you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood. 1 Peter 2:5For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. 1 Tim. 2:5
Christianity in the News

Disciple Newsletter's Christianity in the News will feature articles and other news items impacting the Christianity and the Christian Church.
We neither supports nor reject any of the views and issues presented on this page.  It is simply meant to be a  "clearing house" of  articles and news conveniently collected in one spot.

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Jan. 12, 1012

WILMINGTON, Del. – A hearing Wednesday in a lawsuit aimed at stopping the Sussex County Council from reciting the Lord's Prayer before each meeting delved into the theological meaning and history of the prayer's title and whether it is explicitly a Christian prayer. 
Four county residents want U.S. District Court Judge Leonard P. Stark to rule that council's recitation of the Lord's Prayer violates the establishment cause of the First Amendment, which prohibits government from favoring one religion over others. They have asked the judge to rule the practice unconstitutional and order the council to cease reciting any sectarian prayers.

"It affiliates the county government with one single faith — Christianity — and sends a message to the county residents that their county government favors one religion," said Alex Luchenitser, an attorney for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a Washington, D.C., watchdog group that has taken on the case for the plaintiffs.

The county has asked the judge to dismiss the lawsuit.  The five-member Sussex County Council has been reciting the Lord's Prayer at the start of public meetings for 41 years, under Democratic and Republican majorities, county attorney J. Scott Shannon said.  At the start of each Tuesday morning meeting, Council President Mike Vincent stands up and nods to his four colleagues, signaling them to bow their heads and begin to recite the Lord's Prayer.

The county's attorney contends the council's recital of the Lord's Prayer is permissible under the U.S. Supreme Court's 1983 ruling in Marsh v. Chambers, which found in a Nebraska case that having a government-funded chaplain say a prayer before a legislative session was constitutional.
"Legislation invocations are not religious practice," Shannon said. Shannon argued the prayer is generic and that Vincent, who is named as a defendant in the lawsuit, is not proselytizing or asking the audience to join in.

Citizens attending meetings who are non-Christians can easily recognize the prayer commonly associated with Christianity and found in the Bible's New Testament, Luchenitser said.  If a citizen does not join everyone else in attendance by standing to recite the prayer or leaves the chambers, they may be "outed as nonbelievers" and treated differently by their neighbors or the council, Luchenitser said.  "The way this prayer is recited has many hallmarks of a religious exercise," Luchenitser said.

Shannon said the language of the Lord's Prayer is tolerable and contains language that fits with widely held beliefs of people of other faiths.  "It is not required that a prayer be inoffensive to all or that it be all-inclusive," Shannon argued.  In trying to determine whether the practice is constitutional, Stark asked several questions of both attorneys about the content of the Lord's Prayer, which begins with the words "Our Father" but does not make specific reference to Jesus Christ or the Lord.

"Is there any dispute that today, only Christians say the Lord's Prayer?" Stark asked Shannon.  Shannon acknowledged the prayer is commonly associated with Christianity, but argued the prayer derived from a Jew — Jesus Christ — as detailed in the Gospel of Matthew.  "(Jesus) was not offering a Christian prayer in the Christian tradition because no Christian tradition existed," Shannon said.

The words "Our Father" are an implicit reference to Jesus, Luchenitser said, meaning the prayer is Christian.  "That's a Christian way of referring to Jesus," Luchenitser said. "This is not something reasonable people disagree over."

Stark acknowledged the lawsuit brings "weighty issues" before his court. He set no timetable for ruling on the case. "I'm afraid you all might have brought me a difficult case because there is no reference to Jesus or Allah" in the prayer, Stark said.
 

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November 30, 2011 8:19 PM

Small Ky. church bans interracial couples
AP) LOUISVILLE, Kentucky - A tiny all-white church in the rural South has voted to ban interracial couples from joining its flock, pitting members against each other in an argument over race.  Members at the Gulnare Free Will Baptist Church in Kentucky voted Sunday on the resolution, which says the church "does not condone interracial marriage."

The church member who crafted the resolution, Melvin Thompson, said he is not racist and called the matter an "internal affair."  "I am not racist. I will tell you that. I am not prejudiced against any race of people, have never in my lifetime spoke evil" about a race, said Thompson, the church's former pastor who stepped down earlier this year. "That's what this is being portrayed as, but it is not."

Church secretary Dean Harville disagrees: He says the resolution came after his daughter visited the church this summer with her boyfriend from Africa.  Stella Harville and Ticha Chikuni — now her fiance — visited the church in June and Chikuni sang a song for the congregation. The two had visited the church before.

Dean Harville, the church's secretary, said he was counting the church offering after a service in early August when he was approached by Thompson, who told him Harville's daughter and her boyfriend were no longer allowed to sing at the church.  "If he's not racist, what is this?" Harville said of Thompson.

The vote by members last Sunday was 9-6, Harville said. It was taken after the service, which about 35 to 40 people attended. Harville said many people left or declined to vote.  The resolution says anyone is welcome to attend services, but interracial couples could not become members or be "used in worship services or other church functions."

Stella Harville, a 24-year-old graduate student at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in Indiana, called the vote "hurtful."  "I think part of me is still in shock and trying to process what's been going on the past few days," she said. "I really hope they overturn this."

The church's pastor, Stacy Stepp, said Wednesday that he was against the resolution. Stepp said the denomination's regional conference will begin working on resolving the issue this weekend.

The National Association of Free Will Baptists in Tennessee has no official position on interracial marriage for its 2,400 churches worldwide, executive secretary Keith Burden said. The denomination believes the Bible is inerrant and local churches have autonomy over decision-making.
"It's been a non-issue with us," Burden said, adding that many interracial couples attend Free Will Baptist churches. He said the Pike County church acted on its own. Burden said the association can move to strip the local church of its affiliation with the national denomination if it's not resolved.
"Hopefully it is corrected quickly," Burden said.

The church's vote on interracial marriage was first reported this week by East Kentucky Broadcasting, a network of local radio stations in the region.
 

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Survey: Religious identity slips among U.S. Catholics

Forty percent of Catholics surveyed say you can be a good Catholic without believing that in Mass, the bread and wine really become the body and blood of Christ — a core doctrine of Catholicism.
One in four Americans call themselves Catholic, but a survey released Monday finds this is more a cultural brand label for many than a religious identity.

An overwhelming majority, 88%, say "how a person lives is more important than whether he or she is Catholic," according to Catholics in America: Persistence and change in the Catholic landscape.

The survey, a comprehensive look at the beliefs and practices of 1,442 U.S. adults identifying themselves as Catholics, also finds that 86% say "you can disagree with aspects of church teachings and still remain loyal to the church."  And 40% say you can be a good Catholic without believing that in Mass, the bread and wine really become the body and blood of Christ — a core doctrine of Catholicism.  That could reflect the decline in Mass attendance. The survey finds it has declined from 44% attending at least once a week in 1987 to 31% in 2011, while those who attend less than monthly rose from 26% to 47%.

When asked why they don't go to Mass more often, 40% say they are simply not very religious, says sociologist William D'Antonio of Catholic University.  This is the fifth such national survey since 1987, conducted by a team led by D'Antonio and published in The National Catholic Reporter.

Catholic support for "teaching authority claimed by the Vatican" is down to 30% for Catholics of all ages, the survey found.  The church's opposition to the death penalty, same-sex marriage and permitting priests to marry "has not persuaded a majority of Catholics," says Tom Roberts, editor of the National Catholic Reporter and author of a new book on Catholic community life, The Emerging Church.  "When it comes to questions of abortion, non-marital sex, and homosexuality," more than half of Catholics, including those most highly committed to the church in their personal practices, say it's their own moral views, not those of church leaders, that matter, says survey co-author Michele Dillon, chair of the sociology department at the University of New Hampshire.  "They see this as their church and they won't be exiled because there is a doctrine they disagree with," Dillon says. "To be Catholic, even for the highly committed, is to keep the bishops at arm's length. The bishops have lost their credibility to be pastoral and spiritual leaders."  This shows up in Catholics' responses on questions related to the sexual abuse scandal, which exploded in the USA in 2002:

•7% of Catholics say they personally know someone who was a victim of abuse.
•12% say they know a priest accused of abuse.
•83% say the issue has hurt church leaders' political credibility at least somewhat.
•77% say it has hurt priests' ability to meet parishioners' spiritual or pastoral needs.
•Only 29% say the bishops have done a good or excellent job in handling the issue.

The survey also finds the face of the church is changing. Hispanics, who were 10% of U.S. Catholics in 1987, are now 30% overall and 45% of all Catholics ages 18 to 31.  The survey was conducted in English and Spanish between April 25 and May 2. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

Other authors include Mary Gautier, senior research associate at the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., the research arm of U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and Greg Smith, senior researcher at the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life.
 
 

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         Justices hear religious workplace dispute
10/ 5/11

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court struggled Wednesday with a case fundamental to the separation of church and state, testing when people who work for religious organizations can sue for job discrimination.

A Michigan teacher diagnosed with narcolepsy but eventually cleared to work sued under the Americans with Disabilities Act when a Lutheran school fired her.

The Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church said Cheryl Perich violated a core church principle by bringing her grievance to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) rather than using church processes to try to win her job back. Hosanna-Tabor is asking the justices to throw out the case, based on a so-called "ministerial exception," which bars some job-related lawsuits against religious organizations and is intended to protect churches from government interference. A lower U.S. appeals court had ruled for Perich.

The appeals court rejected Hosanna-Tabor's "ministerial exception" defense, noting that Perich's job as a fourth-grade teacher was mostly secular. She taught math, social studies, music and other subjects, along with religion.

In his appeal on behalf of Hosanna-Tabor, University of Virginia law professor Douglas Laycock told the justices, "Churches do not set the criteria for selecting or removing the officers of government, and government does not set the criteria for selecting and removing officers of the church."

He urged the justices to rule that any employee who is a commissioned minister or who teaches religion, irrespective of other duties, is a "minister" and barred from suing. In his written filing, Laycock asserted that while judges have long recognized a "ministerial exception" in employment litigation, determining who is covered has been difficult.

"They agree that it extends beyond pastors, priests, and rabbis, but not as far as janitors or secretaries," he said. "The question is where to draw the line."

Of Perich, Laycock said that not only did she offer religion classes, she also had been a "called" teacher with ministerial responsibility. "The fact that she's a commissioned minister is the clincher in this case," he said.

Assistant U.S. Solicitor General Leondra Kruger, representing the EEOC, urged the justices to consider the case more strictly as an employee-employer dispute, without special consideration because a church is involved.

Arguing separately on behalf of Perich, Walter Dellinger said any ministerial exception should be read narrowly. He told the justices that in most lower courts it has not applied to teachers.

The justices appeared to be frustrated with the arguments of all three lawyers and searching for some ground between extremes. There was no shortage of examples of the potential scope of the case, however.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, for example, wondered about a teacher who reported child sexual abuse to the government and was fired because of the report.

Laycock said that was "a difficult case" and that an exception to his rule might arise when the safety of children was at issue.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, often a crucial vote on the most contentious cases, homed in the fact that Perich was claiming retaliation under disabilities law and "can't even get a hearing."

"You're asking for an exemption so these cases can't even be tried," Kennedy told Laycock.

Several justices, including Justice Samuel Alito, suggested they wanted to make sure lower court judges did not end up having to examine the validity of various religious tenets.

Many of the justices expressed surprise at the EEOC position that the case should be viewed as a general bias lawsuit. "We think the basic contours of the inquiry are not different," Kruger said, from other lawsuits that may involve an employer's message or mission.

"That's extraordinary. That's extraordinary," Scalia said, rejecting the stance that the First Amendment protection for religious freedom would not shape the case.

Chief Justice John Roberts observed to Laycock that "different churches have different ideas about who's a minister. There are some churches who think all of our adherents are ministers of our faith."

Roberts also immediately jumped at an argument from Dellinger that it matters if an employee has "important secular functions."

"That can't be the test," Roberts said. "The pope is a head of state carrying out secular functions. Those are important. So he is not a minister?"

Dozens of religious organizations and civil rights have filed competing "friend of the court" briefs in the case that pits the interest in keeping government from interfering with religion with the interest in ensuring that workers' claiming race, sex, or — as here, disability — bias, can get into court.

A ruling in the case of Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is likely by next summer.

 

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September 28, 2011
Pastor about to be executed by Iranian government

Iranian Pastor Yousef Nadarkhani faces execution anytime from Thursday onwards after refusing to renounce his faith.

Iranian Pastor Yousef Nadarkhani is currently on trial in Rasht, Iran. He has appeared in court three times this week and each time has refused to renounce his faith when asked to do so by the court. If he does not recant his Christian faith, he could be executed at any time (on or after Thursday, September 29).

The 11th branch of Iran's Gilan Provincial Court has determined that Nadarkhani has Islamic ancestry and therefore must recant his faith in Jesus Christ.

When asked to "repent" by the judges, Yousef stated, "Repent means to return. What should I return to? To the blasphemy that I had before my faith in Christ?" The judges replied, "To the religion of your ancestors, Islam." To which he replied, "I cannot."
 

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Vanderbilt threatens to shut down Christian student groups
September 27, 2011


Vanderbilt University has placed four Christian student groups on "provisional status" after a university review found them to be in non-compliance with the school's nondiscrimination policy. If they remain in non-compliance, the student Christian groups risk being shut down.

Vanderbilt says the student organizations cannot require that leaders share the Christian groups' beliefs, goals and values. Carried to its full extent, it means an atheist could lead a Christian group, a man a woman's group, a Jew a Muslim group or vice versa.

Last year, an openly gay undergrad at Vanderbilt complained he was kicked out of a Christian fraternity. As a result, the school took action against five religious groups and said they violated Vanderbilt's nondiscrimination policy. All were placed on provisional status.

Among the groups threatened with shut down is the Christian Legal Society because "Each officer is expected to lead Bible studies, prayer and worship at chapter meetings." CLS President Justin Gunter said, "We come together to do things that Christians do together. Pray, and have Bible studies."

The school says, however, that if the Christian club requires leaders to be a Christian and espouse Christianity, it can be shut down.
 

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The Christian Post  U.S.|
Tue, Sep. 20 2011 12:20 PM EDT
Freedom of Religion? Calif.
Couple Fined for Hosting Bible Study in Home

A California couple has been fined by the city of San Juan Capistrano for holding Bible studies and religious gatherings in their home, which has some wondering about the future of religious freedom in America.
Chuck and Stephanie Fromm, residents of San Juan Capistrano, home to the oldest church in California, were fined $300 for the religious activities, which the city said violated a municipal code that prohibits "religious, fraternal or non-profit" organizations in residential neighborhoods without a conditional-use permit," the Capistrano Dispatch reported.

Chuck Fromm is publisher of Worship Leader Magazine, a Christian music resource that combines biblical wisdom and best practices for worship, and provides added educational and congregational resources through its associated educational services, according to its website. However, the Fromms insist that their weekly meetings are not affiliated with a church, nor are they seeking to establish a church.

"How dare they tell us we can't have whatever we want in our home," Stephanie Fromm said. "We want to be able to use our home. We’ve paid a lot and invested a lot in our home and backyard … I should be able to be hospitable in my home."

The municipal code is "reactive," which means it is only enforced if someone complains.

Fromm admitted that at least one person had voiced concern about the activities.

 

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Theology a hot issue in 2012 GOP campaign


Sept. 3, 2011, 3:27 p.m. PDT
Associated Press


Rick Perry dived right in.
The Texas governor, now a Republican presidential candidate, held a prayer rally for tens of thousands, read from the Bible, invoked Christ and broadcast the whole event on the Web.
There was no symbolic nod to other American faiths. No rabbi or Roman Catholic priest was among the evangelical speakers. It was a rare, full-on embrace of one religious tradition in the glare of a presidential contest.
Looks like another raucous season for religion and politics.
It used to be simpler. Protestants were the majority, and candidates could show their piety just by attending church.
Now, politicians are navigating a landscape in which rifts over faith and policy have become chasms. An outlook that appeals to one group enrages another. Campaigns are desperate to find language generic enough for a broad constituency that also conveys an unshakable faith.
There is no avoiding the minefield, especially with early primaries in Iowa and South Carolina, where evangelical voters are so influential.
Nationally, more than 70 percent of Republicans and more than half of Democrats say it's somewhat or very important that a presidential candidate have very strong religious beliefs, according to the Public Religion Research Institute.
In 1960, John F. Kennedy could blunt Protestant fears about his Catholicism by calling his religion private. After four decades of culture wars and Christian right activism, the Kennedy strategy no longer works.
Politicians are evaluated not only by what church they attend, but also by what their congregation teaches and what their pastor says on Sundays.
"Candidates often have to make tough choices about their religion — whether to talk about it, what to say about it and even what to do about it — such as leaving a church," said John Green, director of the Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron, Ohio. "These tensions are quite strong among Republicans as the presidential nomination contest heats up, partly because of religious disagreements among key constituencies, but partly because of differences in issue priorities — economic versus social issues."
The current campaign began with two cautionary tales fresh in the minds of political strategists:
In 2008, candidate Barack Obama broke ties with his Chicago pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, after videos surfaced of Wright sermonizing that U.S. foreign policy played a role in the Sept. 11 attacks. "America's chickens are coming home to roost," Wright said. Obama was so close with Wright that the Democrat took the title of his 2006 book, "The Audacity of Hope," from one of the pastor's sermons.
Republican Mitt Romney was the other example. The former Massachusetts governor had struggled to address concerns about being Mormon despite a major faith-and-values speech in 2007 in Texas.
He quoted the New Testament and declared his belief in Jesus; many Christian denominations don't consider Mormons to be Christian.
He commended the deep faith of the Founding Fathers and decried secularism. Like Kennedy, he promised that "no authorities of my church, or of any other church for that matter, will ever exert influence on presidential decisions." Yet, polls continued to show an unwillingness to vote for a Mormon, especially among white evangelicals.
"That speech probably drew more attention to his Mormonism than it was worth," said Ed Kilgore, a former policy director at the centrist Democratic Leadership Council who oversaw programs that urged Democrats to talk about the values behind their policies. "It raised a lot of questions and didn't really resolve them."
Romney is once again running for president. He has barely discussed his religion so far.
Politicians are facing complex questions on religious doctrine, prompted in many cases by their own attempts at highlighting their faith.
Republican Michele Bachmann of Minnesota has been asked to explain a statement she made in the context of her 2006 congressional campaign, that she submits to the authority of her husband.
The teaching is based on Ephesians 5:21-23 and other Bible verses. Evangelicals say the doctrine is about sacrificial love, the way Christ sacrificed himself for the church. A wife should put her husband's needs first and the husband should serve his wife, although some Christian conservatives view the teaching as a license to control their wives.
In a recent GOP debate, Bachmann was asked to explain whether, as president, she would submit to her husband's authority. The audience booed the question. Bachmann was tight-lipped as she listened, then thanked the questioner and said that to her, submission means that she and her husband respect each other.
Bachmann also found herself in the midst of a row about the Reformation.
News outlets reported that the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, the tiny denomination she formally left around the time she launched her presidential campaign, said on its website that the papacy is the anti-Christ.
The Lutheran World Federation agreed in a 1999 joint statement with the Vatican to drop the doctrinal condemnation. The Wisconsin Synod is not a member of the federation.
Bachmann insisted she was not anti-Catholic.
Perry largely dismissed the outcry over his July prayer rally, held the week before he announced he was running for president.
The event was his idea and was financed by the American Family Association, a Tupelo, Miss.-based group whose policy director believes that freedom of religion applies only to Christians.
Among the supporters were well-known Christian conservative leaders such as the Rev. Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention and Focus on the Family founder James Dobson.
Other endorsers were Pastor John Hagee, a Christian Zionist who had called the Catholic Church "the great whore," though he later apologized for the statement. Activist and historian David Barton, who argues that the United States was founded to be a Christian nation, was another backer.
Religion was so in the foreground in the 2008 presidential race that for their first appearance on the same stage after their party conventions, Obama and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., agreed to an event at a church where they would be interviewed by a minister.
The Rev. Rick Warren, founder of Saddleback Church in California, asked the candidates what faith in Jesus meant to them and at what point a baby gains human rights.
For the latter question, McCain answered, "At the moment of conception." Obama joked that the question was "above my pay grade," then went on to explain the moral thinking behind his support for abortion rights. Obama soon after apologized for the way he started his answer, saying he was too flip.
"These folks are not professional theologians and, except in a few cases like Huckabee, they haven't been to seminary," said Gary Smith, author of "Faith & the Presidency" and a historian at Grove City College, a Christian school in Pennsylvania. Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor and 2008 GOP presidential hopeful, is a Southern Baptist minister.
"Most of them haven't had more education about the relationship between Christianity and politics than the average person on the street," Smith said. "While they have their own personal faith, it isn't usually well informed by history and theology."
Voters have started pushing for specifics because they no longer consider belief separate from action and faith unrelated to policymaking, said Kathleen Flake, who specializes in American religious history at Vanderbilt University. The nation's Catholic bishops, more vocal than ever on the duty of Catholic lawmakers to follow church teaching, underscored that way of thinking. Bishops have said repeatedly that a true Catholic cannot support any policy that allows abortion.
"The voting public no longer believes, as they did as late as the 1950s, that religion was about what you thought and not what you did," Flake said.
The trend started with Democrat Jimmy Carter, who in 1976 said at a campaign event that he was a born-again Christian.
Although Carter's liberal-leaning policies would ultimately alienate many evangelicals, his declaration sparked Christian conservative involvement in politics and set the stage for deeper scrutiny of candidates' faith. Politicians and their strategists began preparing a standard response to what became known as the "born-again question," which was asked not only in private meetings with Christian conservatives, but also in presidential debates.
Doug Wead, an adviser on evangelicals to the presidential campaign of Republican George H.W. Bush, recalled a meeting between the then-vice president and a group of televangelists, who asked what Bush would say if he "were to appear suddenly at the Pearly Gates," and St. Peter asked why the politician should be allowed into heaven.
Bush, a mainline Protestant, answered, "I would tell him I'm a good person. I tried my best to do the right things," Wead said.

"I thought, 'Oh, no,'" said Wead. Evangelicals don't believe salvation can be earned. They would expect true Christians to say they would enter heaven because Jesus died for their sins and they accept Christ as savior.
Today, Wead advises Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul, a libertarian and Texas congressman. Paul has issued a statement of faith saying that he was raised as a Christian and accepts Christ as his personal savior.
For the 2012 race, analysts predict that Romney will eventually have to talk about how his faith would influence the way he governs.
Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, a 2012 contender, is perhaps the first presidential candidate claiming the "spiritual, not religious" mantle.
He was raised Mormon but said he is not very active in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Huntsman's wife, Mary Kaye, who was raised Episcopalian, told Vogue magazine, "We are a family that combines two, and it works for us."
Religion scholars have noted the growing popularity of the "spiritual, not religious" approach to faith, so Huntsman's outlook would resonate with many Americans, although people who hold this view are hardly an organized political group.
Some Democrats are trying to persuade Obama to return to the religious language he used in the 2008 race as one way to clarify his values and inspire voters, even though the strategy will raise questions about Wright and about the misperception among some voters that the president is Muslim.
Surveys have found that around 40 percent of voters say they don't know his religion.
"For the first time, we're not only interested in whether someone is religious, which is essentially a question of, 'Do you have a morality that the voter can identify with?'" Flake said. "It appears that there's a significant portion of the electorate that's interested in what the particular theology of the candidate is. Do they believe in Jesus? If so, what kind of Jesus do you believe in?"
 

 

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The Christian Post > U.S. |Fri, Sep. 02 2011 03:28 PM EDT

Kansas Pastor Banned From Islamic Center After Handing Out Bibles

A Kansas pastor has been banned from an Islamic center after he was arrested while handing out Bibles in front of the house of worship.

On Thursday, Sedgwick County District Judge Phil Journey sentenced Mark Holick to 12 months of unsupervised probation.
Holick, who was found guilty of loitering and disrupting a local business, was ordered to pay a $300 fine and to stay at least 1,000 feet away from the Islamic Society of Wichita.
Holick, pastor of Spirit One Christian Ministry, was arrested in August 2010 after he and more than a dozen members of his congregation went to the Islamic center to demonstrate while the center's members were observing the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Holick argued that his group was there just to hand out Bibles. However, police said he was making a scene and blocking the center's entrance. Officers ordered Holick to move to a public sidewalk and he refused, resulting in his arrest.
"The only reason you were the one arrested is because you were the only one who disobeyed the police orders," Journey told Holick, according to The Associated Press.

An appeal from a conviction in a Wichita Municipal Court took Holick's case to the district court. During his trial, Holick requested a jury, who deemed him guilty of two counts of loitering and disrupting a local business, last month.
Holick had appealed the original conviction handed down in municipal court last month, which is how the Kansas preacher ended up before Journey.
In a 15-minute speech during his July trial, Holick argued that his First Amendment right to express his religion was violated in his arrest and charge.
In addition, he quoted Bible verses in order to convey his conviction and reasoning for protesting in front of the Islamic Center.
"Wichita is confused," Holick said, according to AP. "I am not your enemy. Islam is. The Lord said there will be no other gods before me."
Journey countered, asking, "What if the shoe had been on the other foot and someone from the Islamic center had come to your place and tried to convert your members and had blocked your driveway?"
If Holick does not uphold the conditions of his probation, he could face up to six months in prison.

 

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Southern Baptists consider new name to broaden appeal
By Bob Smietana, The Tennessean

The Southern Baptist Convention isn't just for the South anymore, its president contends, and rebranding could open up other parts of the country to new churches. It's a strategy other denominations are trying, and at least one is claiming success.

SBC President Bryant Wright announced Monday at an executive committee meeting in Nashville that he's set up a study group to research changing the 166-year-old denomination's name.

"There are not a lot of folks in New York City interested in going to a Southern Baptist church," he said. "Or in Cheyenne, Wyoming, or Boise, Idaho."  Wright, an Atlanta-area megachurch pastor who was re-elected in June to a second year in office, didn't ask executive committee board members for permission to start the study group.  Instead, he asked 19 pastors and other denominational leaders to serve. They include the Rev. Jimmy Draper, who was head of LifeWay Christian Resources in the 1990s when it changed its name from the Southern Baptist Sunday School Board.

The denomination isn't paying for the group's expenses.    The Rev. Frank Page, president of the Nashville-based SBC Executive Committee, said Wright is free to appoint any advisers he wants, but there's opposition to his plan. Committee members made two motions to table it. Both failed.

The Rev. Darrell P. Orman, pastor of First Baptist Church in Stuart, Fla., was one of the opponents.

"A name change could be a future necessity for our convention, but it should start from the bottom up, not the top down," Orman said during the meeting, according to Baptist Press, the convention's news service.  A proposed name change is part of an effort to reverse decline in membership and baptisms in the 16.16 million member convention. Southern Baptists baptized 332,321 people last year, the lowest number since the 1950s. Membership dropped for the fourth year in a row, and the convention has cut the number of overseas missionaries it sends out.

Since 1965, there have been eight attempts to change the convention's name.  In 2004, Southern Baptists meeting in Indianapolis were asked to appoint a similar study group to Wright's. That motion failed by a vote of 55.4 percent to 44.6 percent.

The Rev. Jack Graham of Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas, was president of the convention in 2004. He tweeted his support on Tuesday.  "Every argument I hear or read opposing a SBC name change references the past not the future," he posted on Twitter. "Tradition and emotion not MISSION."

Time is right

The Rev. Michael Allen of Uptown Baptist Church in Chicago, a member of the name change study group, thinks the time is right for rebranding. He said the Southern Baptist Convention traces its roots to the Civil War --(AT) Baptists in the South wanted to appoint slaveholders as missionaries, and Baptists in the North disagreed.  For most of its history, Southerners have dominated the convention. Now, more are in places like Chicago or overseas, where the convention has thousands of missionaries.  "A name really does matter," Allen said. "We've outlived and moved beyond that brand."  A name change for a major institution can be tricky, said David Bohan, CEO of Nashville-based Bohan Advertising, especially if it has a long history.  "There are perils and opportunities in a name change," he said. "Especially when you have a strong group of supporters."

Success story

The Baptist General Conference, a denomination whose main office is in Arlington Heights, Ill., began using the name Converge Worldwide in 2008.  The denomination didn't change its official corporate name but does business under the name Converge. That made the change relatively simple, said Doug Fagerstrom, senior vice president of Converge Worldwide. They could use the new name without the legal costs of an official name change.  Fagerstrom said the name change has been a success. The word "Baptist" isn't seen as a friendly one in many places, he said, and the new name makes it easier for the denomination to work overseas and in more secular parts of the United States.  He said the mission matters more than what a denomination is called.  "A name is just that," he said. "It's a name."

Campus Crusade for Christ International got push-back from supporters when it announced a name change earlier this year. In 2012, the organization will be known in the U.S. as Cru.

 

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Christians in China Suffer for Supporting Shouwang Church


Members of other house churches detained, threatened, or condemned to labor camp.
DUBLIN, September 1 (CDN) — Last Sunday (Aug. 28) five members of a house church in Fangshan, Hebei township woke at 4 a.m. and traveled for two hours to a public square in Beijing in order to worship with members of the embattled Beijing Shouwang house church.
On their arrival at 7 a.m., waiting police sent the five back to their local police station, according to a report posted Tuesday (Aug. 30) on Shouwang’s Facebook page. Officials then urged them to sign documents repenting of their decision to support the Shouwang church. All five refused but were eventually released.
The Fangshan five are part of a growing wave of house church Christians determined – despite the consequences – to support Shouwang church in its stand for greater religious freedom.
Shouwang members have attempted to meet in the outdoor venue every Sunday since April 11, after government officials repeatedly denied them access to a permanent worship place. Church leaders prayerfully decided on this course of action as a means of forcing the government to resolve their dilemma. (See “China Keeps Church Leaders from Public Worship Attempt,” April 11.)
Besides the Fangshan church members, police detained at least 15 Shouwang members who turned up for worship last Sunday (Aug. 28), holding them for up to 48 hours in interrogation rooms. The Domestic Security Protection Squad maintained constant surveillance outside the homes of senior church leaders, while less senior police camped outside the doors of other church members from Saturday night until noon Sunday, when service times were technically over, according to the China Aid Association (CAA).
“If we count the time from April until Christmas as the longest journey, we have gone through half of it,” Shouwang’s leaders said in a message of encouragement to church members last week. “If it is God’s will, he is [then] able to end this journey and make us shout in his victory. But if it is his will for us to continue this journey … let us pray that he will grant us perseverance and hope.”
Finding Courage
Two weeks earlier, on Aug. 14, police detained some 16 worshippers at the square. Among them was pastor Wang Shuanyan of Beijing’s Xinshu house church.
In a letter written after her release on Aug. 16 and smuggled out of China, Wang described how police detained her at 7 a.m. and took her to the Zhongguancun Boulevard police station. The previous Sunday, a police officer had threatened to lock her up for 48 hours if she persisted in coming to the worship site; this time Wang came prepared with a sleeping bag.
Throughout her detention, Shouwang church members, including the wife of senior pastor Jin Tianming, took turns waiting outside the police station for her release.
Wang described how she wrestled with her natural inclination to obey orders and her conviction that “the things [the officers] have done are violations of the law.”
“I believe deeply that all things considered … Shouwang’s outdoor worship, done [at] this time and this way, is right,” she wrote.
By the time fellow Xinshu church members convinced officers to allow Wang snacks and bottled water, Wang had decided to go on a hunger strike.
“Was I fasting or on a hunger strike?” she wrote. “To me it was both. To God I prayed earnestly. To the relevant authorities I was protesting against the repeatedly occurring violence.”
She had seen police forcefully leading away a female Shouwang member who was physically abused on a previous Sunday – with one officer grinning sadistically at the woman’s fear.
“Formerly I went onto the platform, talked with government authorities and petitioned the People’s Congress,” she wrote. “Now with conflicts lasting and violence rising, to a weak, insignificant and detained person like me, a hunger strike became the only means by which I could express my protest.”
Some China watchers believe the government has shown relative toleration and restraint towards Shouwang’s outdoor worship. But “this can only be true in comparison to extreme violence,” Wang countered in her letter. “We are now used to unrighteous and illegal behavior.”
Petition Ignored
Wang was one of 17 house church pastors who signed and submitted a groundbreaking petition to the National People’s Congress (NPC) on May 10, calling for a complete overhaul of China’s religious policy.
To date the NPC has failed to respond, although CAA claims the backlash against Shouwang and associated churches has since increased.
Since Wang signed the petition, police have stationed themselves outside Xinshu church every Sunday, sometimes entering the meeting room and checking identity cards. Xinshu church members have also received threats and pressure from their work units, according to CAA.
Police on May 31 detained another signatory, Shi Enhao, pastor of Suqian house church in Jiangsu Province and deputy chairman of the Chinese House Church Alliance (CHCA), in a church raid. In late July he was sentenced – without trial – to two years in a labor camp for “illegal meetings and illegal organizing of venues for religious meetings.” (See “House Church Alliance leader in China sentenced to Labor Camp,” July 29.)
Police have since ordered Shi’s church members to stop meeting and have confiscated musical instruments, choir robes and donations, according to CAA.
Responding to the Shouwang events and Shi’s sentencing, Zhang Mingxuan, president of the CHCA, wrote a letter addressed to Chinese President Hu Jintao; CAA translated and published it on Aug. 3. According to Zhang, when Shi’s family hired a lawyer on his behalf, officials refused to grant access to Shi on the grounds that state secrets were involved.
“Isn’t this a joke of the century that a peasant Christian knows classified state secrets?” Zhang wrote.
Shi’s lawyer appealed to higher authorities, including the NPC and the Department of Public Security, but received no response.
Zhang said he had taught church members to abide by the law and respect the government but in return had been deprived of many rights, including the right to a passport. Many others shared his fate, Zhang said, such as house church pastor Zhang Tieling of Fan County, Henan Province. Officials recently sealed Zhang Tieling’s house with bricks and knocked his wife to the floor, leaving her in the hospital with a brain injury.
“This is the so-called religious freedom and harmony of China,” Zhang Mingxuan declared.
In his letter to the president, he concluded, “In the past 26 years I have been arrested, beaten and placed under house arrest 42 times just because I speak the truth. Even if you misunderstand me or even kill me or imprison me, I still have to tell you the truth in this letter … As long as [it means] Christians can freely worship God, I don’t mind dying for this cause.”
It seems many other Chinese Christians are fast forming the same opinion.
While the Chinese government claims freedom of religion through approved bodies such as the Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM), many Protestant and Catholic churches prefer to worship independently, rejecting government censorship and theological interference – and paying the price. House church pastor Zhang Rongliang – who has been detained five times and served a total of 12 years in prison – was released last night (Aug. 31) from a Kaifeng prison after being detained since 2004. He was convicted on ambiguous charges in 2007 and has languished in prison while suffering chronic diseases and a stroke in 2007.
Experts estimate there are anywhere between 60 and 130 million people attending unregistered Protestant churches in China, compared with just 23 million attending TSPM churches. During the past decade of relative openness, many of these unregistered churches have come “above ground” to meet in large numbers in public spaces – highlighting the inadequacy of current religious policies and creating a government backlash often targeting church leaders.
“Now the shepherds are separated from the flocks of sheep,” wrote Yuan Xin, a Christian who recently visited Shouwang senior pastor Jin Tianming – currently under house arrest – and described his visit on CAA’s Shouwang petition website. “The sheep are being beaten, but the shepherds cannot stand out to fend off the blows.”
 

 

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