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Church in Montreat votes to leave the PCUSA
	By a whopping 311-27 vote with three abstentions, the congregation of Montreat Presbyterian Church decided Sunday to request the Presbytery of Western North Carolina to dismiss it to the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. "I'm in shock," said the Rev. Richard White, pastor of the congregation. "Knowing the faith of this congregation, I expected that it would vote to leave – but this was a huge majority!" The vote came despite concerted efforts by presbytery and General Assembly leaders to keep the congregation in the denomination, including a personal visit from the Rev. Joan Gray, moderator of the 217th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA). White said that he and the congregation appreciated the fact that Gray took time out of her busy schedule to meet with them on the Wednesday evening before the vote. "She is a gracious lady," he said. White reported Gray met first with his session, then the congregation. "When we went into the room," he said, "she was on her knees, praying for us, that the Holy Spirit would lead us… She said she did not come to try to talk us into staying, but to listen to our people..."

Faith leaders challenge President Bush to address their concerns in State of the Union / faithinpubliclife.org
	As news reports are abuzz with speculation about the State of the Union address – what agenda items will make the cut and what tone President Bush will strike – Christian leaders are challenging the President to address what they see as the most pressing concerns of our time: bringing our troops home from Iraq, eradicating poverty, abolishing torture without exception, creation care and comprehensive immigration reform. “Christians insist that the war in Iraq must come to an end now,” says Rick Ufford-Chase, chief organizer of Christian Peace Witness for Iraq and former moderator of the Presbyterian Church (USA) – the church’s highest elected office. “In the past two years, I’ve visited hundreds of Christian churches. In congregation after congregation, the folks sitting in the pews of our churches want the President to articulate a clear timeline on the way out of Iraq,” Ufford-Chase says. Dr. George Hunsinger, professor of theology at the Princeton Theological Seminary and founder of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture proclaims: “The president must address U.S.-sponsored torture, abuse, indefinite detention, and secret prisons. The soul of our nation is at stake..."

Foremother of Voices of Sophia recounts history of advocacy for women in the PC(USA) – by Sylvia Dooling / VOW
	"It seems curious to me that the editors of Horizons magazine chose one of the “foremothers”1 of Voices of Sophia (VOS) to write the history of advocacy for women2 in the PC(USA)3 instead of a more neutral and evenhanded historian... "It is indisputable – Ms. Thorson-Smith comes to her “recounting of the history of advocacy for women” with a particular bias. In her opinion, anyone who disagrees with her radical feminist and/or revisionist sexual ethics is a threat to the position and authority of women in the church. For instance, she argues that the 1990s were “traumatic and disruptive years for women’s groups.” Why were they traumatic?..."

Scripture lessons for today – from the Lectionary
	"...Thus says the LORD, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: I am the LORD your God, who teaches you for your own good, who leads you in the way you should go. O that you had paid attention to my commandments! Then your prosperity would have been like a river..." "...when James and Cephas and John, who were acknowledged pillars, recognized the grace that had been given to me, they gave to Barnabas and me the right hand of fellowship, agreeing that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised..." "... Jesus said to them, "Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house." ..."

Today in the Yearbook for Prayer and Study The Synod of the Sun
	"The Synod of the Sun is celebrating the first year of an exciting ministry partnership that has led to the creation of the Presbyterian Mission Center..."
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Pakistan court overturns life sentence for Christian / Compass
After he had been incarcerated for more than five years

A Pakistani court last week acquitted a Christian “blasphemy” prisoner on grounds that the convict was mentally unstable, while another Christian facing the same accusation was released on bail.
     Justice Muhammad Ijaz Chaudhry overturned Shahbaz Masih’s life sentence at a Lahore High Court hearing on Friday (January 19), citing evidence that the Christian was mentally handicapped. He has been incarcerated for more than five years.
     The judge also noted that no one had seen Masih, 28, commit the alleged crime, defense lawyer Khalil Tahir Sindhu said.
     A Faisalabad court condemned the Christian to 25 years in prison in September 2004 for allegedly tearing up a Quran in a Muslim graveyard in Faisalabad.

University of Dallas backs off bid for Bush library / AP

The University of Dallas withdrew its bid for George W. Bush's presidential library Monday, citing the site selection committee's exclusive talks with nearby Southern Methodist University.
     "Our decision to withdraw from the selection process is not a loss for our university; this is not a failure. Instead, we think this is a tremendous success story for us," President Frank Lazarus said.
     Lazarus said university officials made their decision without considering recent friction at SMU, where some professors have said the project would hurt the school's reputation. A group of Methodist ministers also is circulating an online petition urging SMU to abandon plans for the library.
     SMU in Dallas, which is first lady Laura Bush's alma mater, will start discussing possible library sites in the next few weeks. SMU board of trustees members have said the petition will not stop the library project.
Related:
Methodist minister says Bush link would associate church with torture
A California-Nevada clergyman who is a key organizer behind the campaign to prevent President George W. Bush from getting a half billion dollar presidential library at Southern Methodist University (SMU) has explained the motivation behind his campaign – which includes a condemnation of Bush’s endorsement of torture.
     The Rev Dr Andrew Weaver and other United Methodist Church (UMC) members, including a dozen bishops so far, consider the recent proposal to place the library and think tank at the Texas university bearing the Methodist name “nothing short of a disgrace.”

IRD urges mainline churches to abandon abortion rights stance

(CNSNews.com) – Many of the pro-life activists who marched in Washington on Monday belong to mainline churches that support abortion rights, said a conservative alliance that advocates biblical and historic Christian teachings.
Those mainline churches belong to the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, which opposes restrictions on abortion, including partial-birth abortion, and even parental notification. "How appalling that mainline church officials have resultantly ended up sounding more like Planned Parenthood or the National Organization of Women than like the spiritual heirs of the apostles," the Institute on Religion and Democracy said.

Furor over 12-year-old actress’s rape scene
By David M. Halbfinger / The New York Times

Dakota Fanning will turn 13 next month, and she has a short answer for anyone who questions her decision to play a 1950s girl who gyrates in her underwear, wakes up as her naked father climbs into her bed, demands that a prepubescent boy expose himself to her in exchange for a kiss and, finally, is raped by a teenager who lures her with tickets to an Elvis concert:
She’s growing up. Get used to it.
Ms. Fanning, best known for leading roles in children’s movies like “Dreamer” and “Charlotte’s Web,” thrillers like “Man on Fire” and “War of the Worlds,” and the horror film “Hide and Seek,” now is starring in “Hounddog,” an independent film that is to have its premiere on Monday at the Sundance Film Festival.

Delegitimization of Israel rising among US elite
By Haviv Rettig / The Jerusalem Post

In the coming years American Jewry will face the most significant delegitimization of Israel it has ever encountered, Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice-chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, told The Jerusalem Post on Monday.

Pastor's message inspires 'audacity to hope'
By Manya A. Brachear / The Chicago Tribune

When he took over Trinity United Church of Christ in 1972, Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. was a maverick pastor with a wardrobe of dashikis and a militant message. Six years later, he planted a "Free South Africa" sign on the lawn of his church and asked other local religious leaders to follow his lead.
     "None took him up on the invitation.
     "The sign stayed until the end of apartheid, --long enough to catch the eye of a young Barack Obama, who visited the church in 1985 as a community activist. Obama, was not a churchgoer at the time, but he found himself returning to the sanctuary of Trinity United. In Wright he had found both a spiritual mentor and a role model.
     Wright, 65, is a straight-talking pragmatist who arrived in Chicago as an outsider and became an institution. He has built a congregation of 8,500, including the likes of Oprah Winfrey and hip-hop artist Common, by offering an alternative to socially conservative black churches that are, Wright believes, too closely tied to Chicago's political dynasties.

New Congress changes tone of anti-abortion rally
By Katherin Boyle / RNS

Washington – The thousands of anti-abortion advocates who gathered here on Monday (Jan. 22) for the 34th annual March for Life came with a message for the new Democratic Congress: No matter what happened last November, America, they say, still opposes abortion.
"I'm always concerned when the Democrats are in control," said Mary Dixon, 66, who traveled to Washington with 53 other members of the Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church in Burlington, N.C., for the annual rally that marks the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion.

Church marketing run amok?
FoxFaith, DirecTV offer churches free satellite TV and exclusive screenings of upcoming films – by Josh Hurst and Mark Moring / CT

Ever since Twentieth Century Fox announced the formation of its FoxFaith division – catering primarily to evangelical moviegoers – and the subsequent failure of The Nativity Story on the big screen, some have wondered how to best go about marketing Christian-friendly movies, especially to churches.
FoxFaith thinks it has found at least part of the answer.
The FoxFaith website says: "We understand that as a pastor, there are movies out there that are in parallel with your value system that you may want to support, if you could only see the film before it came out in theaters. Together, Fox Faith and DirecTV have come up with a solution. We want to give you a chance to see the movie via satellite. If you are a church and want this, they will install a satellite system in your church for free and give you basic service for free as well. There are no strings attached..."

Generation Next (18-25) makes Generation X looks good
What's your generation's most important goal in life?

See how the values of these two generations compare, according to the Pew Research Center's "2006 Gen Next Survey".
The winner is: To be rich (80%) and famous (50%).
The loser: To be more spiritual (10%)

Golly, what did Jon do?
It has become routine to abort babies like Jon because they are like Jon
B by George F. Will / Newsweek

"What did Jon Will and the more than 350,000 American citizens like him do to tick off the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists? It seems to want to help eliminate from America almost all of a category of citizens, a category that includes Jon.
"Born in 1972, Jon has Down syndrome...
"Without this combination of diagnostic advances and moral regression, there would be more people like Jon, and the world would be a sweeter place..."


Letters from readers – email us
•	Richard J. Mouw "My evangelical friends who are protesting the Winter essay are right... I personally find it "breathtaking" that our denominational leadership seems to be doing everything within its power to harass and taunt the evangelicals within it ranks. Shame!"
•	M. Douglas Harper, Jr ."...as a conservative evangelical, I did not recognize myself or my fellow-evangelicals in Dr .Winter's description of us... "...I am distinctly not a separatist, nor are the evangelicals with whom I have worked most closely..."
•	Gerrit Dawson "I am immensely grateful for Viola Larson's review of Milton Winter's "Presbyterian and Separatist Evangelicals."... Larson's analysis is cogent and extremely helpful. I wish she would add more! I hope that Winter's essay will not be touted around the country as "scholarly" when there is such selective use of quotations and such selective referencing..."