Last week’s post by Veronica Chenik Gilmore, about her adopted children, held special significance for me. My daughters (see below), now 11 and 9, are adopted too. My wife and I worked through an international adoption agency, Gladney, that is at least nominally Christian, having been founded by a Methodist minister more than a hundred years ago. I wasn’t aware of this at the start, but wouldn’t have cared one way or the other. All that mattered to me was that the agency was staffed with experienced, caring, competent, and fair people. And it was. I have nothing but abundant praise for our case workers and everyone else up and down Gladney’s chain of command. Throughout the years-long process, there was just one hiccup that had to do with religion. Read more
Last week, I posted about how 5th grader Zachary Golob-Drake was planning to give a speech that could’ve earned him a spot as one of the representatives to the regional 4-H Tropicana Public Speech contest… unfortunately, the assistant principal at USF/Patel Partnership Elementary School (in Tampa, Florida) told him he would have to rewrite his speech or drop out of the contest altogether. The reason? His speech was all about the harms of religious extremism and how the Golden Rule should prevail… and it was deemed too inappropriate: School District Spokeswoman Tanya Arja said school officials told her that the controversy wasn’t about the religious aspect. “The concern was over the topic of mass murders,” Arja said. “Because these are 4th and 5th graders.” Zachary made a point of saying that mass murder was wrong, but let’s be honest: He was just talking about world history. Religion has contributed to those mass murders. Why hide the fact? (You can read the speech for yourself to see how “offensive” it really isn’t.) There’s finally some good news: Zachary was allowed to compete with his speech and he won! Read more
Yesterday on my daily binge-reading of Advocate.com, the daily website of the country’s oldest LGBT newsmagazine, The Advocate, a headline caught my eye: “The Advocate’s Person of the Year: Pope Francis.” My heart sank and my brain nearly imploded. The leader of the most homophobic institution in the world with a “NOH8” logo splashed on his cheek? Really? Pope Francis was named TIME magazine’s Person of the Year last week, and that makes a little more sense to me. TIME speaks to a greater audience than The Advocate, for one. Pope Francis has undoubtedly said and done more decent things thus far in his papacy — acknowledged the worthy humanness of female convicts and LGBT folk, conjured an image of the Catholic Church as a church of healing and acceptance, etc. — than popes who came before him, and the man certainly has a lot of influence over the estimated 1,200,000,000 Catholics in the world. For TIME, that’s something worth noting. (Maybe not grand-prize-winner-something, but fine. I’m letting it go.) But for The Advocate? Absolutely not. I’m deeply disappointed the staff felt otherwise. Read more
It just got a little more cluttered in the Wisconsin Capitol building. There’s already a “natural nativity scene” there thanks to the Freedom From Religion Foundation: And FFRF also put up a couple of signs in honor of the Winter Solstice: That’s all in addition to the Festivus pole that’s also on display. Now, the Atheists, Humanists, and Agnostics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison are adding a display of their own to the mix: The Flying Spaghetti Monster. Read more
On Fox News yesterday, Elisabeth Hasselbeck interviewed Creationist Ken Ham about those pesky atheists and their billboards proclaiming that people can celebrate the holidays without Jesus. Read more
If any of you want a writing job, I suggest submitting your work to Charisma since they publish everything, no matter how illogical it is. R. Loren Sandford (below), a pastor in Denver, Colorado, lives not too far from Arapahoe High School, the site of a recent school shooting, and he would like to tell you all why it happened: Why? These things never happened a generation ago, when, whether or not we really lived it, our nation at least acknowledged God and our families for the most part remained whole. I want to scream, “America! Wake up!” I have unhappily prophesied in writing that we are witnessing the catastrophic collapse of a once-great culture and our children are paying the price. I warned in my annual prophetic word just a few weeks ago of the rising tide of hatred around us that will surface in many arenas of life. This shooting is a manifestation of that hatred which inevitably results when a nation forgets its rightful Lawgiver and turns from His principles that were given to ensure the well-being of all God’s creation. These things never happened before? Read more
Ivan Okhlobystin, a Russian actor who took time off from the big screen to become a priest, has said publicly that gay people belong in an oven: A popular star with fiercely conservative views, [he] told an audience in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk that all homosexuals should be burned alive. … “I would put all the gays alive into an oven,” the one-time Orthodox priest has been quoted as saying. “This is Sodom and Gomorrah! As a religious person, I cannot be indifferent about it because it is a real threat to my children!” Okhlobystin later tweeted to confirm his comments. “The meaning was rendered correctly,” he said. “Everyone has the right to express their opinions.” Read more
Daniel is back with another montage of some of the awful things done in the name of God over the past month: (via ConversationWithA) Read more
Radio evangelist Harold Camping was so certain that the Rapture would occur on May 21, 2011 that he staked his entire reputation on it. His company, Family Radio, spent more than $5,000,000 on 5,000 billboards announcing the date and a media frenzy followed. Late tonight, his family announced that Camping died on Sunday: Yesterday, Sunday, December 15th, at around 5:30 p.m., Harold Camping passed on to glory and is now rejoicing with his beloved Savior! On Saturday, November 30th, Mr. Camping sustained a fall in his home, and he was not able to recover from his injuries. He passed away peacefully in his home, with his family at his side. We know that each of us remain in God’s hand, and God is the One who knows our appointed time to leave our earthly body behind. A Kansas news station was a little more honest about the legacy he left behind: Read more
It doesn’t take a lot to convince me it’s hard to be gay or lesbian at Liberty University. for that matter, it’s probably very hard to be a conservative Christian at, say, a progressive liberal arts school like Reed College. But being an evangelical Christian at a school in Kansas? Not hard. Seriously. Not even close. So let’s watch Kansas State University freshman Laura Meyers attempt to make that case, anyway: Read more
