Archives For November 30, 1999

Trends and news about secular culture

Headline prayers

ib2newseditor —  May 30, 2016

Today’s headlines are driving me frequently to deeper and more desperate prayer. Many of us probably whisper something like “God help them” when we see a tragedy reported on the news. But I’m not primarily referring to headlines about a natural disaster, or a rare, heinous crime by an isolated, evil person. The headlines driving me to deeper prayer are those that reveal a declining morality in our culture that seems more and more widely accepted.

My main dose of these daily headlines usually comes in the early morning while I’m exercising in front of the TV. As I flip from one news channel to another, I more and more regularly see behaviors and lifestyles and decisions that would have been considered shameful or scandalous a generation ago. Now they are reported as progressive, or even normal. And the proud spokespeople for many of these decadent trends are interviewed by often adoring news anchors, as if they were the civil rights voices of today.

I often find myself asking “Help them, help us, help me.”

Unrestricted freedom of individual choice, preference, and expression seem to have become idols in American culture today. Just this past week, a story and its follow up interview so shocked and deflated me that I moaned out loud, “Oh God, help them!”

“Help them to see the deception they have bought into, and the damage they are doing, and the long-term consequences of the sinful lifestyle they are advocating, both to themselves and to others. Convict them of sin, God, and show them the same mercy and grace that you show me when you convict me of my sin.”

But as the disturbing interview went on, I also found my prayer deepening. “Yes, God, help them, but also help us! Your gospel had no voice in that headline, and your church had no spokesperson in that panel discussion. Interviewer and interviewee alike just presented that issue totally void of biblical perspective or truth. God, don’t let that happen! Don’t let millions of viewers gradually learn to accept that position as true and normative. Give your truth a voice through your people!”

The story passed, and I don’t know what was on the screen next, because my prayer was driven even deeper. “Yes God, help them, and help us. But oh God, help me too!  My voice is so silent. My life is so impotent. My efforts to carry the truth of your word and the power of your gospel are so weak. I’m going to go to the office in a few minutes to answer some e-mails, sit in some meetings, and move some projects along. But what will I have personally done to make any difference in the cultural decline I have just witnessed?”

My feeling of powerlessness was frustrating. And that frustration made me angry. I found myself wanting to pray for God’s righteous judgment to simply fall upon these people, and upon our land if necessary, and make it all right again.

But I’ve learned to be careful, even fearful, about calling for God’s judgment. I am too often deserving of it myself. And when I was most deserving of it, when I was still a sinner by lifestyle and choice, when I was just as far from God as the frustrating people in the headlines, that’s when God in Christ reached out to me in mercy, and with conviction and grace and forgiveness. And he still does that today.

So I am meeting the morning headlines these days with these three prayers: God, help them. Help us. Help me. I invite you to join me in these prayers.

Nate Adams is executive director of the Illinois Baptist State Association. Respond at IllinoisBaptist@IBSA.org.

Governor Rauner crop

Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner

Religion and faith were on display at the Illinois Governor’s Prayer Breakfast as around 200 Christians, Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus, and others gathered at the Executive Mansion in Springfield May 26.

Yet, even in this setting with representatives of several religions, Jesus was lifted up. The gospel was clearly presented in song through the harmonies of The Gibson Girls, Scripture readings from Isaiah 2:1-4 and John 17, and prayer.

At the event, Governor Bruce Rauner asked attendees to pray for the state government. “I hope you will join us and people all around the state of Illinois in prayer. Keep us in your prayers. We need prayers for inspiration and to have good judgment.”

He also shared from his own personal faith background. His father is Catholic, while his mother is Swedish Lutheran. Rauner said he was baptized and confirmed in the Episcopalian Church and his wife is Jewish. “We have interesting conversations around the dinner table,” he joked.

But Rauner said he was inspired by his grandparents’ faith and the lessons they taught him: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” from Luke 6:31 and “For whom much is given, much shall be required,” from Luke 12:48. He spoke of the responsibility he felt after earning his own wealth, and said it was their examples that lead him to set up a charitable foundation to give to causes as well as to serve.

The governor shared about the importance of continuing the tradition of the breakfast, which some feared would not take place this year. In early May, a member of the organization that normally hosts the event, told media the breakfast would not be held due to state budget problems. Upon hearing the news, the Rauner expressed his disappointment and his office sought sponsors to host the event. Three organizations — the Abundant Faith Christian Center, the One Nation Under God Foundation, and the Illinois Executive Mansion Association — stepped up to sponsor the event, held every year since 1963. No government dollars were used to pay for this years event.

Bob Vanden Bosch, chairman of the One Nation Under God Foundation, told the Springfield State-Journal Register last week, “For us, this is a faith initiative. It’s not something that’s political. … I believe that prayer could be used by the state of Illinois right now.”

The event did include a reading from the Koran, but the overall tone of the event was Judeo-Christian.

Illinois Southern Baptists were represented at the event by two of the Illinois Baptist newspaper’s editors, Eric Reed and Lisa Sergent.

The BriefingFloyd among evangelicals to meet with Trump
Southern Baptist Convention President Ronnie Floyd is among 500 evangelicals and other conservatives planning to meet with presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump about his faith and values at a June 21 meeting in New York. Floyd is part of a small group of leaders to spearhead the meeting as the steering committee.

Trump’s other outreach efforts include an address at the Washington conference of conservative Christians sponsored by the Faith & Freedom Coalition and Concerned Women for America June 10.

Military chaplains need the Russell Amendment
Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives kept in place an amendment to this year’s National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that protects the rights of military chaplains. The Russell Amendment is a provision that applies to the religious exemption of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to federal contractors. It provides important protection to chaplains who have substantial discretion to supplement religious support programs via Department of Defense contractors and vendors.

Methodists postpone debate of LGBT issues
Amid protest, song and fears of a denominational breakup, United Methodists at their quadrennial General Conference decided yet again not to decide anything regarding LGBT rights. However, delegates voted 428-405 to allow the church’s Council of Bishops to appoint a commission to discuss whether to accept same-sex marriage or ordain LGBT clergy.

Same-sex marriage advocates work to oust WY judge
In what could be the nation’s first religious litmus test for holding a judicial post, the Wyoming Supreme Court is being asked to dismiss a municipal court judge because of her biblical views about marriage. Attorneys for Judge Ruth Neely argue the efforts of an unelected state commission to remove her from office are rooted in religious bias and misinterpretation of the law.

Churches hosting job fairs
Churches are partnering with Church Job Fairs, a faith-based organization that helps churches plan and promote job recruitment events. The events take place in local churches for the local community. The idea is simple: A church is meant to be a place of hope, encouragement, and love to its community. So why not host a job fair in a church and meet both physical and spiritual needs?

Sources: Baptist Press, Religion News, The Hill, Religion News, Baptist Press, WORLD Magazine

The BriefingRestroom directive harms the transgendered
The Obama administration’s directive regarding restroom use for transgender students at public schools and universities likely will harm children struggling with their gender identity and increase the number who become transgendered. That’s the conclusion of two Southern Baptist psychologists who have treated adolescents with gender dysphoria.

Transgender bathroom laws worry even liberal parents
Girls from a swim team in New York City’s Upper West Side are too scared to use the women’s locker room at a Parks Department swimming pool. In March, a sign appeared noting that everyone has the the right to use the restroom or locker room consistent with their “gender identity or gender expression.” Around the same time, the girls became concerned after they saw a “bearded individual” in the women’s changing room.

Abortion mandate cases returned to lower courts
The U.S. Supreme Court returned to the lower courts for reconsideration a disagreement between religious objectors and the federal government over the Obama administration’s abortion/contraception mandate, which requires employers to make contraceptives available to their workers, including ones that can potentially induce abortions. The appeals involve the Little Sisters of the Poor and GuideStone Financial Resources.

Stetzer leaving LifeWay for Wheaton College
Dr. Ed Stetzer has been appointed to a newly created chair, The Billy Graham Distinguished Endowed Chair for Church, Mission, and Evangelism. In this role, he has been named Executive Director of the Billy Graham Center for Evangelism at Wheaton College (BGCE). Stetzer shared some of the details as to why he’s making the move.

Going to church could help you live longer
Researchers have found that women who went to church more than once a week had a 33% lower risk of dying during the study period compared with those who said they never went. Women who regularly attended religious services also had higher rates of social support and optimism, had lower rates of depression and were less likely to smoke.

Sources: Baptist Press, Time, Baptist Press, Christianity Today, CNN

The BriefingTrump: ‘Moore Is Truly a Terrible Representative of Evangelicals’
Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump lashed out at ERLC President Russell Moore with a tweet May 9. The tweet comes after Moore told “Face the Nation”that “the Donald Trump phenomenon” is an “embrace of the very kind of moral and cultural decadence that conservatives have been saying for a long time is the problem.” He also noted some conservatives “now are not willing to say anything when we have this sort of reality television moral sewage coming through all over our culture.”

Evangelicals feel abandoned by GOP
Some conservatives whose voting decisions are guided by their Christian faith find themselves dismayed and adrift now that Trump has wrested control of the Republican Party. Even progressive Christians — evangelicals and Catholics, among others — who don’t necessarily vote Republican are alarmed that Trump is attracting many voters who call themselves religious.

Justice Dept., NC sue over bathroom law
The Justice Department and North Carolina filed dueling lawsuits May 9 over the state’s controversial “bathroom” law, with the Obama administration answering an early-morning lawsuit filed by Republican Gov. Pat McCrory with legal action of its own.

51 Illinois families sue over transgender bathroom policy
A group of 51 families whose children attend a Palatine, IL high school filed a federal lawsuit attempting to reverse a policy that allows a transgender student to use girls’ bathrooms, locker rooms, and other sex-specific facilities. They are challenging a policy at District 211 that was mandated by the U.S. Department of Education to accommodate the transgender student, who was born male but identifies as a female.

111 Methodist clergy come out as LGBT
Dozens of United Methodist clergy members came out as lesbian, gay or bisexual on May 9, defying their church’s ban on “self-avowed practicing homosexuals” serving in ministry and essentially daring their supervisors to discipline them.

Bono wants Christian music to get honest
When U2 musician Bono reads Psalms he sees the full range of human emotions: anger, irritation, sadness, bliss. Bono, who has become more outspoken about his Christian faith in recent years, is advocating Christian music return to the raw and honest emotion of the Psalms.

Sources: Christian Post, Baptist Press, Washington Post, Fox News, Daily Signal, CNN, Huffington Post

The BriefingESPN edits Schilling out of sports history
ESPN edited out footage from Curt Schilling’s legendary “bloody sock” game when replaying a 2010 documentary about the Boston Red Sox’s 2004 World Series comeback win. The move to cut him out of the documentary happened less than two weeks after the network fired him for objecting to laws allowing men who identify as transgender to use a women’s restroom.

Companies oppose religious freedom bills
Almost 200 bills have been proposed this year in more than 30 states that would limit or prohibit protection against discrimination for LGBT individuals, according to the advocacy group Human Rights Campaign (HRC). In response, large companies that have already contributed millions of dollars to HRC and other advocacy groups have been taking steps to coordinate their lobbying activities.

1 million Americans boycott Target
More than one million people have decided they will no longer buy their Nutter Butters or Wet Wipes at Target. The American Family Association launched a boycott of the nation’s second largest retailer over a week ago – over Target’s corporate policy allowing men who identify as women to use the bathrooms and fitting rooms of their choosing.

Student expelled for views on homosexuality
Former Missouri State University student Andrew Cash is suing the college for expelling him from the school’s counseling program based on his opposition to same-sex relationships. Cash, who began his master’s in counseling in 2007, was expelled from the program in 2014 for expressing his views on counseling homosexual couples on relationship issues.

Religious freedom deteriorating around the world
Religious freedom remains under “serious and sustained assault” around the globe, according to a new annual report from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. “At best, in most of the countries we cover, religious freedom has not gotten better,” commission chairman Robert P. George said May 2. “In the worst cases, it has spiraled further downwards.”

Sources: The Federalist, Bloomberg, Fox News, Baptist Press, Religion News

Safe zoneRecently I had an opportunity to attend a conference at one of the schools in the Illinois State University system. The conference was very informative and what I learned should benefit IBSA churches. What I learned walking through the campus may have been an even greater education.

I always enjoy being on college campuses and find the atmosphere invigorating. It’s a world that’s insulated from the stressors of work, dedicated to learning, the exchange of ideas, and full of youthful energy. But as a Christian it seems less and less welcoming.

Posters on the walls of hallways advertised events featuring authors of books on “queer” studies and “Lavender Graduation” ceremonies which the Human Rights Campaign describes as “an annual ceremony conducted on numerous campuses to honor lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and ally students and to acknowledge their achievements and contributions to the University.” The ceremony was scheduled to take place in a
few weeks in one of the rooms where my conference was meeting.

Different offices bore rainbow colored stickers emblazoned with the words, “Safe Zone.” Generally, they denote places where students can “safely” approach those inside about LGBTQ issues. I wondered how welcome I would be to walk inside and discuss Christ.

Like many of us, I consider myself well-read and informed, believing I know what’s going on in our country and culture. However, the reality of the situation hit me like a slap across the face. This is what many students from our churches encounter on their public university campuses everyday. Their beliefs are not celebrated and most likely not welcomed.

We must encourage and disciple the young people in our churches. We must do the same for them on our college campuses, and our churches must reach out to those on the campuses who do not know Christ. The culture is leading the next generation away from Christ, and we must speak truth into that culture—the truth that is Christ.

Christian college students can’t do it alone. Remember yourself as a student and the pressures you faced. Those pressures have only multiplied. Our churches must stand alongside them.

During a break between sessions, I found my way to the restrooms—one marked “men” and another marked “women.” I couldn’t help but wonder who I might encounter inside.

– LMS

The BriefingTransgender student wins restroom case appeal
In Virginia, federal appellate court has “for the first time ever” held that a public high school may not provide separate restrooms and locker rooms for students on the basis of biological sex alone, according to dissenting judge’s opinion. Although gender identity is not mentioned explicitly in Title IX, the judges said Supreme Court precedent requires that the Department of Education be allowed to interpret its own regulations where ambiguity exists.

#BoycottTarget reaches 500,000 signers
Less than a week after Target, the nation’s second-largest discount retailer, announced that transgender customers may use the restroom that “corresponds with their gender identity,” nearly 500,000 people have signed a #BoycottTarget online petition launched by the American Family Association.

Building the Museum of the Bible
When finished in 2017, the Museum of the Bible will be 430,000 square feet of exhibits dedicated to the Bible. The total cost will exceed $1 billion. The Green family, the same clan that owns the Hobby Lobby retail chain, has put up the seed money behind the project, including about $50 million to purchase the real estate on which the building sits in Washington, D.C.

Pro-abortion baby-shaped cookies
Pro-choicers go to great lengths not to use the term “babies” when it comes to unborn children. Which is what makes it ironic that a University of North Georgia pro-abortion group decide to feature cookies in the shape of said babies to promote keeping abortion legal.

Ga. fires physician for lay sermons
First Liberty Institute has filed a lawsuit for a bivocational lay minister and physician Eric Walsh, alleging the state of Georgia fired him because of sermons he delivered in the pulpit before his employment as a district health director. The termination violates Walsh’s rights to free speech, free exercise of religion and freedom of association guaranteed under the First Amendment, the suit asserts.

Sources: Baptist Press, Religion News, World Magazine, National Review, The Guardian, Baptist Press

The BriefingBans on travel to Miss., N.C., called ‘ridiculous’
At least nine U.S. cities and five states have banned non-essential travel by government employees to North Carolina, Mississippi or both, claiming religious liberty bills adopted there discriminate against homosexual and transgendered persons. Pastors and other Christian leaders call the bans “ridiculous.”

Women share abortion stories with the Supreme Court
Twenty-five years ago, two women found themselves in the same position: freshmen in college, pregnant and scared of derailing all they had worked toward. Both women walked into a Dallas abortion clinic. It’s what happened when they walked out, and in the weeks and decades that followed, that places them on opposite ends of the most significant abortion case to be heard by the Supreme Court in a quarter of a century. These and other women are sharing their abortion stories through friend-of-the-court briefs in the case of Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt.

Colleges welcome diversity, except evangelical Christians
San Diego State University recently withdrew official on-campus recognition from an evangelical sorority and an evangelical fraternity, stripping them of the privileges that all other on-campus student organizations possess. The problem according to the university was that these Christian student organizations were engaging in discrimination because they restricted their members to Christians in agreement with their statements of faith.

The footnote that could split the Catholic church
Some believe a footnote in Pope Francis’ new exhortation on marriage and the family, Amoris Laetitia could cause fractures in the Catholic church. There is an ongoing debate in the church about admitting remarried couples to the Eucharist. The footnote could further inflame that debate. Francis wrote, “In certain cases, this can include the help of the sacraments. Hence, ‘I want to remind priests that the confessional must not be a torture chamber, but rather an encounter with the Lord’s mercy’.”

Bible makes list of books most challenged
On the latest list of books most objected to at public schools and libraries, one title has been targeted nationwide, at times for the sex and violence it contains, but mostly for the legal issues it raises. The Bible.

Sources: Baptist Press, Washington Post, World Magazine, Gospel Coalition, Fox News

Disliking their options, some evangelicals consider withdrawing from presidential politics this time around.

USA symbols mapWith eight months to go until the presidential election, a World magazine survey finds 8 in 10 evangelical leaders say they would vote for an outside third-party candidate as president over Democrat Hillary Clinton or Republican Donald Trump.

Meanwhile, Trump has been victorious in several southern states where voters identified heavily as evangelical, sparking a debate over the meaning of the word “evangelical.”

This tension has not been unnoticed by the media. A recent Yahoo Politics article declared, “Donald Trump’s candidacy has sparked a civil war inside American Christianity.” In an essay for the New York Times, Russell Moore, head of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, asked, “Have evangelicals who support Trump lost their values?” In the article he decries Trump’s past behaviors and urges Christians to vote according to biblical moral values.

World’s March survey of 103 evangelical leaders and influencers showed more than 50% said they would, on principle, “vote for a third-party candidate who had no chance to win.” The survey also found 76% would vote for Sen. Ted Cruz as president if he secured the Republican nomination. In the eight prior surveys, their choice had been Sen. Marco Rubio who has since ended his campaign.

The debate continues over the disconnect between evangelical leaders and some people in the pews. D. C. Innes, King’s College professor and World magazine contributor, told the Deseret News evangelicals support Trump because they believe they’ve lost the culture wars. “Evangelicals, for example, became politically engaged to preserve their way of life and they don’t feel they’ve gotten their support’s worth from politicians. Abortion, gay marriage—they’ve lost on every front,” said Innes. “The support for Trump is an act of desperation: Protect us. We’re not free to be Christians anymore, so you’ve got my vote.”

Turning to Trump, who is decidely not evangelical, is one option. At the other end of the spectrum is The Benedict Option. In 500 AD, after the fall of the Roman empire, Benedict moved to the city of Rome to continue his education. Disgusted by the decadence there, he left the city and withdrew from society. Benedict became a monk and started several monasteries, leading to the Catholic order that bears his name.

Rod Dreher, writing for the American Conservative, calls this “a communal withdrawal from the mainstream, for the sake of sheltering one’s faith and family from corrosive modernity and cultivating a more traditional way of life.”

A less severe option calls on Christians not to withdraw, but to focus on their churches as “counter-cultural communities of disciples who covenant to walk together for the sake of worship, catechesis, witness, and service.”

Nathan Finn of Union University says this movement (called the Paleo-Baptist Option because it draws from Baptist history) is necessary because “all Christians need to learn from each other, sharpen one another, and spur each other on to love and good deeds. We need each other as our respective traditions seek to follow Christ and bear witness to his kingship in a culture that is increasingly hostile to all forms of orthodox, full-throated, publicly engaged Christianity.”

Of course, considering either outright withdrawal from politics or shoring up “the Christian resistance against what the empire represents,” possibly by way of supporting a third-party run, is all conjecture at this point. With Super Tuesday behind us, and until both parties choose their nominees for the general election, believing evangelicals can only watch and pray for better options.