33 pastors make presidential endorsements from pulpit

Most pastors get a bit squeamish when the subject of politics and the pulpit arises. For at least 33 pastors this past Sunday, the subject was tackled from head-on:

33 Pastors Flout Tax Law With Political Sermons

By Peter Slevin

Washington Post Staff Writer

Monday, September 29, 2008; A02

CROWN POINT, Ind., Sept. 28 -- Defying a federal law that prohibits U.S. clergy from endorsing political candidates from the pulpit, an evangelical Christian minister told his congregation Sunday that voting for Sen. Barack Obama would be evidence of "severe moral schizophrenia."

The Rev. Ron Johnson Jr. told worshipers that the Democratic presidential nominee's positions on abortion and gay partnerships exist "in direct opposition to God's truth as He has revealed it in the Scriptures." Johnson showed slides contrasting the candidates' views but stopped short of endorsing Obama's Republican opponent, Sen. John McCain.

Johnson and 32 other pastors across the country set out Sunday to break the rules, hoping to generate a legal battle that will prompt federal courts to throw out a 54-year-old ban on political endorsements by tax-exempt houses of worship.

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Asked why he felt the need to discuss the candidates by name and to be explicit in rejecting Obama and his pro-choice views, Johnson said he must connect the dots because he is not sure that all members of his congregation can do so on their own.

The congregation greeted Johnson's reasoning and his criticism of Obama with applause.

"When things of the world don't line up with Scripture," said Ed Kraus, 61, who executes reverse mortgages for a living, "he has a right to say they don't."

Ruth Stiener went a step further. "He has a duty," she said. "Heaven forbid that that is ever taken away from our pastors."

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"Senator Obama is a committed Christian and a man of deep faith," said Joshua DuBois, Obama's national religious affairs director. "And the notion that there is only one way to address issues like abortion, or that people of faith cannot support full civil rights for all Americans, is absurd."

Read the rest here.

"Son, I'm Home": More parents move in with kids

Ran across this little bit today...read it but whatever you do, don't let your in-laws see this!

More parents move in with kids
In-laws, too, and others

By Greg Toppo and Anthony DeBarrosUSA TODAY

In the 1990s, your family came for dinner. Now they're moving in.

The number of parents, siblings and other relatives who live with adult heads of households grew 42% from 2000 to 2007, according to data released today by the U.S. Census Bureau.
Leading the way: parents, up 67%, to 3.6 million.

The figures suggest it isn't only elderly parents moving in. The number of parents under 65 in these households increased by 75%, and those 65 and older were up 62%. Both groups outpaced the rise in the number of people in family households overall, which is up 6% since 2000.

"This is just a major trend," says Stephanie Coontz, a family history professor at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., who directs research at the Council on Contemporary Families.
Coontz suspects that a host of factors — among them higher housing costs and the USA's struggling economy — are prompting families to combine expenses. Also, intergenerational households are more common among the country's growing number of immigrants, she says.

But Coontz also notes that parent-child relationships are closer now than in the past. The downside, she says, is the emergence of the so-called helicopter parent who may hover too closely, but the upside is a tighter bond between generations and, in many cases, closer friendships between grown children and their parents. "I don't know how many of my students have told me, 'This may sound weird, but I talk to my parents more than I talk to my friends.' "

Read the rest here.

Something to think about...

I don't want the blog to morph into a constantly running commentary on the culture, but some things are pertinent enough to warrant mention here. This is one of those, written over at the Christian Theology blog. The question was in response to one of the major party candidates for president being unable to tell Rick Warren when life began. Further, they told Warren, neither theology or science could answer the question.

"Rick Warren led a recent debate between candidates for president at Saddleback Church in Lake Forest CA. One of the most thought provoking parts was when one of the candidates said that when human life begins was something that could not be known either through “Theology” nor “Science”. Well either way you go with that one it seems obviously wrong.

Beginning either with theology or the sciences it seems that whether or not the product of conception is alive and/or human has become pretty obvious. There are still a lot of things to think about on the nature of human life but haven’t we gotten to the place where we understand that the offspring of a male human and a female human is both alive and human? What else is there for it to be? Dead and Bovine? Say that for some reason we can’t know whether or not it is human life. Shouldn’t we then protect it until we find out for sure? Seems only reasonable."

On the Ray Boltz tragedy...

Doug Eaton writing at the Christian Theology blog has some pertinent thoughts about Christian musician Ray Boltz's bombshell that he is a homosexual. I will link to his whole blog, and here's some of what Eaton wrote:

So what should we think about the “coming out” of such a notable Christian figure, especially since he is now claiming to be happy? Besides the obvious sorrow we should feel for the destruction caused to Mr. Boltz’s family by divorcing his wife and the grief of his four children, and sorrow for Mr. Boltz himself as he is now living outside the revealed will of God, this should cause us to think for a minute about the deceptive nature of our enemy.

Eaton also hits a nerve as he talks about a disturbing trend which has crept into American Christianity: the primacy of self-happiness, self-actualization, or veiled hedonism:

All we have to do is listen to Christian music, Christian conferences, and even the preaching in many churches to see this is this trend. The true gospel has been substituted. Instead of preaching law and gospel where we are told the truth that we need to come to Christ because we are sinners deserving of wrath, and that the wages of sin is death, what is preached in its place is sorrow and self-esteem.

Europe was once a Christian continent...

The decline of Christianity accompanied by the rise of twin forces, secular postmodernism and Islam, is an interesting if not alarming development. Christian churches are shuttered while mosques open. Now this interesting news item, the announcement of the building of the "largest mosque in Europe":

Chechen president to inaugurate 'largest mosque in Europe'

THE JERUSALEM POST

The Russian-backed Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov will inaugurate the "largest mosque in Europe" on October 17 in Chechnya, the Russian official news agency Novosty reported.
Over 10,000 worshipers will be able to pray inside the mosque, which will be named after the president's father, Ahmad Kadyrov, who was killed in 2004.

"The largest mosque in Europe... will by inaugurated on the first day of the International Peacemakers' Conference, titled 'Islam - Religion of Peace and Progress,'" the grand mufti of Chechnya, Sultan Mirzayev, told the press.

Mirzayev underlined that approximately 50 countries have already approved their participation in the three-day conference.

The building of the mosque began more than three years ago. Surrounding the mosque will be Chechnya's Islamic administration, a religious school, an Islamic university, a hotel and a religious library.

Kadyrov, 31, is the son of Ahmad Kadyrov, an anti-Russian rebel leader who at one point was titled "Chechnya's rebel mufti" [mufti - an Islamic, cleric who issues religious decrees].
In 1999 the Kadyrovs defected to the Russian side. On March 2, 2007 then Russian president Vladimir Putin nominated Kadyrov as Chechen president.

Culture Watch: Creeping Secularism?

Interesting stuff came out today in the form of a Pew Research Center report on the role of religion in public life. Close to 3,000 adults 18 and over were surveyed about several issues regarding church and state. The broad findings? 52% of those surveyed felt that churches should "stay out" of political issues, while 45% felt that churches should express their views. The Pew Center finds the responses of "social conservatives" most striking: 50% of those who fell into that category felt that religion and politics shouldn't mix; in 2004 only 30% of the same group felt this way. Why is this? The Pew Center doesn't answer this. Other interesting facts from the survey included:

-Two-thirds of the public (66%) say that churches and other houses of
worship should not endorse one candidate over another, which is unchanged since 2004 (65%).

-Half of Americans (50%) say that it does not bother them when politicians talk about how religious they are, but the number expressing discomfort has edged upward over the past four years.

-An overwhelming majority of the public continues to say that it is important to them that a
president have strong religious beliefs. More than seven-in-ten Americans express this opinion, and attitudes on this issue have not changed in recent years.

-A slim majority (52%) says the GOP (Republican Party) is friendly toward religion, compared with 38% who say the same about the Democratic Party.

-When asked to assess their own moral values on a scale from liberal to conservative,
49% of Americans place themselves on the conservative side of the scale, while just 20% place
themselves on the liberal side (29% describe themselves as moderate.)

-A majority of Americans (54%) say abortion should be legal in most (37%) or all (17%) cases, while 41% oppose legalized abortion in most (26%) or all (15%) circumstances.

-67% of those surveyed favor faith-based initiatives.

You can see the survey in its entirety here.