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The governing boards of both Lutheran Social Services (LSS) and Catholic Charities of St. Paul and Minneapolis (CC) think the proposed photo-ID-to-vote requirement ought to be rejected. LSS has taken the rare step of asking Lutheran congregations in Minnesota to insert a position statement into Sunday-morning worship bulletins. CC's Office of Social Justice is contacting parishes offering information and even a skit to get their message across. Why should nonpartisan, faith-based social service organizations care about whether a would-be voter needs to wave a government-issued ID card to get a ballot at the polls? It's because such a requirement would...

"Cry Out America," which is part of the Awakening America Alliance, has scheduled a national prayer event for Sept. 11, 2012, in memorial of the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks that targeted America. The initiative, which seeks to proclaim the Gospel and strengthen America's unity through prayer and faith in God, will be held across several U.S. cities. "At the time the terrorist attack happened, everybody was coming together. And now they're separated again, so we need to come together more often and ... pray for one another all the time. But we really need to remember that...

The Archbishop of Canterbury has launched a major attack on his critics in the Government and Church of England months before he leaves office.For almost 10 years he has endured a simultaneous barrage of criticism from those who say he should not meddle in politics and those who argue that when he talks about the Bible he becomes “irrelevant”. This week the Archbishop of Canterbury issues a challenge to critics in a book which he introduces with a warning that he has become “resilient” and even “rebellious”. Faith in the Public Square is a collection of lectures from his decade...

The outgoing leader of the world's 77 million Anglicans suggested a form of job share after admitting that he had failed to do enough to prevent a split over homosexuality. Dr Williams said a new role should be created to oversee the day to day running of the global Anglican communion, leaving future Archbishops of Canterbury free to focus on spiritual leadership and leading the Church of England. In his last major interview before he steps down later his year, he acknowledged that he had struggled to balance the growing demands of the job at home and abroad and admitted...

Perhaps you don’t know it: in northern Europe many people think that the "spread", the difference between the interest rate for the soverign debt of his own "virtuous" country and the rate for those countries in a sorry state to the south, is the fruit of a Catholic sin. In German the word “Schuld”, for debt, also means ‘fault’. This semantic nuance reflects profound cultural differences and helps to better understand the distrust – or prejudice – of some nations of northern Europe towards countries considered members of a blithe "Club Med". The spread between Spanish and Italian bonds on...

The First Presbyterian Church Adult Education Program, partnering with the Peace Islands Institute (formerly the Interfaith Dialog Center of New Jersey), will once again hold its popular series on the Qur'an and its teachings beginning Sept. 16. The eight-week program will cover Muslim culture, history and traditions and will present a unique educational opportunity to read the Qur'an in an environment designed to promote respect and mutual understanding of all faiths and cultures. All faiths are invited to participate and the program is free. The First Presbyterian Church in Rutherford, in an effort to bring people of different faiths together,...

"The following was submitted to my second favorite apologetics ministry Apologetics315, it is about my most favorite apologetics site, how I started an apologetics program at my church and will be featured here along with many other fabulous testimonies and resources to help you get apologetics into your church. ________________________________ Hello there, my name is Damon Whitsell. I am a member of, and now long dreamed of Apologetics teacher at, Grace Community Baptist Church in Dayton Texas. Although I have studied General and Christian Cult Apologetics since 1985 and have been DOING Apologetics online and in life since 1998 because...

Apparently, there are a few nitwits who still believe in the hopey-changey crapola. An Obama calendar sold in Charlotte this week compares the failed president to Jesus Christ. Here is the August 2013 page from the “Keep the Dream Alive” calendar:(IMAGE AT LINK)There’s even a video to accompany the calendar:(VIDEO AT LINK) What part of “worst jobs president since the Great Depression” do they not understand?

Rev Alan Wilson, the Bishop of Buckingham, suggested accepting same-sex unions could “potentially enrich” the institution of marriage. His comments further inflamed the debate between church leaders after he called on them to “get our head around blessing gay people’s relationships.” Dr Wilson, who has been an outspoken advocate of the Prime Minister’s plans to legalise gay marriage, broadcast his message in a three-minute clip on YouTube...He said: “It all comes down to how we see gay people and how we see God "We don't actually believe gay people are sick or stunted or criminal. We don't believe God is...

>When asked what he had learned from his years of studying the Bible, the great Swiss Reformed theologian of grace Karl Barth responded, “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” The title of Tullian Tchividjian’s award-winning book, Jesus+Nothing=Everything, offers in similar Barthian fashion a reminder that the Christian faith is not a worldview, political philosophy, social program, or a family values agenda. It is belief in the promises of God fulfilled in the Word of God, Jesus Christ. Tullian is the grandson of Billy Graham and Senior Pastor at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort...

Our church was recently hit with a high-ranking moral tragedy. It was discovered that a staff member (and close friend) was engaging in marital infidelity. I was both shocked and saddened. I didn't see it coming. None of us did. Of all the crises I've faced and had to deal with over the last 17 years of pastoral ministry, this was a first for me. I have dealt on numerous occasions with husbands and wives in the throes of an extramarital affair, but never a staff member. Never someone this close to me. It'll take me a long time to...

One of the great battle cries of the Protestant Reformation was “sola scriptura!” Many thought that the Catholic Church had cluttered up the simple Christian faith by adding all sorts of practices, customs and doctrines over the centuries. They thought the Church in their day was guilty of exactly the same Pharisaical obsession with traditions condemned by Jesus in this Sunday’s gospel (Mark 7:1-23). The solution, it seemed, was simple. Let’s purify the Church by ditching all these traditions and keeping the Bible alone. But if we read this portion of the Bible closely, the Lord is not telling us...

Justin Taylor recently revived Mark Dever’s 2007 series of articles titled “Where’d All These New Calvinists Come From?” This was a ten-part series that looked to the rise of New Calvinism and sought to discover the sources of a theological resurgence. Dever said, Of course, theologically, the answer is “because of the sovereignty of God.” But I’ve never been convinced by hyper-Calvinism’s argument that because God has determined the ends, the means don’t matter. Means do matter. And as a Christian, as an historian who had lived through the very change I was considering, I wondered what factors had been used...

One of the least-known but most revolutionary clauses in the Constitution appears in Article VI, where the framers stipulated that "no religious test shall ever be required" for federal government service. At the time of its drafting, the clause outraged some orthodox Protestants, who fumed that it would open the door for Roman Catholics, Jews, Muslims, and atheists to run the country. They needn't have worried. Nearly 200 years passed before the American electorate chose the first Catholic president, John F. Kennedy. And since then, we have reliably elected a Protestant every four years. Last weekend, however, something happened that...

Of the hundreds of stories I have seen on Mitt Romney's choice of Catholic Paul Ryan as his running mate, there is one aspect of the choice that is historic and of which I have not seen any mention. The Romney-Ryan ticket will be the first in the history of the country that does not include a member of one of the mainline Protestant denominations. I qualify Protestant with "mainline" because there is some issue about whether Mormonism, Romney's faith, is a Protestant denomination. Some use the term Protestant to mean any Christian denomination that is not Catholic. However, while...

Reformation Gems are excerpts from selections contained in the Reformation Commentary on Scripture, a new commentary series from IVP which gathers the best Reformation-era comments on the text together all in one set. The volumes in this commentary series resurrect long-forgotten voices from the Reformation age and in so doing they recover the piety and vivacity of that era. I hope that by sharing some excerpts from this series, I will edify my readers and promote this important commentary series. Today’s selection comes from volume 1 (Genesis 1-11). I appreciated the Christ-centered comments on Noah’s sacrifice in Genesis 8, from...

That’s the title of an interesting and thought-provoking post by Justin Taylor at The Gospel Coalition. Justin embedded a video interview left on the cutting-room-floor of the forthcoming documentary Hellbound. In the video (embedded below), Justin grapples with a question I often receive — is a God who only saves some of His children a moral monster?I’m not going to pretend to be a theologian and wholeheartedly recommend watching Justin’s response (as well as reading his blog), but I will make an observation or two through the prism of my legal training. First, much of what we believe is right...

Rebecca Julius sent me the following letter and gave me permission to share it with you. Rebecca is a student at an ELCA college. I praise God for Rebecca and pray God will raise up faithful men and women to stand up with her. In first Corinthians 5, Paul writes to God's people concerning sexual immorality, and chastises them for their pride and boasting over something evil. He talks about judgement - not hating or being hypocritical, but keeping those who profess Christ's name accountable to their faith and fellowship. Too often today, Christians that oppose homosexuality and same-sex marriage...

It should be apparent by now that the Anglican Communion, torn as it is by "heresies distressed", will not experience a full-blown schism. It is not in the cards. Perhaps it never was. Hysterical religion writers for secular newspapers ran headlines for years on the imminent demise of the Anglican Communion. It never happened and probably never will. (For the record, there is no such thing as the Anglican Church. There is the communion of Anglican churches that forms the Worldwide Anglican Communion.) A no show by 230 bishops, mostly from the Global South, at the most recent Lambeth conference...

The Protestant Reformation was in significant part a protest against the perceived antinatalism of the late Medieval Christian Church. It was a celebration of procreation that also saw contraception and abortion as among the most wicked of human sins, as direct affronts to the ordinances of God. This background makes the Protestant “sellout” on contraception in the mid 20th Century all the more surprising, and disturbing. As the Augustinian monk, theologian, and “first Protestant” Martin Luther viewed his world in the second decade of the 16th Century, he saw a Christianity in conflict with family life and fertility. Church tradition...