Helping the State's Bible Colleges

Family Institute of Connecticut is reporting about a bill to protect Bible Colleges from the State's licensing procedures. A Baptist pastor writes:

What does the state know or understand concerning the operation of a Bible college? Can they offer suggestions on teaching New Testament Survey, Pastoral Theology, Homiletics and Hermeneutics etc. etc. How can they regulate the qualifications of our faculty when there is no state accredited College that has graduates meeting our qualifications?

Read it all here.

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Tags: Connecticut, society, law, government, religion

Why we need revival on campus

This sort of takes it beyond Animal House... Yale is enjoying something called "Sex Week."

One Calhoun resident made his views clear on another blog, criticalmassblog.com. Dan Gelernter, class of 2009, is co-editor of Critical Mass, aimed at "collegiate conservatives," and called the episode "a new chapter in the story of Yale's continuing descent into the depths of moral degradation."

"...in the moral vacuum that has been created by Yale intellectuals, students seem to be left without even the most basic guidelines for proper and decent behavior," Gelernter wrote.

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Tags: Connecticut, Yale, New Haven, Christian

The Perils of Christian Blogging

I thought this was a Christian website - so why is he running that ad?

The problem

I have no philosophical or ethical problem with Christians allowing advertisements or selling products via their vast, far-flung internet empires - after all, the bills must be paid. However, I do believe that Christians must be vigilant and follow the Scriptural admonition to know the state of your flock - in other words, keep tabs on what is happening in your business. (Prov. 27:23)

It's important for me to know what ads are running on my blogs or websites. I don't want to be cheesy or, worse, display ads which my readership will view as morally inappropriate. Nor do I think it's sufficient to run a disclaimer (as I've seen at least one website do) saying they don't endorse the websites in their adspace. The result? I've seen apologetics websites running ads for all kinds of things and organizations which they are probably writing and preaching against!

Being vigilant...

Advertisements do appear on this blog from time to time which I find offensive and which my readers probably will, too. So, I deal with them as soon as possible. I never knew until today that there was such a thing as selling "gay cars," but when I saw the big ad promoting it, I immediately logged into my ad account and blocked that URL from running any more ads on my blog. Are there people who deliberately target Christian blogs for this sort of thing? Can't say... but Christians who blog about certain social issues (rather unavoidable in my home state) need to be vigilant and know what's running on their site. I don't think that's asking for too much, and it will avoid misunderstanding on the part of your readers who may not know why you are "running" such an ad or may conclude that you are a lazy blogger.

And if anybody's eyeballs popped out by seeing the car ad, sorry...

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Tags: Christian, Christianity, computing, blog, web, Google, evangelical

Separation of church and state - is it on the way out?

What did Jefferson really mean - and have his words been twisted?

Jefferson's phrase "wall of separation" when talking about church and state has, ironically, gained religious importance in the minds of many. Looking into a question that is rarely dealt with even-handedly, the Washington Times educates the public a bit on the separation of church and state and wonders if the "wall of separation" is coming down:

Francis Manion, senior counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), says that with its 5-4 opinion in Van Orden v. Perry, the high court "did away with the idea that there is something constitutionally radioactive about the Ten Commandments."

In a December 2005 ruling about a Kentucky courthouse's display of the Ten Commandments, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held that the phrase "separation of church and state" is an "extra-constitutional construct ... [that] has grown tiresome." The court ruled that the display was allowed because it was "part of an otherwise secular exhibit."

Since then, the ACLJ, a public-interest law firm that specializes in religious-liberty cases, has won "most of the Ten Commandments court cases" in which it has participated, Mr. Manion says....

Many Americans wrongly assume the words "separation of church and state" are included in the U.S. Constitution.

This is an article worth reading and spreading around: get the printer-friendly version here. (Thanks to LP for story.)

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Tags: Christian, Christianity, Politics, News, Government, Law, religion

El Trio de Hoy performs at Mid Point Cafe, this Friday

The Mid Point Café (MPC) concert series continues Friday, Feb. 2 at 7:30 p.m. at Harvest Time Church, 1338 King St., Greenwich with a concert featuring Massachusetts-based Latin funk band El Trio de Hoy. The bilingual band will present a concert of original Gospel music. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. Suggested donation is $10 for adults, $5 for teens. For information, contact Harvest Time Church at (203) 531-7778.

Mid Point Café is a meeting place, concert venue, and workshop where novice and professional musicians—and those that love music—can gather to experience the musical process. For more information about MPC, visit www.htchurch.com and click on the Mid Point Café link on the left column. Following the tradition of past concert series events, this concert will take place within Harvest Time’s sanctuary, transformed into a hip café setting with dozens of tables and chairs for relaxing and enjoying the music and a latté. The evening will feature interview moments with El Trio de Hoy and, as always, opportunities for younger members of the audience to jam with these seasoned pros.

Started in 1995 with three members (Jessie Gonzalez, Freddie Velez and Jesus "Kuzo" Velez), El Trio de Hoy now includes five members who create a blend of sweet harmony of acoustic guitars combined with an extra bass player (Alex Moran) and solid drummer (Orlando Gonzalez). Their sound has a unique quality that is enticing to audiences of all ages.

El Trio de Hoy’s contemporary rhythm has taken them around the country to play in venues like the Madison Square Garden with Dr. Rodney Howard Brown, the TWA Dome in St. Louis, MO and the RCA Dome with the Assemblies of God General Council. The band has shared the stage with artist such as Jennifer Knapp, Third Day, Andre Crouch, Anointed, Darlene Zschech, Bryan Duncan, Jackie Velasquez and many others. Most recently, El Trio de Hoy performed at the Potters House in Dallas, where Bishop T.D. Jakes is pastor. With humble hearts and a clear vision of their calling, these five pastor's sons are taking the message of Jesus Christ across the country letting God open the doors of the path that they should continue to travel.

Upcoming MPC concert series performances
March 2, 2007: Sam Cintron Band, soul
April 6, 2007: Bobby Lewis, Gospel
May 4, 2007: Bristrous Brothers, comedy
June 2, 2007, 3-7 p.m.: Backyard Outdoor Festival, food, music and more

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Tags: Connecticut, Christian, Music, Evangelical, Greenwich

East Haven Church contemplates leaving Episcopal Church

Christ and the Epiphany Church, one of the "Connecticut Six ," is getting ready to vote as a parish as to whether to leave the national Episcopal Church over the dispute with Bishop Smith. This is major news that could indicate the beginning of the end of these six churches' connection with the denomination sometime after the Lenten season.

According to the New Haven Register, the church's rector, Rev. Gilbert V. Wilkes, says the dispute isn't personal but is about Christian orthodoxy. Personally, I'm glad to see this even get mentioned, however much in passing.

Read it all here.

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Tags: Connecticut, Christian, Anglican, Episcopal, Christianity, God, Bible, Jesus, East Haven, Evangelical

Back in the game

God's still moving even when the traffic isn't!

We're back again after taking a bit of an online sabbatical and look forward to serving you this year. What's going to be new for us in 2007?

The Christian Events Calendar will start to get regular updates again and this year we hope to include more events from more venues and different parts of the church. We also hope to grow outside of our typical geographical areas.

We'll soon be launching a new online Christian bookstore in association with Amazon. Having said that, we still intend to retain our relationship with Christianbook.com in order to provide the fullest range of products possible for you.

The popular Connecticut Church Map will continue to grow. Write us and let us know about great churches we can add to the map!

Looking forward to what God is going to do in our midst in 2007!

Tags: Connecticut, Christian, Evangelical

Without God

What should we think about the rise of what's being called the New Atheism? A particularly in-your-face repackaging of the old atheism, the New Atheism is getting lots of airplay and print media attention through the writings of people like Dr. Richard Dawkins. In today's Wall Street Journal, Sam Schulman insightfully summarizes why the new atheists are not as engaging as the older crop:

For the new atheists, believing in God is a form of stupidity, which sets off their own intelligence. They write as if they were the first to discover that biblical miracles are improbable, that Parson Weems was a fabulist, that religion is full of superstition. They write as if great minds had never before wrestled with the big questions of creation, moral law and the contending versions of revealed truth. They argue as if these questions are easily answered by their own blunt materialism. Most of all, they assume that no intelligent, reflective person could ever defend religion rather than dismiss it. The reviewer of Dr. Dawkins's volume in a recent New York Review of Books noted his unwillingness to take theology seriously, a starting point for any considered debate over religion.

The faith that the new atheists describe is a simple-minded parody. It is impossible to see within it what might have preoccupied great artists and thinkers like Homer, Milton, Michelangelo, Newton and Spinoza--let alone Aquinas, Dr. Johnson, Kierkegaard, Goya, Cardinal Newman, Reinhold Niebuhr or, for that matter, Albert Einstein. But to pass over this deeper faith--the kind that engaged the great minds of Western history--is to diminish the loss of faith too. The new atheists are separated from the old by their shallowness.

To read the accounts of the first generation of atheists is profoundly moving. Matthew Arnold wrote of the "eternal note of sadness" sounded when the "Sea of Faith" receded from human life. In one testament after another--George Eliot, Carlyle, Hardy, Darwin himself--the Victorians described the sense of grief they felt when religion goes--and the keen, often pathetic attempts to replace it by love, by art, by good works, by risk-seeking and--fatally--by politics.

Read it all here.

Tags: Christianity, religion, God, atheism, evangelical, Bible

Book under fire in Westport

What's OK for 14-year-olds to read? A parent is asking a Westport middle school to remove the book The Lovely Bones from the school library.

Lynne Shain, assistant superintendent for curriculum and staff development, said the parent of a sixth-grade girl at Coleytown Middle filed a challenge form requesting the book be removed from the library.

The committee, of which she is chair, interviewed the school library media specialist, the challenging parent, and a Westport resident who used to be an American Library Association member with experience in challenged materials, she said....

The parent, Shain said, read “The Lovely Bones,” and thought it was right for an adult audience but was not appropriate for a sixth-grader.

In the first chapter of the book, published in 2002, she said, a 14-year-old girl is walking home from school when she is abducted, raped and killed by a neighbor.

“The author shows amazing restraint considering the graphic nature of the events,” she said.

The parent felt it could upset her daughter, Shain said, and it was beyond her maturity level.

The parents have acknowledged the students at Coleytown Middle have a range of reading skills, she said, and have considered with the committee other ways to flag the book so readers could be counseled if the “frightening material” upset them.

“The Lovely Bones” is also available at the Westport Public Library, but Library Director Maxine Bleiweis said the book has not been challenged there.

Shain said she and others cannot remember a book in a school library being challenged.

Of course, I'm not very surprised that no one can remember a challenge to a book. After all, this is Connecticut! Notice the placement of the words "frightening material" within quotes. That tells you all you need to know...

Read more here at Westport Now.

Tags: Connecticut, Christian, Christianity, Evangelical, Family, books, Westport

What Was The Star of Bethlehem?

I was sent this site by a friend and found it very interesting - a scientific examination of the Star of Bethlehem, or at least a candidate for the title. What was the Star? Not sure if this site gives the answer but it is real food for thought, including a conclusion that the Birth of Jesus did actually take place on December 25, 2 B.C.

The problem with a planet stopping is not what you might think. The problem is not that planets can't stop. Just the opposite. The problem is that all planets are always stopped to the eye of a human observer. The sky moves above Earth at half the speed of the hour hand on a common clock. Its movement is imperceptible to the naked eye. So, if all stars are always stopped, what can Matthew have meant?

Perhaps you have already anticipated the key to this final mystery: retrograde motion. An astronomer tracking the movement of planets through the star field watches not so much on the scale of minutes, but on the longer scale of days, weeks and months. On this scale of time, Jupiter did stop. On December 25 of 2 BC as it entered retrograde, Jupiter reached full stop in its travel through the fixed stars. Magi viewing from Jerusalem would have seen it stopped in the sky above the little town of Bethlehem.

Worth reading...

Tags: Connecticut, Christian, Christianity, Christmas

Quiet blogging until January

Hey Loyal Readers, we'll be doing light blogging until the end of the year owing to the demands of the season. What season, you ask? You know which one... the Holiday That Dares Not Speak Its Name.

The Holocaust

You must take time out of your busy day and read an incredible piece of personal reflection by a Jewish man about the Holocaust and what is happening in Iran. The madness is happening again and we must work and pray against it.

My grandfather and his sister had many relatives. The exact count is not known. My grandfather used to know, but, as time went by and his mind weakened, his estimates started to vary. Somewhere around 20 seems to be about the right number. You can count 16 in the group photo from 1940, or is it 1941, that I have seen. You only get 8, I think, if you count the names mentioned in the yellowed letter. Yes, I think it’s 8 names that the neighbor lists as my grandfather’s relatives who were lined up outside the village and shot by Germans and Ukrainians in 1941. It’s 8 if you just count the names, but then the letter does refer to “and everyone else.” I don’t remember the names. I haven’t seen the letter for a while. My grandmother had it, but she has given it to a museum. I live on a different continent now. This doesn’t mean these people never were. First, they lived, and then they were dead. It is a fact. I had relatives, before I was born. It is a fact. I have seen the letter.

Read the whole thing here; it's called "How My Grandfather Invented the Holocaust."

Tags:Holocaust, Iran, Israel, Ukraine, Russia, Ahmedinejad, Judaism, News

A punk for God

Here's an interesting profile of Jay Bakker, the son of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker of PTL fame.

More recently, he started his own church called Revolution, which met in an Atlanta barroom with its own attitude. It's the subject of a new documentary series, "One Punk Under God," subtitled "The Prodigal Son of Jim and Tammy Faye," starting Wednesday on the Sundance Channel.

Starting a church may be the last thing expected of Bakker, who was profoundly disillusioned by what happened to his parents.

"For a while, I thought God hated me, and the church hated me, seeing everything that my parents went through and going through prison," Bakker says. "I left the ministry completely and didn't want anything to do with Christianity or the church because I just felt judged all the time. I didn't feel comfortable with God in my life."

Eventually, he "started realizing that there's so much more in the Bible about love and hope than there is about condemning and judging," Bakker says. "It drove me to want to make a difference. "

Tags: Christianity, Christian, Evangelical

Who will be Connecticut's new Chief Justice?

The weekly legal newspaper The Connecticut Law Tribune is running a story on the various judges who may possibly be the next Chief Justice of Connecticut's Supreme Court. Please pray for this very important decision.

Tags: Connecticut, Law, Legal, Government

What's going on with the State Police?

This press release from the Attorney-General's office is nothing short of shocking. With help from the New York State Police, Mr. Blumenthal investigated the Connecticut State Police internal affairs system and it looks like heads are going to roll, or at least be incarcerated...

The full report, detailing some sixty cases, is viewable here as a PDF - and it's a safe bet you'll be hearing about the fallout from this throughout 2007.

Pray for the 1200 men and women of the State Police, the majority of which are of course dedicated public servants and guardians.

Tags: Connecticut, Government, Law, police, Blumenthal

Trends for '07: Learn From Connecticut's Mistakes!

Will our popular Governor expend any political capital to reduce taxes?

Learn from Connecticut's mistakes? Sure, we're always happy to provide the other 49 States the benefit of our accumulated wisdom!

Here's an editorial urging people in Tennessee not to repeat the mistakes of Connecticut. What did we do that was so bad? Oh, yeah - it was that temporary income tax we adopted way back in 1991. Here's a slice:

In 1991, Connecticut adopted a broad-based tax on wages and salaries-the most recent state in America to do so. Fifteen years later, it is clear that adopting the tax was a major blunder. Contrary to promises made by income tax advocates, Connecticut's income tax failed to produce long-term fiscal stability. Instead, the Nutmeg State plunged into a brutal recession that continues to this day.

In response to the recession, the state borrowed heavily and policymakers drained the state's reserve fund. Connecticut legislators then broadened the sales tax base, inflated cigarette taxes, imposed surcharges on Connecticut's corporate tax, hiked energy taxes, implemented a new death tax and increased the income tax itself.

Connecticut's spiraling increase in taxation, started by the addition of an income tax, led to a dismal economy over the last 15 years. Between 1976 and 1991, job growth in the state topped 29 percent. But between 1991 and 2006, job growth was nonexistent. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation recently concluded that since the early 1990s, "no other state has had such stagnation in employment."

Is the new Democratic supermajority going to listen to this sort of thing or are they just going to worry about civil unions and bashing Wal-Mart? What about our extremely popular Republican Governor... would she be willing to expend some political capital to give the people back some of their capital?

Here's another slice:

To make matters worse, young people flee the state in droves. U.S. Census Bureau data shows that in the 1990s, no state in America lost a greater percentage of its 18-to-34-year-olds.

Finally, the harshest condemnation of Connecticut's income tax came from the states that chose not to follow Connecticut's disastrous lead. When the tax passed, Harley T. Duncan, Executive Director of the Federation of Tax Administrators, predicted that "three or four other states" would adopt a state income tax in years to come. Fifteen years later, not one of the nation's income tax free states has followed Connecticut's lead. In fact, Texas, Florida and Tennessee, boast robust economies and remarkable growth largely as a result of remaining free of an income tax.

In the three and half centuries between its founding and 1991, Connecticut became the wealthiest state in the nation per capita without an income tax. Over the last decade and a half, the state's economic fortunes have plummeted. Despite its prime location, highly educated workforce and tradition of innovation, the state has been unable to overcome a tax burden that has ballooned since the adoption of a state income tax.

It's official... Connecticut is now the poster child for "Don't Do This Unless You Want Your State Economy to Tank!"

However, because of the politicization of nearly all aspects of modern life, almost no one in Hartford will dare to act on such an analysis or even mention it... it's not progressive enough. The Courant would rather run pieces about the economic good times that may be ahead because Hartford is now one of the "gayest" cities in the country.

Tags: Connecticut, government, economy, taxes, Hartford, politics, news, Tennessee, Rell, Democrat, Republican

Have A Harry Potter Christmas! (Not)

Can anyone tell me why Harry Potter movies are run on TV at "Holiday Time," the Holiday Formerly Known As Christmas? I must have missed the connection between Harry Potter and the Incarnation of God the Son. Frosty's one thing, but now we associate Christmas with Harry? Cut it out.

I quote the immortal American philosopher C. Brown, who said in 1965,

"Isn't there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about?"

Tags: Christian, Christianity, Evangelical, television, HarryPotter, God, religion, Christmas

Rights of Connecticut Churches Upheld

Interesting decision from the Connecticut Appellate Court (the State's second-highest court) upholding the power of religious institutions over religious employees. In a case in which a Roman Catholic priest was locked out of a church after he claimed he was passed over for promotion because of his race, the Court said,

The constitutional guarantee of the free exercise of religious authority requires secular institutions to defer to the decisions of religious institutions in their employment relations with their religious employees. In broader terms, administrative and judicial intervention in religious employment relationships would violate the constitutional prohibition against civil entanglement in ecclesiastic disputes.... The ministerial exception prevents courts or government agencies from exercising jurisdiction over a religious institution’s actions regarding the employment of its ministers.

This is significant in a day and age when we see increasing encroachment on religious liberty.

Background story here from the Stamford Advocate. Hat tip to the Religion Clause Blog.

Tags: Connecticut, Christian, Christianity, religion, God, law, society, news, FirstAmendment

Christianity Moves South

Christianity Today is running a lengthy excerpt from Philip Jenkins's new book, The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South. This is well worth your time as an exploration of how the global center of the faith is moving to the Southern Hemisphere, and how Christians there read the Scriptures. Here's a piece:

In many ways, then, Christian communities in global South nations share certain approaches to the Bible and to biblical authority, and these are sufficient to mark real differences with the outlook common in Europe and North America. Divisions over the nature of biblical authority matter because the weight of numbers within Christianity is shifting so decisively to the churches of the global South. Partly, this is a matter of demographic change and the rapid growth of the relative share of the world's population living in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Since the 1960s, populations have fallen or stagnated in Europe and North America, while global South birth rates have remained far higher—spectacularly so in Africa. Today, there are about two billion Christians, of whom 530 million live in Europe, 510 million in Latin America, 390 million in Africa, and perhaps 300 million in Asia, but those numbers will change substantially in coming decades. By 2025, Africa and Latin America will vie for the title of the most Christian continent. A map of the "statistical center of gravity of global Christianity" shows that center moving steadily southward, from a point in northern Italy in 1800, to central Spain in 1900, to Morocco by 1970, and to a point near Timbuktu today. And the southward trajectory will continue unchecked through the coming century. As Todd Johnson points out, Spanish has since 1980 been the leading language of church membership in the world, and Chinese, Hindi, and Swahili will soon play a much greater role. In our lifetimes, the centuries-long North Atlantic captivity of the church is drawing to an end.

The figures are startling. Between 1900 and 2000, the number of Christians in Africa grew from 10 million to over 360 million, from 10 percent of the population to 46 percent. If that is not, quantitatively, the largest religious change in human history in such a short period, I am at a loss to think of a rival. Today, the most vibrant centers of Christian growth are still in Africa itself, but also around the Pacific Rim, the Christian Arc. Already today, Africans and Asians represent some 30 percent of all Christians, and the proportion will rise steadily. Conceivably, the richest Christian harvest of all might yet be found in China, a nation of inestimable importance to the politics of the coming decades. Some projections suggest that by 2050, China might contain the second-largest population of Christians on the planet, exceeded only by the United States. More confidently, we can predict that by that date, there should be around three billion Christians in the world, of whom only around one-fifth or fewer will be non-Hispanic whites.

The effects of these changes can be witnessed across denominations. The Roman Catholic Church, the world's largest, was the first to feel the impact. Today, two-thirds of its adherents live in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, and that total does not include people of the global South residing in the North. By 2025, that proportion should rise to 75 percent, a fact that will undoubtedly be reflected in future papal elections. The Anglican Communion —historically, the "English" church—is becoming ever more African dominated, so that the Nigerian branch will soon be its largest representative. The Seventh Day Adventist Church also epitomizes these trends. In the 1950s, the church had around a million members, mainly concentrated in the United States. Today, the church claims some fourteen million members, of whom only one million are located in the United States; and among even that American million, a sizable share are of immigrant stock. Of the churches with Euro-American roots, those that are expanding do so by becoming rapidly more Southern in composition. Those that fail to expand retain their Euro-American identity, but they are shrinking perilously in terms of market share. The Orthodox Communion, still firmly rooted in Eastern Europe, offers a worrying model of apparently irreversible demographic decline. Christianity worldwide is booming, but at least in relative terms, "Western" Christianity is stagnating, while the old Eastern Christianity may be facing terminal crisis.

Read the whole thing here.

Tags: Christianity, Christian, news, trends, society, religion, God

Getting off the public housing merry-go-round

The richest 2% of people in the world own half the world's wealth, according to a new study. Obviously studies of this type can be politically motivated, but we are in any case a long ways away from every man sitting under his own vine and his own fig tree.

Is capitalism a problem or an answer for people trying to better their economic conditions?

If you live in public housing, what's the incentive to do more when your rent goes up as your earnings do? Came across this interesting piece about public housing in Greenwich, of all places, where they are trying new ways to lift people out of the public housing cycle.

When [one resident] took up a six-month temp job to help pay off $6,000 in student loans a few years ago, her rent leaped from $50 to $500 per month. She's held jobs as a cashier at Target and CVS, a sorter at the post office, hotel receptionist and packager at Federal Express. During those times, she often asked her eldest child, Joseph, now 16, to mind the four younger children.

'The kids don't complain but it gets hard,' she said. 'It's a small place here for us but everything can get mixed up so fast.'

Under the new program, participating residents see no rent increases. Instead, the housing authority itself antes up the additional money and puts those funds into an escrow account that participants may withdraw upon moving out of public housing.

Let's hope it works.

Tags: Connecticut, Christian, Greenwich, news, politics