The Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles elected a lesbian as assistant bishop Saturday, the second openly gay bishop in the global Anglican fellowship, which is already deeply fractured over the first.

The Rev. Mary Glasspool of Baltimore needs approval from a majority of national church leaders before she can be consecrated as assistant bishop in the Los Angeles diocese.

Source/Full Story: FOXNews.com

We can safely remove the “of the people, by the people, for the people” part I think since it’s an entirely notional sentiment.

“…that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”  Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania  November 19, 1863

A Michigan man has filed a federal lawsuit claiming his constitutional rights were violated when he was ordered to remove a Nativity scene from the median of a public road — a creche that his family has displayed at the location for 63 years.

John Satawa, of Warren, Mich., filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court on Friday in an attempt to be allowed to put back the 8- by 8-foot Nativity scene his late father built in 1945.

After receiving a complaint by the Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation last December, the Road Commission of Macomb County told Satawa to remove the holiday display, citing incomplete permits. Satawa’s permit application was later denied because it “clearly displays a religious message” and violated “separation of church and state,” Macomb County Highway Engineer Robert Hoepfner wrote.

Satawa says he simply wants to restore the “tradition” on the median between Mound and Chicago Roads outside of St. Anne’s Parish Church.

“The Nativity display has been a tradition not just for my family, but for the whole community for 63 years,” Satawa told Foxnews.com in a statement. “I am disappointed the Road Commission would not stand up for our community and our Constitution and that is why I was compelled to file this lawsuit.”

According to Satawa’s lawsuit, St. Anne’s Parish received a donation of Christmas statues in March 1945 that were too large to house inside the church — so they were moved to the public median outside. Jack Eckstein, president of the village of Warren at the time, granted permission for the move.

“As a result, a Christmas tradition was born,” the lawsuit reads.

The Nativity display has been there every Christmas season since, except for one — 1996 — when there was road construction. The creche returned the following year, according to the lawsuit.

But last year, just 14 days before Christmas, Satawa received a letter from the Macomb County Road Commission instructing him to “immediately remove” the Nativity scene within 30 days. Satawa removed the structure and was denied a permit when he reapplied in January. In March, he received a formal denial of his petition to erect the nativity scene because, according to county officials, it would be a violation of the First Amendment, which prohibits government from making laws “respecting an establishment of religion.”

“It boils down to maintaining a tradition that’s been going on for six decades and one letter received from an out-of-state radical organization,” attorney Brian Rooney of the Thomas More Law Center told Foxnews.com. “We believe this shows hostility towards Christianity.”

Source/Full Story:  FOXNews.com

Recently someone who disagreed with what I had to say on somebody’s blog was, yet again, unable to actually stick with her convictions and had to add phrases like “I respect you and your desire to obey the Scriptures as you understand them” and “praise God for what He has shown to each of us in His word” to her reply, after exerting a lot of effort refuting what I had pointed out before.

Well, while I am aware of the fact that such phrases are meant to keep the conversation friendly, they are much much more than just Christian candy coating:  They are blasphemy.  You think that’s my way of ego self defense and that I am overreacting ?  If you do, consider the following Scriptures:

“Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.” (Pro 3:5)

“For God is not a God of confusion but of peace.” (1Co 14:33)

“And we have something more sure, the prophetic word, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation.” (2Pe 1:19-20)

Incidentally, the lady in question doesn’t even practice what she spent so much time preaching, as one can see on her blog.

It is fascinating that modern day Christianity is still studying, studying and studying those things that are simply a matter of obedience.  One would think that after all this time, it would have been possible to move on to the more substantial matters.  Will they ever come closer to the truth (2Ti 3:7)?

Joh 14:15  “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.”

Source/Full Story @:  USATODAY.com

Ten Maryland nuns — almost an entire religious community — converted from the Episcopal Church to Catholicism on Thursday, saying their former denomination had become too liberal in its acceptance of homosexuality.

The ten members of the All Saints Sisters of the Poor, who were received into the Catholic Church by Baltimore Archbishop Edwin O’Brien, will continue to live with two nuns who decided not to convert at their convent in Catonsville, Md. The community’s chaplain, the Rev. Warren Tanghe, also converted on Thursday with the nuns.

“Our archdiocese and our church’s mission of caring for the poor are now greatly enriched for having the All Saints Sisters among us,” O’Brien said in a statement.

Members of the order had been considering conversion for seven years. Mother Christina Christie, superior of the order, told the Baltimore Sun: “We were drifting farther apart from the more liberal road the Episcopal Church is traveling. We are now more at home in the Roman Catholic Church.”

By allowing gay bishops and blessings for same-sex relationships, the Episcopal Church is “way off the boat,” Christie said. Dozens of parishes and the majority of four dioceses have split from the Episcopal Church since it consecrated an openly gay man as bishop of New Hampshire in 2003. The church lifted a de facto ban on consecrating more gay bishops at its General Convention in July.

The All Saints order, whose members wear traditional black habits and white wimples covering their heads, was founded in England and came to Baltimore in 1872.

Episcopal Bishop of Maryland Eugene Sutton said in a statement that “despite the sadness we feel in having to say farewell, our mutual joy is that we remain as one spiritual family of faith, one body in Christ.”

"Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap."
Galatians 6:7 

President Obama has been without a pastor or a home church ever since he cut his ties to the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. in the heat of the presidential campaign. But he has quietly cultivated a handful of evangelical pastors for private prayer sessions on the telephone and for discussions on the role of religion in politics.

All are men, two of them white and three black — including the Rev. Otis Moss Jr., a graying lion of the civil rights movement. Two, the entrepreneurial dynamos Bishop T. D. Jakes and the Rev. Kirbyjon H. Caldwell, also served as occasional spiritual advisers to President George W. Bush. Another, the Rev. Jim Wallis, leans left on some issues, like military intervention and poverty programs, but opposes abortion.

None of these pastors are affiliated with the religious right, though several are quite conservative theologically. One of them, the Rev. Joel C. Hunter, the pastor of a conservative megachurch in Florida, was branded a turncoat by some leaders of the Christian right when he began to speak out on the need to stop global warming.

But as a group they can hardly be characterized as part of the religious left either. Most, like Mr. Wallis, do not take traditionally liberal positions on abortion or homosexuality. What most say they share with the president is the conviction that faith is the foundation in the fight against economic inequality and social injustice.

“These are all centrist, social justice guys,” said the Rev. Eugene F. Rivers, a politically active pastor of Azusa Community Church in Boston, who knows all of them but is not part of the president’s prayer caucus. “Obama genuinely comes out of the social justice wing of the church. That’s real. The community organizing stuff is real.”

The pastors say Mr. Obama appears to rely on his faith for intellectual and spiritual succor.

Source:  NYTimes.com

The only group that grew in every U.S. state since the 2001 survey was people saying they had “no” religion; the survey says this group is now 15 percent of the population. Silk said this group is likely responsible for the shrinking percentage of Christians in the United States.

Northern New England has surpassed the Pacific Northwest as the least religious section of the country; 34 percent of Vermont residents say they have “no religion.” The report said that the country has a “growing non-religious or irreligious minority.” Twenty-seven percent of those interviewed said they did not expect to have a religious funeral or service when they died, and 30 percent of people who had married said their service was not religious. Those questions weren’t asked in previous surveys.

The survey reflects a key question that demographers, sociologists and political scientists have been asking in recent years: Who makes up this growing group of evangelicals? Forty-four percent of America’s 77 million Christian adults say they are born again or evangelical. Meanwhile, 18 percent of Catholics also chose that label, as did 40 percent of mainline Christians.

“If people call themselves ‘evangelical,’ it doesn’t tell you as much as you think it tells you about what kind of church they go to,” Silk said. “It deepens the conundrum about who evangelicals are.”

Source: washingtonpost.com

Although they would like to take some small credit for making a change to the culture by placing Bibles in hotel rooms across the globe, in fact it has done little towards stemming off the wave of apostasy that has swept the land.  In fact, over the past 100 years, while the Gideons have been working to place Scriptures in hotels, prisons and schools, we have witnessed an explosion of iniquity (lawlessness), and things show no sign of improving.  The love of many continues to grow colder and colder.  Are the Gideons simply casting Pearls before Swine?  Let us pray for judgment on the land, and for a return to the Law of God.

Source: USATODAY.com

Long before cable television, spa treatments and eco-friendly soaps and shampoos became staples in hotel rooms, there was the Bible — the Gideon Bible.

And the book with the familiar two-handled pitcher and torch on its cover that most guests find inside hotel nightstands doesn’t appear to be going anywhere anytime soon.

Gideons International is celebrating its 100th anniversary distributing Bibles and has begun efforts to hand out more Scriptures in the U.S. to boost a distribution rate that’s remained relatively flat in recent years.

Nearly 76.9 million Gideon Scriptures were given out in nearly 85 languages in 187 countries last year. Close to 1.5 billion Scriptures have been distributed since 1908, when the Gideons first began to place Bibles in hotel rooms.

Since then, the nondenominational evangelical group run by businessmen has spread its tremendous reach, also giving out free Scriptures at hospitals, schools, prisons and in the military.

“This is not a church-sponsored, clergy-led effort,” said Leith Anderson, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, an umbrella group for evangelical churches and organizations. “It’s individuals that go around and distribute Bibles. It’s an astonishing accomplishment.”

“What it’s done is actually changed our culture. People expect there to be a Bible in a hotel room. There’s hardly anything that’s parallel to it.”

Full Story

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6 And he said to them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, “‘ This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me;  7 in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’   Mark 7:6-7 

Source: USATODAY.com

Two-thirds of Americans think religion is losing its influence on U.S. life, a sharp jump from just three years ago when Americans were nearly evenly split on the question, according to a new Gallup Poll.

Sixty-seven percent of Americans think religious influence is waning while just 27% say it is increasing. That perspective demonstrates a continuing downward trend, Gallup said.

But the 27% figure is still higher than the record low, set in a 1970 poll, when just 14% of Americans thought religion was increasing in influence.

Those who regularly attend worship services are more likely to say religion is losing its influence; three out of four weekly attenders (74 percent) said religious influence is falling, compared to 24% who thought its influence is on the rise.

At other times in American history, religion has been perceived by more Americans as having increasing significance. In 1957, 69% thought its influence was increasing, compared to 14% who thought it was declining. Likewise, in 2001, three months after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, 71% saw an increasing religious influence, compared to 24% who said it was decreasing.

The latest poll also finds that the percentage of Americans believing that religion “can answer all or most of today’s problems” has reached an all-time low. Slightly more than half of those surveyed — 53% — held that view, while 28% say it is “largely old-fashioned and out of date.”

The poll results are based on telephone interviews conducted Dec. 4-7 with 1,009 adults; the poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

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Technorati Tags: Apostasy

Source: FT.com

The Church of England was facing charges of hypocrisy yesterday over its leaders’ attack on short selling and debt trading after hedge funds pointed out it uses some of the same practices when investing its own assets.

Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury and head of the Anglican Church, said it was right to ban short selling, while John Sentamu, archbishop of York, called traders who cashed in on falling prices “bank robbers and asset strippers”.

Hedge funds pointed to the willingness of the Church commissioners to lend foreign stock from their £5.5bn ($10.2bn) of investments – an essential support for short selling – and derided the pair for not understanding shorting.

“They are trying to shoot the messenger and … deflecting attention away from the dramatic incompetence of bank executives,” said Hugh Hendry of Eclectica Asset Management, a London hedge fund. “Short selling is the pursuit of truth.”

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