the last half of the 1980s, she said. | | | Religions try adapting A.A.'s Twelve Steps
Christians, Buddhists, Jews add vocabulary, rituals to recovery effort
Dallas Morning News | | | Like all Twelve Step programs, Alcoholics Anonymous is, and has always been, spiritually generic. The Steps, first published in 1939 -- four years after A.A.'s founding in Akron -- call for surrender to a higher power, but leave it up to participants to decide what, or who, that higher power might be.
This can leave those with strong roots in traditional religions feeling a void: They miss their familiar God and worship practices.
"When Christians in A.A. don't hear references to Christ, they get nervous and think maybe the group is trying to pull them away from Jesus,'' said Izzy, an Austin resident who asked that his last name not be used because, like many in A.A., he prefers to remain anonymous.
An Orthodox Jew, he added: "When Jews hear vague spiritual ideas (in A.A.), they're suspicious that they're being pulled away from Judaism. From a Jewish viewpoint, A.A. looks like a Christian organization. To certain Christians, A.A. looks like a watering down of Christianity.'' | | | Church leaders work to alter public perception
By Cathleen Falsani, Chicago Sun-Times | | | A few weeks before Christmas 2004, eight of the Chicago area's leading evangelical Christian pastors assembled for an unusual meeting in a hotel room near O'Hare Airport.
They were white, black and Hispanic, friends and strangers, charismatic, traditional, liberal, conservative, centrist, megachurch shepherds, rising stars, longtime vanguard pastors. Among them, they represent more than 50,000 Chicago area evangelical Christians.
The meeting was "very promising," said Willow Creek's Bill Hybels, perhaps the best-known pastor in the group and leader of the largest congregation in the Chicago area, because "we had racial diversity, and we had a kind of richness of theological representation that promised a very interesting, united front that I think could be a head-turner for other parts of the country."
"I think some evangelicals have put too much emphasis on what Christ's followers are against, as opposed to what are the great causes that we should get up early in the morning and be motivated to give ourselves to because of the love of Christ."
And what would those causes be? "First would be the poor and the oppressed," Hybels said, ". . . the hungry, the homeless. Right next to that would be bridging the racial divide. Certainly, it would be AIDS. Lack of education. | | | | God and evolution – by Nicholas D. Kristof, New York Times | | | "...While I was living in China in the early 1990's, after religion had been suppressed for decades, drivers suddenly began dangling pictures of Chairman Mao from their rear-view mirrors. The word had spread that Mao's spirit could protect them from car crashes or even bring them sons and wealth. It was a
miracle: ordinary Chinese had transformed the great atheist into a god...
"The faithful can believe that God wired us to appreciate divinity. And atheists can argue that God may simply be a figment of our VMAT2 gene.
"But what the research does suggest is that postindustrial society will not easily leave religion behind. Faith may be quiescent in many circles these days, or directed toward meditation or yoga, but it is not something that humans can easily cast off.
"A propensity to faith in some form appears to be embedded within us as a profound part of human existence, as inextricable and perhaps inexplicable as the way we love and laugh." | | | | Who gets credit for American democracy: Puritans, Deists or both? – by Richard N. Ostling, AP | | | Two thinkers began 2005 with simultaneous articles in neo-conservative magazines expressing differing views about who gets credit for laying the foundations of America's distinctive democracy.
Both agreed, however, that the nation is fortunate that those foundations were profoundly biblical.
In the American Jewish Committee's Commentary magazine, Yale professor David Gelernter lauded New England's oft-maligned orthodox Puritans, who dominated pre-Revolutionary religion.
In the interfaith magazine First Things, Fordham University's Cardinal Avery Dulles celebrated the role of the heterodox believers known as Deists.
Though Puritanism and Deism greatly influenced the Founders and succeeding generations, both movements faded soon after the new nation's birth. | | | Unchurched Lincoln, the theologian?
Words of 1865 still ring loud and clear in religious circles
By Peter Steinfels, New York Times | | | Today is the birthday of a man thought by many to be the nation's greatest president. It is also the birthday of a man whom many believe to be if not the nation's greatest theologian, at least to come close. That is no coincidence, because they are the same man.
Abraham Lincoln seems an unlikely candidate for the Theological Hall of Fame. He belonged to no church. He had read little theology. The exact nature of his religious beliefs remains a matter for debate.
Mark Noll writes, "None of America's respected religious leaders," Professor Noll wrote, "mustered the theological power so economically expressed in Lincoln's Second Inaugural. None probed so profoundly the ways of God or the response of humans to the divine constitution of the world. None penetrated as deeply into the nature of providence. And none described the fate of humanity before God with the humility or the sagacity of the president." | | | 'For these words to survive intact, it is kind of mind-blowing'
By Bo Emerson, Atlanta Journal-Constitution | | | Did John the Baptist hang out with the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls?
They certainly had a lot in common.
It is believed that the scroll writers, contemporaries of John, lived in the Judean desert (where he famously wandered), preached about a coming Messiah and used water for purification rituals. Sound familiar?
At the same time, the community at Qumran, credited with stashing the scrolls during the first century, was a rigid, ascetic sect with a two-year waiting period for applicants and elaborate rules of conduct. | | | Let's tighten spigot on the deluge of sex
By Ken Garfield, Charlotte Observer | | | My 20-year-old daughter reminds me I'm not the target audience for this sort of thing. The stores selling tops that show your midriff aren't after a balding, morally high-strung 51-year-old who writes about faith, family and values all day.But no matter what our age and principles, we ought to demand that our pastors, teachers, neighbors and children quit walking past this stuff with eyes closed to avoid it. We need to pose tough questions:
• Do these hip clothing stores that cater to kids really sell more stuff with sexually charged marketing? Why wouldn't a kid buy those jeans if the ad featured an attractive model in-line skating in the park? Or studying? A father can dream, can't he? |
| | | Letters from readers – email us | |
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| Al Sandalow "I read with interest MRTI questioning Intel's low percentage of women in their workplace. I sure hope that this group never investigates the Presbyterian Church... Intel has us beat by 10%..." |
The sources underlying the following letters:
• Layman article • Achtemeier response • Layman response | |
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| Bob Titus "...my question to Dr. Achtemeier is... what DO you believe and WHERE do you stand on homosexuality as a sin and it's place in the life of the church?" | |
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| Dave Pepper in an "open letter to my former classmates at Dubuque Seminary": "It is with much sadness that I have followed the accusations, the request for a retraction, the refusal of the request for a retraction, and the ensuing online debate over what Mark Achtemeier did or did not say in class...
"Either be willing to stand up publicly for what you think is right, and be willing to face the consequences, or keep quiet." | |
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| Tom Armstrong "I am responding to Rus Howard’s assessment of the recent journalistic efforts of The Layman regarding Mark Achtemeier.
"While I am a PC (USA) pastor now, I have also been a newspaper reporter and editor... following “the rules” does not necessarily eliminate bias nor does it bring forth truth... A good reporter will get the story in its entirety, no matter how long it takes. As practiced by The Layman,all that following “the rules” does is provide a false sense of integrity..." | |
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| Clay J. Brown "...Short of credible evidence that Achtemeier has gone off the deep end theologically, I am more likely to accept his version of events versus The Layman's. Sorry, but I can't support The Layman nor Rus Howard here. They are practicing and supporting the type of journalism they so often decry in others." | |
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| David Bower "...it seems to me that Mark Achtemeier is in one of those "Have you stopped beating your wife?" situations... being accused by anonymous students... why did they not call a press conference...and publicly express their concerns in an open forum?..." | |
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| Gary W. Miller "...For pity sake, why doesn't Mark Achtemeier stand up, speak up and say what he believes clearly." | |
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| Wait and See "...Despite being a conservative, I am not a fan of The Layman... I do not know Dr. Achtemeier, but his decision not to respond to The Layman’s repeated attempts to contact him lays part of the blame of this matter in his lap... that he doesn’t say in his response what he does think on the matter at hand ought to lead those who are rushing to his defense to pause and take a more careful look at what he is saying and not saying..." | |
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| Want more Layman-Achtemeier letters? See our Wednesday and Thursday letter sections. And the Layman has 3 pages of them. | | |
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